RA: Thanks for posting. If we have nothing else we certainly have a coach who speaks well. I cannot remember anyone of our coaches fielding questions and responding as well as he does. He could sell ice to eskimos. But i strongly disagree with his statement that you should not have games that are more important than others. it is the nature of sport that some games just count more. Some games get you national recognition, some are in front of big crowds, some are on national TV and have a throng of possible recruits watching, and some are playoff and tournament games (like an NCAA tournament game). Some games just ARE more important and a team has to learn how to get up for these games, play well in these games and not freeze under the pressure. He used the 2 games against AIC last year as an example-sorry-every game is important but beating BU last year, our 3 results against Union, and beating Yale were more important and might have been our tickets to the tournament at the time. I honestly think he realizes this and is just playing down the importance of the BRF and some of the other games because of our poor performance in them lately. If we want to climb back up the ranks of the NCAA teams and the ECAC in particular-we have to emphasize our performance in the big important games. Of course you do not want to lose to the 58th ranked team (or to Army like we did this year). But if we continue to lose the games that we have tradionally done well with (the OOC contests against HE teams like BU, the BRF, etc), how can we expect to be considered as a program that is improving? I really wonder how this all plays out when coach SA is out on the recruiting trail and approaching prospects who can choose to go to teams ranked in the top 20 as opposed to one ranked in the bottom 10. I am not a hot shot hockey recruit-but I was, I would be thinking about what the RPI program really has to offer me right now. I certainly would look at the record the past 5 years and i would definitely be looking to see how players who do choose to come to Troy mature and whether they indeed imporve over the 4 years they spend in the program. Are the seniors in this program actually better players than they were as freshmen would be one of my major questions. And of course i would be asking how often this team gets to even play in the final four of the ECAC tournament. Now, after saying that, let's get this thing started with 2 road victories this weekend and start making a push towards the playoffs (which are indeed more important games). As usual just my 2¢
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