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RPI 2011-12 Part V: Don't Stop Believing

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Re: RPI 2011-12 Part V: Don't Stop Believing

Ralph Baer said:
It does seem that way. Either Nolan Graham hasn't been given the same responsibilities as Montgomery, or he is not capable of doing them as well.

BTW, for whatever reason Kasdorf has not been a shutdown golaie in the USHL. He has been sitting on the bench in favor of an MTU recruit the last couple of weeks.
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I noticed that his stats were not great, but didn't realize he was now not even playing. The two coming back do not appear to be good enough for a team averagin fewer than 2 goals a game.
 
Re: RPI 2011-12 Part V: Don't Stop Believing

FlagDUDE08 said:
I think the problem is deeper, but you don't have to dig too far, as you just presented the problem. I don't see very much away-from-the-puck movement on the power play. I'd almost like to see a little more motion out there. We have the skating prowess (after all, we can keep up with a team like Yale), so with those slower teams, let's skate them and create some openings. With any zone defence, they want you to chuck it from the cheap seats, so why not look to break that?
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Some teams in the ECAC and the other leagues just seem to have successful power lays year after year-they graduate a group-reload and their statistics don't vary very much. I suspect at least this part of the game is coachable/teachable. There is a lot of this game that is just plain talent and natural ability-you cannot really teach speed or size, etc. But we have just been rather poor and near the bottom of the national statistics in some categories for years. There are also a lot of little things that the better teams do well that never show up in any statistic (except in the win column). Obviously there are some teams that are just loaded with talent that we cannot compare with (teams with 16+ NHL draft choices like NDak last year). But for the great majority of teams, once you get past their first or perhaps second forward line and past their first pair of defensemen-the talent level differences are just not that big. There are 58 teams playing NCAA Div I hockey-I would be willing to bet comparing all the individual players on every team that we should not be ranked (on talent alone) down in the bottom 5 or 10. Whatever our problems are-I find it hard to believe that our roster does not compare more favorably to a good percentage of the other 57 teams. Especially when we realize that most of our boys were also recruited by the other schools.
 
Re: RPI 2011-12 Part V: Don't Stop Believing

DrDemento said:
Some teams in the ECAC and the other leagues just seem to have successful power lays year after year-they graduate a group-reload and their statistics don't vary very much. I suspect at least this part of the game is coachable/teachable. QUOTE]

Powerplays are coachable. But it helps if you have someone that can bury the puck. The other team usually knows your big scorer and will cheat a little bit. That opens up the middle or the other side. RPI simply doesn't have that scorer up front. The other team can be aggressive all over the ice because besides maybe Bailen at the point they simply don't fear anyone.
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Re: RPI 2011-12 Part V: Don't Stop Believing

As far as the power play goes, one aspect that we have lacked it seems for the past few seasons has been that pointman with a low hard shot that can one time it. Labeouf has shown flashes of being able to get the puck to the net low and hard, and some have gone in for him. Bailen appeared to be taking on that role last year but seemed to struggle this year.
Guys that come to mind from the past are Jake Luthi and Scott Basiuk.
 
Re: RPI 2011-12 Part V: Don't Stop Believing

DavidSec17 said:
As far as the power play goes, one aspect that we have lacked it seems for the past few seasons has been that pointman with a low hard shot that can one time it. Labeouf has shown flashes of being able to get the puck to the net low and hard, and some have gone in for him. Bailen appeared to be taking on that role last year but seemed to struggle this year.
Guys that come to mind from the past are Jake Luthi and Scott Basiuk.
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Bo Dolan has it as well, he just needs to take it more. I'm sort of reminded of Erik B, how he'd take maybe a maximum of one shot every month (granted he was a stay-at-home D-man). Of course, that's probably why his shot percentage was so high.

We definitely need a finisher. There are some that just plain can't hit the net, even if it were wide open. I'm assuming the goal is regulation size (no Happy Gilmores here). :D Some of them could use a little work with getting the stick on the puck, because we could have a whole heap of shots with just those two things.
 
Re: RPI 2011-12 Part V: Don't Stop Believing

FlagDUDE08 said:
It wouldn't surprise me, given how that other job he took panned out.
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It's apples and oranges of course but 6 years as an NHL head coach is not failure. And the Kings are a great young team.

It he had come to RPI and done well he probably would have left by now for an NHL gig anyhow. And if he did poorly then we'd be complaining like we are now without the excuse that a new head coach needing a 6 year learning curve. 6 years is a long time.

I wonder if Montgomery left because he saw something he didn't like. I mean Iowa is such an exciting place to be every winter.
 
Re: RPI 2011-12 Part V: Don't Stop Believing

jmhusker said:
It's apples and oranges of course but 6 years as an NHL head coach is not failure. And the Kings are a great young team.

It he had come to RPI and done well he probably would have left by now for an NHL gig anyhow. And if he did poorly then we'd be complaining like we are now without the excuse that a new head coach needing a 6 year learning curve. 6 years is a long time.

I wonder if Montgomery left because he saw something he didn't like. I mean Iowa is such an exciting place to be every winter.
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I think that Montgomery left because he decided that he needed Head Coach experience to advance. (Just a guess.)
 
Re: RPI 2011-12 Part V: Don't Stop Believing

Ralph Baer said:
I think that Montgomery left because he decided that he needed Head Coach experience to advance. (Just a guess.)
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His prowess in Dubuque has certainly made the Maine threads longer by two words per post. :D

To say that Coach Appert hasn't made an improvement this year, though, is nuts. Look at January, he finally realized that sometimes you can't get the seniors to lead your team, and that you must be a high motivating factor. Look at how well we have performed since then. It's night and day from the 3-15-0 we saw in the first half of the season. Sure, we'd laid a couple of eggs, but we've had some very good games that I don't think would have happened if nothing changed.
 
Re: RPI 2011-12 Part V: Don't Stop Believing

FlagDUDE08 said:
His prowess in Dubuque has certainly made the Maine threads longer by two words per post. :D

To say that Coach Appert hasn't made an improvement this year, though, is nuts. Look at January, he finally realized that sometimes you can't get the seniors to lead your team, and that you must be a high motivating factor. Look at how well we have performed since then. It's night and day from the 3-15-0 we saw in the first half of the season. Sure, we'd laid a couple of eggs, but we've had some very good games that I don't think would have happened if nothing changed.
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That is true, but I do think taht our powerplay still sucks. The available talent does not seem to me to be used well.

I gave up reading Maine threads for Lent. (Oops. Wrong thread. :D )
 
Re: RPI 2011-12 Part V: Don't Stop Believing

Ralph Baer said:
That is true, but I do think taht our powerplay still sucks. The available talent does not seem to me to be used well.

I gave up reading Maine threads for Lent. (Oops. Wrong thread. :D )
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Could not agree more. And the talent has not been used well for a long time with the exception of Polacek's last 2 years. I find it odd that our recruit classes and talent level is not considered to be in the bottom 10 of the NCAA, but often times our power play is (and this year our overall ranking is). Just very strange that over the past 10 years we have had probably 60 or more different players come through the program (a total guess on my part -I have no idea how many) and we had only one who could bury the puck.
 
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Re: RPI 2011-12 Part V: Don't Stop Believing

FreshFish said:
hmm....from my experience it is nicer than Troy, NY ;)
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You can coach in Troy but live in Saratoga or a number of other nice surrounding areas. You coach in Dubuque and you live there or on a farm somewhere or perhaps in Galena Illinois (nice little town). It's really the region that we are comparing and the CD has a lot more going for it than the Dubuque area. I'd rather be 2 hours from NYC and 45 minutes from the Adirondacks than 2 hours from Madison and 45 minutes from another corn field. But others may feel otherwise - especially pig farmers and riverboat casino dealers. Sorry that was a cheap shot. Iowans are good people. The area is just a bit boring to my taste.
 
Re: RPI 2011-12 Part V: Don't Stop Believing

DrDemento said:
Could not agree more. And the talent has not been used well for a long time with the exception of Polacek's last 2 years. I find it odd that our recruit classes and talent level is not considered to be in the bottom 10 of the NCAA, but often times our power play is (and this year our overall ranking is). Just very strange that over the past 10 years we have had probably 60 or more different players come through the program (a total guess on my part -I have no idea how many) and we had only one who could bury the puck.
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Appert said he wanted a skating team and that is what we have. We just don't have a shooting and passing team. And we seem to lack strategy. He needs to start treating hockey a little more like a chess match and a little less like a horse race!
 
Re: RPI 2011-12 Part V: Don't Stop Believing

jmhusker said:
Appert said he wanted a skating team and that is what we have. We just don't have a shooting and passing team. And we seem to lack strategy. He needs to start treating hockey a little more like a chess match and a little less like a horse race!
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The team has no identity. The coach wants a skating team that plays hard and is hard to play against. We skate, but we are not hard to play against. We have a lot of tools, but are not able to use them.
The defense and goaltending was very good at the beginning of the season, but eratic towards the end. We never scored more than 4 goals in a single game. How can that be?
Seniors and Juniors seemed to play their part, and the freshmen are just now beginning to show some improvement. Haggerty and Schroeder will be good goal scorers during their careers here. Laliberte needs to decide who he wants to be. He shows flashes, but seems to want to pass instead of shoot. I thought he was a shoot first kind of guy, but I guess I was wrong.
The team needs some direction and cohesiveness.
I would love to see us make some noise in the playoffs, just to get us in the right frame of mind coming into next season.
Of course, I wouldn't mind if they won out, but that may be asking too much.
 
Re: RPI 2011-12 Part V: Don't Stop Believing

Ralph Baer said:
Shouting "U!" -- Bad. Shouting "Red!" -- Good. ;)

Seriously, these shouts used to bother me, but I have grown to accept them. There are many other things that are shouted at games that bother me much more.
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Well said.
 
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