Let's clear up some inaccuracies. First, Vines was not fired from the men's program. We brought in a new coach and he chose not to renew a member of the previous staff. It's a standard practice for a new coach to want to bring in new staff members. Given our previous struggles I was actually surprised that Smith chose to keep even one, but he probably wanted to maintain some continuity in recruiting.
That leads to the second inaccuracy. Vines has not brought in 3 of his own classes. In fact, it's arguable that 2020 is really the first Vines class. He was hired as "interim coach" well into the summer of 2017, after that class was all locked and loaded. Furthermore, there were a half-dozen additional recruits already committed for 2018 and 2019. He could have dumped them I suppose, but that's not a desired practice and, since he was still technically just an interim coach until the summer of 2018, probably not a wise one or one that he may have been empowered to execute. So there are only a handful of Vines recruits on the team with many more committed for 2020-2022. It should be noted, however, that the best arrival during the post-Burke period was a Vines' recruit, Nystrom, and he couldn't keep her.
The biggest argument against Vines is that the players don't seem to have improved under his tutelage. Burke was not an amazing recruiter but he seemed to develop whatever he got so the team could be competitive. Of course, it may have helped that he was a goaltender as we've had a long tradition of depending on a rock in the nets (Selander, van der Bliek, Schiff, etc.). They kept us in the game and we usually had at least one competent scoring line so we could be in most games and compete for a spot at the back-end of the playoff grid. We didn't come close to that this year.
All of this is probably irrelevant to whether Vines will stay on the job. I'll bet it has more to do with his contract status. Having not been appointed until the summer of 2018, I presume he has at least a year or two left. Women's hockey is a non-revenue sport. I've been to home games with, at best, 100 in attendance and road games where the only other people in RPI gear turned out to be the parents of a player. That was during the period when we were competitive. In that sense, I'm part of the problem since I haven't attended a women's game in 3 years. Any way you look at it, there's a strong disincentive to pay multiple coaches in a sport that not only doesn't bring in revenue, but doesn't move the dial in terms of student, alumni or community involvement. (Note: I've seen the team in road games at 4 other D-I rinks as well as non-RPI games at two more , a total of 4 ECAC and 2 HE, and they didn't do any better so this is not a uniquely RPI problem). He'll get another year, maybe 2, to show what he can do with his own recruits.
