I know you love Seth and want to give him as much credit as possible, but if you go back and look at our recruiting pipeline when he was fired it's really bad. Outside of Marshall and Babichuk there was very little talent committed for the entering classes of 2017, 2018 and 2019. Here are the other committed names Seth left behind: Jonathan Bendorf, Matt Cameron, Austin Cho, Bailey Conger, Jacob Modry, Emil Ohrvall, Owen Stout and Atte Tuliara. Bendorf is the only one that came close to having even a moderately good D1 college career and that was at the Atlantic Hockey level. Modry and Conger finished their careers in D3. Cameron's entire career was 4 games for Niagara. Ohrvall and Stout played one year for us and then bounced around other colleges without establishing themselves. Cho and Tuiliara just vaporized. Seth's recruiting cupboard was incredibly bare.
Fontaine committed to the Engineers in 2018, nearly a year after Seth was fired. He also wasn't considered anywhere near the star of his prep team when we recruited him as a host of teammates already had Hockey East commitments (including both of his linemates). After he had his breakout season in the USHL the only way we'd have gotten him to Troy would be by joining HE.
As for the rest of the 19-20 team, I think you are unfairly underselling Smith's contributions. Certainly Reilly, Burgess and Polino were key upperclassmen that Seth brought in and he should be credited for that. However, Zeiky, the leading scorer, was brought in by Smith as was Savory the star goalie. Key forwards Linden, Gornall, Ashbrook, Leppanen and Dubinsky and the entire defense outside of Reilly and Babichuk were also Smith recruits.