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RPI 2025 Off-Season: HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Murley said on the podcast at noon that RPI is at the finish line, and there will be a press conference on Monday or Tuesday.

I wasn't expecting any official announcement today, but the offer will definitely go out soon, today or tomorrow, if they're announcing early next week. Once the offer is out, I'd be surprised if it's not reported by one of the main college hockey reporters or local news
 
rpi82 said:
This is one of a relatively small cluster of jobs (D-1 head coach) that only come available at this time of year in relatively small numbers (a handful each year). I'm sure these family issues were discussed ahead of time when the candidates accepted the invitation to apply - and certainly when they were brought in as finalists. If the three remaining are, as we believe,
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I tend to agree. You don't go interview for a job like this and then only after getting an offer decide if it's something your family can support.

rpi82 said:
Shirley is the gift that keeps on giving.......
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New sheriffs in town. We'll get to find out exactly how new in short order.
 
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sezenack said:
Murley said on the podcast at noon that RPI is at the finish line, and there will be a press conference on Monday or Tuesday.

I wasn't expecting any official announcement today, but the offer will definitely go out soon, today or tomorrow, if they're announcing early next week. Once the offer is out, I'd be surprised if it's not reported by one of the main college hockey reporters or local news
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I'm also hoping the deal is done and the new guy is on the job by the end of the day. They can do the press conference next week or even after the FF, but this is very dynamic time of year and every day that is lost makes lining up new staff, working to retain current players and recruiting (freshman and, particularly, portal) more difficult. Give the best guy the keys (the fob?) and let's get going.
 
rpi82 said:
I'm also hoping the deal is done and the new guy is on the job by the end of the day. They can do the press conference next week or even after the FF, but this is very dynamic time of year and every day that is lost makes lining up new staff, working to retain current players and recruiting (freshman and, particularly, portal) more difficult. Give the best guy the keys (the fob?) and let's get going.
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One interesting thing Murley said on the podcast today is that RPI will only really consider freshmen or sophomores from the portal, because you have to take 60% of your credits there to get a degree.
 
tanman said:
One interesting thing Murley said on the podcast today is that RPI will only really consider freshmen or sophomores from the portal, because you have to take 60% of your credits there to get a degree.
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I don't remember that rule, but I'm surprised that he said that. It presumes they didn't already graduate and transferring to get an MBA or MS. We've had several one year transfers in recent years (McDermott, Ragula, etc.) and I believe they were all grad students. Some were using extra Covid eligibility, but players often graduate after 3 years because they took courses while playing juniors or in the summer while prepping for the next season. In fact, didn't Murley say in one of the recent podcasts that he graduated in 3 1/2 years? As far as I know the Ivy League still doesn't allow grad students to play so any of their players graduating after 3 have to go somewhere else for their final season of eligibility.
 
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Today is 5 April 2025. There are 182 days (26 weeks) until RPI's next game. It has been 27 days since there has been a head coach.



This is based upon 4 October 2025 for the start of next season, and 10 March was the day that coach Smith was relieved of duty.
 
tanman said:
One interesting thing Murley said on the podcast today is that RPI will only really consider freshmen or sophomores from the portal, because you have to take 60% of your credits there to get a degree.
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So maybe Gilson only intended to be at RPI for one year from the start.
 
Ralph Baer said:
So maybe Gilson only intended to be at RPI for one year from the start.
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I doubt it. Matt was fundamentally right about true undergraduate transfers (as opposed to grad "transfers"). We would only be looking at guys with no more than two years of credits. In Gilson's case he was only at Alaska for a couple of years. However, Matt's calculations were a little off. RPI requires 64 credits in residence, - basically a normal two year load. Most majors require 125-130 credits to graduate so it's essentially 50%. Less rigorous schools like the Q only require one year's worth of credits on campus so they can take senior one year transfers.

The portal is with us to stay so we should expect to lose some people via transfer, but we have to get the program back to the point where we are an attractive destination and the program has enough to offer that we keep the critical core from year to year.
 
rpi82 said:
From their bios I can see that the staff under Lang pretty much turned over completely during the pandemic and shortly thereafter. A season or two later results dropped off a bit (still not bad until this season given AIC's resources). Was he highly dependent on any of the staff for critical roles? In particular, did he lose a lead recruiter that he relied upon?
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That's the question I hope that RPI asked. When Lang was hired, it was after the 2015-16 season ended. And we ended up with a lot of Freshmen that you wouldn't think we'd be able to get. A friend of mine asked one "Why were you still available?" And the player flat out said, "I don't know" So it also may be that other teams are now doing a markedly better job finding the good players??? We also got a few game changer transfers(imo) that we didn't get towards the last 2-3 years. TBH, I'm quite surprised that Mike Towns name has not come up for a head coaching job.
 
bgtrpi said:
All this speculation about an announcement today assumes that there are no negotiations over the contract terms and the chosen candidate doesn't require time to discuss with his family. I know I never accepted a job that required relocation before discussing with my family. Employers generally would give the weekend to decide.
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Of course this is true. Likely many of those conversations were ongoing during the application process...."honey. if they offer me the job, what are your thoughts about your work, the kids, the house, etc etc .

Equally likely, if the swirl is accurate that Lang is the guy, is the lawyers doing what lawyers do.....that being slowing things down. LOL I suspect we'll have our answer soon enough.
 
vicious said:
Lang has given notice at AIC. The head men's hockey coach position is listed in their job openings.
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It can’t be bad news for us but I wouldn’t read too much into it. I don’t think Lang is going to drop down with the team under any circumstances. The job was posted on Wednesday, the day of the last interviews, and I doubt we made an offer, he accepted, resigned his old position and the opening was posted all on the same day. I think he told AIC he was leaving before he even interviewed. If he did commit on that timeline then I think we’d have heard by now.

BTW, I think Lang’s the guy (although I must admit their drop off from AH dominance would make me ask questions), but we thought BB was the guy 8 years ago. Tapp and Brooks are excellent candidates, so it wouldn’t stun me if either got the job. I would consider both to have much higher odds than I would have given Dave Smith last time.
 
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rpi82 said:
I don't remember that rule, but I'm surprised that he said that. It presumes they didn't already graduate and transferring to get an MBA or MS. We've had several one year transfers in recent years (McDermott, Ragula, etc.) and I believe they were all grad students. Some were using extra Covid eligibility, but players often graduate after 3 years because they took courses while playing juniors or in the summer while prepping for the next season. In fact, didn't Murley say in one of the recent podcasts that he graduated in 3 1/2 years? As far as I know the Ivy League still doesn't allow grad students to play so any of their players graduating after 3 have to go somewhere else for their final season of eligibility.
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Yeah I know pretty much squat about the "business" aspects of recruiting and eligibility, it was just something he said that caught my attention. It made me think it would shrink the pool of candidates even further, but it sounds like it's not the whole story based on what you and others have pointed out.
 
CornwallAce said:
That's the question I hope that RPI asked. When Lang was hired, it was after the 2015-16 season ended. And we ended up with a lot of Freshmen that you wouldn't think we'd be able to get. A friend of mine asked one "Why were you still available?" And the player flat out said, "I don't know" So it also may be that other teams are now doing a markedly better job finding the good players??? We also got a few game changer transfers(imo) that we didn't get towards the last 2-3 years. TBH, I'm quite surprised that Mike Towns name has not come up for a head coaching job.
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I just read Towns' bio on the Michigan State site. His career has had a nice trajectory and it seems he'd be a credible candidate for new HC positions in the future.
 
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