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

Today is 19 April 2025. There are 168 days (24 weeks) until RPI's next game.


This is based upon 4 October 2025 for the start of next season.
 
rpi82 said:
When coaches are fired they often don’t leave behind a lot of talent. Let’s not rewrite history. On Seth’s last day as coach this was Ralph’s recruit list for 2017 and 2018;

Cory Babichuk, Jonathan Bendorf, Matt Cameron, Austin Cho, Bailey Conger, Mat Harris, Linden Marshall, Jacob Modry, Emil Ohrvall, Gavin Payne, Owen Stout and Atte Tuliara.

Ugghhh….that list includes at most 3 D1 players (Babichuk being the best and he was a one dimensional player), at least 3 that literally did drop down to D3, a couple to Usports and some that never made it to college hockey at all. I’d be willing to bet that Dave’s list, while hardly stellar, will have better careers than this group.

And if the portal existed in 2017 you can be sure that several of Seth’s better carry-overs would have bailed too. That’s the new world of college hockey.
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Thank you for that post.
The truth about the past without blaming anyone.
It is going to be hard for any coach to build a team in the first season.
It wasn't easy before the portal, now it is impossible.
Even if the new coach is as good as all of you think he is, it will take at least three years to make this team competitive.
I hope that I am wrong, but I don't think so.
 
rpi2004 said:
I think 10 to 15 to 20 wins should be the goal in year 1-3.
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Year 1 should be about establishing culture regardless of the record. I expect year 1 the record to be not great as Lang assesses what he currently has and then to go from there with getting better recruits and using the portal to fill gaps from there. Year two I can see 12-14 wins but RPI in lots of those games they lose. Year 3 between 16-18 wins as Lang finally gets his players fully in and culture firmly established and who knows maybe an appearance in Lake Placid. Year 4 they should be a factor in the top 4 of the ECAC battling for a league title potentially. Year 1 for lang was bad at AIC as it was similar to the previous year under the old coach. Year two was a huge step forward and by year 3 he was in the NCAAs. It’s possible he can do in similar fashion but it was easier in the Atlantic to do that without teams like Quinnipiac, Cornell and Clarkson to deal with. But the sky is the limit for Lang and RPI if they invest in the program because he is one of the better coaches in all of college hockey. RPI hit a home run but it was at the cost of losing another D1 program which sucks.
 
jericho said:
I’m sure he also has a nice list compiled from his showcase. What are the chances that gets hosted in Troy or Albany next year?
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Great idea. The Albany County facility is right next to the airport and ton of hotels on Wolf Rd. I know you may be partial to the Knick in the Burgh though ;)
 
rpi82 said:
Perhaps, but the better players just finished showcasing themselves during the regular season. Most of the guys we or other D1 teams would want wouldn't be going to what amounts to a tryout camp. It will help if a player was injured or, perhaps, a few that were on the end of top 10 team rosters and don't have much college tape to show. However, even in those cases they must have had some pretty good tape from juniors to even be recruited by those teams.
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You underestimate the relationships that Eric built putting this thing together. I agree with Jericho that Eric being the brainchild of the showcase is a big plus.
 
rpi82 said:
Perhaps, but the better players just finished showcasing themselves during the regular season. Most of the guys we or other D1 teams would want wouldn't be going to what amounts to a tryout camp. It will help if a player was injured or, perhaps, a few that were on the end of top 10 team rosters and don't have much college tape to show. However, even in those cases they must have had some pretty good tape from juniors to even be recruited by those teams.
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"Perhaps" this didn't age well after the portal pick up of Sobieski
 
rpi2004 said:
Big time get
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Really nice. Carvel quote when he joined UMass: " He is a smooth skating right shot defenseman that possesses a heavy shot, while making a solid first pass."

Western Mass kid, played at Shattuck before the USHL .

umassathletics.com

Western Mass Native Sobieski Joins Massachusetts Hockey Incoming Class - University of Massachusetts Athletics

AMHERST, Mass. - The University of Massachusetts has added 6-1, 181-pound right-shot defenseman Kazimier Sobieski to the squad for the 2024-25 season, head c...
umassathletics.com umassathletics.com
 
AspyDad said:
"Perhaps" this didn't age well after the portal pick up of Sobieski
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Far from it. Perhaps I misunderstood the post I was responding to as I interpreted it to mean Lang got a target list of players from the camp. The point I made was that not many players we would want would be in a tryout camp. I stand by that. Did Kobieski skate in a tryout? He should have plenty of tape from 1 1/2 years in the USHL and even the handful of games at UMass.

I don’t disagree at all that setting up the camp might lead to connections. I could easily envision an advisor signing up his lower level guys (having already arranged well before the move of his better guys with established junior or college track records) establishing a relationship with Lang that could be harvested in the future. If that was the case here I will admit that I didn’t expect it to payoff this fast.
 
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Sobieski has 4.0 Stars from Neutral Zone.

Going through the Neutral Zone reviews, Lang has definitely picked up on the quality of our recruits.

I do wonder why he was dissatisfied with UMA or they were dissatisfied with him.
 
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Ralph Baer said:
Sobieski has 4.0 Stars from Neutral Zone.

Going through the Neutral Zone reviews, Lang has definitely picked up on the quality of our recruits.

I do wonder why he was dissatisfied with UMA or they were dissatisfied with him.
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I would be more concerned about any history of injury. he only played the first 5 games of a season with UMass. For all intents and purposes he was not on the ice after early November. If injury is not of any consideration, I would not be questioning much else. With defense being perhaps our biggest problem for the past several years, he may indeed be a nice part of the answer.
 
Ralph Baer said:
Sobieski has 4.0 Stars from Neutral Zone.

Going through the Neutral Zone reviews, Lang has definitely picked up on the quality of our recruits.

I do wonder why he was dissatisfied with UMA or they were dissatisfied with him.
Click to expand...
Amazing what a difference in the quality. All 3.75 and up. Kazimier is a stud
 
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