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

[Engineers]

I’m


Definitely the best pickup so for for Eric Lang and RPI.

Lang isn’t messing around

 

[Ralph Baer]

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.

He left UMA and went to Youngstown (USHL) where he is still playing.
regular season 38- 8-19- 27- 31
playoffs 1- 0- 1- 1- 0


Is he eligible for a redshirt?

 

[rpi2004]

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.

He went back to the USHL and was really productive. Idk why he left UMass, i don’t think any of us really have any sources there

 

[AspyDad]

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.

Please keep Neutral Zone coming. For sure, a huge upgrade on recruiting front. I'm excited to see what Eric gets out of CHL

 

[AspyDad]

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.

Tape is great for sure but no substitute for seeing a player in person. By setting up this showcase he got a jump on relationship part of recruiting part. Eric is a leader and proactive. Happy Easter/Passover RPI 82

 

[AspyDad]

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 .

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

Sounds like a player for the PP

 

[rpi82]

Tape is great for sure but no substitute for seeing a player in person. By setting up this showcase he got a jump on relationship part of recruiting part. Eric is a leader and proactive. Happy Easter/Passover RPI 82

You appear to have inside info on this one so I’ll defer to your knowledge. As I said, I figured added connections might help get better players but I didn’t think it would be this year.

Since Sobieski’s last game at UMass was against AIC, coach has seen him in action. Given that one of Lang’s talents was in getting quality transfers that he wouldn’t have been able to get there the first time around I would have thought he’d have been on him since he went back to the USHL. Apparently I was wrong.

Edit: I also didn’t factor in AIC’s dropping down happened at that same time so Lang undoubtedly stopped recruiting in-bound players at that level.

 

[troyboy]

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 .

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

Certainly has the pedigree if he works out should be a big boost to PP !

 

[Ralph Baer]

Hopefully, we won't have trouble getting the players we are recruiting from the portal into RPI. I suspect that it is easier to get people admitted into AIC than RPI.

 

[DavidNardolillo]

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.

I agree that the first year is going to be tough, but the portal actually offers me some hope for a decent roster in a relatively short amount of time. There are only 64 DI teams and now a whole new talent pool from the CHL is theoretically available. The ECAC is still a desirable league to be in, relatively speaking. And, the NIL situation in hockey doesn't have the same $$ as basketball or football, so there's still a chance of movement of players to smaller programs.

Recruiting at RPI has been a problem for a while now; the win-loss record is the proof. It looks like the new coach is pretty good at it, which is really encouraging.

 

[DavidNardolillo]

Haggerty, Zaliewski, Reilly, Foss, Bergin, Kasdorf, York, Burgess. Dave never recruited a kid in that caliber. Cupboard is bare and you can thank Dave. The great Nolan Graham recruited Babs when he was 15. Dave couldn't hold him.

Babichuck seemed like a big loss at the time, but only played one more season and retired right after he got his degree from UVM with one or two years of eligibility left.

I think that Dave Smith's recruiting got hurt by some factors outside of his control, but even considering that, the 22-23 class turned out to be a really disappointing one on the whole, and an indication of one of the issues that eventually led to a head coaching change.

 

[sezenack]

I agree that the first year is going to be tough, but the portal actually offers me some hope for a decent roster in a relatively short amount of time. There are only 64 DI teams and now a whole new talent pool from the CHL is theoretically available. The ECAC is still a desirable league to be in, relatively speaking. And, the NIL situation in hockey doesn't have the same $$ as basketball or football, so there's still a chance of movement of players to smaller programs.

Recruiting at RPI has been a problem for a while now; the win-loss record is the proof. It looks like the new coach is pretty good at it, which is really encouraging.

I also think that given how tight the ECAC is in the middle and bottom that home ice is within the realm of possibility. Even this year, two more wins would have propelled us from 10th to 8th. That being said, I'm withholding from any predictions until the roster is finalized

 

[Engineers]

Babichuck seemed like a big loss at the time, but only played one more season and retired right after he got his degree from UVM with one or two years of eligibility left.

I think that Dave Smith's recruiting got hurt by some factors outside of his control, but even considering that, the 22-23 class turned out to be a really disappointing one on the whole, and an indication of one of the issues that eventually led to a head coaching change.

Dave’s recruiting was terrible. Half the roster was high end D3 players. Don’t even get me started on the defensive play. Flat out abysmal

 

[Ralph Baer]

Today is 21 April 2025. There are 166 days until RPI's next game.


This is based upon 4 October 2025 for the start of next season.

 

[Ralph Baer]

Dave’s recruiting was terrible. Half the roster was high end D3 players. Don’t even get me started on the defensive play. Flat out abysmal

Were the other half low-end D3 players?

 

[DavidNardolillo]

Dave’s recruiting was terrible. Half the roster was high end D3 players. Don’t even get me started on the defensive play. Flat out abysmal

You certainly can't say Dave's recruiting was great (RPI's consistently poor special teams play is one demonstration of talent shortage), but going through old threads here over the past couple of seasons, we were also left wondering whether the team was performing to its potential and being properly coached. The last two years featured really experienced players and RPI was in the top half of the country in scoring offense, but the league records were poor, defense was a liability, and RPI was comfortably beaten in the regular season by almost every opponent that was an NCAA tournament contender.

Regardless of how one weights the impact of those factors, the simple combination of those questions made a coaching change necessary.

 

[Engineers]

You certainly can't say Dave's recruiting was great (RPI's consistently poor special teams play is one demonstration of talent shortage), but going through old threads here over the past couple of seasons, we were also left wondering whether the team was performing to its potential and being properly coached. The last two years featured really experienced players and RPI was in the top half of the country in scoring offense, but the league records were poor, defense was a liability, and RPI was comfortably beaten in the regular season by almost every opponent that was an NCAA tournament contender.

Regardless of how one weights the impact of those factors, the simple combination of those questions made a coaching change necessary.

Agreed. The combination of poor defensive play, terrible coaching, bad penalties is a killer.
Comfortably is one way of putting it. I was at the fieldhouse for the Maine series and UNH this year. It was flat out awful. Maine absolutely beat the balls off us. They could have scored 15 goals if they wanted to. Benny called the dogs off lol. UNH was the same game That’s all behind us now! Lang is a great coach who will build this the right way. I’m very excited to see the recruits he brings in. And a team that actually plays structured defense.

 

[rpi82]

Dave’s recruiting was terrible. Half the roster was high end D3 players. Don’t even get me started on the defensive play. Flat out abysmal

You certainly can't say Dave's recruiting was great (RPI's consistently poor special teams play is one demonstration of talent shortage), but going through old threads here over the past couple of seasons, we were also left wondering whether the team was performing to its potential and being properly coached. The last two years featured really experienced players and RPI was in the top half of the country in scoring offense, but the league records were poor, defense was a liability, and RPI was comfortably beaten in the regular season by almost every opponent that was an NCAA tournament contender.

Regardless of how one weights the impact of those factors, the simple combination of those questions made a coaching change necessary.

That's what baffles me to this day. We are celebrating our incoming guys who have nice ratings, but as Ralph's data showed the guys we are losing in the portal (Smolinski, Hotson, Caron, Muzzati & Strom) were all rated equally well. Although Gilson was not rated highly entering college, they now rank him as 4 stars (pretty clearly weighted toward his offensive skill). While I agree we lacked depth as a number of guys on the lower half of the roster were, at best, marginal D1 players, I could say that for most teams outside the top 10-20. Now we can certainly question recruiting rankings and I see some of the above as a real basis to do so, that should make us equally cautious over the new guys' ratings before they even hit Troy ice.

In my opinion, recruiting was far from a strength of the program and the roster needed an injection of talent, but an even bigger issue was coaching and converting the skills we had into a cohesive team. Oddly, I thought Dave did a decent job of that in the early years and we were making progress, but the last few were a complete implosion (and we can't blame all of it on the pandemic or even Shirley). We had a veteran team that just didn't perform - even to the level expected for their skills. At the end of the day that's why major changes were required both on the roster and behind the bench. It is also an area where Lang may have an even bigger impact than recruiting. If he could get early AIC (a school with no history and even fewer resources) rosters to be competitive while he improved the talent level, I am cautiously optimistic he can find a way to stitch whatever roster we have into a functioning unit and not just 6 guys on the ice. That alone would make us competitive in the ECAC in fairly short order. Then we can shoot for the upper echelon of the league as the overall roster improves.

Edit: I'm really interested to see who he brings in as the new lead assistant. Given the massive job of building a team almost from the ground up, enhancing the recruiting pipeline and reinvigorating a program that has taken a beating, that slot is almost as important as the HC.

 

[Engineers]

That's what baffles me to this day. We are celebrating our incoming guys who have nice ratings, but as Ralph's data showed the guys we are losing in the portal (Smolinski, Hotson, Caron, Muzzati & Strom) were all rated equally well. Although Gilson was not rated highly entering college, they now rank him as 4 stars (pretty clearly weighted toward his offensive skill). While I agree we lacked depth as a number of guys on the lower half of the roster were, at best, marginal D1 players, I could say that for most teams outside the top 10-20. Now we can certainly question recruiting rankings and I see some of the above as a real basis to do so, that should make us equally cautious over the new guys' ratings before they even hit Troy ice.

In my opinion, recruiting was far from a strength of the program and the roster needed an injection of talent, but an even bigger issue was coaching and converting the skills we had into a cohesive team. Oddly, I thought Dave did a decent job of that in the early years and we were making progress, but the last few were a complete implosion (and we can't blame all of it on the pandemic or even Shirley). We had a veteran team that just didn't perform - even to the level expected for their skills. At the end of the day that's why major changes were required both on the roster and behind the bench. It is also an area where Lang may have an even bigger impact than recruiting. If he could get early AIC (a school with no history and even fewer resources) rosters to be competitive while he improved the talent level, I am cautiously optimistic he can find a way to stitch whatever roster we have into a functioning unit and not just 6 guys on the ice. That alone would make us competitive in the ECAC in fairly short order. Then we can shoot for the upper echelon of the league as the overall roster improves.

Edit: I'm really interested to see who he brings in as the new lead assistant. Given the massive job of building a team almost from the ground up, enhancing the recruiting pipeline and reinvigorating a program that has taken a beating, that slot is almost as important as the HC.

The past two years were just bizarre with the lack of cohesion. Not surprising lang has a history of having excellent assistants. Weidler at Vermont, towns at Michigan state and clarkson, Riley at LIU, all learned under lang. we should get a excellent assistant coach

 

[rpi2004]

That's what baffles me to this day. We are celebrating our incoming guys who have nice ratings, but as Ralph's data showed the guys we are losing in the portal (Smolinski, Hotson, Caron, Muzzati & Strom) were all rated equally well. Although Gilson was not rated highly entering college, they now rank him as 4 stars (pretty clearly weighted toward his offensive skill). While I agree we lacked depth as a number of guys on the lower half of the roster were, at best, marginal D1 players, I could say that for most teams outside the top 10-20. Now we can certainly question recruiting rankings and I see some of the above as a real basis to do so, that should make us equally cautious over the new guys' ratings before they even hit Troy ice.

In my opinion, recruiting was far from a strength of the program and the roster needed an injection of talent, but an even bigger issue was coaching and converting the skills we had into a cohesive team. Oddly, I thought Dave did a decent job of that in the early years and we were making progress, but the last few were a complete implosion (and we can't blame all of it on the pandemic or even Shirley). We had a veteran team that just didn't perform - even to the level expected for their skills. At the end of the day that's why major changes were required both on the roster and behind the bench. It is also an area where Lang may have an even bigger impact than recruiting. If he could get early AIC (a school with no history and even fewer resources) rosters to be competitive while he improved the talent level, I am cautiously optimistic he can find a way to stitch whatever roster we have into a functioning unit and not just 6 guys on the ice. That alone would make us competitive in the ECAC in fairly short order. Then we can shoot for the upper echelon of the league as the overall roster improves.

Edit: I'm really interested to see who he brings in as the new lead assistant. Given the massive job of building a team almost from the ground up, enhancing the recruiting pipeline and reinvigorating a program that has taken a beating, that slot is almost as important as the HC.

This is an incredibly well-thought out post with the proper nuance for what happened. When Dave was let go, I wrote about how the recruiting strategy sort of shifted after 22 loss to Harvard and the talent they added did not make up for what they lost in grit and tenacity which they seemed to have going for them prior. It was a gamble to elevate the program past middle of the pack, but they weren’t able to implement the defensive principles with the post covid core like they had before (just look at the PK stats, it’s night and day after the Linden group left). Regardless, we have a new coach to get excited about now, I think we have beaten the horse dead already.

Frankly, the four commitments so far look solid and we have a lot of spots to fill so that’s a good thing. But it’s also not like Zeev Buium and Ryan Leonard just committed. You’re right that Coach Lang’s calling card as a coach so far seems to be getting a lot out of a little. I’d hope in year one his principles as a coach are evident to us as fans and we see a system with strong defense that succeeds without much talent. Then, as he gets his bearings here and momentum to start recruiting some studs, it will really take off. He is incredibly well liked and regarded as a great culture builder, which I think is very important for roster retention in this era of college hockey