Re: RPI Engineers 2016-2017: 10 Years on
You may want to read my post more carefully. Aggressive and effective recruiting should be expected to be a success factor for all teams. Unless your campus is in a hockey hotbed (e.g. many of the WCHA teams) you need to expect to recruit far and wide to be competitive. I was suggesting that the number of Canadians on ECAC teams MAY be an indicator of how much effort is put into recruiting, NOT that you need Canadian players to be successful.
So, how do you think RPI has been doing in recruiting in recent years, and do you have any thoughts on what they are doing right or wrong? Some of the teams that have had big year over year improvements through recruiting have developed specific pipelines into certain regions or programs. Much of the recruiting burden falls on the Assistant Coaches, and frequent turnover in the Assistants can disrupt the development of those relationships, but perhaps all teams face that challenge.
Oh I read it and agree better recruiting is key but you brought up the Canadian issue. I also did note you said MAY but my point I believe still holds that it is not about having Canadian players. Do you believe Ohio is a hockey hot bed? Hardly yet that team is improving greatly even with two recent firings and not having coaching due to visa issues.
Though recruiting does often fall to the asst. coaches, those inroads are, or at least should be built by the head coach. All those potential feeder programs do a lot of reaching out as well. Why? Because if they show they are sending players to D1 then THEIR program looks better, hence bringing in more players, higher demand, potentially more money either in greater fees or a 2nd feeder team program. Often this creates a want to get players from that feeder program, regardless of what line a player may be on, ie getting a 3rd line player from Shattuck as an example compared to say getting a 1st liner from the Thunder Bay Queens. If you get a player from Shattuck and they do not work out a coach can say well she played at Shattuck. Whereas if you get a player from the Thunder Bay Queens and they do not work out, people will say, what were you thinking. FYI I am not referring to any players in specific as I know RPI has players from Shattuck, just using them as a well known program vs a unknown program. Though I do know of at least one player playing D1 that was a former Thunder Bay Queen.
It's just finding the right players to fit your system, or adjust your system to the best players you find, or change your system because it doesn't work. Not saying it is easy but I believe that is the best way for it to work.
As far as RPI recruiting, I don't believe it is an issue of academics. There are other rigorous academic institutions both on the women's and men's side that show success. The reverse you could argue would be the least rigorous institutions have the best teams, obviously not true (well I guess that depends on your opinion of MN and WI
). I also do not buy in that the Ivies are hamstrung because of the lack of scholarships. Harvard and Cornell were powers at one time. Yes some of the Ivies who can not or will not offer more F Aid can find it more difficult. How do you explain the men's Union run? No NHL prospects either. I know many will argue you can't compare the men's recruiting to the women's I disagree. There are at least some comparisons that work for both.
On another note, I did see the official team picture in the usual place in the arena.
