RPI Hockey 2016 - 2017: Here we go again! I hope it's a fun ride.

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: RPI Hockey 2016 - 2017: Here we go again! I hope it's a fun ride.

Maybe we just haven't had anything good at all up front, and we used good goaltending to cover up the faults.

 

[TucsonMike]

Re: RPI Hockey 2016 - 2017: Here we go again! I hope it's a fun ride.

Not sure if this means anything, but I did notice at the alumni/team meet and greet in Tempe that as a group, our guys seemed, well, not very big. We were either short and thin or tall and thin. If Seth's philosophy is to build a fast team at the expense of bulk, then perhaps were are just getting knocked off the puck more than other teams. This may explain our struggles maintaining possession in the defensive zone and maintaining a presence in front of the opposing teams' net.

I can remember walking past Graeme Townsend my freshman year and thinking that he could be an NFL linebacker - he was that huge. We DEFINITELY don't have anyone near that size on this team right now.

 

[RHamilton]

Re: RPI Hockey 2016 - 2017: Here we go again! I hope it's a fun ride.

Not sure if this means anything, but I did notice at the alumni/team meet and greet in Tempe that as a group, our guys seemed, well, not very big. We were either short and thin or tall and thin.

CHN has average height/weight stats here: http://www.collegehockeynews.com/stats/

RPI is 50th out of 60 in height (12th in the ECAC), and 49th out of 60 in weight (11th in the ECAC). Those averages are a bit "noisy", though, a better metric would be to weight by games played, and exclude goalies. Could be a fun quick exercise to calculate that.

Other notes extrapolated from that page, 1st overall in Blocked Shots with 277, 8th in Blocked Shots per game with 15.4.

Faceoffs... shooting percentage (4.5% at 5v5, 15.7% on the powerplay...) it's all not pretty. Power Play corsi is 2nd worst, just not enough shot generation. 5v5 is not much better.

 

[TucsonMike]

Re: RPI Hockey 2016 - 2017: Here we go again! I hope it's a fun ride.

CHN has average height/weight stats here: http://www.collegehockeynews.com/stats/

RPI is 50th out of 60 in height (12th in the ECAC), and 49th out of 60 in weight (11th in the ECAC). Those averages are a bit "noisy", though, a better metric would be to weight by games played, and exclude goalies. Could be a fun quick exercise to calculate that.

Other notes extrapolated from that page, 1st overall in Blocked Shots with 277, 8th in Blocked Shots per game with 15.4.

Faceoffs... shooting percentage (4.5% at 5v5, 15.7% on the powerplay...) it's all not pretty. Power Play corsi is 2nd worst, just not enough shot generation. 5v5 is not much better.

Also have to take in consideration WHEN the height/weight data was taken. My guess is that more than a few of these guys have lost a few pounds since stepping on the scale in the summer.

 

[lugnut92]

Re: RPI Hockey 2016 - 2017: Here we go again! I hope it's a fun ride.

Also have to take in consideration WHEN the height/weight data was taken. My guess is that more than a few of these guys have lost a few pounds since stepping on the scale in the summer.

And of course the fact that the official heights and weights reported by teams are generous to say the least, especially for players on the smaller end of things.

 

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: RPI Hockey 2016 - 2017: Here we go again! I hope it's a fun ride.

There's at least been SOME improvement on faceoffs... given the past few years; it may be too little too late...

 

[TucsonMike]

Re: RPI Hockey 2016 - 2017: Here we go again! I hope it's a fun ride.

And of course the fact that the official heights and weights reported by teams are generous to say the least, especially for players on the smaller end of things.

So maybe what has happened is the following... Seth recruits for and emphasizes team speed. We end up with talented but undersized players at most positions but look good on paper going into the season. Then the games begin and we start getting knocked around and taken out of our speed game. We compensate by drawing penalties at an alarming rate in trying to regain puck possession...we start losing games, Seth works the team harder...confidence and body mass are lost and the cycle repeats itself.

It's an easy fix...I'll just send the team a few cases of Sonoran hot dogs and an email to Seth to get them back in the weight room

 

[Ralph Baer]

Re: RPI Hockey 2016 - 2017: Here we go again! I hope it's a fun ride.

Ralph, this is not a fun ride.

I wasn't the one who suggested that title.

 

[jmhusker]

Re: RPI Hockey 2016 - 2017: Here we go again! I hope it's a fun ride.

I wasn't the one who suggested that title.

No the title is good... we can use it again and just add "out of Troy" at the end if this keeps up.

 

[vicious]

Re: RPI Hockey 2016 - 2017: Here we go again! I hope it's a fun ride.

that's easy, we are 5 years removed from the supposed bottom, and things have gotten worse. Especially, after last year, where it appeared there was a fundamental improvement in effort and performance, and today it's worse than it's ever been.

Largely agree. Since the end of the 2011-12 season we are 66-85-22 (.445). Fan patience has pretty much run out, at least from what I hear at HFH. In 2011-12 we were still just a couple of seasons removed from making the NCAAs and there was some cause for optimism, but it's been mediocre at best since then and not even a whiff of the league semifinals or another NCAA berth while our neighbors at the other end of Route 7 with a lesser facility and no scholarships are raising banners and stocking the trophy case.

 

[TucsonMike]

Re: RPI Hockey 2016 - 2017: Here we go again! I hope it's a fun ride.

Do people think this team is that much worse than the 2011-12 season? That team also started 3-16-1, including wins against Brown, RIT, and <strike>Arizona</strike>Minnesota State. Like this year, that team had a lot of trouble scoring and was coming off a season where an extremely talented goalie left early. It's not much comfort to say that things have been this bad recently, but I don't remember this level of fan angst that year. Thoughts?

We didn't lose to Arizona State in 2011-12. What else really needs to be said?

 

[engineerhockeyfan]

Re: RPI Hockey 2016 - 2017: Here we go again! I hope it's a fun ride.

I have said in a previous post that the ECAC doesn't start until January.
We are only 3 points out of 7th place,
I don't think that we can get any higher than that, but I will be here all year rooting for that 7th place finish.
Maybe the momentum from that will lead to better things in the tournament.
At this point, I wish I could say that I believe in that, but I am a fan and I will wish and hope for better things.
As for the angst, I don't remember being outplayed to badly by what could possibly be considered the worst team in the league.
Or blowing a two goal lead to them in the last 10 minutes of the game.

 

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: RPI Hockey 2016 - 2017: Here we go again! I hope it's a fun ride.

I have said in a previous post that the ECAC doesn't start until January.
We are only 3 points out of 7th place,
I don't think that we can get any higher than that, but I will be here all year rooting for that 7th place finish.
Maybe the momentum from that will lead to better things in the tournament.
At this point, I wish I could say that I believe in that, but I am a fan and I will wish and hope for better things.
As for the angst, I don't remember being outplayed to badly by what could possibly be considered the worst team in the league.
Or blowing a two goal lead to them in the last 10 minutes of the game.

Oh, and the one team we did beat in ECAC play, we almost blew it against them, too.

 

[rvd5star69]

Re: RPI Hockey 2016 - 2017: Here we go again! I hope it's a fun ride.

Lipstick on a pig it's still a pig

 

[rvd5star69]

Largely agree. Since the end of the 2011-12 season we are 66-85-22 (.445). Fan patience has pretty much run out, at least from what I hear at HFH. In 2011-12 we were still just a couple of seasons removed from making the NCAAs and there was some cause for optimism, but it's been mediocre at best since then and not even a whiff of the league semifinals or another NCAA berth while our neighbors at the other end of Route 7 with a lesser facility and no scholarships are raising banners and stocking the trophy case.

Never even should of mAde the NCAA they year if they used real people and not pairwise we would of skipped the 7-0 beat down

 

[Ralph Baer]

Re: RPI Hockey 2016 - 2017: Here we go again! I hope it's a fun ride.

Never even should of mAde the NCAA they year if they used real people and not pairwise we would of skipped the 7-0 beat down

IMHO, anything is better than the smoke-filled room for making decisions on whom to include.

 

[lugnut92]

Re: RPI Hockey 2016 - 2017: Here we go again! I hope it's a fun ride.

Never even should of mAde the NCAA they year if they used real people and not pairwise we would of skipped the 7-0 beat down

We only lost 6-0 to NoDak. Also you're just so very wrong. The pairwise isn't perfect, but if we had people choose the field instead of people, there would be 6 Hockey East and NCHC teams in the tournament every year. Why should our wins early that season be devalued just because we finished weak?

 

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: RPI Hockey 2016 - 2017: Here we go again! I hope it's a fun ride.

We only lost 6-0 to NoDak. Also you're just so very wrong. The pairwise isn't perfect, but if we had people choose the field instead of people, there would be 6 Hockey East and NCHC teams in the tournament every year. Why should our wins early that season be devalued just because we finished weak?

To be fair, there was a time when the PWR included a "Last ## games" in determining the comparison. Also at the time, there was also the "TUC Cliff" (can't remember if it was .5000 RatingsPI or if it was still Top 25, but it helped that we lost to Colgate and didn't have to play Cornell again). Obviously it was still an objective ranking system, so it was well known how to get there, and we did as such. Yes, some people thought we shouldn't go because we'd just end up getting nationally embarrassed, but making top 15 with a 8-1-3 OOC record (especially since the 16th team was AHA) is pretty gosh darn solid, no matter how you do it.

If some are saying we shouldn't have made it because of the extensions it triggered (a bit of a hindsight argument, but something to certainly think about), that seems more of a fault of the Col.'s views on the matter, especially since he had offered a large extension the year before. And sadly, if he were still with us, I would not have been surprised to see another "extension" after last year's winning season (we had more wins than losses on the year; it truly was a winning season).

 

[lugnut92]

Re: RPI Hockey 2016 - 2017: Here we go again! I hope it's a fun ride.

Obviously it was still an objective ranking system, so it was well known how to get there, and we did as such.

Exactly. Everyone knew the rules going in and we did what we needed to do to get in. There were (and are) certainly faults in the way the Pairwise is worked out, but they applied to everyone and we happened to benefit from some things that have since changed.

 

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: RPI Hockey 2016 - 2017: Here we go again! I hope it's a fun ride.

Exactly. Everyone knew the rules going in and we did what we needed to do to get in. There were (and are) certainly faults in the way the Pairwise is worked out, but they applied to everyone and we happened to benefit from some things that have since changed.

One of the things that's very dependent in the ratings (even today) is how your opponents do. In 10-11, our NC opponents were CC (2), Northeastern, Bentley, RIT, Niagara, Union, UCONN, Bowling Green, BU, Alabama Huntsville (2). Sure, you could say, minus CC and BU, it was a bit of a cupcake-ish NC setup. We did beat BU, and they went on a tear in Hockey East, which really propelled us. Also, the one of the "first teams out" was Nebraska Omaha, who split with UAH. If UAH got swept, we would not have made it. Colorado College was also quite strong in the WCHA, even though that was a loss and tie, it did help out a bit.

Obviously we'd like to help ourselves first, but it's kind of interesting how, for an at-large bid, not only do you need to be good, but you need to have the "right" opponents.