Re: RPI Hockey 2018 - 2019 Part II: We're Just Gonna Complain, Don't Bother Reading
Now I'm going to state I believe Clarkson has a lot of support from the administration so the situations are different but I find it funny a lot of the RPI fans expect to succeed so quickly with how D1 college hockey is present day.
Look at Casey Jones, year one was promising with Karpowich keeping us in most games and we went 9-9-4 in conference, year two was a disaster all around, the recruiting was awful which was to be expected but that staff as is (Jones, Phil Roy, Andy Jones) couldn't recruit a goalie to save their life, Clarkson goes 9-20-7 overall but a decent 8-11-3 in conference.
Now year three you're still not expecting much but you hope to see at least a decent goalie to come in and some decent recruits, the numbers were decent we went 21-17-4 overall with a cupcake schedule, 11-9-2 in league with a bad 2nd half, we lose at Lynah on a game 3 OT heartbreaker but those were all Roll guys that carried that team and were great leaders for our program playing desperate senior hockey (Burton, Frederick, McPherson, Sexton, and de Haas, Geiger, Tansey were workhorses on D).
Year four we go 12-20-5 overall, 8-11-3 in the league and lose to RPI in the 1st round at home in 3 (what do you think Clarkson fans were thinking at this point?). 15-16 we still have bad goaltending with Lewis/Perry but we have better skilled players like Boucher and Vigneault and the aforementioned defensive leaders like de Haas, Geiger, Tansey plus adding a young Amorosa and Summers so the D carry us but it came to an end at SLU in the 2nd round, a 20-15-3 season but the big thing is Andy Jones to a job at UML and we added Josh Hauge to start the season and he helped set us up for where we are now.
In 16-17 things were noticeably different, Roy gets Brosseau and Rempal along with a lot of Quebec players he recruited to Clarkson in previous years and Hauge gets Egle, Kielly, Moro, and secures Sturms commitment who Andy Jones previously recruited. Now it's looking like we are sustainable for the next few seasons at least with our current levels of recruiting.
I was under the original impression Smith was an average hire, now I'm starting to believe he was a good hire. He's recruiting at a level I didn't think he'd reach so quickly, with the likes of Ashbrook, Herrman, Kjellberg, Klee, McIssac he's obviously trying to get more mature and quicker up front with some towers on D (sounds familiar). The pickups of Beaton, Dubinsky (if he can recover from his injury fine), Fontaine seem promising as well. It also seems he has his #1 for years to come with Savory.
