Re: Severe Ronaldstorm Warning: the Michigan Tech 2010-11 Season Thread, Part the Sec
I feel that Russell and his various assistants have generally been pretty good at recruiting potential talent, but perhaps not so good at developing said talent. We've seen several freshmen (Bunger, Royer, Robinson, MacLeod) have a promising rookie year, then plateau or even regress. After two and a half years, there is still no explanation for why we've sustained all the key injuries that we have - you can blame bad luck only to a point, and then it's a question of how you're creating that bad luck. The last three seasons now, our lineup has had little to no consistency after mid-October, and that wrecks line chemistry.
Manurespreader sent me an email with his report on the game, and he thought most of the players showed little heart and the score "could've easily been 10-1". I know that Jamie cares and asks himself dozens of "How?" and "Why?" questions every day, because if he didn't he would've been canned already. However, I think even the players can only put up with so much losing while remaining positive, and perhaps some of them are getting to a point where they're tired of playing for him and are just going through the motions out there. Maybe that's why we're seeing freshmen putting up points and trying, while upperclassmen who should be taking charge and leading in Olson's absence, are instead floating.
One thing is clear - Olson is the real captain and leader on this team, and without him they are burnt toast.
I think the fact that Olson and Baker are the sole leaders on this team, and nobody (except maybe Cousens) has stepped up in their leadership void goes back to the fact that we only had the potential for 9 upperclassmen on this team given the size of recruiting classes at the time.
It seems to me that it has been a hallmark of this era to have players split two different ways. There are heart and soul players who would do whatever it took to play hockey the right way and lead this team as they got older (Batovanja is the first player that comes to mind, though there are others), and players who had potential and instead, for whatever reason, just played out the string towards the end. I also agree with the comment that the potential doesn't seem to grow in many players, and instead they regress or plateau. Is this an indictment of the coaching staff, or do we have players that just hit their ceiling and go as far as they can go? We tend to get older freshmen, so perhaps they come to us at the end of physical development and they don't grow as they progress. Is it a work ethic issue with some of the players? I am not in the locker room, so I have no idea.
I like numbers, as they seem to bring sense out of the randomness. I went and looked at the longest winless and undefeated streaks that Tech has had per season under Coach Russell. The longest unbeaten streak in the tenure is 5 games, which happened twice (3-0-2 both times), earlier this season and also in 04-05. The longest winless streaks are pretty hard memories to stomach, but they were 13 games (twice, 04-05 and 08-09) and one epic 15 game clunker (last season). If you average it out, Tech gets a 3.6 game unbeaten streak every season, and goes off on a 9.6 game string without wins.
Year/Longest Unbeaten/Longest Winless
03-04/3/7
04-05/5/13 (also a 1 win in 19 game stretch)
05-06/4/10
06-07/4/6
07-08/4/5
08-09/3/13
09-10/1/15
10-11/5/8 (and counting, but hopefully stops tonight)
Tonight is the night this winless drought needs to end. If it does not end tonight, it might be a while before it does. After this weekend, we travel to Nebraska (9-3-1), play a game at NMU (who is 7-3-1 since we last saw them), go to the GLI and face Michigan (8-5-4) and then either Sparty or CC (perhaps it might end there?). Once we are done with the holiday, we go to SCSU (losing record, but you know the history), before we finally come home to face St. Lawrence.
If we don't stop the slide tonight, it is likely that this winless streak will jump into double digit games, which would be the 5th time in 8 seasons we have pulled that feat. That is more than a quarter of the season (more than a third in some cases) that passes by without jumping into the win column.
The unfortunate thing is that us diehards will still show up to the games no matter what happens. We are addicted to Tech hockey. Even when the drug doesn't give you a high anymore, you come back and hope that it lives up to the few times it brought you pleasure. We leave disappointed, but always come back, in case the next game is the next fix that we need.
I have never once wished that I was a fair-weather fan. It was never concievable for me to just blow off a hockey game if I was in Houghton, or if I could come back for the series. It is not in my nature to understand the parts of the crowd that show up when we win, and then vanish when we lose. We can't even give away 675 hockey tickets to watch this team right now.
I told Yager last night that "I don't know what is more sad, the fact that half of the arena is empty, or the fact that more people showed up than I expected".
The standing part of the Misfits has shrunk from 2+ sections, to about half of Section L.
Things are, in a word, bleak right now. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, but it has always been there. It really doesn't seem to get any closer. It is like a car coming the opposite way on the Seney Stretch, you don't know whether it is a mile away, or 15. We have young players that have all the potential in this league, but in the past we have had young players show flashes of brilliance too. It feels different this time, but it has felt different in the past too.
We are patient, we stay the course. The eight years later, you wonder if maybe you have held on for a couple of seasons too long. "There will be great upheaval if we change coaches, and it will take a couple of years to get back to stability". But, what has stability brought us thus far? 6-25-7? 5-30-1? 3-7-2?
This is not 4-34-0. Not even close. But is it still where we want to be?
Is there an appropriate way to show displeasure in the losing streak and history of the last 8 years at the game, yet still be supportive of the team and the people in place? Being a fan does not mean blindly accepting everything that happens in the name of being a fan, but you don't want to be a ********* about things either.
Although Heinonen's penalty did create a nice spark for our team
