Re: St Lawrence Hockey
This mostly is what I was thinking as well. Clearly the coaches and the fans will be pushing for Flanagan to win it and I can't blame them, but it ultimately will hurt Carey's chances. Another thing is that Carey is a junior and this is Flanagan's last chance. Carey still has a senior year left to give it another go.
Fwiw. I have no insight and I'm not really sure who votes. I think it's still a toss up. I think Gaudrau will *not* win because he is a sophomore. That said, I think that interview with Greg Carvel lays out the problem for SLU's candidates pretty clearly. At the risk of p&$@ing somebody off, when Carvey says "I think Kyle Flanagan is the best player in college hockey" that tells you where his head and heart lies. Meanwhile Carey has a good shot at winning the nation's total points race and he might run away with the most goals.
The SLU chances may suffer from our own ambivalence. In Flanagan, we have a great all around player, by all accounts a great character player and an on and off ice leader and let's not forget this: a Canton boy and a Senior. This is his last best chance. The SLU coaching staff doesn't just live in Canton, they mostly grew up Canton and the North Country and the history of the Flanagan's in hockey and at SLU and in Canton is pretty rich. As a Canton native myself who went to CHS and SLU with PJ Flanagan, I'd be pretty pumped if an SLU player from Canton won the Hobey. So, I think the coaches are likely going to put their thumb on the scales for Flanagan for plenty of justifiable reasons.
But, Carey if he keeps the scoring up, would debatably make for a much stronger Hobey candidate to sell to the Western voters who have 15 year old biases against the ECAC.. It's much easier to explain lots of goals and total points and he has a great academic record, which Hobey cares about.
So my perhaps unfair and uneducated opinion is that we could end up diminishing Carey's chances by more strongly supporting Flanagan. And given the lack of media coverage of our games, the argument for Flanagan outside the ECAC is not as strong or as easy as it is for Carey, whose stats tell a very simple story, fair or unfair though that may be.
My prediction worth the pixels it's printed on, If Carey wins the overall points title and if he ends up with 30 goals through the ECACs, he gets it. After that, I have no idea.
This mostly is what I was thinking as well. Clearly the coaches and the fans will be pushing for Flanagan to win it and I can't blame them, but it ultimately will hurt Carey's chances. Another thing is that Carey is a junior and this is Flanagan's last chance. Carey still has a senior year left to give it another go.