I agree that you can't completely judge any player you haven't personally seen, but the statistics on many of Maine's recruits gives something to at least be cautiously hopeful for. We have three players who were point-per-game players or better coming in (Adam Dawe, Adrian Holesinsky, and Brady Keeper) and a fourth if you count Eduards Tralmaks, who had 29-27-55 in 40 games last year and has been batting injury trouble this year, and Keeper is a defenseman. Two more are just a touch under the PPG mark (Emil Westerlund, Brent Hill), and can add more down the wing in most cases. And while I realize that offense is the area of least concern for Maine, D is even harder to quantify from stats than forward or goalies are, but they have two potentially game-changing blueliners (Keeper and Alexis Binner) coming in, with more potential depth also waiting behind them. According to collegehockeyinc, we don't have a goalie coming in, which could be a problem, but that would leave us with only two, so maybe they have it wrong and Ben Beck or Jeremy Swayman will be headed to Orono in the fall. Speaking of recruits, who does Connecticut have coming in that jumps out at you? They already can't score, and with no particularly skilled freshman expected to head to Storrs and them graduating a goalie, they don't figure to be a particularly scary opponent. And for that matter, how about New Hampshire? They also have nobody coming in able to even dream of replacing Kelleher, who carried their offense for most of the season (UNH as a team scored 118 goals, Kelleher had 62 points, so he had a hand in more than half of their offense this year), and their defense was about just as bad as ours this season. They are getting a goalie already picked in the NHL draft, Mike Robinson, but with their offense trying to offset the loss of Kelleher and minimal reinforcements on D, he can probably only do so much. As such, I don't think it's out of the question at all for Maine to pass UConn or UNH in the standings next year.
