Re: UMAINE Recruits Part 2: 2016/2017 and what follows
New recruiting news seems to have slowed. A lot has been going on in the past month pertaining to currently committed UMaine recruits. As some junior leagues and high school starts to wrap up there may be a few more transfers yet to come.
Next year's class has become pretty clear at this point. May still be a few surprises. Class is heavy on D and W and international players. Alexis Binner has been a stud this year for Green Bay. Jeremy Swayman is really putting together a very good season for a young Sioux Falls team. Adam Dawe sits 4th in the SJHL in scoring, is leading all rookies in scoring by a long shot, is garnering numerous rookie calendar awards this year. He will be making a big jump next year to Orono form the SJHL but he looks to provide a lot of scoring potential from the RW. Eduards Tralmaks is hitting his stride after dealing with injuries early. He came back just before World Juniors and took more time off from USHL to compete with his native Latvia. Emil Westerlund, another winger, is still leading the Swedish SuperElit league. Adrian Holesinsky has put up 1.2 pts/game in the NAHL which is nothing to bat a eyelash at either. He is an older recruit in his final year of juniors who recently came to the US. Will be interesting to see how he fairs against Hockey East competition next year. Out of camp it was disappointing to see that Cam Spicer was cut from his USHL team in his final year of eligibiity in favor of younger options. However, he will bring two years of USHL experience to the team next year. He is a defensive defensemen who will likely compete for starting time. Brady Keeper is a big unknown to me. I still have not seen him play. Obviously he can score from the blueline. Is he a Defensemen or a Forward? Is he a Matt Mangene type? I have no idea. If anyone has seen him I would love to hear more about him. Throw Oliver Herner into the mix next year and UMaine should be improved along the blue line.
Disappointing to see Jacob Schmidt-Svejstrup not perform well in his first shot at the USHL. Scoring production was not there and penalties went way up, both uncharacteristic of his previous performance. Simon Butala, finally healthy again, has put together a nice campaign in Bloomington. He will be back for one more year in the USHL before arriving in Orono. As expected Ben Meyers is completely destroying mostly inferior competition in Minnesota high school hockey ranks leading the state in scoring. Good news is high school season will be ending soon and hopefully Fargo gets him back up to end the season so he can be exposed to consistent competition. Perhaps the biggest disappointment on the recruiting trail was losing Neil Shea. Still have not heard officially but seems as though he might have been asked to enroll a year later and he didn't want to (speculation). Jack Moran transferred to the USPHL at the Christmas break. Moran needs to continue to improve his skating and spacing. Good news is he landed with Sean Tremblay who is one of the best teachers of the game in New England. Kyle Kawamura just played his first weekend for Shreveport (NAHL), this is probably a good thing considering he is an undersized '99. He had only played 14 games with Lincoln. The NAHL will offer him good competition while most importantly receiving playing time. Dallas Farrell has put together a very good rookie season in the USPHL, his development will be one to watch closely. Lynden Breen has had a very good year in his first season of prep hockey. He may be the most talented commitment of the Gendron era. Not to be outdone Craig Needham has put together a good year while wearing the "C" for Lawrence and Harry Roy is over a point a game for Loomis Chaffee.
For anyone interested, below is a link to the spreadsheet I use to track recruit stats and approximate arrival. It is easier to provide the google spreadsheet than try to paste in the message board. This way readers can check in at their leisure. I typically update stats once a week (when time provides). The second tab show estimated arrival which I use a
general guideline and update periodically. As we all know recruiting classes are quite fluid and the further away anyone tries to project the more variability one finds. I don't pretend to know when everyone is arriving in Orono, so again the recruiting table is a
general guideline.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...a7PTYrs0p6MIzdujVgCh1uwnqY/edit#gid=206482657
Go Blue!!
