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UMass Lowell 2018: Champions of the Offseason

Re: UMass Lowell 2018: Champions of the Offseason

Amherst has a game tonight and Lowell doesn't. Let that sink in for a minute.
 
Re: UMass Lowell 2018: Champions of the Offseason

It will be BC vs. BU and PC vs. NU next week at the Garden as the top seeds sweep this weekend.
 
Re: UMass Lowell 2018: Champions of the Offseason

Merrimack will have a new coach next season.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">BREAKING: Merrimack will announce today that Mark Dennehy will not return as head coach of the men's hockey program. Dennehy was informed following last night's Game 2 loss to Boston College in overtime.</p>— Mike McMahon (@MikeMcMahonCHN) <a href="https://twitter.com/MikeMcMahonCHN/status/972859546254413824?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 11, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
 
Re: UMass Lowell 2018: Champions of the Offseason

Was reading that former uml player billy riga and lowell assistant cam ellsworth are possible dark horses for the merrimack job.
 
Re: UMass Lowell 2018: Champions of the Offseason

Congratulations to the University on leading Hockey East in attendance again this season. The average attendance for 18 games was 4,867 which ranks Lowell 11th in the nation. Over all attendance dropped this season. The Hawks led the league in 2016-2017 with an average attendance of 5,542 for 18 games which was good for 9th in the nation.

http://www.hockeyeastonline.com/men/statistics/1718/oaattend.php
 
Re: UMass Lowell 2018: Champions of the Offseason

Split-N said:
So when does the Fire Norm thread start? Oh wait...this isn't Maine.
Click to expand...
Or UNH where they are already all over Umile's potential replacement. Or 5% of the PC threads.
Or that one donor from Merrimack.

This was very un-Bazinish performance.
 
Re: UMass Lowell 2018: Champions of the Offseason

Jon said:
Or UNH where they are already all over Umile's potential replacement. Or 5% of the PC threads.
Or that one donor from Merrimack.

This was very un-Bazinish performance.
Click to expand...
ABS. Anybody but Souza. That be us.
 
Re: UMass Lowell 2018: Champions of the Offseason

Darius said:
ABS. Anybody but Souza. That be us.
Click to expand...
I know better than to argue that point with your fan base. It's been a precipitous drop.

boblav1 said:
It will be BC vs. BU and PC vs. NU next week at the Garden as the top seeds sweep this weekend.
Click to expand...
It's kind of like the Big Four era of Hockey East, except with PC as Maine and NU as UNH. Or visa versa.
 
Jon said:
I know better than to argue that point with your fan base. It's been a precipitous drop.


It's kind of like the Big Four era of Hockey East, except with PC as Maine and NU as UNH. Or visa versa.
Click to expand...

UNH been in 8 HEA championship games to 7 for UML.
 
Re: UMass Lowell 2018: Champions of the Offseason

boblav1 said:
Congratulations to the University on leading Hockey East in attendance again this season. The average attendance for 18 games was 4,867 which ranks Lowell 11th in the nation. Over all attendance dropped this season. The Hawks led the league in 2016-2017 with an average attendance of 5,542 for 18 games which was good for 9th in the nation.

http://www.hockeyeastonline.com/men/statistics/1718/oaattend.php
Click to expand...

That is an outstanding accomplishment! It used to be very low attendance to where you all sat in one section and we could have pick of seats(20-15 years ago).

Great turn around, and Great engineering program at Lowell!
 
Re: UMass Lowell 2018: Champions of the Offseason

Well it's on to the 2018-2019 season. Can we go anywhere but up? Let’s hope so!!!!!!

But the task may prove more daunting than we expect.

The prior 6 years were indeed great, with unparalleled success, and have left us, the fan base, with higher expectations. Success unfortunately breeds higher expectations and with it the underperformances, whether perceived or warranted, become magnified. This year is not the norm (no pun intended) that we have come to expect. So this year’s results leave a bad after taste, and I am straining to find a silver lining somewhere. We have come to expect more wins than losses when we play the likes of UConn, Merrimack, UHN, Vermont, UMass-Amherst, Northeastern and even Maine and to be 500 with the elites of Providence, BC and BU.

Congrats to Tommy Panico for his Hockey East Third Team All Star selection, he was truly one of the few players on this year’s team to elevate their game. Honorable mentions to Forney, Dmowski and Hernberg as well, and rookies Sodergren, Baxter, Levesque and Evingson (when he was allowed to play and develop), but not much else. Wall, Edwardh, Göransson, Lohin, Hausinger, Mueller and Master all seemed to regress a bit this year. That may be a harsh assessment, so let me rephrase and say that I expected more from them. I expected them to carry the load and accept the mantle of leadership for the team. Hopefully their performances were as much an aberration as the teams were this year.

Some last musings. UML was ranked #40 out of 60 teams in the pairwise rankings this year. Going from being consistently in the top 20 or better in the last few years to the bottom third of all hockey teams, with teams like Mercyherst #20, Princeton #22, Air Force (YES Air Force!!!!!) #30, Colgate and Canisus at #33 and #34, and Dartmouth #39, and the aforementioned UConn and UMass-Amherst at #35 and #36 respectively. I admit I hope we return to the elite teams of prior years.

Scoring to me is the big issue and especially adding some dynamism to the power play. The last 15 games of the season we had a 14.55% conversion rate on the power play. UML was 3 for 16 or 18.75% in their 5 wins during that period and 5 for 39 or 12.8% in the last 10 losses. Overall UML was 44th at 16.46% conversions on 26 of 158 attempts. A more consistent offense would keep the pressure on the other team and lighten the burden on the defense. As a comparison, last year UML had a conversion rate of 26.97% and ranked third nationally on 48 of 178 attempts.
Hopefully we have some speed and strength, stick-handling and passing ability and fire with this year’s incoming class.

As I said in a prior post, I feel we need to attract some higher quality (drafted) players, if not we may be looking at a new norm as the rest of Hockey East and college hockey in general is not standing still in uncovering the diamonds in the rough that we were fortunate to have recently.
 
Re: UMass Lowell 2018: Champions of the Offseason

Chiefof78 said:
Well it's on to the 2018-2019 season. Can we go anywhere but up? Let’s hope so!!!!!!

But the task may prove more daunting than we expect.

The prior 6 years were indeed great, with unparalleled success, and have left us, the fan base, with higher expectations. Success unfortunately breeds higher expectations and with it the underperformances, whether perceived or warranted, become magnified. This year is not the norm (no pun intended) that we have come to expect. So this year’s results leave a bad after taste, and I am straining to find a silver lining somewhere. We have come to expect more wins than losses when we play the likes of UConn, Merrimack, UHN, Vermont, UMass-Amherst, Northeastern and even Maine and to be 500 with the elites of Providence, BC and BU.

Congrats to Tommy Panico for his Hockey East Third Team All Star selection, he was truly one of the few players on this year’s team to elevate their game. Honorable mentions to Forney, Dmowski and Hernberg as well, and rookies Sodergren, Baxter, Levesque and Evingson (when he was allowed to play and develop), but not much else. Wall, Edwardh, Göransson, Lohin, Hausinger, Mueller and Master all seemed to regress a bit this year. That may be a harsh assessment, so let me rephrase and say that I expected more from them. I expected them to carry the load and accept the mantle of leadership for the team. Hopefully their performances were as much an aberration as the teams were this year.

Some last musings. UML was ranked #40 out of 60 teams in the pairwise rankings this year. Going from being consistently in the top 20 or better in the last few years to the bottom third of all hockey teams, with teams like Mercyherst #20, Princeton #22, Air Force (YES Air Force!!!!!) #30, Colgate and Canisus at #33 and #34, and Dartmouth #39, and the aforementioned UConn and UMass-Amherst at #35 and #36 respectively. I admit I hope we return to the elite teams of prior years.

Scoring to me is the big issue and especially adding some dynamism to the power play. The last 15 games of the season we had a 14.55% conversion rate on the power play. UML was 3 for 16 or 18.75% in their 5 wins during that period and 5 for 39 or 12.8% in the last 10 losses. Overall UML was 44th at 16.46% conversions on 26 of 158 attempts. A more consistent offense would keep the pressure on the other team and lighten the burden on the defense. As a comparison, last year UML had a conversion rate of 26.97% and ranked third nationally on 48 of 178 attempts.
Hopefully we have some speed and strength, stick-handling and passing ability and fire with this year’s incoming class.

As I said in a prior post, I feel we need to attract some higher quality (drafted) players, if not we may be looking at a new norm as the rest of Hockey East and college hockey in general is not standing still in uncovering the diamonds in the rough that we were fortunate to have recently.
Click to expand...

I share similar sentiments about your evaluation of the players. I would add Schutz to the list of players I thought showed promise; I don't understand why he didn't see more ice time. Evingson's still too much of an unknown for me; I was expecting more...maybe unreasonably so. Lohin's line was the greatest disappointment for me; I thought the regression was quite evident (as was Göransson's). Wall played more aggressively challenging shooters in is freshman year; he was too passive this year. He's the first goalie I can recall who has taken a step back in year two under this coaching staff. I feel there's far too much mediocrity in the rest of the line up which gives me pause for next year. I'm hoping the incoming class will provide the infusion of talent and competition necessary to raise the level of game play back up to what we now expect from a Bazin led team.
 
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