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UNH 2024/2025 Goldberg Edition
- Thread starter norbert
- Start date
TheGrouchyCat
Litter Box of Bad Ideas
Glad that I didn't make the drive to Orono tonight. Don't need to relive last year's drive of shame home after the quarterfinals
deltabravo62
Active member
Sparkee
Blackbear
Maybe you can do it again? Wonder if UNH can come up for the quarterfinals again. Would love to host you all.
Happy Valentines Cat fans. Meow
Embarrassing. With a 2-1 lead going into the third, UNH decided to go into a conservative defensive posture apparently seeking to keep UMaine off the scoreboard for the entire third period. Unlikely.
Presumably in furtherance of the plan, senior d-man Nickolai Jensen decides it was time to go headhunting with a cheap shot in the neutral zone against Nadeau. UNH follows up the Jensen low iq penalty with a hooking minor. The roof soon caves in.
Maine 5-2. I think UNH had 3 shots the entire third period. UNH loses two third period leads on the weekend.
UNH played hard but doesn’t have the coaching or on ice leadership to play with the lead. Ridiculous. UNH’s eleventh place position in Hockey East is well earned.
Presumably in furtherance of the plan, senior d-man Nickolai Jensen decides it was time to go headhunting with a cheap shot in the neutral zone against Nadeau. UNH follows up the Jensen low iq penalty with a hooking minor. The roof soon caves in.
Maine 5-2. I think UNH had 3 shots the entire third period. UNH loses two third period leads on the weekend.
UNH played hard but doesn’t have the coaching or on ice leadership to play with the lead. Ridiculous. UNH’s eleventh place position in Hockey East is well earned.
Nikolai Jenson is a fifth year graduate student that is a two time assistant captain. He decided to go headhunting in the neutral zone and draws a penalty. Neutral zone. No strategic advantage. Penalty in a tough road game against number 4 team in country with one goal lead on road in third period.
UNH get 8 shots in first period, 13 in second and is playing good, rugged two way hockey through 2 periods. UNH decided to play ultra conservative in third period on the road against the fourth ranked team with a 1 goal lead.
But you actually think Conmy is a problem?
It’s very hard to win when the captains play stupid and the coach doesn’t know how coach with the lead in tight games.
Umile also had his teams “sit on leads” in the third and usually got away with it, but not always, because he had more skilled players that Serino and McCloskey recruited.
TheGrouchyCat
Litter Box of Bad Ideas
And, now we're getting to the nitty gritty, the recruiting prowess of McCloskey and Serino and their ability to find undiscovered talent in the hinterlands of BC. There is no one comparable on Souza's staff
Yup. Sousa learned that defensive shell crap from Umile. It's a fail to go into that mode with a 1 goal lead and 20 to play. Suicide...you are conceding at least a third of the ice and giving most of the offensive chances to the opponent. It's dumb. As soon as I saw 3 UNH guys backing past their blue line on the first shift of the period, I though, oh boy, here we go... And true to form, it blew up. Barr probably said "great, lets shove down their throats..."
The third period, in total, was a 5h1t show. But to me, the real tell tail of where this team's collective head is at was Maine's 3rd goal. Jensen is in coverage in front of Whale (and in many games would have had a cross checking penalty but got away with it...) You got lavins out on the left wall. Me34 leaves the puck for Nadeau, who takes a couple strides toward the net. Now, you've got all of siedem, Leclerc and Reid ALL STEPPING OUT TO COVER NADEAU! You don't need to be a math genius to know that if 3 GUYS are converging on 1 guy, there's a real good chance SOMEBODY IS WIDE OPEN!! Low and behold, right there on the right high slot is Scholle with enough time and space to have lunch.
This is really pathetic. These guys have been playing this game for many years. D-zone coverage is as basic as it gets. What's your assignment? Mark a man!! So it's one of two things, or a little of both...they just aren't coached or they don't give a damn.
The next two goals were not much better with stick reaching by conmy to cover (too late) freel.
Yep -- it's that easy!
Is there a betting pool I can get into on this one?
HockeyRef
Well-known member
Wow..we were shocked to say the least that yet another game this was MS7's answer to winning the game. Someone needs to remind him that doing the same thing over and over and expecting the a different result is a total FAIL.
I just don't know what to say anymore...glad you guys are laying it out. ..if anyone has any counter to this do bring it forward.
Chuck Murray
WIS & Effingwoods Hockey Almanac
On the issue of "sitting back and trying to protect a one goal lead" ... if you watch ANY hockey beyond that of your own team, you realize this is a commonplace occurrence, and certainly not an MS7 or UNH thing. The score dictates the longer a one-goal game goes into a 3rd period, the more chances a trailing team is taking to at least even things up. A well-coached team knows how to defend against that, and better yet, they also know how to counter that with taking advantage of the opposition's desperation. Last night's game was the perfect example.
UNH buttoned things up for most of the 3rd period. But they got careless, taking two super avoidable penalties, and even when they killed both of them, they couldn't clean up the aftermath of the second one, leading to the 2-2 equalizer. So now the momentum is back with the home team, and not surprisingly, they take advantage with the go-ahead goal. As UNH melts on ice with the realization of "Oh jeez, here we go again" another goal (4-2) follows seconds later. Then the officials decide it's time to do UNH a solid, and they start handing out penalties to UMaine to gift UNH a chance to get back into the game. Blockhead MS7, down two goals but up two players, decides for some reason NOT to pull Whale (which for fans of irony would have been a replay of the UMaine-Denver FF game in Boston back in the '00's), and worse yet, Barr takes advantage by having his guys spring Nadeau out of the box after his "taunting" penalty
to put in the SHG kill shot. Game set match.
The idea of "sitting back" happens all the time, and it could be the last place Blackhawks against the first place Jets in Winnipeg, and you will see Chicago pressing the play if they're one goal down in the later stages of the 3rd period. If you're ahead, you try to protect what you've got ... and if you're behind, you've got nothing to lose if you drop a game by one, two or three goals. UNH has proven over the last 9-10 games that they can't successfully manage a 3rd period. Coaching issue. UMaine (and others) have taken advantage, and a big part of that boils down to superior coaching in situational hockey.
FWIW I did not hate the Jenson penalty. It was on time, and it just as easily could not have been called. But why take that chance, knowing you are the road team, and the officials have an edict to curtail stuff that's on OR near the head? You ran the risk of shifting momentum (it did), and creating circumstances that could lead to a goal against OR another penalty (latter). Where is the discipline from the bench to tell your guys not to risk doing the (flailing at the time) opposition any favors?
Long and short ... we have a head coach who has always underestimated the amount of effort and application needed to perform his duties at the D-1 level. The only time we've ever seen him going "above and beyond" was during the early 2024 "charm offensive", when he was ubiquitous across all forms and shapes of media, when his professional future was on the line. I was optimistic this near-death experience (professionally anyway) would motivate him to apply himself and his guys to continue to build on their short run of success. That hasn't even come close to happening, although a nice out of conference run papered over the cracks, before the UConn sweep began the crash.
You are supposed to learn from your mistakes ... not repeat them over and over and over ... but this is where we are, and you don't have to be a student of the game to realize what's going on.
MS7 will play out the rest of the season ... UNH will find a couple of wins down the stretch, but instead of having a first round bye (top five) with a chance for home ice in the quarters (top four), the 'Cats will be on the road for the MBPBEGAM "playoffs" likely against the 6th seed, and the season will once again end a game or two short of Boston. All this PWR chatter about being a "bubble" team is silly, as if the NCAA was ever gonna seed a last place HEA team as an at-large in the national tourney. If you ever believed that, give me a jingle, I've got some prime "deeded wetlands" available for sale over here in Effingwoods.
What happens after the season ends about a month from now is all that matters. MS7, who is SO all about the paycheck, will not have the integrity to resign. AD SB, who is still kind of a newbie to this hockey that's played on ice, will point to the contract, throw her arms up, and plead for patience, donations, and facility upgrades. Next season, we'll see another bottom tier finish, and no trip to Boston. Again, there will be no resignations, no buyouts, and no hope. And in '26/'27, we'll be treated to the "MS7 Charm Offensive 2.0". You read it here first ...
... like I've said a few times now, get ready to wait until circa 2030 for a legitimate shot at UNH Hockey relevance ...
UNH buttoned things up for most of the 3rd period. But they got careless, taking two super avoidable penalties, and even when they killed both of them, they couldn't clean up the aftermath of the second one, leading to the 2-2 equalizer. So now the momentum is back with the home team, and not surprisingly, they take advantage with the go-ahead goal. As UNH melts on ice with the realization of "Oh jeez, here we go again" another goal (4-2) follows seconds later. Then the officials decide it's time to do UNH a solid, and they start handing out penalties to UMaine to gift UNH a chance to get back into the game. Blockhead MS7, down two goals but up two players, decides for some reason NOT to pull Whale (which for fans of irony would have been a replay of the UMaine-Denver FF game in Boston back in the '00's), and worse yet, Barr takes advantage by having his guys spring Nadeau out of the box after his "taunting" penalty
to put in the SHG kill shot. Game set match.The idea of "sitting back" happens all the time, and it could be the last place Blackhawks against the first place Jets in Winnipeg, and you will see Chicago pressing the play if they're one goal down in the later stages of the 3rd period. If you're ahead, you try to protect what you've got ... and if you're behind, you've got nothing to lose if you drop a game by one, two or three goals. UNH has proven over the last 9-10 games that they can't successfully manage a 3rd period. Coaching issue. UMaine (and others) have taken advantage, and a big part of that boils down to superior coaching in situational hockey.
FWIW I did not hate the Jenson penalty. It was on time, and it just as easily could not have been called. But why take that chance, knowing you are the road team, and the officials have an edict to curtail stuff that's on OR near the head? You ran the risk of shifting momentum (it did), and creating circumstances that could lead to a goal against OR another penalty (latter). Where is the discipline from the bench to tell your guys not to risk doing the (flailing at the time) opposition any favors?
Long and short ... we have a head coach who has always underestimated the amount of effort and application needed to perform his duties at the D-1 level. The only time we've ever seen him going "above and beyond" was during the early 2024 "charm offensive", when he was ubiquitous across all forms and shapes of media, when his professional future was on the line. I was optimistic this near-death experience (professionally anyway) would motivate him to apply himself and his guys to continue to build on their short run of success. That hasn't even come close to happening, although a nice out of conference run papered over the cracks, before the UConn sweep began the crash.
You are supposed to learn from your mistakes ... not repeat them over and over and over ... but this is where we are, and you don't have to be a student of the game to realize what's going on.
MS7 will play out the rest of the season ... UNH will find a couple of wins down the stretch, but instead of having a first round bye (top five) with a chance for home ice in the quarters (top four), the 'Cats will be on the road for the MBPBEGAM "playoffs" likely against the 6th seed, and the season will once again end a game or two short of Boston. All this PWR chatter about being a "bubble" team is silly, as if the NCAA was ever gonna seed a last place HEA team as an at-large in the national tourney. If you ever believed that, give me a jingle, I've got some prime "deeded wetlands" available for sale over here in Effingwoods.
What happens after the season ends about a month from now is all that matters. MS7, who is SO all about the paycheck, will not have the integrity to resign. AD SB, who is still kind of a newbie to this hockey that's played on ice, will point to the contract, throw her arms up, and plead for patience, donations, and facility upgrades. Next season, we'll see another bottom tier finish, and no trip to Boston. Again, there will be no resignations, no buyouts, and no hope. And in '26/'27, we'll be treated to the "MS7 Charm Offensive 2.0". You read it here first ...
... like I've said a few times now, get ready to wait until circa 2030 for a legitimate shot at UNH Hockey relevance ...