I'll start by saying that I was on the FOH board from 1992 to 2012. With my good friend Andy, I produced the Bluelines newsletter for almost that entire time. In both capacities, I got to interact with Umile on a weekly basis throughout the hockey season. On top of that, I got to know McCloskey and Lassonde and they would talk about the recruiting process. I got the impression that Brian's mission was a lot more involved than David's,, although I will say that the goaltending quality we had for most of those years was because of Lassonde. But Brian was on the road to the USHL and BCHL towns constantly. He told me more than once that Umile was only used as a closer. That once they had honed in on a recruit who might be on the fence, Umile was brought into the process to seal the deal. From talking to both of these guys, the impression was left with me that Umile left the nuts and bolts of recruiting to them. He wanted to know what was going on, of course, but he was comfortable delegating authority to them.
I spoke to a good friend of mine the other day about this "hands off" issue. My rhetorical question is, "if his emphasis on delegating authority was okay 15-20 years ago, how come it is not now?" Well the obvious answer is that we don't get the quality of players we used to. You know, there was a 10 year span from the late-90's on when UNH had at least one All-American every year, and in most years had two. It peaked in 2008 when we had four first teamers. Those guys - Regan, Flashians, Radja, Fornataro - were signed, sealed and delivered in the fall of 2004, one season removed from the Buffalo FF. After that the results were less spectacular. And why? Because the level of talent dropped off. And here is where I can see dropping some of the blame on the coach. He was stuck in the old model of letting his assistants do the work, having the faith in them to bring in the right players. But every year, just like a leaky faucet, there was this drip, drip of increasing mediocrity. Sure, we got some pretty good ones - Butler, JVR, TVR, Pesce, etc. - but you need more than a first line and one defense pairing to win in HE, and often we had less than that.
For whatever reason Umile did not call out his assistants on this diminution of talent. That's his fault. I'm not excusing him, and this is a bit of speculation, but he had operated one way for over 20 years with great success and probably never got past the idea that if it's not broke, don't fix it. I guess that is where he has shown weakness, in being unable to shift gears when the evidence that he needed to was right in front of him. In hindsight, there were many things besides the drip, drip which should have grabbed his attention - the email fiasco, the ill informed decisions to defer LaLeggia and Vechionne, the admissions stuff with White and Reid - but he was, and is, probably too set in his ways to change. The same thing happened to Parker I believe. As for York, as Dan says, he is the exception that proves the rule. And btw, we have no evidence that York is getting out on the road save for visits to local rinks.
Another, more important, BTW. I was told by the same friend referred to above that a good friend of his has a daughter who is a freshman at UNH. He was told by said friend that there is no two languages requirement at UNH, only two years of one language. If true (and I have no doubt that it is), there has been a lot of misinformation spewed out on this forum in the last few months.
All of us who have been at something along time have had to do just that, or sink. Believe me...I know with 30 plus years teaching high school kids. And I firmly believe if your horse is dead, you really should dismount. Anyway, onward 'Cats!
