Re: UNH Commits & Recruiting: 2016 and Beyond
This is more appropriate in this thread
Things are not great in UNH hockey nation at present and most posters are generally critics who think they can do better. Mike is the most trusted and best poster we have on our site. He drives two hours each way to get to each game and many practices and has done yeoman's work with our recruits. He knows the players, coaches, families, advisors and most everyone who is a legitimate UNH hockey fan or season ticket holder. Please take your anger out on the coaches if you like (I believe it is misguided) and they all have UNH emails (you can look these up on the website) and phone numbers 603 862-1234 is main line and you can talk to them directly. They have a job to do but I believe all three coaches will listen to you if you have great prospects that you feel are a good fit for UNH. It seems many posters are recruiting geniuses and our team could use your talents. Please send the names along to the coaches (I am quite sure they know who all of the players are but most of these star players are committing to the top 8-10 schools as they do every year) and please have these star players contact the UNH hockey office about their interest if they have not been contacted by UNH. It is my humble opinion that most do not have any real inside knowledge about any players that you cannot get off the internet.
I wanted to take the summer off from this site but so many are clueless about the talents of Mike Souza, you jokers sucked me in. Mike Souza is an outstanding recruiter and players and recruits like and trust him. UNH still has a little back log on incoming recruits and he is not going to pull a Boston and cut those loose who are not top two lines or defensive pairings.
If you have free time to belittle CHC on this site, please use your time better by helping out some local charities. Umile is likely leaving within the next few years and Mike Souza will be your head coach. He will very likely find another assistant who is a great recruiter like he is (Mike is earnest and cares about the players as much or more than UNH itself, unlike the competition in hockey east) who played and coached defense. I would rather play for someone like Mike as he does want to win and he will, but he really cares more about the players. The current players love him and he is there for them all day long. I urge you to stop bashing and start helping the coaching staff and the team with your incredible recruiting talents. Many of you are not UNH grads or season ticket holders so you can actually try to convince some of these student athletes to attend UNH. Maybe you know some of these players already. Please let the coaches know of these great players before posting on this site so they can be in the mix.
I have stated before that we have rarely won head to head battles with the Michigan, Minn, ND, NoDak, DU, BU, BC etc over the past 30 years and we can only hope that we will someday. Please ramp down the tone and have a little faith. We may not be great this coming year but we may be. If you want to write bad things about Coach Umile, he is used to it. I hope we do not start attacking players like last summer. Special thanks to Mike for all you do and special shout out to Hockey Ref for being our number one fan. You will see a turnaround over the next few years as we lost 12-13 one goal games this year and were only blown out in 5 or so games. Cleland will be the Captain in my opinion and there will probably be one senior A and one junior A. Take a deep breath to all and don't listen to the others Chuck as you know in your heart that Souza is and will be a great recruiter and closer. He is great with 15-25 year old kids and he will make you proud for sticking with him.
I will see many of you at the banquet and the rest of you in early October for the season opener. The schedule should be coming out in June.
Not going to the banquet, stopped that several years ago as I think it is more for the players and parents than for fans. But anyway, I agree with most of what you have to say here. Midway through the season I was critical of some posters who seemed to think that they could psychoanalyze Dick Umile and find the rationale for why he continued to be the head coach instead of resigning for the good of the program. Now many of these same people seem to have a handle on what type of recruiter Mike Souza is after he has served as an assistant for less than a year. If what others have said is true about Cavanagh, I take that to mean that he liked to do the dirty work and Souza was there to complete the follow up to insure that the kid came to UConn. If that it is the case, how the heck can you conflate from that that Souza is not a good recruiter? As for his other job, at Brown, the school has not had a competitive hockey program since the St. Denis days and NCAA playoff calibre since Bill Gilligan was roaming the ice 40 years ago. My limited interactions with Souza when he was a player at UNH and a bit after that lead me to believe that he has a head on his shoulders, is quite earnest in his approach, and probably has a game plan as to what he wants to do. However, I really think he is starting almost from scratch given that Cavanagh most likely did not give him free rein at UConn. That's a problem, but let's see where it goes before we determine that he is a failure. Terribly unfair to do otherwise.
As for the kerfluffle between Mike and Dan, I respect both for what they do. I spent 12 years as the editor and writer of BlueLines. My pal Andy and I started it because we were fanboys, oure and simple. For the most part the coaching staff, the players and even the AD's office appreciated what we did. However it became more of a chore as time went on and, with the advent of social media, the effort seemed to become unnecessary, so I stopped. But I can relate to what Mike does. It takes a lot of time and effort so I would hope others would appreciate what he does. Without his efforts we fans would have little idea of what led certain recruits to choose UNH.
That all being said, I also know that there can be difficulty when you write about recruits and players in a laudatory way then see other players (or even maybe the same ones) not perform to expectations. I learned to hold my tongue most of the type when these situations came up, only criticizing the team in the most cryptic ways since, after all, I was writing as the voice of the Friends of UNH Hockey. Mike is in a different situation since his blog has no affiliation with the Friends or the University. But I guess that if he wants to have continued access to some of his sources and to the players themselves, He can't go full bore on the players who fail or the coaches who recruited them. It's just not realistic to do so.
So what I will say is that Mike, Dan, Watcher and the rest all serve a purpose when commenting on UNH Hockey. As said, Mike provides us with the voice of the players, Dan, Watcher and others provide us insight on the intricacies of recruiting that I really don't have the inclination to delve into. My only request is that we all keep it civil going forward.
Cheers.
