Chuck Murray
WIS & Effingwoods Hockey Almanac
Good post, with a lot of loose ends worth unraveling ... so let's give it a shot, I'm tired of ripping on Schenectady.
* Ty Conklin's involvement? I believe he is still technically limited to volunteer assistant status, and I know he works full-time selling medical devices for a national company, with their office based in Portsmouth. I believe his family lives in New Castle, and had previously lived in Central Maine (somewhere near Augusta) before moving here closer to UNH. My guess - and I stress this is a guess only - is that he does what he can to assist Souza's staff when he can, but as a guy who is now in his mid-40's with growing children, and a burgeoning real-world career, he is likely not as regular a presence as would be ideal, as might a younger volunteer OR an older hockey lifer?
I also have a recollection of Souza describing Conklin's hire as a "tough sell" for MS7, maybe suggesting that Conklin (goalies coach for the St. Louis Blues in 2013-2017) had gotten his fill of the coaching thing by the time he left the Blues' organization, and went into risk management before going into medical device sales? So maybe an agreement was struck, where Ty agreed to replace the prior "Captain Video" arrangement and add an NHL CV to the still relatively-new UNH staff (just one year after Umile finally stepped down), with the idea that this could help them on the recruiting front? There are some funky strings we could pull at involving Jordan Binnington's emergence post-Conklin from disappointing prospect to Stanley Cup-winning goalie, but I'm already out on a limb logically on a few other guesses and assumptions. So I'll leave it here with the thought that Conklin is probably doing exactly what was expected by both sides, and that's on Souza - not Conklin.
* It's clear as crystal that neither Taylor nor Muszelik (nor Robinson, for that matter) developed positively as goalies while on campus at UNH. This was never an issue at UNH so long as Dave Lassonde was on the staff, and was a regular presence. "Captain Video" filled most of (if not the entire) gap between Lassonde and Conklin, and that included guys like CDS and Tirone. It is fair to ask if MS7 is doing enough with a part time guy like Conklin to get his goalies what they need to develop. MS7 set those terms, and Conklin's continued presence with the program is enough to tell me MS7 thinks Ty is meeting his baseline time commitment. Should Conklin be a full-time salaried assistant instead (assuming he's even interested, not knowing what his real-world paycheck is now)? And if so, which of the two current salaried assistants makes way?
* You describe Muszelik as a "legit goaltender despite how he's done with us", but what is legit?? My recollection is he was invited to one of the World Junior Camps recently - no doubt based on stellar past performance(s) - and was sent home almost immediately, so clearly other folks "in the know" didn't rate him, and came to that conclusion fairly quickly. So, is there an injury? Is there something else that's bothering him, physically or mentally? A good coach would make it their business to get to the bottom of this situation as a priority. But if your head coach is swimming over his head with other problems with the program ... your position coach is around once or twice a week, and is out hawking his full-time job otherwise ... and your WJC coach is focused only on picking the best 2-3 guys as quickly as possible, and has no luxury of time to be diagnosing someone else's headaches for them ... you can see how a kid can find themselves isolated.
* And finally ... when you are an assistant coach on a program that's circling the drain, and the guy you are working for doesn't seem to have a clue on how to reverse things, these "recruiting trips" have to be extra challenging. What is your message, and how do you answer questions on poor performance while maintaining credibility? How do you prop up a guy that you yourself may have lost complete faith in? At this point, guys like Stewie are probably losing sleep over what next year looks like, and who's going to be paying the mortgage? You may be spending at least as much time brushing up your future options as you are on the full-time job, and that's not going to improve the on-ice product any time soon. Everyone you talk to can see the reality of things on dozens of websites, and you arguably have two options: one, answer honestly, and lose the best potential recruits, or two, try to slide by with BS, and not only lose recruits, but damage your personal reputation. Ugh.
All reasons why a clean start is absolutely necessary, and the sooner the better, for ALL concerned ...
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