I am 100% OUT. Not a fan of tanking for any reason. Ever.
I'm not a fan of tanking myself, and to be clear, I'm not saying the UNH players are tanking OR should be tanking. Certainly Coach Souza has a vested interest in not tanking, as he's coaching for his future D-1 HC career at this point. To date, he hasn't accomplished a single thing, and if he doesn't accomplish something quickly, he's probably never going to get another chance at it. There is urgency there, and if he's been able to motivate his players to collect some W's by passing that urgency further down the line, then good for him. That's the
fool's gold part of the equation, winning a few meaningless late RS games to (temporarily?) pull his team out of the basement.
MS7's pathway to real "success" is a very narrow one, and it probably involves a "respectable" RS finish that sees them eke into the 8th slot (one above the MBPBEGAM home ice cutoff line), and then emerge from the gauntlet that involves a winnable MBPBEGAM round, then somehow pull off an upset in the REAL league quarterfinals round - probably against either BU or Northeastern - and remind his program and its fans of a place known as the Boston Garden, which used to be a regular feature of the UNH program's seasons. And with the way the league has been, top to bottom, you somehow get to Boston with some momentum, anything goes.
But getting there is crucial.
That of course ensures MS7 gets to coach the final year of his contract. UNH should
NOT extend him for anything short of an HEA title/auto NCAA berth (at large ain't happening anyway). The strong finish
MUST lead to an improved performance out on the recruiting front, and your graduating class (mediocrity incarnate)
MUST be replaced by higher quality recruits, all of whom have the potential to skate on the top two lines/pairings by the time they are juniors (at the latest). You build on the momentum of a strong 2023 finish with a good start to next season, continue to parlay that momentum into better results, better recruits, etc. and suddenly you've demonstrated that maybe just maybe, you are the man to continue the job, and are
deserving of an honest-to-goodness contract extension on the basis of actual merit.
Otherwise ... MS7 wins a few more meaningless games in the last six RS games against UConn, UMaine and UVM (and let's be honest, those are ALL winnable games, for varying reasons - UConn not playing for much at this point, and UMaine and UVM just aren't that good), but bows out of the post-season before Boston. No real momentum to take into the next season, no publicity bump from a strong postseason finish, and you're suddenly a "lame duck" HC where no one (besides your returning players) - and I mean your fans, and potentially more importantly your would-be recruiting targets - have any reason to expect the next year(s) to be any different than all the others where you've accomplished zip. Self-fulfilling prophecy in the end. But we have to wait longer, and the UNH program slips further into D-1 irrelevance, where it now resides.
There's a strong chance that UNH's recent "revitalization" has probably averted the "nuclear option" of firing MS7 and his staff a year early, which (unless there is a full-blown turnaround as outlined above, lurking below the surface) likely only serves to delay the timeline to a return to real relevancy by at least a year. Knowing what we've seen for the past 5-8 years, I've reluctantly come to the conclusion that I've seen enough, and losing a few meaningless games down the stretch (IF it gets us to the restart point) isn't tearing my heart out like it used to.
So maybe not "tanking" but for sure I'm under-enthusiastic about the overall value of some of these recent W's vis a vis the long-term interest in seeing the program return to national relevance.
And of course, if/when we do get to the restart, then it becomes incumbent on the AD to make the right hire(s) ...
