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UNH Men’s Hockey 22-23: the start of something new, or more of the same?

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Snively65 said:
Capt. Clutch’s home is West Kelowna, B.C., so I do not see him transferring to a MN school. He could conceivably play two more years at UNH while working on a PhD. :-)

I also do not see Muszelik displacing Commesso, Levi, or Mullahy, all juniors, which leaves only BC as a Beanpot school with two new goalie recruits coming in this fall, but I do not know anything about their talent level.

I am more concerned about LeClerc, Devlin, or Huard hitting the portal, but hoping that they all stay put. I agree that they all should be feeling good about themselves with their second semester turn-around.

Hey, we must have shaken Yukon’s overconfidence as Luce’s team needed OT to beat the 56th PWR Anchorage 4-3 tonight.
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LeClerc is a legacy player with strong family ties to this area....highly doubtful that he would enter the portal.
 
Darius said:
Why is there underclassmen portal concern? The team vibe is more positive than anytime in the last few years. Did I miss something?
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When I look at a team that is in the bottom of the league, now playing well, with some good young talent, I ask myself what could go wrong and what could go right. So clearly I believe the most important ingredient to turning UNH Hockey around is talent on the ice. That means stacking good classes on good classes. The addition of the transfer portal means that retaining that talent is very important.

From there we can do best case worst case scenario planning

Best Case - Stevenson stays (#3 in scoring and from what we see on ice seems to be a good leader), the Freshman and Sophmores continue the improvement seen in the second half, Muszelik keeps his form and can handle the work load of a #1 goalie, Conmy and Ring (thanks for the heads Robert Balin) from the USHL transition well and can contribute early to mid year. I don't want to down play this senior class and at the same time this team is built on second half improvement of the freshman and sophomore classes

Worst Case - you loose a few young players to the transfer portal as they think they can trade up, Muszelik regresses, the freshman class ends up a dud...

Well best case is basically already baked with limited moving parts, discussions with Stevenson, its not like some amazing new recruit is likely to fall out of the sky for next fall at this point. It is also unlikely you get a high end transfer in, possible but unlikely. That to me means managing the bad thing that could potentially go really wrong - aka transfer portal.

For me it is just risk mgmt.
 
JB said:
Best Case - Stevenson stays (#3 in scoring and from what we see on ice seems to be a good leader), the Freshman and Sophmores continue the improvement seen in the second half, Muszelik keeps his form and can handle the work load of a #1 goalie, Conmy and Ring (thanks for the heads Robert Balin) from the USHL transition well and can contribute early to mid year. I don't want to down play this senior class and at the same time this team is built on second half improvement of the freshman and sophomore classes

Worst Case - you loose a few young players to the transfer portal as they think they can trade up, Muszelik regresses, the freshman class ends up a dud...
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Stevenson is a 24 year old Senior with solid academic performance. Obviously a loss if he moves on, but good for him if he decides to go old school and leave. Muszelik losing his current form, recruits not contributing, underclassmen regressing are bad for the team, terrible for the coaching staff. I don’t think we lose underclassmen to the portal, but admittedly don’t know anything about how the modern college hockey player views the portal. It will be disappointing if players leave. Equally disappointing that the portal even exists.

Great seeing you posting JB!
 
One irony that should not be lost on us is that we used to whine on these threads about not successfully recruiting in-state players, and now we have LeClerc, Dunlap, Gagne, and Gendron, although after three years Gendron has been a disappointment.
 
Snively65 said:
One irony that should not be lost on us is that we used to whine on these threads about not successfully recruiting in-state players, and now we have LeClerc, Dunlap, Gagne, and Gendron, although after three years Gendron has been a disappointment.
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Clearly the coaching staff took our advice ;-) Seriously, happy to see all the homegrown talent. Bonus that they are contributing and seeing lots of ice time. You can’t win national recruiting battles if you lose in your backyard.
 
I think we might be seeing an up tick in recruiting... I am curious to what changed.

Is it Jeff Giuliano?

Is it they got so bad that this up tick gives us Blue & White Colored glasses? (although the record since Jan 1 is real, those are real results, even if many of those games were closer than we want to remember... aka regression to mean on 50/50 coin flip games)

Is it a better recruiting pitch?
 
JB said:
I think we might be seeing an up tick in recruiting... I am curious to what changed.
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Did you not see our "Crossroads" Schenectady/Robert Johnson discussion earlier, JB?

If someone at The Whitt's sound desk has a sense of humor, I'm expecting lots of backwards Zep next weekend!! ;-)
 
JB said:
I think we might be seeing an up tick in recruiting... I am curious to what changed.

Is it Jeff Giuliano?

Is it they got so bad that this up tick gives us Blue & White Colored glasses? (although the record since Jan 1 is real, those are real results, even if many of those games were closer than we want to remember... aka regression to mean on 50/50 coin flip games)

Is it a better recruiting pitch?
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Hmmm. He didn’t have college recruiting experience so it makes sense that it took time for him to develop a strategy and make connections. Stevenson is the only British Columbia player on the roster, ’cats used to always have many. Now we have more NH (where Jeff is from), northeast and overseas players. Jeff played in Belarus in a league that included Russian teams and he also played in Germany. Sardarian and Stutzle?

When he was hired I posted that I liked it, thinking he would bring some BC mojo. “While (he was) at BC, the Eagles played in the 2000 and 2001 national championship games, winning the title in 2001. He graduated from BC having played 166 games, which were the third-most in school history. He posted 40 goals and 73 assists for 113 points. He was also on two Hockey East championship teams.” Back in the day I absolutely sports hated him.
 
Snively65 said:
One irony that should not be lost on us is that we used to whine on these threads about not successfully recruiting in-state players, and now we have LeClerc, Dunlap, Gagne, and Gendron, although after three years Gendron has been a disappointment.
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Gendron on has certainly shown flashes of very good play, but he’s has been inconsistent (maybe some injuries have come into play with that). He’s from my town, so I’ve been rooting for him. Was he highly touted coming in, I honestly have no memory of his signing or recruitment.
 
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Today's game is important and UNH needs all 3 points but HR believes they will be hard to come by. Seeing how both Maine amd UMass win last night and both with games in hand might be hard to finish any higher than 9th or 10?

Really don't think it matters anyway and you can't "cry over lost points" that were left on the table. Regardless we will be on the road am guessing either Maine or BC (unless they get beat tonight outright?) I should leave the HE predictions to Sean and look forward to his latest on HE tourney news...

Hate to say this since I've been way off track all season but I think the wheels come off the bus today for the 'Cats:

IceBus 4 UNH 2
 
I don't think its fair to call Gendron a disappointment as it would have been unfair to have ridiculously high expectations for him. First of all he came from the NAHL, which is a step down from the USHL and the BCHL. (And yes, I know LeClerc played there but players like him are outliers) Not to mention that he was still playing in that league when he turned 21 and he wasn't exactly lighting it up. But there is nothing wrong with being a bottom six forward. Every team needs some. (Think of the Johnny Rogers types.) Its like Souza was saying in the locker room last weekend - there are more ways to influence the game at a key moment (a hit, a back check, a block, etc.) than just the scoresheet.
 
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HockeyRef said:
Today's game is important and UNH needs all 3 points but HR believes they will be hard to come by. Seeing how both Maine amd UMass win last night and both with games in hand might be hard to finish any higher than 9th or 10?

Really don't think it matters anyway and you can't "cry over lost points" that were left on the table. Regardless we will be on the road am guessing either Maine or BC (unless they get beat tonight outright?) I should leave the HE predictions to Sean and look forward to his latest on HE tourney news...

Hate to say this since I've been way off track all season but I think the wheels come off the bus today for the 'Cats:

IceBus 4 UNH 2
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So pick your poison, who do you choose?

BC, PC or Maine?
 
Darius said:
Hmmm. He didn’t have college recruiting experience so it makes sense that it took time for him to develop a strategy and make connections. Stevenson is the only British Columbia player on the roster, ’cats used to always have many. Now we have more NH (where Jeff is from), northeast and overseas players. Jeff played in Belarus in a league that included Russian teams and he also played in Germany. Sardarian and Stutzle?

When he was hired I posted that I liked it, thinking he would bring some BC mojo. “While (he was) at BC, the Eagles played in the 2000 and 2001 national championship games, winning the title in 2001. He graduated from BC having played 166 games, which were the third-most in school history. He posted 40 goals and 73 assists for 113 points. He was also on two Hockey East championship teams.” Back in the day I absolutely sports hated him.
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They currently have one recruit in British Columbia and they do have 3 from from Ontario which is kind of a new trend. I think the last one was William Foegle.
 
Robert Balin said:
Yes it was..Why did Sousa split up Skrastins from the line with Stevenson and the Russian kid? makes no sense
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Sigh..who knows? This game is going as expected but thought we picked up the pace in the 2nd (some) but nothing to be rewarded for. Feels like a Union game. Was pointed out by the UNH radio crew that it was, what, since Friday's game v Maine that they've scored a goal???? (Regulation that is) For some reason am not that invested in this game...

edit: Atta boy Liam D. (UNH color says 115 mins/8 seconds since our last goal)
 
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HockeyRef said:
Sigh..who knows? This game is going as expected but thought we picked up the pace in the 2nd (some) but nothing to be rewarded for. Feels like a Union game. Was pointed out by the UNH radio crew that it was, what, since Friday's game v Maine that they've scored a goal???? (Regulation that is) For some reason am not that invested in this game...

edit: Atta boy Liam D. (UNH color says 115 mins/8 seconds since our last goal)
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a power play goal - awesome!

There was a time not long ago when we could not score a power play goal, even with two minutes of 5 on 3.
 
Snively65 said:
a power play goal - awesome!

There was a time not long ago when we could not score a power play goal, even with two minutes of 5 on 3.
Click to expand...

Rats, there goes my score predict (again) as the Huskies get another one (er 2) . Warm up the (non) Ice-Bus!
 
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