WIS Productions brings you the "Missed the Deadline"
edition of "Umile's Last Stand - The _____ for 600"
"Umile's Last Stand - The Quest for 600"
Coach Umile's current career wins total: 582
Wins Remaining to the next round number: 18
*Games Remaining (Next 2 Seasons - Min.): 45
Win Pct. Required to Hit Target: 40%
WIS Estimated Likelihood of Success: 65%
2016/2017 Cupcake Conversion Ratio (CCR): 9/15 (60%)
* - minimum games remaining assumes 34 regular season games, and at least 2 games in the MBPBEGAM "playoffs"
... and in the immortal words of Yogi Berra, it's
deja vu all over again, as UNH's winless streak stretches to six (6) games with Friday night's 6-4 loss to the Chestnut Hillbillies. Throw in the previous weekend's home sweep by Providence at Durham, and UNH has dipped to a game under .500 overall, and frighteningly is only halfway through "The Gauntlet", which was the long-projected run of 12 games (shortened to 10 games with Northeastern's return to normalcy this season). In fact, the next four games are all on the road, and it's hard to see where that next "W" might be. Lowell seemed to be trending in a vulnerable direction recently, but have bounced back a little since, and it's hard to see them passing up a chance to devour cupcake-trending UNH in their current poor run of form.
None of this is good news, of course, as Coach Umile continues to stalk the next round number in
The Quest. He's been stuck on 582 now since the boys took to the ice at Fenway, and although there have been some near-misses and a pair of ties (0-4-2) mixed into this stretch, those aren't helping anything right now. After Lowell, there is the two game road series at Gutterson with UVM, then a home-and-home with BU before "The Gauntlet" ends with the arrival of the UConn Luce Canaans. And with UNH slowly sinking like a rock down the Hockey East standings, their presence in the MBPBEGAM round again looks highly probable, and at this rate home ice there is far from guaranteed.
The Big Picture - Coach Umile's Wildcats have slumped under .500 (with an overall 11-12-4 record), and the impact of losing more than the expected amount of "cupcake" games is really coming home to roost. As seen in many posts over the last few days, the "oh no, not again" warning beacons at The Whitt are fully engaged, and although WIS prognosticators have only modestly scaled back the chances for a successful end to
The Quest - impacted more by failing to nick a win last weekend at home against PC - the outlook could take a real hit if the next 3 games don't at least advance the "W" cause by a game. This season has been all about getting to about 15 wins to make next season's similar win haul sufficient to do the trick and send Coach Umile off having attained the vaunted next round number. An implosion that leaves UNH needing 16 or more wins next season could raise the spectre of Coach Souza getting an early start on his own career wins total - a possibility discussed early on in this series, but virtually dismissed and buried when UNH matched last year's win total almost a month ago now ...
I guess if there's good news to discuss, it's that potential Hobey candidate Tyler Kelleher emerged from his much-discussed struggles on Friday night against a more wide-open style favored by BC. His standing as a potential Hobey nominee seems assured, but his status as a would-be frontrunner has taken on water, and the fortunes of his team have followed right behind. Kelleher is going to have to find a way to build on the BC performance, and get back to making steady contributions not only to keep his Hobey campaign realistically viable, but to turn his team's season back around, and to help his coach in his next-to-last rodeo. Good luck with that, Ty.
Predictions:
Saturday (Feb. 4th): UNH 1 @ UMass Lowell 4
Friday (Feb. 10th): UNH 3 @ UVM 5
Saturday (Feb. 11th): UNH 4 @ UVM 2
NEXT CUPCAKE ON THE SHELF: Still none on the horizon, at least until the MBPBEGAM playoffs
WIS BRAIN-BUSTING TRIVIA QUESTION: Who were Martin St. Louis' notorious linemates at the height of his UVM career?
IS BS35+4 PAYING ATTENTION YET?
Kinda. Now that UNH has gone a half-dozen games winless, and the chances of two or three home "playoff" games comes into question, you just know the big guy (or is that the Big Guy) is paying attention at least a bit. Now if we get to the next edition of
The Quest and Coach is still stuck on 582 wins ... you'd have to think the "nuclear option" of not allowing Coach Umile to finish up the 3rd and final year of his long goodbye tour may start sneaking itself back onto the table. Long winless streaks against league competition, two seasons in a row, do tend to cause such distractions. Coach badly needs to pull a rabbit or two out of his hat in the February stretch run before Luce Canaan and his Huskies arrive late to offer a pseudo-cupcake opportunity for a UNH team that's giving off way too many pseudo-cupcake vibes of their own as we're 3/4's of the way into the season now. If nothing else ... depending upon how things wind up over these last few weekends of the season, you gotta think the chances of the birth of the new UNH-SNHU in-state rivalry might not be so far away, in order to achieve the "prime directive" next season. After all ... if SNHU is going to insist on playing at a D-1 opponent, why force the Penmen to chase all the way to ASFU to get waxed, when they can get just as easily waxed by in-state cupcake-seeking competition closer to home? We'll spruce the thing up a bit, call it the "Van Ostern Cup" and even play it at the newly-tagged SNHU Arena? Screw Dartmouth ...
