Re: UNH Wildcats 2018-2019: Souza the Opportunity or Louza the Opportunity
On another note I'd like to see Anthony Wyse take fewer penalties that lead to 5 on 3 opps...not that those happen all the time with him of course but we can't afford those moving forward. I'm all for his aggressiveness etc, but it's costly. Perhaps he's showing he has what it takes to play in the next level?
Wyse is without a doubt looking more and more like a NHL-caliber defenseman. He still needs to improve on his footwork and quickness, but I do think his hockey sense is quite good. His size will be attractive.
FWIW I think Wyse will develop into a solid AHL player who (with the right organization) could make it onto a 3rd pairing in the NHL at some point. As the Prof points out, he's got room for improvement, but his size will at least register NHL-level interest, and then from there, it's up to development and a little bit of luck. Whereas I'd project someone like Gildon has a 2nd pairing ceiling and a 75-80% chance at playing in the NHL, I'd project someone like Wyse will only have a 40-50% chance at that level, and it will depend on his physical play (check) combined with further development of his skating and his skills. Considering how he dropped into UNH's lap late in the process, we're frankly lucky to have him.
On the penalty front, yeah, there have been some questionable decisions, and I'm thinking back to the Bentley game when he buried a Falcon who had just taken liberties with one of his smaller teammates along the boards in the defensive end early in the third period. I think I called it "admirable but dumb", or something like that. On further reflection, it was with a two goal lead against an opponent that had been taking a lot of liberties leading up to that moment, and had shown precious little in the way of sustained attacking pressure. So maybe it was a cynical calculation by Wyse to drill an opponent and send a message, and while they did concede on the resulting PK, it seemed like Bentley toned down their chippiness afterwards, and never really threatened to equalize.
All in all, though, I'm good with the physical play and the messaging that goes along with it. For far too long, UNH teams were too passive on the physical stuff, and we all know the "SMT" label that was attached to many of Coach Umile's teams. I like to see a combative UNH team, and if Wyse is going to be the guy primarily responsible for leading the way there, he has my total and complete backing. BTW I thought the second call against him last night was borderline at best.
I'll also point out that - as alluded to by some of the previous posters - Merrimack is a bad team this season. And bad teams do find a way to lose games. We saw UNH doing a lot of that in the fairly recent past, and we saw Merrimack hand it to UNH in OT last night. UNH "got away" with a substandard performance against a poor team to earn the W last night, and they'll have to play MUCH better to do the same against Yale - regardless of Gildon or the two Yale kids and their respective availabilities.
And finally, kudos to Robinson for last night, when he made several quality/key stops in the 3rd period when the game was in the balance. I'm fairly certain that if the 'Mack goes up by two goals in the 3rd, we're talking about a bad UNH loss to a really bad team, as opposed to enjoying a 4 game winning streak. But if anything else, last night shows us that UNH without Gildon still isn't a playoffs team - much less a national tourney team. And Crookshank looks like a keeper. More of those, please.
