Darius
Go 'cats!
Re: UNH Wildcats 2019 Offseason - How Much Progress Did We Really Make This Past Seas
Will we be better than last year? Who will be captain? We didn't have any early d-men departures! I heard Benton Maas is carrying a 4.0 as a Paul School finance major. Check out @UNHMHOCKEY for some recent Merrimack Valley publicity and outreach.
C'mon Chuck, play along for a bit.Snively65 pretty much handled the low hanging fruit approach to a response here.
Let me turn the tables a little bit and ask you … what has UNH Hockey done to get the masses excited to the levels of past years? Yes, not too long ago, UNH had one of the best D-1 programs in the country, year in and year out. And the interest level hummed in anticipation of "next year" with the school itself doing relatively little to stoke that interest - they took it for granted, allowed the local media to boost the program to the hockey-loving hordes. Coach Umile wasn't a publicist's dream, he was a hockey coach, and he relied on the on-ice results to keep the buzz on the program, which in turn helped him immeasurably with the other stuff he really didn't enjoy about his job - that whole recruiting thing. That was what McCloskey, Serino, Borek and Tortorella were for.
The AD was (still is) asleep at the wheel when it comes to publicizing and romancing the NH hockey base, ceding it without even a fight when the Monarchs arrived in Manch during the good ol' days. "Doesn't matter, all is fine" as the AD pointed to a waiting list of over a thousand folks patiently waiting for season ticketholder interest to wane so they could step in and keep the house full.
Eventually, guys like McCloskey and Serino wanted to do other things, and guys like Borek and Tortorella weren't quite as good at what they did as their predecessors were. Eventually they wanted to do other things, and guys like Souza and Stewart haven't yet established themselves at the levels of Borek or Tortorella, much less McCloskey and Serino. Coach Umile was the same coach, but the quality of "groceries" was slipping, and he himself couldn't be bothered to do something he always relied on others to do.
The AD still can't be bothered, he's put his latest plan (MS7) in play, and he's just hoping it works out (as do the rest of us). I'm not seeing him doing anything to promote UNH Hockey, now that they're back to being the only game in town (state) by default.
The fans - the long-term fans - have been entirely taken for granted. MS7 might turn out to be a heck of a hockey coach, but it's early days, and frankly he is showing the same talent for PR as his mentor/predecessor. Which is to say, next to nothing. If you got every hockey fan in the state in a single arena, and asked them "Who is the UNH Men's Hockey head coach?" my guess is one third would know it's Souza, another third would still think it's Coach Umile, and the final third wouldn't know at all.
This is not made better in any way by the current state of the modern media, which doesn't provide the in-depth coverage they used to, don't ask pressing questions, and just copy and paste press releases to pass for "beat coverage" for the program. It's sad.
I'm not necessarily expecting MS7 to turn into a hockey messiah and get the word out on his own. Guys like that (RIP Walshy) don't seem to exist anymore. Luckily for him, I don't think he has to be that "out there" or even that great to be successful. But he's got to turn this back into a winning program. Then, if he can do that, we can get on the other folks who've parked things in neutral for the better part of the last generation, and shame them into doing their share of the work to get stuff out there.
I don't think it's incumbent upon guys like 'Watcher, C-H-C, Dan and an unpaid cast of dozens on here to generate the excitement that the folks with paying jobs should be handling. Those who post on here with their insight and knowledge, do so because they love the game, and they love the program. But it's not their "job" to create content for the casual or not-so-casual fans out there like you and me. So welcome aboard, CoachD (it couldn't really be U, right?), and don't hesitate to provide your thoughts and your own content. I've always said, the more, the merrier.
Will we be better than last year? Who will be captain? We didn't have any early d-men departures! I heard Benton Maas is carrying a 4.0 as a Paul School finance major. Check out @UNHMHOCKEY for some recent Merrimack Valley publicity and outreach.
