Re: UNH Wildcats Official Wait til Next Year...14/15 thread
Just a q for you Greg so are you saying that this year's team is worse talent wise than any you've seen even in lean years regardless of win/loss record? And I think most would agree with you that winning these next two weekends will be a definite accomplishment...
Interesting that you feel the talent in College hockey isn't what it used to be do others out there who have been following the sport feel the same?
Ref, I thought I'd do a little research this morning, to satisfy my own curiosity as well as yours. I'll start off by saying that I am focusing only on 1985-86 through 1987-88, the three year span when UNH won a total of 20 games (I had earlier said 19 by mistake). This takes in Charlie Holt's last year as coach and the first two years Bob Kullen was at the helm. You may know that Bob suffered his heart problems during this period and team was taken over by interim coach Dave O'Connor, with some help from Charlie as well. During this period I would say that the top five players that UNH had on their roster, not all at the same time, were Steve Leach, Peter Douris, James Richmond, Mike Golden, and Mike Rossetti. Leach and Douris played two years apiece at UNH then left for the pros. Both carved out careers in the NHL, including stints with the Bruins. I think they actually played with the B's at the same time. Richmond and Rossetti were four year players for UNH, with Richmond a two time captain, the only one besides Patrick Foley in UNH history I believe. Golden was a pretty good forward, had a lot of talent, but he wasn't much in the classroom. He was asked to leave after two years and, lo and behold, wound up at Maine where I believe he was an all-Hockey East selection at least once. That's pretty much it for UNH. I have gone over this many times with folks on this board but, IMO, UNH recruiting was not ready for the rigors of the schedule that they were about to face in those years, playing BU, BC, Maine, etc. in HE and WCHA powers like Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Dakota out west.
Just to give you an idea, during the three year period that I am talking about, BC had players like Craig Janney, Brian Leetch, Kevin Stevens, Ken Hodge, Jr., Greg Brdown, and Bob Sweeney, all who played in the NHL. BU had John Cullen, who I think is still BU's leading all time scorer, Clark Donatelli, Mike Kelfer, and Scott Young. Maine, which was just coming on then (the won 30+ games in 1987-88) had the Capuano brothers (Jack is the coach of the Islanders), the Weinrichs who both played in NHL plus a bunch of others who were Walsh's first wave. Add in guys like Rick Bennett from PC (now coach at Union), Bruce Racine, Northeastern goalie, Lowell's Jon Morris who also played in the NHL. and it was formative bunch. Then add in the WCHA. I noted on the Minnesota hockey website that in this three year span the Gophers had 21 guys drafted. Not all of them made it of course, but the group included Tom Chorske, Todd Richards, Rob Stauber, and Corey Millen. Wisconsin, which won 30+ games in 1988, had the great Tony Granato, Paul Ranheim and Steve Tuttle. And how can you forget North Dakota. They won the NCAA title in 1987, led by Tony Hrkac (the Hrkac Circus) who scored something like 130 points that year. And I am not even mentioning Minnesota-Duluth, who were nowhere is good as the other teams but produced back-to-back Hobey winners - Tom Kurvers and Bill Watson.
If we had this discussion back in the late 90's a very good argument could have been made that the talent of that day was every bit as good as what I have described above. But that was 15+ years ago. There are some very, very good players out there today, Jack Eichel the most obvious example in HE. But the breadth of talent over college hockey has dropped in the last several years,. I really don't think anyone can argue that convincingly. Reasons are many but there are two major ones for me. First, in several of the "hockey hotbed" areas of the country, there just aren't as many talented kids playing as there were 30 years ago. Since I am a Massachusetts guy, I look at how few kids are actually on the rosters of Hockey East schools. This is going way back, but I can remember in the 70's UNH's roster was all kids from Eastern Mass. and Ontario. Now we get hardly anyone from those areas. My guess is that the talent issue is the same in places like Michigan and upstate NY. Why this is, I don't know. Maybe the cost of the sport? The second reason is that many of the kids who used to populate college hockey are now going to play Major Juniors in Canada. Just in UNH's case I can think of two guys who had committed to UNH but wound up in the Quebec League - Keith Yandle and Ryan Bourque. I am sure that this had been duplicated across the college landscape.
This is my take. Open to discussion, of course.
. And I agree that we are seeing a big Frosh impact; Andrew P's tee shot last night oh my more of that please!
