Re: Union College: 2015-2016
I like this team .....
We are 1-4-4 in our last 9 but:
Since starting the 13 freshmen and sophomores
We are playing 60 minutes ...
We are winning more 1 on 1 battles ...
We are back to being tough to play against ....
We are playing with more intensity ... especially the leadership
We are playing with fewer turnovers ...
We are hungrier ...
We are fun to watch !!!!
In 2013-2014, we were 1-2-2 out of the gate but you could tell good things were going to happen. You can see the "youngins" are much hungrier than the upperclassmen. Makes sense. You have been a member of a national championship team .... what do you do for an encore?
Two years ago we lost 2 first string all-American defensemen and last year we lost an all-American goalie and 30% of our scoring. We had hoped that returning so many on "D" that there would be folks stepping up. What we do have is one of the youngest teams in college hockey, around 10th youngest. No excuses. We are a no-excuses team.
I had picked us for 10th in the ECAC based on lack of an establish goaltender and loss of scoring. I still hope I am wrong. I was wrong about Dartmouth whom I felt would be at the bottom of the ECAC since they lost just about everyone. Goes to show you that each team develops its own character and freshmen skill is important.
Next year we are losing 5 seniors but only two are starters, a very good defensive forward and very good defensemen. Can we get Vecchione to stay for his senior year?
We are no longer that team which can be said .... "They rely on defense first and offense second". We are clearly recruiting for offense and developing offensive minded defensemen. In 2014, we averaged 5.00 ppg through six playoff games (two ECAC and 4 NCAA). Not sure this is a bad thing.
As a school and as a league we have no sustainable competitive advantage over big brother (HE) or the South Dakota's or the Minnesota's or the Michigan's or the Saint Clouds of the world. The IVY's face a very rigid and enforced academic index which hits Harvard, Yale and Princeton the hardest. They have a small pool to recruit from at the top of the academic pyramid. Colgate has something similar as part of the Patriot League. The Liberty League members have to make sure that their programs don't get out of synch with the rest of their respective D-III sports programs and are held back by budgets. All of the ECAC takes great pride in graduation rates and the emphasis is on the student in student-athlete. There are clearly excellent academic schools in other leagues including HE and the Big 10 but count the number of SEM (Science, Engineering, and Math) majors on the hockey team. We may not be the best league in college hockey but there is no question that as a league, we are way tops academically.
How we do as well as we do is beyond me.
We are dwarfed by other leagues if you look at the number of NFL draft picks, especially if you take away Harvard and Cornell.
We (Union) have to find a "diamond in the rough" and then we have to develop them into D-I hockey players in an environment where we are constrained by not being able to give out scholarships AND where our whole athletic department reports to an academic dean and we have no money.
How successful is our program? Getting BU, Michigan and next year South Dakota to come play us was unimaginable 4-5 years ago. That is a testament to how well we have done and how well the ECAC has done. 9 of our 12 ECAC teams are .500 and above.
I see our cup as half full and I would not want to play us, home or away, in the first round of the ECAC tournament. We are not going to go quietly into the night.
