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Union College Hockey 2014-2015 "ReUnion 2015? Why "Nott"?

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Re: Union College Hockey 2014-2015 "ReUnion 2015? Why "Nott"?

Hynes in for Shier:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/UnionHockey?src=hash">#UnionHockey</a> lines for tonight's game vs <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SCSUHockey?src=hash">#SCSUHockey</a>. Only change is Tyler Hynes replacing Kevin Shier. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ECACHockey?src=hash">#ECACHockey</a> <a href="http://t.co/BxHhOeMhps">pic.twitter.com/BxHhOeMhps</a></p>— Union Hockey Blog (@UnionHockeyBlog) <a href="https://twitter.com/UnionHockeyBlog/status/526117282813333504">October 25, 2014</a></blockquote>
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Re: Union College Hockey 2014-2015 "ReUnion 2015? Why "Nott"?

rdf8585 said:
Hynes in for Shier:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/UnionHockey?src=hash">#UnionHockey</a> lines for tonight's game vs <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SCSUHockey?src=hash">#SCSUHockey</a>. Only change is Tyler Hynes replacing Kevin Shier. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ECACHockey?src=hash">#ECACHockey</a> <a href="http://t.co/BxHhOeMhps">pic.twitter.com/BxHhOeMhps</a></p>— Union Hockey Blog (@UnionHockeyBlog) <a href="https://twitter.com/UnionHockeyBlog/status/526117282813333504">October 25, 2014</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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Is Alex starting in goal tonight?
Schott - "Alex Sakellaropoulos leads #UnionHockey out on the ice. Apparently, he's starting in goal tonight."
Max moves to second line as well
 
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Re: Union College Hockey 2014-2015 "ReUnion 2015? Why "Nott"?

Yes, it appears Alex is starting even though Colin was listed first. Probably just want to give Colin a breather.
 
Re: Union College Hockey 2014-2015 "ReUnion 2015? Why "Nott"?

Win lose or draw .... I think its great !!!!
 
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Re: Union College Hockey 2014-2015 "ReUnion 2015? Why "Nott"?

Got totally outplayed by St. Cloud ... they got the win. They deserved it. Could be just what we needed.
Alex looked good !!!!

On to the ECAC and league play ....
Next Stop - 6 league matches, 5 at home
RPI (2)
Dartmouth
Harvard
QU
Princeton

We need these 12 points ...... 26 points gets us to a bye and a good shot at Lake Placid ... worse case past 10 years.

Friday at RPI

They are losing but not giving up a lot of goals - if you take away the ENG's they are holding opponents to about 3 goals/game. Their record masks that they have two good goalies.
 
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Re: Union College Hockey 2014-2015 "ReUnion 2015? Why "Nott"?

Fiirst slice of humble pie in some time. But Union has some goal tending between Stevens & Sak. The frosh look mighty good, too.
Over in Troy the "has beens" fell for a second night to the "never weres." Schadenfreude is the perfect post prandial to humble pie. Union should feast on RPI next weekend.
 
Re: Union College Hockey 2014-2015 "ReUnion 2015? Why "Nott"?

We can't take stupid penalties, 2/3 of their goals came when we were down a skater. Also, I learned in youth hockey never pass the puck in front of the net. JC should get credited an assist on their 3rd goal. If he puts the puck in the corner, there is a different outcome tonight. The growing pains of a freshman.
 
Re: Union College Hockey 2014-2015 "ReUnion 2015? Why "Nott"?

Tough day for the ECAC 1-4
Colgate won
Union lost by 1
Clarkson lost by 1
St. Lawrence lost by 1 in OT
RPI lost by 4
 
Re: Union College Hockey 2014-2015 "ReUnion 2015? Why "Nott"?

UnionFan4Life said:
We can't take stupid penalties, 2/3 of their goals came when we were down a skater. Also, I learned in youth hockey never pass the puck in front of the net. JC should get credited an assist on their 3rd goal. If he puts the puck in the corner, there is a different outcome tonight. The growing pains of a freshman.
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The outcome would not have been different.. better team won and would have even without that play by JC, but it was brutal. I bet this will be a tough week of practice and may see some lineup changes next weekend.

That being said, amazingly (because I'm usually wrong) this is pretty much where I though the team would be: offense is good to very good, goaltending is very good to excellent (Alex was VG tonight).. and defense is young, inexperienced, a little undersized and makes periodic bad mistakes. JC's mistake tonight can be corrected with coaching & repetition in practice, but their will be more mistakes like this because of the lack of experience with the pace of play in D-1 by the frosh & some of the sophs, who will make up at least 2/3rds of the D on any given night. The coaches quandary is how to handle this best. Last year's team was not always the tightest defensively, but could make up for it with explosive offense. Both Bodie & Ghost at times made horrendous defensive mistakes, but thankfully they were pretty rare and more than madeup for by great plays the other way. Likewise this year, the strength of the D-men is that they are good skaters that handle the puck well, but the underclassmen are not so good without the puck on their sticks. How much rein should they be given to make the offense go without sacrificing on defense is the question, because there really aren't options to add more defensive stoppers, unless somehow Light turns out to be one. I'm concerned about next weekends games as they are setups for overconfidence on Union's part and something to prove on RPI's, who will obviously have nothing to lose by being physical and in U's face.
 
Re: Union College Hockey 2014-2015 "ReUnion 2015? Why "Nott"?

As for Brassard's turnover that led to the decisive St. Cloud goal, this is what Rick Bennett said after the game:

“It’s easy to blame JC Brassard for that. It was our other defenseman [Gingras] snoring, not plugged in and losing his man at the net front. That’s where we were tonight, just not plugged in.”
 
Re: Union College Hockey 2014-2015 "ReUnion 2015? Why "Nott"?

Got a chance to watch some of the RPI versus Bentley matchup on Friday and Saturday on RPI TV. Bentley is not your average AHA team. I believe they finished second last year in the conference. They returned just about all of their offense.

General observations:

If you take away empty net goals, RPI is not giving up a lot of scoring. Minnesota only scored three goals. RPI has two very good goalies and blasting away from the blue line, you're not gonna get a puck by them. There have been no blowouts. RPI is giving up about three goals per game if you subtract out the empty net goals. The problem right now is that they are not scoring. They have scored 3 goals in the last 5 games. If they solve their scoring problem, they can win a lot of games. Do I think they will solve it?

What was remarkable about those two Bentley games were:

#1. Penalties: RPI was leading the ECAC in penalty minutes per game and ranked in the top 10 in the country. That all changed, and RPI stopped taking penalties. It does not appear to have helped very much. Bentley was a much faster team and scored well on the power play so it was probably to RPI's benefit not to take penalties.
#2. SOG: the shot on goal totals for both teams was very low. Bentley made a point of working the puck down low and waiting until they could fire in close to make a shot. They were deliberate.
#3. SPEED: RPI looked slow. It was not that they were not trying, I just don't think this is a team of skilled fast skaters. Skilled yes, fast no.
#4. BLOCKED SHOTS: While I am not certain of the numbers, it looked like Bentley blocked a lot of RPI shots. Bentley, while not noted as a defensive team, deliberately went to shut RPI down first and score second and was very deliberate in setting up scoring opportunities. Excellent execution of a game plan on Bentley's part.

If I'm correct in what I saw, we should be able to play much of the game in the RPI end. We will need to camp out in front of their goal if we want to get more than 3 goals. Fore-check. Keep the puck in their end. Scrum in front of their goalie. In both games Bentley totally out skated RPI. If we stay out of the penalty box and force RPI to play man even hockey, I think they will have a hard time scoring on us.

ECAC points on the line. We need 26 to be sure to get a first round bye. Time to start collecting.
 
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Re: Union College Hockey 2014-2015 "ReUnion 2015? Why "Nott"?

ADK11 said:
I bet this will be a tough week of practice and may see some lineup changes next weekend
Click to expand...

Years past we were always a defensive minded team .... aka played like Cornell (but without necessarily the same results). Offense is sevy. Scoring at the buzzer is sevy. But offense does not win championships by itself. Look at St. Lawrence last year. We have got to go back and be that fundamentally sound defensive team. We certainly have the goalies to do it.

I saw a play Foo made on Friday. He was battling three Saint Cloud defenders and two were their big 6'5"+ 230 lbs guys. He would not give up. He was being ground to a pulp but he would not give up. To everyone's amazement he dug out the puck !!!! with is what, 160lb frame? and centered it. One tiny little skinny freshmen going up against their most experience upperclassmen !!! That is Union College Hockey ....

The freshmen are making mistakes but some are better examples of Union College Hockey then some of the upperclassmen. Last year is over, the banner has been raised. Get it behind us and lets play Union College Hockey !!!!
 
Re: Union College Hockey 2014-2015 "ReUnion 2015? Why "Nott"?

This team is pretty much where I expected it to be at this point in the season, except the W-L record. When I first saw the schedule, I would have anticipated a 3-3 or similar record at this stage. This team is still very young and inexperienced in many key positions and with a possible leadership void which needs to be and likely will be filled as the team matures. Noticeably lacking this weekend in my view was the tenacious forechecking that we have been so accustomed to seeing over the past several seasons. Some of that has to be attributed to the quality of the opponent, SCSU is a very real Frozen Four threat in my view.

This weekend and season so far has been an excellent teaching opportunity for the coaching staff but the team needs to buy in. I am still confident that the results will follow, but not without some disappointing moments and results. We should have a chance to win every game with the quality goaltending that we have. Going to Alex was a calculated move in my view, getting the attention of the team that they can't just sit back and expect Colin to "save" the day without the support he needs.
 
Re: Union College Hockey 2014-2015 "ReUnion 2015? Why "Nott"?

Dutchman said:
Got a chance to watch some of the RPI versus Bentley matchup on Friday and Saturday on RPI TV. Bentley is not your average AHA team. I believe they finished second last year in the conference. They returned just about all of their offense.

General observations:

If you take away empty net goals, RPI is not giving up a lot of scoring. Minnesota only scored three goals. RPI has two very good goalies and blasting away from the blue line, you're not gonna get a puck by them. There have been no blowouts. RPI is giving up about three goals per game if you subtract out the empty net goals. The problem right now is that they are not scoring. They have scored 3 goals in the last 5 games. If they solve their scoring problem, they can win a lot of games. Do I think they will solve it?

What was remarkable about those two Bentley games were:

#1. Penalties: RPI was leading the ECAC in penalty minutes per game and ranked in the top 10 in the country. That all changed, and RPI stopped taking penalties. It does not appear to have helped very much. Bentley was a much faster team and scored well on the power play so it was probably to RPI's benefit not to take penalties.
#2. SOG: the shot on goal totals for both teams was very low. Bentley made a point of working the puck down low and waiting until they could fire in close to make a shot. They were deliberate.
#3. SPEED: RPI looked slow. It was not that they were not trying, I just don't think this is a team of skilled fast skaters. Skilled yes, fast no.
#4. BLOCKED SHOTS: While I am not certain of the numbers, it looked like Bentley blocked a lot of RPI shots. Bentley, while not noted as a defensive team, deliberately went to shut RPI down first and score second and was very deliberate in setting up scoring opportunities. Excellent execution of a game plan on Bentley's part.

If I'm correct in what I saw, we should be able to play much of the game in the RPI end. We will need to camp out in front of their goal if we want to get more than 3 goals. Fore-check. Keep the puck in their end. Scrum in front of their goalie. In both games Bentley totally out skated RPI. If we stay out of the penalty box and force RPI to play man even hockey, I think they will have a hard time scoring on us.

ECAC points on the line. We need 26 to be sure to get a first round bye. Time to start collecting.
Click to expand...

Amazing, an analysis of yours that I almost totally one-hundred-percent concur with. First time for everything :P
 
Re: Union College Hockey 2014-2015 "ReUnion 2015? Why "Nott"?

ADK11 said:
The outcome would not have been different.. better team won and would have even without that play by JC, but it was brutal. I bet this will be a tough week of practice and may see some lineup changes next weekend.

That being said, amazingly (because I'm usually wrong) this is pretty much where I though the team would be: offense is good to very good, goaltending is very good to excellent (Alex was VG tonight).. and defense is young, inexperienced, a little undersized and makes periodic bad mistakes. JC's mistake tonight can be corrected with coaching & repetition in practice, but their will be more mistakes like this because of the lack of experience with the pace of play in D-1 by the frosh & some of the sophs, who will make up at least 2/3rds of the D on any given night. The coaches quandary is how to handle this best. Last year's team was not always the tightest defensively, but could make up for it with explosive offense. Both Bodie & Ghost at times made horrendous defensive mistakes, but thankfully they were pretty rare and more than madeup for by great plays the other way. Likewise this year, the strength of the D-men is that they are good skaters that handle the puck well, but the underclassmen are not so good without the puck on their sticks. How much rein should they be given to make the offense go without sacrificing on defense is the question, because there really aren't options to add more defensive stoppers, unless somehow Light turns out to be one. I'm concerned about next weekends games as they are setups for overconfidence on Union's part and something to prove on RPI's, who will obviously have nothing to lose by being physical and in U's face.
Click to expand...

Exactly my thoughts. And we need to keep calm and play our game : Simple short passes (no turn overs please !!!!) to get into the zone. Also, we always have problems with teams that defend really high. I remember thinking that last year too. And Saturday's game was the same : we're OK bringing the puck to center ice, and then we loose it if the defense doesn't move back to the blue line.
I'm still very impressed with the freshmen... Shier and Foo especially.
 
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