Union

[shelfit]

Re: Union

"Make sure you leave no stone unturned."

Are you suggesting it's time to get out of the Stone Age?!

 

[Flarrow]

Re: Union

Got to agree with Fivedevs here: "When those young forwards were attacking the Harvard Defenders and creating turnovers, when we can make a simple breakout pass to avoid getting pinned in our own zone for significant lengths of time, and look at special teams (Both are respectable)." I've seen this part of the Union game change this year too, and it's something that was unrecognized or was beyond an ability to address by the previous coach.
Good things ahead for Union.

 

[giwan]

Re: Union

Got to agree with Fivedevs here: "When those young forwards were attacking the Harvard Defenders and creating turnovers, when we can make a simple breakout pass to avoid getting pinned in our own zone for significant lengths of time, and look at special teams (Both are respectable)." I've seen this part of the Union game change this year too, and it's something that was unrecognized or was beyond an ability to address by the previous coach.
Good things ahead for Union.

Should be an interesting weekend for everyone.

 

[Skate79]

Re: Union

Your excuse for Harvard's increasingly lacklustre performance in recent years, and abysmal performance this year -- ie. "lack of talent" relative to better performing teams--is certainly not supported by ANY objective facts.

Since the time the current year's senior class arrived on campus, Harvard's roster has been graced with 12 players who were selected for Canadian or US National U18 and/or U22 teams. That's more than half the roster!! While I would certainly not suggest that being selected to a National team necessarily makes someone MORE talented than many who are passed over, it would be ridiculous to suggest any of these players are not top end talent. Further, the majority of remaining Harvard players have very unusually strong hockey resumes which generally include attendance at NDC camps, league all star honours, titles with top teams, National Championship appearances, scoring titles, family NHL pedigrees, et al.

Resumes don't always tell the whole story. It's the results that count and this team simply hasn't delivered. You don't go winless in 15 games (a program first by the way) unless there is a talent issue. You can disagree or trot out any number of U-18 or national camps. Plenty of players who attend sometimes never take their games to the next level. It is simply naive to think that every player who has that type of resume automatically makes the jump to the next level and keeps on going. I've seen it time and again both at Harvard and other programs where players with resumes simply don't deliver at the next level.

Nationally #3 ranked Clarkson has only half as many (6) players with National USA or Canada U18 experience (plus 1 player on the Czech National team). In addition, historically, Clarkson teams have often been widely seen as relatively slow by D1 standards, though they have typically seemed to have been able to overcome this in the win column regardless. Most of their players in many seasons would have been deemed far too slow to be of any interest to Harvard. (In fact, a great many relatively slowish players for a variety of teams over the years have notched much higher stats than anyone on Harvard's current roster, but I digress....)

Oh so now it's a speed issue? Glad you cleared that up because I was really worried there for a while.

Nationally #5 ranked SLU has only 2 players with National team experience. Furthermore, SLU has only 3 seniors and 8 freshman, meaning they are overall a very inexperienced team in terms of D1 level play. Perhaps even more notably, a large number of players on the roster have no real "blue chip" hockey achievements noted in their bios, unlike virtually every player on Harvard's roster. This relative lack of "blue chip" talent is not a new phenomenon for SLU. Their "lack of talent" and very young roster have been no barrier to top end performance, either this year or in years past, where their performance has also been consistently good. I think of SLU as typically having great "lunch bucket" teams, not flashy or particularly speedy but with exceptional work ethic and great teamwork rather than exceptional individual skill.

Actually you couldn't be more wrong. SLU has always emphasized skill and speed. From 2000 to 2008, SLU was consistently a top four team making regular appearances in the NCAA tournament. I have never thought of SLU as a "lunch bucket" team. I doubt they think that way either.

Taking a look at top-rated Ivy competitor Princeton, now #9, which you seem to believe has been more successful at securing high end talent relative to Harvard. However, they have 4 players on their roster (only 1/3 as many as Harvard recruited in the same period!) who had National U18 team experience coming in. There are actually a great many players on Princeton's roster who had zero interest from Harvard.

No I said that Kampersaal has been successful at recruiting more skilled players than in previous seasons and that's the truth. I wasn't making a direct comparison to Harvard. His system has emphasized defense first but because he has been able to attract more skilled players up front, Princeton is able to open things up and plays a more up tempo style. Good for them and for Kampersaal. From what I've learned from a couple of Harvard parents, he is very well respected by players who came to Harvard.

In actual fact, Harvard has always been far more blessed talent-wise relative to the majority of it's ECAC competition (perhaps with the one exception of Cornell in a few of its greatest glory years). Harvard's top academic reputation automatically makes it a highly favoured destination. Its significantly more flexible admission policies relative to its Ivy competitors, especially vs Princeton and Yale, are also well-known factors that make it that much more appealing to recruits, and provide it with access to a significantly larger player pool to draw from. Historically strong performance on-ice, albeit now changing, has made it a further big draw. While there are certainly a few other reasons for Harvard to have growing difficulties in recruiting moving forward, that has not yet been a factor in poor team performance.

Ah sorry chief but I do academic recruiting for the admissions department and 'flexible' is not a word that is in our lexicon. In fact Katey and I have talked about some of the difficulties in recruiting that have plagued the program. You really should be the one doing the digging because you are out of your element here.

A look at the RPI rankings indicates that only Union and RIT currently rank lower than Harvard among D1 programs this season. Probably not coincidently, both are non-Ivy non-scholarship schools which, unlike Harvard, result in very difficult recruiting challenges for their coaches. There is no comparison whatsoever to the skill level of players rostered by these 2 schools relative to Harvard. Player for player, it is truly like night and day difference.

You could make that argument for any Ivy school. To lay it at the feet of Harvard solely just doesn't make sense.

At some point, one has to stop laying the blame on the players' lack of hockey skills for Harvard's woes and begin to look elsewhere for the real answers. As the above data and their bios show, Harvard's rostered players were incredibly talented and high-achieving on ice the day they stepped on campus, both in absolute and relative terms. In the vast majority of cases, they were heavily pursued by several other D1 hockey programs. It's not possible that suddenly those skills, displayed in other hockey environments, just disappeared. If it's not talent, what else could it be? For many seasons, a significant number of players actually seem to have gone backwards in offensive numbers during their Harvard careers (other than those who saw little ice time early on of course). What could possibly account for that?

There are any number of factors that can contribute to a team's demise. Other than the injuries to Heffernan and Zarzecki, the team has been intact. So it's not health. But talent is definitely a factor and to say otherwise just simply is ignoring what's happening on the ice. As a famous coach once said, "You are what you are" and what Harvard is right now is a lousy team. You don't get shut out and get held to the fewest number of goals in program history because you're having a bad hair day.

A great many experienced observers for many years, have judged Desrosiers and Wells the best coaches in the ECAC, and I would agree. I don't think it's any accident then that their teams are ranked where they are in the country, despite the fact they are not necessarily blessed with the most talent, nor the most highly desirable educational venue either to be attracting "the best of the best".

Are you just looking for an easy scapegoat or do you really want to find the truth? To discover the reasons for Harvard's growing malaise I might suggest you would need to dig much deeper. Make sure you leave no stone unturned.

Clever that you end this post with a shot at Coach Stone. Let's see, she is the winningest coach in D-1 women's history, has coached Four Nations and the Olympic team but experienced observers for many years think Desrosiers and Wells are the best coaches in the ECAC. Nothing against them because I think they are fine coaches but you're whistling past the graveyard if you think this is all about Katey. I've been critical of some of her coaching decisions but you don't coach as many Patty Kaz winners and have the number of players she has coached play in the Olympics and Four Nations and say that she is the problem. I have spoken to several former players who credit Katey with making them better players and even better individuals.

I get that you are a big Clarkson booster but some of your posts really are over the top when it comes to Harvard. But hey, that's okay. You're entitled to your opinion. Just don't lecture someone on their school or program when you just aren't clued in. It's a bad look.

 

[Flarrow]

Re: Union

Best of luck to the team with final game Friday.
A real hold-yer-heads-high season. Thanks for the effort.
Go U!