Re: Wisconsin Hockey - 2018 Off-Season - Hope or Despair?
I think the best case for Badger D would be everybody gets much better and then Emberson and Miller are still good enough and trustworthy enough to come in and be a ready made top 4 pair with say, Tischke and Kalynuk. If that could happen, then you'd have maybe Inamoto-Ess plus Greenway and the Krygier boys fighting it out. I really thought Inamoto progressed nicely through the year and was very good late in the season. Ess was just so reliable in his decision making all year -- I'd love to see him take a big step offensively in the off season and push the other guys out. We're just not sure of his ceiling at this point. Greenway is just a big question mark. Tons of unrealized talent still -- could never see a game, could have 40 points -- who knows? Krygier's aren't chopped liver and are probably going to be mid-round draft picks similar to what Inamoto was, so they could move up as well. It's going to be interesting to see how the staff handles all these guys.
Offensively we lose 42% (48g) of our goal scoring. That's not going to be easy to replace. Ranta is a goal scorer with a tremendous shot, and Mersch has had a really nice season, but when you consider just 4 guys in the entire B1G had more than 16 goals on the entire season, (Frederic, Lewandowski, Marody, Jobst) the odds we're going to get that back from just a couple of guys are pretty long. It's more likely going to have to be by committee.
Even if the D is much better and Jack or whoever finds a groove in net, plus we get decent production up and down the lineup-- it's still going to be very hard to make the tournament next year. Looking around the B1G, depending on what damage the NHL does, most teams are going to be as good or better next year. Add that to our OOC schedule... It's going to take a very good team to go over .500 vs. MTU, BC, DU, Sue, and Clarkson.
