Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XXI - For every dark night, there's a brighter day
trust me there's an undercurrent of discontent with this past weekend...but it's too early to jump all over the coaching staff (though last weekend resembled most weekend's last season)...I do recall the 06 Championship team started 1-3 or something like that, maybe 2-4? anyway, I remember 3-4 of us bemoaning that at the time and then about 20 games later we were pretty **** happy...so all in all, time to be patient at least for the first 4-5 weeks...
Working off the assumption that the talent level of UMN, UND, DU, and UW are (and have been similar over the course over Eaves tenure as coach, first year excepted) and that the talent level at UW has been roughly equal from team to team, it really causes me to wonder why the UW teams have been so much more inconsistent and generally under-performing than any of the other 3 programs.
I have three potential explanations (I suspect that they ALL contribute in some way and are in many ways inter-related)
1.) Uneven recruiting classes: I know that this has been harped on repeatedly but none of the other three schools undergo the same recruiting cycle imbalance as UW, this leads to massive turnover in players every 4 years, a level of player turn over that is often only experienced at other schools during Head Coaching changes. This leads to a massive swings in the collective experience of the team AND discontinuity in maintaining a constant team culture.
2.) Coaching staff turnover: Looking at the other three schools, they have all undergone some Assistant Coach turnover, all top programs do, but nothing to the extent that UW has undergone during Eaves tenure when 1st assistants last about 3 years and 2nd assistants last about 2 years (not to even mention the Coach Howard departure debacle). This has major impact in recruiting and player development as each coach has a unique recruiting eye and focuses on different aspects of players. Recruiting is more art than science and the knowledge of what it takes to excel at the college level is the result of first hand experience as much as anything. NHL evaluation and draft status is NOT a predictor of the impact that the player will make in college (it's BARELY a predictor of what the player will do in the NHL (with zero impact outside of the first two rounds)
3.) Team unity and cohesion: It's commonly stated that the most talented team often isn't the champion because they are unable to go from a group of individuals with a similar goals to a united entity with a single unified objective. If UW has suffered from ANYTHING since the 2005-06 team it is this problem which has been EXACERBATED by the uneven recruiting classes and the assistant coaching turnover (which have seemed to happen at the same time). It is all well and good for players to have NHL aspirations, but I wonder if those dreams are distracting from the players performance while at UW. Strong leaders can help the other team members put their individual aspirations aside for the good of the team, and while the Badgers have had a number of fine captains in the past 6 or 7 seasons, none of them were great leaders like the group that lead UW to the 2006 title.
This is just my analysis of why UW is in it's current situation, I have no idea is these are actually the problem and ZERO idea how to fix them. They can only be fixed from within the program itself and no quick fix exists for these as they are structural problems at the foundation of the program.
