The following appeared in the "Hometown Heroes" section of the Lawrence
(Mass.) Eagle-Tribune today, Wednesday, September 20th.  My comments
follow.
 
=== begin excerpt ===
by Michael Muldoon
 
Nothing fires up a crowd like the hometown boy who makes good.
 
The struggling Merrimack College hockey program missed out on another local
hotshot when Jayson Philbin of North Andover and Cushing Academy committed
to UNH.
 
Coach Ron Anderson's Warriors have gone just 37-91-7 (.300) in Hockey East
since joining the league.
 
Realistically, Merrimack has had an uphill road to climb.  The Volpe
Complex doesn't rate with most of the league's other facilities, the
Warriors don't play in the prestigious Beanpot and the school didn't join
Hockey East until the 1989-90 season.
 
Still, one can't help but wonder if Merrimack has spent too much time
recruiting in Canada and not enough in its own backyard.
 
North Andover's Andy Heinze and Andover's Matt Adams have been about the
only local contributors from this region in recent years.
 
This year's club has 15 Canadians to only five natives of Massachusetts, a
hockey hotbed.
 
Think what the addition of such recent local standouts as North Andover's
Steve Heinze (BC), North Andover's Ed Ronan (BU), North Andover's Ethan
Philpott (Harvard), North Reading's Bill Kelleher (Dartmouth), Salem,
N.H.'s D.J. Harding (Brown), Salem, N.H.'s Scott Balboni (Providence),
North Andover's Ryan Taylor (BC), Amesbury's Mark Devine (Providence) and
Salem, N.H.'s Jason Kelly (Northeastern) would have done to the talent
level and excitement at Merrimack.
=== end excerpt ===
 
I feel I must vent a little here in response.
 
1) "The Volpe Complex doesn't rate with most of the league's other
facilities."  "Most"?  Which facilities *does* it rate with?  How about it
doesn't rate with ANY of them?  That's a huge stumbling block right there.
These kids grow up playing youth and high school hockey in the rink, as
well as Hockey Night in Boston, and they sure don't want to keep playing
there when schools with winning traditions and beautiful facilities come
calling.
 
2) "Too much time recruiting in Canada"?  There are six Massachusetts
players on the roster, not five...but more importantly, in total, 11
Americans as compared to 15 Canadians.  How did they get those 11 if they
spend too much time in Canada?
 
Last year, if I remember correctly, just over 50% of the players who played
in at least one game for Merrimack were American.
 
3) Of the "local standouts" listed, a majority fall into at least one of
two categories: players who wouldn't have gone to Merrimack even if offered
a full scholarship (Merrimack over Harvard?  over Brown?  BC?), and players
who wouldn't have made a significant impact at Merrimack anyway.
 
4) Danny Hodge (Lynnfield) is noticeably absent from the list of local
players who came to Merrimack.
 
5) The implication given is that all Merrimack had to do was beckon and
these and many more local players would have gladly followed.  Philbin's
signing with UNH was apparently the impetus for this piece.  But would he
have come to Merrimack if offered what UNH gave him (a nearly full
scholarship)?  This question isn't addressed.
 
How about a list of local players who were courted by Merrimack but
rejected the school?  There are enough of these around to fill a DivI
roster.
 
Or, how about including the local players who played on Merrimack's ECAC
East championship teams in the late 80s, when the team was winning?  I have
looked at the rosters back then and they were filled with local standouts.
Jim Alcott doesn't count, nor Dave Vater (Peabody), Bobby Fowler
(Tewksbury), or DivII-III Hobey Baker winner Jim Vesey (Charlestown)?
 
Not to mention the local players who were given scholarships and turned out
to be busts, including one who led my alma mater HS in scoring and couldn't
even make the team at Merrimack, leaving to transfer to Salem State.
 
I would challenge the Tribune to run a list of players who would have come
to Merrimack but were told "no thanks" and who went on to star for other
schools.
 
6) Given the inability to attract the type of local players needed to build
a HE contender, should the alternative have been to stack the roster with
the marginal local players who would have come to Merrimack and ignore the
better Canadians, and thereby consign the team to an even worse record each
season?  Of course not.  You bring in the best players you can.  Winning
begets winning, and despite the rink, winning in the late 80s helped
attract the locals I mentioned above.  Anderson tries to get the best
players he can, and he hopes that by doing so, he will build a winning
tradition that will make Merrimack more attractive to the good local
players who want to play for winning teams.
 
And as to what I took as a putdown of the Canadians who have come to
Merrimack...I have trouble conceiving of any local players I would have
wanted to play for my alma mater more than people who represented Merrimack
on and off the ice as well as Mark Cornforth, Quentin Fendelet, Guy
Ragault, Steve McKenna, Rob Beck, and Martin Legault have.  They're
Warriors as much as Matt Adams and Andy Heinze were.
 
7) This comes from the paper located less than a half mile from Merrimack
but which has provided sporadic coverage of all of the school's teams over
the years, including hockey, to the extent that soon to be former SID Jim
Seavey had to write many of the pieces that appeared in the paper just so
the Tribune would run anything at all about Merrimack sports.  They trumpet
themselves as a champion of local sports, but they have not even covered
half of the Merrimack hockey team's games since 1989 - the only DivI sports
team in the area the paper serves.  And as I have been at about 95% of
those games, home and away, I would know better than almost anyone else.
 
 
Let's face it: Ron Anderson cannot at this time recruit on an even par in
the local area with other schools.  Given that, it is truly a cheap shot to
run a piece like this.
 
As a result of my own observations over the last six years, I am convinced
that the annual recruiting effort goes something like this:
 
* Anderson identifies a list of players he would like to bring in.  This is
done after watching players both locally and outside the area.  The list
includes top players both from the area and from outside the area.  I'm not
sure much consideration is given to where the players are from, as the goal
is (and should be) to bring in the best players possible.
 
* Many of those top local players wind up being kids who are courted
heavily by programs with which Merrimack cannot compete, such as BU, BC,
Maine, and the Ivies.  They go elsewhere.
 
* Most of the remaining players are from outside the area, often Canada.
Some are players who are courted heavily by other schools (Cornforth - NU,
Casey Kesselring - UNH, Legault - Lowell), but many more are players who
don't draw much interest from other DivI programs.
 
Result: when it comes time to offer scholarships to the players who are
truly interested, many wind up being from Canada.
 
Sure, I would like to see players like Steve Heinze, Philbin, etc. in a
Merrimack uniform, and I am absolutely convinced that Anderson would too.
To suggest that he doesn't recruit these players and would prefer not to
have them is a reflection of an utter ignorance of reality, as is the
implication that he has a "first crack" at them ahead of everyone else.
 
All I ask as an alumnus is that Anderson does his best each year to put the
best team on the ice he can, and I am convinced he does that.  Perhaps the
most telling refutation of the charge above is that other HE and DivI
coaches - his peers - annually comment on how his teams overachieve despite
their less than stellar record to date in HE.  Those other coaches, who
recruit against Anderson, know the struggle he faces because they're the
ones who take players away from him.  And they know that despite this, they
can expect to face a team that may not be as talented as theirs but which
will give a 100% effort as he gets the most out of his players that he can.
 
Is there anything wrong with this?
 
Here is a guy who is univerally respected by his peers and whose ethics are
above reproach, who since 1989 has suspended four of his star players at
times when it would most affect the team on the ice and when no one would
have been any wiser if he had looked the other way.
 
The Merrimack program under Anderson has steadily improved since joining HE
in 1989, and again, that is all I can ask for, given that I understand the
obstacles faced.  Last year was a milestone in that they consistently
played to the level of the top teams they faced, and I am cautiously
optimistic that this season will bring more of the same and a continued
improvement; apparently others agree given some of the predictions I have
seen.
 
But as I said recently to Jon Barkan, we all know the old saying about a
prophet and his own people.  Anderson is no prophet, but he doesn't deserve
the criticism leveled against him in the above article.
 
---                                                                   ---
Mike Machnik                   [log in to unmask]            *HMM* 11/13/93
>> Co-owner of the College Hockey Lists at University of Maine System  <<
***** Unofficial Merrimack Hockey home page under construction at:  *****
*****   http://www.tiac.net/users/machnik/MChockey/MChockey.html    *****
 
HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey;  send information to
[log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.