JohnH wrote:
>As far as freshman classes go, Merrimack and BU both impressed me out east.
>In the CCHA, it has to be Michigan all the way.  Bowling Green also has a
>talented bunch of frosh.  One indicator I like to see is individual games
>played by freshmen, per team.  Barring other mathematical errors, here are
>the CCHA overall totals to date:
>
>                  FROSH   TEAM
> SCHOOL           GAMES  GAMES
> Michigan          225     30
> Kent              199     31
...
 
I thought this was interesting.  I've heard of man games lost to
injury, but never this.  Since there has been some talk about
freshmen, I decided to dig up these totals for Merrimack, and it adds
up to 29 team games, 230 freshmen games.  Is this tops in the country?
One team I can think of which *might* have more is Maine.
 
Figuring that you play 18 skaters and 1 goalie a game, that adds up to
(18+1)*29 = 551 player games, so 42% of Merrimack's are accounted for
by freshmen.  As of late, 9 freshmen have appeared in the lineup
nightly, or 9/19 = 47%.
 
As for a comparison of the freshmen, well, Michigan is 27-2-1 and
Merrimack is 13-14-2. :-)  Michigan has more who have made an
immediate impact on scoring.  Only 3 of Merrimack's freshmen have
totaled more than 10 points - Tom Johnson (9-11--20), Claudio Peca
(9-10--19), and Daryl Krauss (4-8--12).  MC freshman have accounted
for 31 goals (28%) and 78 points (27%).  Their production has stepped
up recently, though.
 
However, add to that three defensive players who have made a
significant impact.  G Martin Legault has a save% of .895, something
like 4th overall in Hockey East.  And Twin Tower Ds John Jakopin (6-5,
225) and Steve McKenna (6-8, 225) have given MC a previously unknown
force to contend with in front of the Merrimack net.
 
Merrimack tended to have freshmen who play sparingly and don't really
blossom until their junior or even senior years.  With the graduation
of 12 seniors last year, this year's freshmen have had to play, and
they've proven from the start that they could at least be competitive
in DivI.  If the development continues, and it will have to since 2 of
the 3 players with more than 20 points are seniors (with 38 & 35 pts
each), there could be some interesting things happening here in the
near future.
---                                                                 ---
Mike Machnik                                          [log in to unmask]
Cabletron Systems, Inc.                                  *HMM* 11/13/93
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