Steve suggests:
 
save some really eye popping players (like apparently Michigan
>has) but you can assemble a great team without a super star--sort of
>imagine a team where none of the players could be on Michigan's
>1st line or will make the NHL but all the players are better than
>Michigan 2nd line.
 
Sure.  Like all those LSSU championship teams.  Or maybe a mediocre team with
a really great goaltender, like the Chris Terreri-led Providence team in 1985.
But to me what seems to be different this year is the ease with which the
supposed "bottom dwellers" have been knocking off the "top ten" teams:
Princeton beats RPI at home, Notre Dame ties LSSU, Ohio State beats Michigan
State, Minnesota-Duluth takes 2 from Harvard.  In short the top teams exhibit
absolutely NO consistency.  The old adage "on any given night" seems to be the
norm this season.  The intriguing question is why.
 
The absence of a super star obviously inhibits a team's chances of winning
consistently.  But even more so, the absence of a stabilizing individual
on a team hurts even more.  Guys from year's past like Ted Drury or Scott
Pellerin were able to re-ignite their teams from the doldrums, or correct
their teammates' bad tendencies when a game was going badly.  Their worth to
their teams IMO was more than just a sum of their athletic abilities, it was
also that effusive quality of leadership.  What players in this year's talent
pool show leadership qualities?  Certainly in the East there aren't any such
players.
 
Another measure of mediocrity is the apparent dearth of talent in the freshman
classes.  Does anyone have a list of the highest scoring freshmen nationally?
Or can anyone put together a list of incoming freshmen who have made an impact
on their teams?  (It's pretty easy to rate RPI's freshmen...)
 
A more difficult question: has the quality of collegiate coaching declined, or
perhaps stagnated?  The expansion of the NHL has been fueled by the influx of
European players who have been schooled in the more mobile, free wheeling type
of hockey played at the international level.  Has the collegiate coaching
fraternity failed to keep up with the times?  Has it grown too stodgy?  Most of
the traditional collegiate powerhouses are coached by guys who have had their
jobs for quite a long time.  Is college hockey able to attract the young,
innovative coaches who are in step with the current hockey trends
internationally, are all those individuals heading exclusively for the Junior
A's?  Perhaps college hockey is losing potential scholar athletes since they
feel the coaching they would receive is outdated.  Outside of Shawn Walsh,
which coaches have joined a program and really changed the way it was perceived
in recent years?
 
One final concern: has the failure of college hockey to successfully market
itself led to its current talent drout?  PBS ran an interesting story last
night about the NHL's failure to succeed the way the NBA has.  The major theme
was that the NHL refused to market its players into the kind of Hollywood-types
that the NBA has.  I'm not suggesting that college hockey start engaging in
huckersterism, but a need to improve its marketing is unassailable.  One only
has to look at the ECAC to see an example of a conference that is marketing
itself out of existence.  What high school hockey player is going to want to
enroll at a school where his talents will go almost unnoticed?  Unless you have
access to Droopy's timely posts, there is virtually no way of finding out the
ECAC player of the week, one of the most mundane of all marketing tools.
 
Time will tell whether the current state of college hockey is temporary, or
the harbinger of things to come.  What seems important to me is whether the
problem stems from something the hockey community is doing, or more
importantly, not doing.
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            "NYS   // Hockey"
        Go 'Gate  //   Brian Morris
          Go RPI //      Albany, NY
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