Maine D Brett Clark looks like a shoo-in for the Hockey East All-Rookie
Team, but in the midst of a rough season for Merrimack, one of the bright
spots has been the unexpectedly superb play of freshman defenseman Darrel
Scoville.
 
Scoville's 19 points (4-15--19) are, officially, the most by a rookie
Merrimack D since Bryan Miller had 2-19--21 in 1989-90.  That is, the most
since the team joined HE and has played fulltime DivI.  Scoville will
likely break Miller's record, as 7 games remain in the regular season.
Most of his points have come in HE play, too (3-8--11).
 
Mark Cornforth has easily been the best Merrimack D since 1989, but
Scoville seems to be playing even better than Cornforth did in his rookie
season of 1991-92, when he had 1-9--10 in 23 games (injury-shortened thanks
to Scott Pellerin :-)).  Cornforth was known for his one-man rushes up ice
that sparked the offense and helped lead them to big wins like last
season's upset at BU.  Scoville has come on after a slow start to the point
where he looks like a clone of Cornforth, and this bodes very well for the
upcoming years.  The team needs a quarterback from the point now that
Cornforth is gone, and Scoville has gradually become the leader in that
area.
 
Apparently NESN thinks highly of him too, since they chose him for the
first intermission interview tonight and Bob Norton put him in a class with
Clark and Marty Reasoner as HE's best rookies.  Scoville talked about how
the fact that he has received a lot of ice time has given him confidence,
and from what I have seen, he has certainly played like a veteran
confidence-wise.
 
The question is, what other HE freshman defensemen might also deserve
mention as All-Rookie?  There aren't many other freshman Ds in the league
this year, but besides that, few Ds in general are playing as well as
Scoville has played.
 
Clark picked up an assist tonight and has 4-24--28.  Would Scoville fare as
well as Clark pointwise on a team like Maine that is much better than
Merrimack offensively?  One interesting factor is that both players are
getting a lot of ice time as rookies and both have similar +/- ratings
(entering tonight, +2 overall for Clark, even for Scoville).  I don't
normally put a large weight on +/-, but it is bound to be something that
the coaches consider when voting.  Clark probably has the edge on Scoville
defensively, but Scoville has still been one of Merrimack's better
defensemen at both ends.
 
At any rate, you'll forgive me for trying to find the silver lining in this
cloud, I'm sure. :-)
 
---                                                                   ---
Mike Machnik                   [log in to unmask]            *HMM* 11/13/93
>> Co-owner of the College Hockey Lists at University of Maine System  <<
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