On Thu, 10 Feb 1994, Brian Morris wrote:
 
> 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.
 
This has also been true in Hockey East, probably more so this season than
others.  Maine's dominance has slipped, and BU has been strong, but they
have been beaten... by Lowell and UNH, I think.  The rest of the league
is bunched up, with Providence, UNH, Lowell, and Boston College all
pretty close.  Now that the games Maine forfeited have gone to
Providence, they have swapped places.  The only team really out of it at
this point is Merrimack, who has only beaten BU once in HE play, and
Maine NEVER.
 
> 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...)
 
Merrimack's Martin Legault (G) has had an immense effect on the
performance of Merrimack's team this year. Some of the upperclassmen I've
spoken to after games felt that Legault's talent and reliability
(relative to goaltenders of the recent past) took some of the pressure
off the forwards and defensemen.  MC also has several forwards in their
freshman class that have been steady players, not marquee idols
certainly, but devoid of some of the failings that previous classes have
had.  Rob Beck, Claudio Peca, and Darryl Krauss have all played regularly
and could develop into very good players.
 
So while other, traditionally talented teams may be finding the pool a
little leaner than lately, that may be due to better recruiting and
schools moving up, such as Merrimack, Lowell, and Umass-Amherst.
 
 
> 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?
 
Bruce Crowder at Lowell is one.  One could argue that Ben Smith, who
moved to Northeastern from Dartmouth, could be another.  In the future,
I'd look at Joe Mallen at Umass-Amherst, who was an assistant at Boston
College.
 
A better question may be where schools look to find coaches.  Is it
enough to have been an ex-collegiate player?  Or is pro experience
necessary?
 
However, I'd guess that if college hockey is losing recruits to junior
leagues, the length of schedules and potential for pro careers are
probably more important factors to players than the perception of
coaching quality.  That's *just* a guess, tho', since I'm neither a
player or a coach.
 
> 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.
 
Exposure costs money, over and out.  However, I doubt that college hockey
will be able to succeed if the NHL does not.
 
David M. Josselyn
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