Since this has been brought up with regard to a certain young team in
recent posts, maybe someone can clarify something for me.  How much is
the head coach responsible for recruiting and how much of it lies on the
shoulders of the assistant coaches.  I realize that being head coach
means you are ultimately responsible for everything, but isn't it the
assistant coaches that do most of the leg work, traveling all over the
place to get the best players they can?  What percentage of an assistant
coach's job is recruiting?  If a team has had problems getting good players,
does that mean the asst. coach should be fired, or is it only a relatively
small part of his job?  Does the amount of responsibility asst. coaches
have for recruiting vary much from school to school?
 
I ask this because many people have been criticizing Brian McCutcheon for
the quality of recruits in recent years.  However, the drop in quality
happened when we did not have a former Cornell hockey player as an asst.
coach (between the time Mike Shafer left and Casey Jones arrived).
Recruiting at an Ivy League school is hard.  After all, what can Cornell
offer a player, no scholarships, fewer games in a season, a hard academic
program.  I think the reason former Cornell players can be successful at
this is because they can tell a recruit what playing for Cornell is like
Only a former player can get across the sense of pride and family that
they experienced while skating for Cornell.  I hope that the Red finds
another alumnus to replace Casey.  I think the program will be much better
for it.
 
Paulette Dwen
Cornell '89
Let's Go Red!