More on Scott LaGrand that I mentioned to someone in mail but never posted.
 
Of course I don't know about the rumor posted by Jim Love, so I won't comment
on it.  But one of the parents of the BC players says that LaGrand has never
gotten along with Cedorchuk and even was very close to transferring to one
of the North Country schools near home, likely St Lawrence.  He was encouraged
to stay and did so when it appeared that someone other than Cedorchuk would
get the BC job.  Now that Cedor has the job, LaGrand may have no interest
in staying one more year at BC and playing for the man.
 
A certain very influential man in Boston-area hockey (if you know Boston
hockey, you must know who I am talking about) sat in front of me and tore
apart BC for its recruiting.  He said he was offered the assistant's job at BC
but turned it down because he didn't want to go down with a sinking ship (my
assessment of his reasons).  He was not happy with most of the players BC
brought in as freshmen this year (a weak class by BC standards, especially
when you look at who BU got, being in a similar situation) and when I
asked him how things looked for next year, he said it would be worse - maybe
because of the length of time it took for BC to decide upon a coach, I'd guess.
 
BU is continuing to rob BC of the best local players.  Changing from Lenny's
skating game to a more physical style, as we saw late this year, may be all BC
can do to survive because they are being outrecruited (believe it or not).  It
used to be that BC got the local kids and BU had to go to Canada.  As recent
as 1986-87, BU had 10 non-Americans on their overall roster.  This season, BU
had only 5 non-Americans.  Jack Parker has not been afraid to go after the
local high school kids like McEachern, Kelfer, the Saccos, the Bavises,
Prendergast, O'Sullivan, Ronan, Shaunessy, Sullivan.  BC has gone more and
more for the prep school kids where they are facing more and more competition.
That's why whereas BC used to be a team of exclusively Massachusetts kids,
they have been forced to go outside the state (7 non-Mass kids this year) and
have even talked about starting to recruit Canadian kids.  Keep an eye on
this situation.
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Mike Machnik    [log in to unmask]   mikem@{beanpot,bubba}.ma30.bull.com