At 10:02 PM 12/15/95, David M. Josselyn wrote: >On Fri, 15 Dec 1995, Barkan, Jon wrote: >> In response to Dave and Mike's little note battle about Merrimack, I hate to >> take sides, but I have to in this case. Not a battle! Just a friendly conversation. :-) >MC competing w/ Celtics and Bruins? Not 26 miles from Boston they don't. >Nobody sits at home and says, gee, Warriors or Bruins tonight.... I believe that tv plays a part here. Some people probably do decide to stay home and watch the Bruins on tv from their cozy, warm living room rather than freeze in the Volpe. >Ron a great coach? Based on what? Based on his record leading a Division >2 team that kids fought each other to play for? But before he came along, they never had the kind of dominance in DivII that they had in the late 80s, nor were they able to give a consistently good showing against DivI teams. If his teams had the same kind of record that Bruce Parker and Thom Lawler's teams had, it wouldn't have been enough for them to seriously have a shot at being invited to join HE. And Parker and Lawler had good teams. >Volpe an obstacle? No argument there. Would Ron fare much better with a >new building? I doubt it. This seems contradictory to me. Volpe is an obstacle for him, yet even with a DivI rink, he wouldn't fare much better? The rink has a definite effect on potential recruits - local players who grow up playing high school and Hockey Night in Boston there and know what the rink is like, and Canadians who go on a recruiting trip to Merrimack one week and Northeastern, UNH, or one of the ECAC schools the next. I don't know any program that hasn't fared better when they've suddenly been able to start getting better players. Volpe is also only one piece of the puzzle as you know. Merrimack has trouble attracting even regular students because of the lack of other on-campus facilities. The campus is dead on the weekends because the kids leave - there's nothing to do. Potential recruits look at this and then they see what UNH has, or the Boston schools, or any of the ECAC schools. I'm glad the school will be building not only a new rink but also a new student center. It will give the students a reason to stay on campus, and the added facilities will make the school more attractive to recruits. >> But the bottom line is if you give Ron Anderson a new facility, I guarentee >> he'd be as successful as the rest of the eastern coaches, if not better. > >Well, if the rink gets built, we'll see. Maybe he'll be coaching MC then, >maybe not. I've seen too many highly-touted, talented players come in and >play like crap for Anderson and go on to improve. Who were these players? Every year there are highly touted players - often highly touted by people who haven't seen them yet and are hoping they'll be the ones to suddenly become stars. It's not as if they are able to get many players who other programs really wanted and then those players disappoint. I've also seen many players come in as freshmen and look like they didn't belong in DivI. By the time they were juniors and seniors, they had become integral parts of a team that was at least competitive in DivI. The one truly highly touted player I remember was Emmanuel Fernandez, whose story has been told here many times before (goalie from Quebec, signed with Merrimack in 1992(?), drafted first by Laval of the QMJHL and given a car to stay up north, took Laval to the Memorial Cup final and Team Canada Jr to the gold, now starring in the IHL). There's nothing that could have been done about that. >Look at Mark Cornforth, >playing now for the Boston Bruins. He's played better since leaving MC >then he ever did there, save perhaps the first half of his freshman season. I don't agree. Cornforth didn't finish fourth in team scoring last year (as a D who missed 7 games) and sixth in scoring as a sophomore by underachieving. He developed into one of the better two-way Ds in the league - his defensive play really improved over his career. Heck, he was almost frightening defensively as a rookie. He became so important that he was the one guy you wanted out there in the final minutes of a close game whether they were ahead or behind. It was his defense that got him a shot with the Bruins. If he hadn't improved in that area, he probably wouldn't even be in the AHL. >> As >> much as it hurts me to say this, he took an average indepedent team into >> Matthews Arena a few years ago in an NCAA tournament and beat Northeastern >> before losing to eventual champion Lake Superior State. Did you think that >> was luck? I sure as hell don't! > >Luck? In a manner of speaking, yes. Just out of curiosity: did you feel this way back in 1988? This is the first time I have heard anyone say this about that season. I would say that I did think it was luck after MC beat NU...I didn't a week later when they beat LSSU in the first game of the next series. In fact, I distinctly remember feeling "vindicated" that "first Merrimack had done it to us, now they did it to Lake Superior." >1988 Warriors key player #1: Jim Hrivnak. He expected to go pro and was >told very late in the recruiting season he should play another year where >he was. He decided to go college instead, and MC was one of the few >schools left with scholarships to offer. Although not the only DivI school, and there was at least one conference school that wanted him. Hrivnak certainly was a key, because he gave them DivI quality goaltending. Yet, he also allowed 8 goals in five periods against Northeastern...and he didn't score any of the seven goals Merrimack racked up in 26 minutes to come back and win. >Key player #2: Jim Vesey. 95 points in one year was impressive, even if much of it was against DivII-III teams. But if I recall, he was quiet against Northeastern. It was the other players who did most of the scoring in that series. >Key player #3: Rich Pion. > >Other players on that team were in similar situations: Mike Boyce, Chris >Kiene, etc. I certainly agree on these key players. But there were not just one or two, and including Ziliotto below, you've mentioned six. Luck might have been involved if there was one key player who was dominating against NU and everyone else was along for the ride. And, however he landed all of those players, the fact remains that he still got them. Sometimes you get lucky and nab one or even two overlooked players who turn out to be very good. Never more than a handful. >A triumph of coaching? MC had already beaten NU in OT earlier in 1988. >All ANderson's cards were on the table. I can attest that NU didn't take that game (3-2 win by MC at Christmas) seriously at all. They had a habit of doing that against teams they perceived as not being very good (nothing new as teams do that all the time). I really believed at the time that MC's win was a fluke. >I was at those games. MC was in a hole after five periods in the >total-goals series. However, by the end of the series, MC had outplayed NU in three of the six periods - including the first two of the first game when they led (3-1?) going into the third before losing. Being on the NU side, I thought the first game was lost after the first two periods. It was pretty impressive for Merrimack to win the first two periods just four days after NU had beaten Maine on Monday to win HE. >All-America goaltender Bruce Racine had a series of >SERIOUS mental lapses. He gave up two long slap shot goals-- one from >beyond the blueline by Mark Ziliotto (another Canadian player overlooked >by Div 1 coaches-- this time, anecdotal evidence has it, because it was >assumed he was already playing major junior) and MC crawled back over the >final thirty minutes to win 10-8. Well, they didn't quite get a fluke goal here and there and wind up with seven in 26 minutes and a series win. I agree that Racine didn't play well, but Merrimack also dominated 26 minutes in a way that I have seen few teams dominate such a stretch in NCAA play. >Is that great coaching? A nailbiting comeback playoff victory that >happened seven years ago? Did he engineer that win? Or did his players, >along with NU's falling asleep when they thought it was, to paraphrase >Dan Roche on WCCM, "all over"? I have heard secondhand (but a good source) that once NU was up 8-3 in the series, a key to turning it around from the standpoint of Merrimack was that they started to get angry. Angry that NU, as they would do back then, was running the goalie and cheap shotting Merrimack. Anderson was supposed to have told his team, "Whatever happens, we're not going to let them run our goaltender." That's only one thing I have heard, but it is an example of the type of leadership that a coach in that situation needs to show. He was also supposed to have shadowed NU's better players like Kevin Heffernan, who was shut down most of the series. I have to believe that Anderson was successful at conveying to his team that they had to "fight back" and refuse to back down from the abuse NU was giving them. That's because that is the way MC played and it's why they won - not because of Hrivnak or Vesey or Pion. I know the way NU played during that season...almost an NHL style where they abused opponents and antagonized them. I never saw anyone stand up to them the way Merrimack did. And Merrimack had to change its style to do that. It is said by some MC people that a key was a heavy, heavy hit that was laid on Heffernan and resulted in him struggling back to the bench. They say that you could see NU back down from that point. Of course, I didn't remember these things at the time because I was in a state of shock from what was happening. >Great coaching is what Parker's teams do. They win regularly, >methodically, mechanically. They don't let teams back into games, They >don't let up. (Recent games vs. MC notwithstanding). Interesting point. BU doesn't let teams into the game or back into the game...except for Merrimack. January 13, 1995; February 24-25, 1995; March 12, 1995; December 8-9, 1995. All close games, one MC win, two others in which BU seemed to have it in hand and MC fought back. 1988 or 1995, little has changed...Anderson's teams don't pack it in, even when playing a HE champion like NU or BU and the odds are against them. Opposing coaches say this, too. Of course, they don't do this all of the time. Sometimes they come up with a lackluster effort against a weaker team. It happens to everyone. But one thing I can say after seven years of watching Merrimack for 35 games a year is that I have rarely been disappointed in their effort. Meanwhile, Parker's teams that win "regularly, methodically, mechanically," have also been among the most talented teams in the nation the last 4-5 years. It's a lot easier to play like that when you have the players they have had. They sure weren't playing that way before Blaise MacDonald came along five years ago. It's also the way Anderson's teams played when they had a similar mismatch of talent in their favor in the 80s. >Ronnie has it tough recruiting. He scours Canada looking for those >overlooked players to build another dream team. It's not going to happen. >And even if it did-- is it a credit to him? Or just happenstance? It's tougher to get those overlooked players when you have fewer scholarships to offer and when there are more scholarships being offered out there in DivI hockey. More teams are out there on the roads now than in the 1980s. And people are more aware of who Merrimack is looking at now than before. I agree that it's tougher and probably impossible now to create a "dream team" entirely out of overlooked players. That's why it's so important to be able to compete on an even level with other top DivI schools for players. They have never been able to do that. >I'm struck by the impression that Anderson will be the Moses of Merrimack >hockey. He may have helped take the program to the Promised Land (after >seven years wandering in the desert-- and counting) but he may not be >allowed to cross over into it. Nice analogy. :-) You may be right. I hope not, however, because I continue to believe that not only can he do the job, but he deserves to have a chance to do it (with a commitment and new facilities) because of his dedication to the program and the fact that he took them where no one else was able to, after years of being told that Merrimack could never go DivI. Anything less than a fair chance would be almost criminal. If he is given that chance and things still don't change, then I will be disappointed, but I will admit my mistake. But I don't think that would happen. >P.S. Even so, I have a tape of that game vs. NU and the highlight tape >that year. I'll have to talk to John Savastano. At the risk of breaking my heart again, I'd still like to see it. I'm still trying to find the box scores (I have them buried somewhere) to put up on the web site. It's probably among the more-discussed games here on HOCKEY-L. >A mediocre team? I think not. That's my favorite hockey team >ever. Give them a good rink, decent crowd support, a real coach, and a >regular D1 schedule-- they would've been Hockey East champs at least once >and had Lake Superior visiting Massachusetts to play THEM. Except for the coaching question, I tend to agree with you. They were good, but you cannot separate that from the person who built and coached them. --- --- Mike Machnik [log in to unmask] *HMM* 11/13/93 >> Co-owner of the College Hockey Lists at University of Maine System << ***** Unofficial Merrimack Hockey home page located at: ***** ***** http://www.tiac.net/users/machnik/MChockey/MChockey.html ***** HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.