I am intrigued by this thread. NMU clearly needs to fill out the roster after losing players to graduation and discipline problems. What I wonder is what will happen in the future. If their class is 13 this year, what does that mean for the next three years? Small recruiting classes followed by another huge class in the fourth year? I'm sure this has happened at other universities. The case I can comment on would be Michigan's classes of '93 and '97. During the '93 season, I wondered how they would replace a large departing class of seniors (Chris Tamer, David Harlock, Pat Neaton, David Roberts, Mark Ouimet, Dan Stiver) which would soon also include the departure of two juniors (Aaron Ward and Cam Stewart). All of a sudden, this team which was good enough to reach the previous two Final 4's was losing its top 4 defenseman and 4 of its top forwards. We now know that Red Bererson more-than-adequately replaced them with this year's senior class (Morrison, Botterill, Madden, Legg, Luhning, Sloan, Schock, Frescoln, Bourke). What happens next year? Can another recruiting class be brought in to replace this graduating class? Certainly, non-Michigan fans wouldn't mind seeing a decline when this class leaves. I'm less interested in the specific case of the Michigan team than I am in the general philosophy. Does it make for a more stable program to try for recruiting classes of roughly equal size each year? Certainly, recruiting exactly 6 players each year would give you a team which constantly has senior leadership, freshman enthusiasm, etc. On the other hand, having a 13-player freshman class this year should make NMU a force to be reckoned with by the time these 13 are juniors and seniors. Perhaps it is a philosophy preference. Would the coach rather have consistent quality; or would he rather have a roller-coaster ride with a team that is not as good but learning how to win, then a team that is very good, then back to the learning stage again. How do you feel as fans towards this question? I think it would be different based on the stature of the program you follow. For Ohio State, for example, there has not been much success to this point. I would think they would be happy to have a very large recruiting class which could make the team strong for a year or two. For teams that are consistently in the top 5 every year, consistency would seem preferable since they do not need the 'monster' class to put them into the elite group. Glenn Auerbach [log in to unmask] Michigan '88-'93; A2 townie '93 - ?? HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.