Not off to the start I was hoping for. Thoughts on what to expect?
I would not expect more than 8 wins.
Pain
I would take the over there. 5 conference wins seems to be our floor, we have 1 win currently and 2 OOC series left, against Mercyhurst and LIU. But doesn’t feel great to have to make a case for more than 8 wins.
I was a student during the program’s “Hey Days” in the mid-2000s. I’ve stopped following closely for a number of reasons but ever since the Big Ten ruined College Hockey, we’ve seem to have been in neutral. Hopefully the new coach can bring us close to where we were.
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Back when we let Rico go, I suggested that we should aim for a coach who had a background and ties to the western states of our conference, like Colorado, Minnesota and the Dakotas. But when Bergeron’s name was floated, everyone got excited seeing as he’s a Miami Man and had turned BG around. I was even flamed somewhat for my contrarion opinion in that thread. Haha
To be fair, he seems to be a good coach, and perhaps he’ll turn things around here eventually, but I feel the hire was sticking with a CCHA mindset when we are the far eastern outlier in a western conference gave me pause. Most of the high school eyes on the NCHC are in the aformentioned states, so it would be beneficial to have coaches with recruiting ties in that area. I know nothing about Chris’ staff, maybe we already do, but I think having a MAC/CCHA footprint mindset in a western conference is a recipe for failure. Particularly considering what a big deal hockey is in Minnesota and North Dakota.
Berg has strong ties to both Canada and Minnesota. Those are two great areas for Miami to pull from.
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In addition to Bergeron’s ties to MN, assistant coach Eric Rud was a longtime assistant at CC and St. Cloud before becoming the head coach of the women’s team at St. Cloud (which is what we hired him directly from).
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