I just looked at a list of the pairwise rankings yesterday and that list had 61 teams. I don’t know what is causing the discrepancy.
I wonder if a few of the new independents might be in a transition year.
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Well, if it’s only 61, then we’re in the lowest 25% every year.
PairWise lists 62, including Stonehill, which is in its first season as a D1 member.
Robert Morris and Alabama-Huntsville are dormant and Augustiana starts play this fall.
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I don’t think I see Alabama-Huntsville on the list I posted. I thought they gave up the ghost about the time COVID hit. Had to do with their inability to get into a conference and/or build a schedule of games.
Looking at the list, I note that 16 hockey schools also sponsor D1 hoops and FBS football. A total of 15 others have hoops and FCS football. Several others sponsor D2 football - Minnesota State and Ferris State at a highly competitive level.
Was there an expectation (among the knowledgeable here) that Miami would begin to show much more competitiveness this year, or was it apparent our talent and skill levels are still not “up to snuff” in the NCHC?
Having watched a lot of hockey over the past 25 years, I have some limited observations about what I see in the season’s RedHawks team.
To me, Miami looks like a young team that has not yet found its identity. The gap between its first line forwards and second and third liners is visible. The Savages and Barbolini seem to have excellent speed but there don’t appear to be any other really quick water bugs on the ice who provide an offensive threat. The forwards can’t seem to develop much rhythm in the offensive zone with very limited puck cycling. They also don’t appear to be crashing the net much at all and I didn’t see many controlled rebounds and second chances last night. Accordingly, this team can’t score.
On the back end, the defense last night wasn’t ready to play at the start of all three periods. They were either running around in the zone or standing and watching and gave up goals in the first three minutes of each period. The fourth goal was the most egregious. And I don’t think there is any Brian Rafalski type scoring threat among the current blue liners - nobody I would consider a go-defenseman - so we’re not getting much offensively from the D.
The goaltending seems to be pretty good but not spectacular. Perrson only gave up one goal last night that I would consider a bad goal but averaging nearly 4 GA is not where we want to be.
Although they were better last night overall, they sometimes play a bit undisciplined and take too many penalties.
That’s just my lay observation. Perhaps Bonk or others who have played have differing views or better insight.
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How many years has Berg been here now? Is this his third? My concern is that we don’t seem to even be moving up a few spots in the standings from year to year…just mired at the bottom.
Year four. He finished in the Bottom 3 in his first three seasons at BG (CCHA) and then finished 4th or higher for the next six (WCHA), but progress has been clearly slower than the program needs.
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We are not getting better vs. our conference mates…may need to reconsider CCHA or hope MAC-based hockey conference emerges due to NCAA rules…or even drop hockey at D1 level.
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NESCACDAD makes good points but I feel like we have been saying the team is young, Covid hurt recruiting, and making other excuses for a long time. Regardless of conferences or alignment, Miami’s approach to recruiting has been problematic for years. Think of it like college admissions marketing, another group under pressure owing to declining demographics: how do you get quality students at any institution? You figure out what you do well and what you offer. That doesn’t mean going after the same group of 1550 SAT 4.5 AP students from the same high schools and communities. They all can’t go to every school. You broaden out your recruiting and take a look at putting together a class with different skill sets.
On the ground, here is how it most often works in hockey: advisors, most of them paid, farm players to junior programs or out east to specific prep schools. There is a network of advisors determining rosters and ice time working in tandem with junior coaches. The internet media influencers are in the mix as well, sometimes acting as the advisors too. They funnel particular kids, create hype and buzz, and place players on the “right” teams. They will block other players they see as a threat to their clients. Hockey is very easy to manipulate. Peruse through elite prospects and it isn’t hard to find players who seem to have spectacular drop offs in ppg and other stats while still playing with the same group of players they have been with since age 5. What happens? A deal dissolves, a coach changes, older linemates aren’t carrying a player, someone is taken off a 1D power play, someone keeps stats honestly and isn’t padding them for a goalie.
Getting back to Miami, what is the problem? It has a lot of different causes, many of which we have covered, but there is a problem in hockey and the schools in the bottom third need to recognize it because clearly they aren’t benefiting from the status quo. Do things differently to compete.
The “best” players, assuming they are the “best,” have never been on weak teams in their careers. They have been carefully placed. These players aren’t coming to Miami nor would they be able to handle building a team. Hockey has never been hard for them. Some of them have never even had to try out for a single team. Even if they wanted to consider Miami, their people around them allow it. It is too risky. What if they get exposed? What Miami needs to do is stop looking for the players that have been carried through every USA festival (because that pipeline is pretty broken at the local level), on the advisor-agent teams tied to academies and stop assuming that a league or a name or a father’s hockey career confers skill and talent on a player. If a father coached the player be very, very suspicious of how that player plays when their chosen support cast isn’t there.
Throughout junior hockey there are players with skill, speed, talent, heart that lack the family or advisor to shape a team for them. You might say, “but coaches want to win.” Maybe at some level, but not necessarily at juniors. They want to win enough to keep their jobs, if that is what dictates their jobs. But they want to keep their connections and their own piplelines more, so they do favors, take kids, sit others, cut others for the greater benefit of their own contact list. No junior coach is going to promote a particular player to the detriment of another even if it is based on merit, if it is going to hurt his own position, paycheck, off-season opportunities or ability to get a fresh supply of players for the next season.
With this going on, combined with Covid and the 5th year eligibility for all the Covid players, college coaches in the bottom third need to be more open-minded and work harder. Talk to the players, forget the advisors, trust their eyes. If I were a program anywhere from 40-62, I would talk to every player who called me, ask to see grades, learn about how the player came up through hockey. One of the best ways to learn about a player isn’t from the agent or the coach/parent/friend but from players who played with and against them, know them from off-season. I said this back in the fall, but players know who can play. They also know who are just good guys to be around.
Egos might get bruised if a program started taking players who weren’t from “name” programs, legacy, etc. and it would make for chat on the fan boards and people complained “we aren’t getting the best recruits,” etc etc. On the other hand, wouldn’t it be a great story if a program found players that actually improved their program through hard work, being open minded, and not following the twitter-hockey lemmings? Wouldn’t it be something for a coach in a program to be able to say “I don’t care where he came from, how many followers he has, or what team he made or didn’t as a pee wee or at 16? I don’t need to hear from some agent to take his player instead. The kid can play and knows how to help build a program and I like him.”
I know it is kind of old-school, and I am showing my age, but I can still dream!
I find it hard to believe with all of the players hit by the Covid NCAA disaster from the 2000 to the 2002 birth year, that Miami didn’t miss a few players who are now either playing D3, playing in Europe or Canada, or had to stop playing entirely. It is too bad. Miami is a great school, in a great town, with outstanding facilities. Bergeron knows hockey and has had success. This shouldn’t be as difficult as it is.
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I would draw the line at "drop hockey to a lower level. No. But I do hope we get into a conference where we can rebuild fairly quickly and become a winning and fun program to follow as we were in the past. Weekends like this one have been happening every years for what seems like a very long time now. They destroy a team’s confidence, both in themselves and also in their coaches. The size of the gap between where we are and where the top of the CCHA makes rebuilding there far more difficult than it would be is a lesser D-1 conference.
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As pointed out by others on this site Western Mich is having great success - how is it that a similar MAC school in our geographic area is so much better? Watching Miami Friday night on CBS very disappointing- virtually no power play in the first period and 3 of the four goals given up by a defense that is not D 1 level - it might be helpful to have some outside independent review of our program and make recommendations.
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Very good points. Another area that is often missed is the small group of Canadian and northern tier American kids who are talented enough to play Major Junior at age 16-17 but are on the fence as to what their hockey track should be. Their “agents” and CHL factions will steer them toward Major Junior as the quickest route to professional hockey. Some sign and play a couple of years but are then released by their CHL clubs, especially the American kids, leaving them pretty much screwed.
There is a growing body of evidence that NCAA D1 hockey might be nearly as effective a route. Capturing them before they sign a CHL tender offer and forfeit their NCAA eligibility is tricky but could be beneficial to both the players and the college programs. Many parents of highly talented 16-17 year olds might lean toward keeping college eligibility.
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And the Swedes value both Hockey and a college education and cannot
pursue both in Sweden.
Miami has 4 Swedes. ( corrected).
2 Latvians coming for next season.
The roster has 4 from Sweeden, 1 from Slovakia, 2 from Canada (3 if you include Ryan Savage but he was really only born there)
You can make an interesting parallel with our football program. Like hockey, we were in the depths of despair after the disastrous Treadwell years. Enter Chuck Martin, and after a couple of years, we were again competitive in the MAC. Note I mention in the MAC, because despite our turnaround, we were uncompetitive against all non-conference FBS opponents, and went years without a win. In this timeframe, we continued to be competitive in the MAC and even win a title.
In hockey, after years of decline, we bring in Berg to rebuild our program but after four years, we are still arguably the worst team in the NCHC. The problem here is that Berg doesn’t have a MAC conference in which to become relevant again, it’s the powerhouse NCHC. The team plays with no confidence, and the board debates how important it is to remain in the NCHC in order to compete…yet at the same time, our program offers little to the most promising recruits. It also offers little to the students and alums who follow hockey and are becoming numbed by incessant losing. Pretty vicious cycle if you ask me.
I don’t have the answers because I am not a college hockey expert as are some here, but something needs to change. We need to find a way to start winning, even at a modest pace. Can that be achieved in the rugged NCHC…remains to be seen, but I struggle to find any reasons to be optimistic at this juncture.
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I don’t think being in a good conference is hurting us. In football, Northwestern has won the Big Ten before and they are clearly the low rung in the conference. Bill Snyder turned around Kansas State when they won a game or two a year. Rutgers doesn’t suck anymore. Neither does Kansas. Things can be fixed. We just have to find our secret sauce to do so. The hell if I know what it is though…
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Most years, getting to .500ish in the NCHC, 4th or maybe 5th place, means you make the NCAA Tournament. To me, that’s what defines a successful season.
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I don’t think it’s real relevant to compare a program like Northwestern in a P5 conference where they were a laughingstock in football for decades, primarily because they got oodles of money for remaining in the B10. In NCHC hockey, I don’t believe we are deriving any meaningful revenues.
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