carl hagelin

Bork! Last night Carl Hagelin had a case of deja vu when a ref blew the play dead despite a very loose puck in the crease. Luckily for him, the grave miscarriage of justice happened to the other team this time. Result:

Congrats @CarlHagelin and @kporter12 on winning back-to-back Stanley Cups! #ProBlue 〽 pic.twitter.com/jRrIrXZi6r

— Michigan Hockey (@umichhockey) June 12, 2017

Hagelin had the empty-netter to seal it, and that's Carl Hagelin: the guy you put on the ice with a minute left when you're up 1-0 in game six of the Stanley Cup finals. Congrats to the Penguins and their veritable horde of college hockey alums; nuts to all the people who call Sidney Crosby "Cindy."

Better than perfect. I don't know how Michigan is claiming a 1006 APR for one year, but they are indeed:

Leaders and Best — on the field and in the classroom. #GoBlue 〽️ pic.twitter.com/znriaTZJhE

— Michigan Football (@UMichFootball) June 7, 2017

This is a much better thing to try to figure out than "what score do they need to not get nailed?"

Amateurism is bad and dumb, part 300. UCF has a kicker. You probably did not know this but could extrapolate it from facts. It is a certainty that no one wants to give this kicker money for playing college football. He plays for Central Florida. He is a kicker. He has zero career field goals. But he's also a minor Youtube star with 52,000 subscribers. Fly, meet nuclear bomb:

On Saturday, June 10, De La Haye uploaded a new YouTube video titled, “Quit college sports or quit YouTube?”. In the video, the kicker showed up to a meeting at the football offices exclaiming he felt like it was Judgement Day.

“Everything’s going to go well,” he said in the video. “We’re just going to talk about ways that I can keep doing what I’m doing and follow the rules.”

It’s unclear who the meeting was with, but upon returning, De La Haye said he was basically given an ultimatum of choosing between football or YouTube videos.

“The meeting went well, but it didn’t go well at the same time,” he said. “Basically, I’m not allowed to make any money off of my YouTube videos. I’m working hard basically as a job — filming, editing and things of that sort, and I’m not allowed to make any money. If I do, then bad things happen for me. I feel like they’re making me pick between my passion for what I love to do shooting videos and entertaining and my other passion, playing football.”

This isn't an anomaly. This is the ruthless logic of amateurism as practiced by the NCAA: not only will we not give you any money, but nobody else can give it to you either. Even if it has nothing to do with sports. Even if you are so obscure that you're not even an AAC school's primary kicker.

Lavall Jordan moving on up? Jordan just took over UWM but there's an opening at Butler and he almost got the job once before:

Hearing Micah Shrewsberry, LaVall Jordan and Butler assistant Ryan Pedon the primary candidates. https://t.co/pE58lTettf

— Jeff Goodman (@GoodmanESPN) June 10, 2017

Jordan will certainly be a person of interest when Beilein decides to hang 'em up, and Butler would be a fine platform via which to confirm or dis-confirm the idea that he should be the successor.

What is even going on in Oxford. The Ole Miss saga—I can call it a saga because it involves men in helmets bellowing nonsense and ends with an axe going through someone's forehead—takes an odd twist:

A business in Oxford, Miss., has filed a civil complaint alleging defamation that could reverberate through the University of Mississippi’s ongoing NCAA case. Rebel Rags LLC, an Oxford-based clothing company, filed the complaint Friday in Lafayette County Circuit Court.

The suit alleges defamation in the NCAA testimony of two Mississippi State football players, Leo Lewis and Kobe Jones, and also Lindsey Miller, the estranged stepfather of former Rebel star Laremy Tunsil. In Ole Miss’s response to the NCAA’s notice of allegations last week, it attempts to deny the allegations that two recruits and the family member of a recruit—Lewis, Jones and Miller—received a total of $2,800 in gear from Rebel Rags.

The store in question is named as a booster and if disassociated will lose its ability to sell Ole Miss gear. This is a slight problem for a store that only sells Ole Miss gear. Therefore this, which cannot be good for Ole Miss. Either the NCAA will pause for the outcome of a court case, lengthening the recruiting purgatory that caused Hugh Freeze to refer to his 2017 class as a penalty, or it will do whatever it's going to do anyway. The general thought is that the NCAA will do the latter, leaving this defamation lawsuit as an attempt to exact some revenge on the folks who set the Ole Miss program on fire.

What is even going on in East Lansing. Another gent who won't be playing for MSU this year:

Former Michigan State lineman Cassius Peat says he felt "blindsided" earlier this week when coaches told him he didn't have a spot on the team less than a week from when he was supposed to report to East Lansing.

Peat told the Detroit Free Press that Michigan State coaches informed him Wednesday that he shouldn't return to campus for summer workouts.

"I have respect for them, and I understand it's a business," Peat told the Free Press. "But morally, man, as a 20-year-old kid with a family, for them to do that is -- I can't even put it into words, to be honest."

Peat was the ultra-rare JUCO guy who was set to return to his original school. Since he is an ambulatory person large enough to play DL and Michigan State looks set to have two walk-ons on their DE depth chart, this could not have been voluntary on MSU's part. Peat must have failed to get by the Clearinghouse.

The number of players MSU has lost to offseason attrition is truly prodigious:

• OL Thiyo Lukusa: quits team, says he's giving up football, ends up at JUCO.
• S Drake Martinez: probably a playing time transfer
• DE Donovan Winter: dropped after armed burglary charge
• LB Jon Reshcke: dropped N-bomb on teammate
• WR Donnie Corley: charged with criminal sexual conduct
• DE Josh King: charged with criminal sexual conduct
• S Demetric Vance: charged with criminal sexual conduct
• DE Auston Robertson, charged with criminal sexual conduct
• DT Cassius Peat: probably not qualified?
• CB Kaleel Gaines: JUCO transfer, academics related?
• S Kenney Lyke: another JUCO transfer, academics related?

That might not be it, either. MSU's Scout site reported that CB Vayante Copeland and DE Robert Bowers were gone as well; Dantonio directly refuted that report but when insider sites report negative news there's almost always something to it. If those guys do end up gone MSU will be down almost an entire recruiting class of guys they expected to be on the team this fall. Add in the dismal finish to MSU's 2017 class and they're going to go into this season with a roster as depleted as a sanctioned PSU program was a few years back.

This is an amazing carousel. Via Get The Picture, an amazing thing about Florida:

Transfer quarterbacks are nothing new for Florida, which has seen six of its own quarterbacks transfer since 2010 and had signal-callers Luke Del Rio and Austin Appleby transfer in to the program. So far, the players coming in haven’t done much more than the players going out, and Zaire is hoping that all changes with him.

That's a transfer out per year. Since you usually recruit one quarterback a year… carry the two… some long division… take the cosine… that's bad.

Not bad enough for Florida to stop winning the SEC East, apparently.

Etc.: DJ Wilson #16 on the SBN mock draft. State theater renovations underway; end result will be four small theaters. Bruce Arena helped the US scratch out a draw at Azteca yesterday because he's not a goof pretending to be a coach. CMU to be a bodybag game for basketball this fall. This would be a good fix for illegal men downfield being hard to call. It's Harbaugh's job to find the loopholes though. Harbaugh goes to Washington. Wagner up to 245.

The Question: How does Kyle Connor compare vs. the Michigan forwards you've seen?

Bill Rapai/MGoBlog

The Responses:

David: So, my first year of season tickets at Yost was my junior year in college, 05-06. I vaguely watched Michigan hockey in the previous years before, but I made a concerted effort to follow the team, game-by-game, during that 05-06 campaign. I went to a couple of games (and watched a few more on tv) during my first couple years and I remember them losing to BC in '04 and the Colorado College Collapse in '05, but my serious Michigan Hockey fandom began the following season. I just looked up a ton of stats from that 04-05 team and they scored A TON. Eight skaters had double digit goals and thirteen (!!) had 20+ points. Unfortunately, I'll have to let our resident old dudes talk about Tambellini, Hilbert, and Cammalleri.

From what I've seen, I think Connor has to be the best. Not only does his pedigree match up (torched the USHL), but his exquisite skill (see the GTG on Saturday) and sheer volume of production -69 points in only 36 games- exceed anyone else in the last decade (Hensick took 41 games to get 69 points).

My quick Top 5:

5. Carl Hagelin. Our favorite Swede never quite got to 20 goals and only once to 50 points. Hagelin was a terrific skater, a terror on the PK, and maybe the fastest I've seen at Yost. Just never hit Elite in terms of production. He's carving out a nice NHL career, though.

[After the JUMP: Comrie, Cam, Ort, Hagelin, Larkin, Porter, Hensick, Tambo…?]

you, go away

Brian.

Given the general distaste we Michigan fans have had with the way in which SEC coaches like Les Miles and others oversign and then cut in order to make scholarship numbers work, how can we not be similarly enraged when it looks like we are now engaging in a similar practice? Is the answer HARBAUGH?

XOXO

Michigan is not yet at the point where they have to tell a freshman who's been on campus for weeks to GTFO. Should they reach that point, or one anywhere near it, then I'll be grousing as well.

They aren't near it. To date they have lost some commits before Signing Day. If those are Michigan's choice that is a recruiting misdemeanor compared to the felony of getting a guy's LOI and putting yourself in a position where someone's gotta go, deserved or not. And in some cases they are not Michigan's choice—reports after Vic Viramontes decommitted were that Michigan was blindsided and disappointed. (The MGoSlack chat was certainly mournful.)

I do think Michigan put themselves in a bad spot by offering a few guys before it was clear whether they had the academics and/or talent to play at Michigan. In the former case, those guys should know the score without anyone having to walk their way through it—if you're not taking officials you have to know you're a long way away.

In the latter case, once that disappointing senior film comes in you can either try to make it work even if you don't believe the player is Michigan-caliber anymore or you can consciously uncouple. I can see how moving on before Signing Day instead of two years into a career nowhere near the field could be better for everyone. Michigan told Matt Falcon they didn't think he could play but had a medical scholarship. That sucked for Falcon but better to find out before you've spent eligibility. The error has been made either way.

Meanwhile, Michigan has limited control of the narrative that gets put out there because they cannot say anything about ongoing recruitments. Reports that Michigan isn't contacting certain players much are probably frustrating to the staff because the reason for that is that they've already told people the deal, as they did with Falcon, but "Michigan commit" looks good on a resume when you're looking for another spot to land. Recruiting sites waited months for Dele Harding to say something about his recruitment and finally just took him off commit lists. That doesn't mean Harding didn't know his status. If you read between the lines you know who isn't likely to be in the class. If you know, they know.

Meanwhile I know that they have told certain players not to commit whereupon those players commit anyway; Michigan shrugs its shoulders at crootin' and keeps going. Carr used to go out of his way to make things clear when such things happened to him (LB [something] Justice and some OL out of Tennessee who I can't remember spring to mind); Harbaugh seems to (accurately) regard the whole edifice as a farce and plays his part with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind.

We'll see what happens on and after Signing Day. I don't think we'll see any more untoward than playing time transfers and guys not being offered fifth years.

[After the JUMP: where to put guys, where to spend scholarships, and the best hockey forwards of the past 15 years.]