mel pearson recruiting god

Sponsor Note. If you've got a business to incorporate or help run or sell or divide or recombine or create and elaborate series of shell corp… okay maybe not that last one uh what

Right! Richard Hoeg.

He will do all of those things for you except probably the last one. We do not need to send the authorities on a wild goose chase only to find out that the final shell corporation is named "You've Wasted A Lot Of Time LLC." They have important things they should be doing instead. Come on, man.

They're employees, for now. The National Labor Relations Board has been weirdly relevant to college football over the last few years, first shooting down an attempt for players to unionize and now throwing the doors wide open:

College football players and some other athletes in revenue-producing sports at private universities are employees of their schools, the National Labor Relations Board's top lawyer said in a memo Wednesday that would allow those players to unionize and otherwise negotiate over their working conditions. … Abruzzo notes that the act and NLRB law "support the conclusion that certain players at academic institutions are statutory employees, who have the right to act collectively to improve their terms and conditions of employment."

The NLRB tends to change radically depending on which party is in control of the executive branch so anyone fixin' to have a union should get on that horse as fast as possible and try to get something that can't just be swept away in the event the NLRB gets turned over and decides to reverse itself yet again.

As a bonus this lawyer bombed the most gag-inducing term in college sports:

NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo also threatened action against schools, conferences and the NCAA if they continue to use the term "student-athlete," saying it was created to obscure the employment relationship with college athletes and discourage them from pursuing their rights

I like this person.

This opens the door to seismic changes that will cause administrators to wail about the destruction of college sports while the general public says "Roll Tide" with little to no awareness of what the financial particulars are.

[After THE JUMP: good news and bad news from NFL Draft projections]

This past weekend was the 2021 NHL Entry Draft, held a bit later than normal due to the COVID-induced NHL schedule, but it still happened, and well, uh, if you missed it, here's a small summary: 

Michigan had made hockey HISTORY with 4️⃣ of the top 5️⃣ picks in the 2021 #NHLDraftDay #GoBlue〽️ #ProBlue pic.twitter.com/7WseEQUXJP

— Michigan Hockey (@umichhockey) July 24, 2021

Yeah, that happened. Michigan Hockey landed four of the top five picks in the NHL Entry Draft, something we thought was a small possibility, but I myself didn't think was likely entering draft day. And when combined with incoming freshman Mackie Samoskevich going 24th overall to the Florida Panthers, Michigan became the first NCAA team to ever produce five first rounders in a single NHL draft. It's been awhile since I wrote a Michigan-hockey specific piece, and since we're currently in the summer doldrums, I thought I'd put together this article looking at who each player was picked by, what it means for their NHL futures, and what it all means for Michigan Hockey's 2021-22 season. We'll go player by player for this: 

Owen Power

The towering defenseman went 1st overall to the Buffalo Sabres, the first Michigan player to ever be picked 1st overall in the NHL Draft and just the sixth Michigan athlete to go 1st in any of the big four (NHL/NBA/MLB/NFL) drafts, joining Jake Long (2007), Chris Webber (1993), Cazzie Russell (1966), Elmer Madar (1947), and Tom Harmon (1941) in that rare company. First and foremost we should send our sincere condolences to Owen for being picked by the Sabres, a franchise that has been stuck in a perpetual rebuild for nearly a decade now and has a long track record of messing up their prospect development. It's definitely not the team I would want to be drafted by, but Power will join fellow young defenseman Rasmus Dahlin on Buffalo's blue line and the Sabres seem to be accumulating lots of young talent and future draft capital to help put a core together, so it may not be as bleak of a future as it seems in the present. Especially if Buffalo can land, say, Shane Wright in next year's NHL Draft. That said, it's hard to trust the Sabres to play any of their cards right when we've just watched them repeatedly go bankrupt at the poker table. 

The Sabres bet high on Power's potential to develop further as an offensive player in drafting him at the 1OA slot. Pretty much everyone (your author included) sees Power as a future top four defenseman in the NHL who can handle tough defensive assignments and munch minutes. He was arguably the draft's safest prospect and in a year with tons of COVID-related scouting uncertainty, going safe with such a high pick seemed optimal. The question is about Owen's NHL upside. Part of the reason he was picked 1st is that he's tall and there's nothing that Hockey Men love more than Big Tall Defensemen, seen this weekend in Philadelphia paying a king's ransom for Rasmus Ristolainen, a defenseman who is objectively awful at hockey, but apparently it doesn't matter because Risto is tall. Same logic here. No matter how Owen develops in the NHL, no one will ever be able to take away the fact he's tall (unless Rick Moranis still has his electromagnetic shrinking machine) and for some reason, to a great many institutional NHL scouts, that has some special value. 

At this juncture it appears very likely that Power will return to Michigan for this coming season. He was listed on Michigan's 2021-22 hockey roster that was discreetly slipped out to the public sometime in the last few weeks, which shows all of Michigan's freshmen from last year returning (and with their grade years all bumped up one). Nearly all Internet Scouts who I follow and interact with agree that Power will benefit from playing one more year in the NCAA, and since Buffalo appears to be stripping their roster to tank for Wright in the 2022 Draft by trading several key players, they have no logical reason to rush Power to the show. In fact, the incentive is the opposite direction, to keep him off the roster, if the goal is to lose as much as possible next year. Scouts are most looking to see a more dynamic element in Power's game, an ability to rack up points and drive offense from the back-end. With Cam York gone, there will be a hole on Michigan's top PP unit, and perhaps Power could try and fill it. Power himself has indicated a return to Michigan was more likely than not and given the way Buffalo is behaving as a franchise, it seems extremely probable at this point in time that #22 suits up in the Maize and Blue again, though I'm not sure when we will know officially. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: Lots more draft picks]