Hockey performance reaching UNACCEPTABLE levels

That's the one thing I've picked up about hockey recruiting is that it has a massive delay in terms of bringing in top talent.  Some programs do the thing where they pick up a bunch of 22-year-old freshmen who aged out of minor league hockey, but otherwise you have this 2-3 year lead-up to guys actually signing with your team.

It's weird - this team feels like it's only a couple of breaks/some cohesiveness away from being pretty good.  This game was weird (I'll admit to only following it on Twitter), but if they can consistently score 3 goals a game they'll be pretty good.  

Yeah, we heard that for years about RichRod. Bare cupboard, not his recruits, yadda. That went so well for us, and then for Arizona.

This. Hockey recruiting at a top program boils down to two types of players. You have one and done types, where you’re lucky if they come back a second year (Quinn Hughes, Josh Norris, Johnny Beecher, Cam York for recency example) and then you have your “lifers.” Fringe/late round NHL type players who you expect to be contributors by their junior and senior seasons. Looking back a few years, you see guys like Hyman, Copp, Compher, and Motte filling these roles EXTREMELY well. Still NHL type talent, but not on that one and done level.  
 

Now the problem with this team, is we severely lack that upperclassmen offensive talent. Guys like Lockwood (more of a power forward) and Slaker that you’d need to lead the team offensively arent producing. A lot of that falls on Red’s recruiting on his way out of the door. Not his fault entirely, as not many top kids want to go play for a coach who is retiring. But you see the ramifications of that in the upperclassmen on this roster. Many of Mel’s freshmen and sophomores are playing and producing at the level of these upperclassmen, and that’s not how quality top programs are built. 
 

As for the future, you look at the current roster and you can see guys like Garrett Van Whye as a sophomore and he is a guy who looks like he can fill that upperclassmen role. Ciccolini is a late round pick, only a freshman, but he’s shown flashes that he can fill that role down the line. Jimmy Lambert is on that list too. But again, those are all young guys who you don’t expect to fill those roles until they’re upperclassmen. To really hammer that’s point home, Hyman had 89 points in his four years at Michigan, 54 of those came in his senior year. Michigan doesn’t have any upperclassmen who can fill that type of role, and that doesn’t fall on Mel. 
 

Michigan hockey as we see it today, is a prime example of the legendary coach getting out of there at the right time, and his successor trying to mold something out of the crumbling infrastructure. This was always going to be a rebuild, and unless you deeply understand college hockey and roster management, it was a rebuild you wouldn’t see coming. So it’s easy to blame Mel. But if you understand what is happening, none of this is on Mel. He needs time. He not only has to get his guys, but we have to get them deep into their Michigan careers. Championship teams aren’t built with one and dones in college hockey. You build a solid core of those “lifers,” and then you stagger top tier NHL talent around them. You pair a Larkin or a Conner with a Hyman or a Compher. Right now we have Beecher and a Pastujov. Not gonna cut it. 

Surprises me people older than 10 root for professional sport sports teams. 

its tough with hockey recruiting it seems like because even when you get great players to verbal, you can lose them to the OHL.

Pretty sure this has happened a couple of times where Michigan had kids ready to sign, only to have the OHL poach them late.

I think Canadian kids grow up with the CHL and don't have the same affinity for the college development track like football and basketball, so there is more kids that end up not signing...

Yeah, time is needed.

One thing I've seen when I've been able to see the team on tv (thanks, BTN) is that the team's overall puck control just isn't that great. Passes aren't crisp, puck management isn't precise, a lot of guys seem to haven leaden hands. 

Not sure what it means. But it makes it tough to create good scoring opportunities, and that's been a real problem this year. 

I don't know what you mean by 'give the staff" but coaches usually get a lot longer than in football or basketball. 

you're going to get negged.  But it's the one sport I know of that you can kick someone's ass up and down the ice . . . and still lose with a bad/lucky bounce. 

You must be a soccer guy. 

For a glorified community college, Yale is surprisingly tough to get into.

Why is penn state good? They went from a club sport to competitive in the new big ten hockey conference  and I don’t get it. 

Clarence Boddicker gets it.

*supervisor*