2015-2016 Coaching Changes

[pokechecker]

Re: 2015-2016 Coaching Changes

How is my East Coast bias (which does exist) showing in this situation? Is UMD generally a more attractive school to potential players than Harvard? Is Duluth a generally more attractive city to recruits than Boston (if so, why has its population declined by 20% in the last 40 years)? There will always be a few where the answer is yes, but not the majority. The point is that these coaches have to find the few - and they haven't had to deal with that situation before. Your anti-Harvard bias seems to be showing a little more I would say. And if anyone is showing an East Coast bias, it is UMD - they just hired 3 Harvard trained coaches when they are awash (if others are to be believed) in a sea of highly-qualified potential candidates within a few hours of Duluth.

Regarding Harvard losing the better of its coaches to Duluth, I would say that while I think Katey Stone's best coaching days may be behind her she did OK before Crowell showed up and will likely do just fine without her. I don't think one year of decent coaching with a depleted team (but still very talented - it wasn't Sacred Heart she was coaching) makes me think that she is suddenly one of the best coaches in the country.

It's often been observed about Ronald Reagan that one of his greatest strengths was that he knew what he didn't know (which was a lot) and surrounded himself with really smart, talented, loyal people and relied on them to handle those things. I've found that to be a pretty good strategy in life. I'm not so sure that an inexperienced head coach entering what you always argue is the most competitive league in the country has done herself the best service by hiring two young, novice inexperienced assistant coaches. It doesn't seem like the best recipe for success. Hey, but who knows - anything's possible....

judging by the number of top quality hockey players who have gone to UMD compared to Hawvaad, I guess the answer is yes
doesn't matter how popular of a place Boston is, they only have to find 5 or 6 quality kids each year willing to come to Duluth

[ARM]

Re: 2015-2016 Coaching Changes

Is Duluth a generally more attractive city to recruits than Boston (if so, why has its population declined by 20% in the last 40 years)?

NCAA athletes are recruited to a school to get an education, not necessarily settle there for life. UMD's population has decreased due to job loss. That's not unusual for U.S. cities of that size where a high percentage of the jobs were blue-collar. It is pretty much true of Northern Minnesota as a whole - there aren't the job prospects out of high school that there once were. There never were a ton of jobs available in the area for those looking to take advantage of their college degrees. Anyway, we do know at least two people with highly-touted Harvard degrees recently chose to live in Duluth for their post-college careers, so we'll say you're not an expert on who would or would not want to live in Duluth and leave it at that.

[HockeyEast33]

Re: 2015-2016 Coaching Changes

judging by the number of top quality hockey players who have gone to UMD compared to Hawvaad, I guess the answer is yes

Not in the last few years it isn't.

... they only have to find 5 or 6 quality kids each year willing to come to Duluth

Which is what I wrote. Problem is, these three coaches (one of them even left Duluth to go to college) aren't exactly the most-qualified bunch to explain to potential recruits why they should be one of the 5 or 6.

[HockeyEast33]

Re: 2015-2016 Coaching Changes

Anyway, we do know at least two people with highly-touted Harvard degrees recently chose to live in Duluth for their post-college careers, so we'll say you're not an expert on who would or would not want to live in Duluth and leave it at that.

Good point and I never claimed to be an expert, just to have an opinion.....

[Skate79]

Re: 2015-2016 Coaching Changes

Regarding Harvard losing the better of its coaches to Duluth, I would say that while I think Katey Stone's best coaching days may be behind her she did OK before Crowell showed up and will likely do just fine without her. I don't think one year of decent coaching with a depleted team (but still very talented - it wasn't Sacred Heart she was coaching) makes me think that she is suddenly one of the best coaches in the country.

Excuse me? Katey Stone's best coaching days may be behind her? What parallel Universe are you living in? And what coach has her/his best days in front of them? Wow. Guess the marijuana laws really are helping society becoming more brain dead by the day.

[driventoit]

Re: 2015-2016 Coaching Changes

(Cue the Aguirre gif.)

[pokechecker]

Re: 2015-2016 Coaching Changes

Not in the last few years it isn't.



Problem is, these three coaches (one of them even left Duluth to go to college) aren't exactly the most-qualified bunch to explain to potential recruits why they should be one of the 5 or 6.

people familiar with the team would say otherwise, they have been getting good athletes, but the team underperformed due to outdated coaching methods (by about 40 years!)
IOW a coach whose better days were truly behind her
it's too bad this change didn't happen a few years ago, last years team should have made the NCAA tourney

you seem to think everyone wants to go to Harvard when in fact only a small fraction do, most know Harvard isn't for them
you also seem to think everyone wants to go to school in a big city, which also isn't true

Duluth is a unique city, out your front door is a metro area of 1/4 million people
out your back door you can go wandering in the wilderness for as far as you have a mind to
and then there is the largest freshwater lake in the world ...

one thing I'm wondering though, the Ivy leaguers keep telling us how much better your education is
if 2 Harvard grads and a Harvard coach can't figure out how to sell UMD to prospective students, maybe that Harvard degree isn't all it's cracked up to be, is it?

[HockeyEast33]

Re: 2015-2016 Coaching Changes

one thing I'm wondering though, the Ivy leaguers keep telling us how much better your education is
if 2 Harvard grads and a Harvard coach can't figure out how to sell UMD to prospective students, maybe that Harvard degree isn't all it's cracked up to be, is it?

Nice one! No rebuttal....

[charlieconway]

Nice one! No rebuttal....

That's the thing though. There's plenty of benefits to sell prospective athletes on the UMD program and college experience. Many recruits (especially those who project as middle six forwards or #3-5 defenders at a school like Minnesota or UW) out of the metro might find a spot like Duluth to be pretty ideal.

As far as location goes, UMD takes a backseat to Minneapolis and Madison in the WCHA, but that's about it. St. Cloud, Bemidji, Mankato, Grand Forks and even Columbus have nothing on Duluth. And the academic environment might make recruiting easier for the new Bulldog staff. Harvard has routinely run into a lot of frustration getting players into school, and even some who can get in choose to go to a school that provides athletic scholarships.

[Watson Rink]

Re: 2015-2016 Coaching Changes

That's the thing though. There's plenty of benefits to sell prospective athletes on the UMD program and college experience. Many recruits (especially those who project as middle six forwards or #3-5 defenders at a school like Minnesota or UW) out of the metro might find a spot like Duluth to be pretty ideal.

As far as location goes, UMD takes a backseat to Minneapolis and Madison in the WCHA, but that's about it. St. Cloud, Bemidji, Mankato, Grand Forks and even Columbus have nothing on Duluth. And the academic environment might make recruiting easier for the new Bulldog staff. Harvard has routinely run into a lot of frustration getting players into school, and even some who can get in choose to go to a school that provides athletic scholarships.

I admit that in my euphoria at Crowell & Co's colonizing a WCHA program, I had naively assumed that with Crowell's success coaching student-athletes as varied as those at UMass Boston and Harvard she will have no difficulty relating to any other kind of student-athletes anywhere, and probably that's true so far as coaching goes. But I was oblivious to the recruiting issue, and previous posters have painted a bothersome picture. Assuming UM to have a lopsided recruiting edge in light of its academics, location and outstanding hockey resume, the critical question is whether Crowell can or will (1)attempt to replicate the previous coach's differentiation of UMD from Bemidji, Mankato and St Cloud via international recruiting and program success or (2) differentiate UMD as primus inter pares by relying on the arguments set forth in the above-quoted post and skimming the remaining cream from what is obviously a very deep instate talent pool. I welcome the views of Minnesotans as to the relative merits of the four schools.

One might also consider the possibility that Crowell would seek to differentiate UMD by playing some different system than the other WCHA schools, but I have no factual basis for surmising that.

[Skate79]

Re: 2015-2016 Coaching Changes

And the academic environment might make recruiting easier for the new Bulldog staff. Harvard has routinely run into a lot of frustration getting players into school, and even some who can get in choose to go to a school that provides athletic scholarships.

It should. For one thing, UMD doesn't have the AI. Then there are the scholarships. Yes, Harvard does lose players to scholarship schools and to other Ivies. It happens. And Crowell will lose her share of recruits to other WCHA schools. Let's give her a couple of seasons to see what she, Reber and Bellamy can do for the program.

[HockeyEast33]

Re: 2015-2016 Coaching Changes

It should. For one thing, UMD doesn't have the AI. Then there are the scholarships. Yes, Harvard does lose players to scholarship schools and to other Ivies. It happens. And Crowell will lose her share of recruits to other WCHA schools. Let's give her a couple of seasons to see what she, Reber and Bellamy can do for the program.

UMD doesn't have the academic standards of Harvard (or any of the Ivies or Wisconsin, Minnesota, Clarkson, St Lawrence, and on and on for many other schools). She will have limited restrictions based on admissions. What she will have is the reality that the higher hockey and academic performers who see life beyond hockey will tend towards the Ivies or other schools I listed. So she is left fighting for the strong players who are the lower academic performers with the rest of the MN schools and some others scattered around the country. This is not the recruiting scenario she or her hand-picked staff have experience with (and I'm guessing they were partially chosen to improve the academic performance of the team which may actually create some previously unknown restrictions). Whether they can adjust will be the question - because in the end recruiting has more to do with success than actual coaching.

Hey, she's got her time to do something - she's already hired. One of the fun things on this forum is predicting how it will go prior to it happening. Some of us think it will go well, others not so much. We'll see.

[HockeyEast33]

Re: 2015-2016 Coaching Changes

Excuse me? Katey Stone's best coaching days may be behind her? What parallel Universe are you living in? And what coach has her/his best days in front of them? Wow. Guess the marijuana laws really are helping society becoming more brain dead by the day.

I'm hoping that many coaches have their best days in front of them. Certainly UMD is hoping this of Crowell and her staff. I think it's you that is smoking....

[HockeyEast33]

Re: 2015-2016 Coaching Changes

So which assistant left, Boe or Keady, and does anyone know why? How much are these coaches making anyway?

Keady out, Chris Cobb from Williams in (assistant coach). Nice guy. Lead story on USCHO at the moment.

[charlieconway]

UMD doesn't have the academic standards of Harvard (or any of the Ivies or Wisconsin, Minnesota, Clarkson, St Lawrence, and on and on for many other schools). She will have limited restrictions based on admissions. What she will have is the reality that the higher hockey and academic performers who see life beyond hockey will tend towards the Ivies or other schools I listed. So she is left fighting for the strong players who are the lower academic performers with the rest of the MN schools and some others scattered around the country. This is not the recruiting scenario she or her hand-picked staff have experience with (and I'm guessing they were partially chosen to improve the academic performance of the team which may actually create some previously unknown restrictions). Whether they can adjust will be the question - because in the end recruiting has more to do with success than actual coaching.

Hey, she's got her time to do something - she's already hired. One of the fun things on this forum is predicting how it will go prior to it happening. Some of us think it will go well, others not so much. We'll see.

UMD is a better school than you're giving it credit for. By default it's a better academic institution than the three neighboring state schools in the WCHA.

Funny thing about all the doubt that's been cast on the new staff is that I have yet to see a single name dropped as a better, more qualified alternative. This isn't the NHL. Superstar assistant coaches don't grow on trees, and I would guess many top assistants are content where they're at.