Maine thread (cont) - Hobey Abbott goes Dancing

[amherstblackbear]

Re: Maine thread (cont) - Hobey Abbott goes Dancing

"If you don't have the best of everything, make the most of what you have." -God... or the anti-christ depending on your college hockey religion.

I guess that's my point. At the moment, Whitehead is making the most of what he has. Time to give him some credit.

Just don't finish 9th in HEA again any time soon. I'll revoke that praise as quickly as I gave it.

[Fishman'81]

Re: Maine thread (cont) - Hobey Abbott goes Dancing

exactly. brian dumoulin's "family advisor" is an nhlpa certified agent... dumoulin was actively negotiating this off-season and turned down very good money to return to BC this year. the source of that info? the family advisor himself when he was on a local sports radio show...

Yeah, that's the sort of thing that makes my skin crawl.

If an NCAA athlete in football, hoops, etc., has any contact with an agent, they lose their eligibility instantly. In college hockey..? Not a problem! Just another example of how Bettman's NHL whores-out the NCAA as a free feeder-system, and gets away with it.

College Hockey Inc.'s main reason to exist seems to be to address this issue, and maybe they'll get somewhere... With >30% of all current NHL players having come from the NCAA, they ought to have some leverage.

[Priceless]

Re: Maine thread (cont) - Hobey Abbott goes Dancing

I didn't go to the pep rally Friday because I was at the game, but lines to get in anywhere on Saturday were insane, so I headed to the Greatest Bar for the Saturday rally. The pep rally was off. Seems the manager didn't expect Maine to defeat BU on Friday and canceled. It probably didn't help that they were charging a $20 cover and packing people in like sardines. Finally the owner agreed to let us have our pep rally, but it wasn't that great since we were shuffled off in a corner. I stayed for a bit but it was hot, incredibly crowded and not much fun so I left.

Probably not the best move to tell a Maine booster that they canceled the pep rally because he expected Maine to lose.

Oh, and the playoff format is probably going to change. Once Notre Dame joins Hockey East all 11 teams will go to the postseason - probably using the same format the CCHA has used with 11 teams.

[walrus]

Re: Maine thread (cont) - Hobey Abbott goes Dancing

I would never say this as a coach, but I'm not a coach. I'm random internet guy - so I have the luxury of being honest. Maine already did good. No reason to settle for anything less than an A+ effort in Worcester, but the success of this season isn't riding on an upset of the defending champs.

To some degree I think it is riding on it. Don't show up and I'll consider this the same ol Timmay team we've seen for 5 years with a NCAA game. On the other hand, they did exceed expectations which is great but once they beat BU and BC midseason things changed. I think they're an underdog against UMD but they have to show up for 60 minutes win or lose for me to say it was a successful season. No NCAA experience for any of these players is pretty crucial if you ask me.

[acs64]

Re: Maine thread (cont) - Hobey Abbott goes Dancing

Are you going to Worchestah?

That'd be nice. Not sure I could afford the tickets. If I knew for sure those old bahstids from BC werent going to be there, I might. I would like to see the UMD matchup. You going?

[TripleE]

Re: Maine thread (cont) - Hobey Abbott goes Dancing

I'm sure something to this nature has been said already, but all signs point to Abbott returning this Saturday.

First, the injury was listed as 'concussion symptoms'...it wasn't defined as a true concussion. He got his cage rattled (literally) and they needed to take precautions.
Second, If you listened to O'Neill's postgame interview, he answered questions about the PP unit without him on it, and after giving his expected answers about how they did that night, he slipped in: "and with Abbs back next week...."

And if you follow Twitter, Spencer certainly doesn't tweet nearly as often as much of the rest of the team, but on Sunday he tweets: "Tough loss, but we will be ready to go in the NCAAs" ... obviously you could say that one way or another, he was being a supportive teammate, and 'we' refers to the team with him on or off the ice... but he's a smart, and publicly quiet kid. He knows speculation about his status would ensue by what he implied, and if his status was poor enough to be even have a prognosis of questionable, he'd probably stay the course of saying nothing.

[FiveHole12]

Re: Maine thread (cont) - Hobey Abbott goes Dancing

That'd be nice. Not sure I could afford the tickets. If I knew for sure those old bahstids from BC werent going to be there, I might. I would like to see the UMD matchup. You going?

Haha... I'll be there, and the pro has told me he will be. Stay home!

[claver2010]

Re: Maine thread (cont) - Hobey Abbott goes Dancing

I'm sure something to this nature has been said already, but all signs point to Abbott returning this Saturday.

First, the injury was listed as 'concussion symptoms'...it wasn't defined as a true concussion. He got his cage rattled (literally) and they needed to take precautions.

Sorry that was pretty obviously a concussion. The guy couldn't get up by himself and needed to be guided the entire way off the ice.

For his sake, I hope he's not rushing it.

[Runsub5]

Re: Maine thread (cont) - Hobey Abbott goes Dancing

Here's a good article by Larry outlining the possible new regular season schedule and playoff changes in 2013-2014. Playing each team only twice with 11 teams, which means more non-league games. I am expecting either Holy Cross or Quinnipiac to join making it twelve.
http://bangordailynews.com/2012/03/1...-in-2013-2014/

[KnowItAll]

Re: Maine thread (cont) - Hobey Abbott goes Dancing

Yeah, that's the sort of thing that makes my skin crawl.

If an NCAA athlete in football, hoops, etc., has any contact with an agent, they lose their eligibility instantly. In college hockey..? Not a problem! Just another example of how Bettman's NHL whores-out the NCAA as a free feeder-system, and gets away with it.

College Hockey Inc.'s main reason to exist seems to be to address this issue, and maybe they'll get somewhere... With >30% of all current NHL players having come from the NCAA, they ought to have some leverage.

I am pretty sure that all good college athletes have "family advisors"
unpaid
anyone remember when Tiger had a zillion dollars in endorsement deals the DAY after he finished playing golf at Stanford?

what was the name of the guy you saw on TV?

[KnowItAll]

Re: Maine thread (cont) - Hobey Abbott goes Dancing

Look at some of the coaches/programs that didn't get in this year: Wisconsin, Colorado College (talk about history), Nebraska-Omaha (Blais + heart of USHL), Notre Dame (Jackson), Ohio State, Harvard . . . all of these are programs that have real advantages over Maine. High-profile coaching staffs, rich athletic departments, location, recruiting base, prestige (in Harvard's case).

.

if you talk to players, junior coaches and player parents you will hear the same thing over and over.
the players play for a team BECAUSE of who the coach is.
Parents will say, "my son played for peter masters" and not mention which team he was coaching at the time.

the players want their best change of making it to the next level.
money helps, but it is the coach.
Shawn used Grant as bait.

[J.D.]

Re: Maine thread (cont) - Hobey Abbott goes Dancing

If they start with 11 teams, I don't think 20 league games is enough but I know many people disagree. Ideally, somewhere in between 20 and 27 would be nice, but hard to accomplish with 11 teams.

[amherstblackbear]

Re: Maine thread (cont) - Hobey Abbott goes Dancing

We already have an unbalanced schedule regarding home/away games. We could also just go to plain-old unbalanced. Play 5 teams 3 times and play the other 5 twice. Try to make sure that the 3 game series are divided as evenly as possible regarding opponent strength to make the regular season as level a playing field as possible. There's a lot of parity in HEA (BC excluded), so this won't be the end of the world.

Part of the problem is that nobody else has a 20 game regular season. In that scenario, there might not be enough OOC games to go around. A lot of other teams already schedule the bulk of their OOC games in tournaments like the GLI. They're not going to cancel those tournaments to schedule more OOC games against HEA.

edit:

While the 20-game season seems like a simple solution, it's not. It creates headaches, too.

You're not going to have *two* teams flying to/from Indiana for home-and-home series every single weekend. So what does that mean? Does everybody play home-and-homes except Notre Dame? Or do we get rid of home-and-home weekends and have both games at the same rink? That would mean that season ticket holders would only get to see their team play Notre Dame/BC/BU/UNH (or anyone else) every two years.

[amherstblackbear]

Re: Maine thread (cont) - Hobey Abbott goes Dancing

To some degree I think it is riding on it. Don't show up and I'll consider this the same ol Timmay team

Sure - I'd agree with that. You can't just go through the motions.

But if Maine plays hard and loses anyway . . . I'm not going to be writing any angry rants.

[J.D.]

Re: Maine thread (cont) - Hobey Abbott goes Dancing

OK, so it seems like you're not in favor of slashing the league schedule by seven games each either...not to mention it might not even be possible based off of what other conferences are doing (as you pointed out).