hockey studs

Submitted by Bringitback2a2 on

i just saw on rivals, with no link, buts in on the main michigan.rivals.com page, that capparusso, rust and hagelin are all coming back to win a nat'l championship. great stuff. go blue

JustGoBlue

April 2nd, 2010 at 3:18 PM ^

that their class would all stay after this season, that doesn't really surprise me. It's lovely to get even a tentative confirmation of this, but it just helps confirm my suspicion. I'm most worried about the classes below them. Of the ones that could probably leave, let me know what you think:

BROWN: keeps saying he's going to be here for four years and at this point he's said it enough where I think I believe him.

LYNCH: This is probably the person I'm most worried about. Late 2nd round draft pick that didn't produce like what he (or Red, probably) wanted, seems like a reason people tend to leave. I have no information that would make this likely or unlikely, just my personal thoughts, looking at numbers. Looking at past cases with similar situations, Czarnik left and Winnett is still here. It'll come down to his relationship with the team/coaches and I don't know how he feels about that. Hopefully good...

Those are the only drafted freshmen and none of the others had good enough seasons to make me fear for them.

Of the sophomores:

PATERYN: I think he stays, he's probably not ready yet and is also probably in line for more playing time next year. If that's wrong, I could see him leaving to get PT, but he played most of the end of the season and I see that continuing.

BURLON: Could definitely leave if he wanted to. Also a 2nd rounder but playing like it, unless he has issues with coaches/players I think he stays, especially since with Summers and Kampfer leaving and Hagelin and Glendening (the Captains) playing forward, there's an opening for a defensive leader and Burlon is probably our best returning defender.

WOHLBERG: I think he stays, he had a great freshman season and a somewhat lackluster one this year, though with an injury for most of the season. Came on stronger towards the end of the season. Might be ready to leave and with the somewhat poor season and the departure of Czarnik (I remember reading on mgoblue last year that they were close) he might leave.

If I'm remembering correctly, Summers and Red both talked about the chemistry this team had and how great it was, so hopefully that points towards lots (dare I say everyone?) returning. If you have any different opinions might as well scare me now. We should know in the next couple weeks if anyone decides to make the jump early.

EDIT: The drafting teams of players are Montreal, New Jersey, Phoenix, Columbus, New York Rangers, Toronto and Ottawa, if anyone knows what those teams feel about leaving kids in NCAA to develop, or anything similar.

Mr. Robot

April 2nd, 2010 at 3:51 PM ^

If we don't lose Capparusso, Rust and Hagelin, I'd already be in heaven.

If by some college hockey miracle we manage to retain EVERY non-senior, I might just die of happiness. On paper, that would be the best team we've had in a good long time. Add on the freshman we've got coming in (Hello Jon Merrill), and, in theory anyway, nobody is going to be stopping us.

Of course, that's what we thought about this year, too, so I'll save the real excitement for sometime around the Big Chill and what I've seen up until then. Regardless though, its hard not to be excited. Only thing we're missing is Jack Campbell, but if Hogan can get his mojo back and Hunwick can keep up the awesome, we'll have a pair of good goaltenders to our name next year behind an already fantastic defense.

rb4kb8

April 2nd, 2010 at 5:31 PM ^

about the situation in goal?... with Hogan and Hunwick and any freshman... I think it could actually end up being a solid part of the team.

AKWolverine

April 2nd, 2010 at 5:43 PM ^

But, assuming no unexpected attrition, goaltending will be *the* giant questionmark going into next year. If next year's team gets decent-to-good goaltending, it will be very, very good (and a Hogan/Hunwick combo is certainly capable of providing that). If it doesn't, well, it might lose a whole bunch of games in which the team outshoots its opponents by giant margins. Like it did early on this year.

JustGoBlue

April 2nd, 2010 at 9:38 PM ^

are generally a pretty good measure of who out-played who in a game, but they don't always tell the whole story. Throughout the year, especially in the games like that we lost, we'd have a lot of pretty low-chance shots and give up a pretty good amount of quality scoring chances for the other team. It's not always quantity, it's quality too. Goaltending was definitely an issue at times, but it certainly was nowhere close to the only problem. If our team, defense especially, had played like they were "supposed to" coming in to the year, the regular season is much better, with the same goaltending.

Red's style is also more offensive oriented (he stresses defense, of course, every good coach HAS to), he even describes it as a fast paced offensive system. That generally means we take a lot of shots no matter what and if we're shooting it, the other team can't be, hence the discrepancy in numbers. Some years (1996,1997,2008) a lot of the shots turn into goals, other years (this year), we have a rock-bottom shot percentage and the shots on goal go from decent shots to "Get it to the net a hope something good happens" shots. As far as goals/shots against goes... There were ELEVEN (11) unassisted goals against us this year. Most of those are pretty big defensive break-downs on our end. Again, goaltending was certainly suspect at times, but far from the whole story.

As to the situation, I think the early guess is that Hogan and Hunwick will start the year splitting starts and whoever gets the wins, however they come, earns the starting job, like Hogan and Sauer in 2009. And unless things are going really well for both of them (later), or poor for one of them (earlier), we likely have a more entrenched starter around Christmas, would be my guess.