With hockey just around the corner, and the full roster known, it's time to look at the 2016-17 season and see what it holds for the men. For a breakdown of the newcomers, check out this post from a few days ago.
The biggest change from a year ago will be the faces behind the bench for the Saints. With Carvel and DeMichiel now at UMass, the Saints will be lead by Mark Morris, and assisted by Matt Deschamps as well as Hurlbut, Durocher and Elberty. They've also brought on Alex Petizian as a volunteer assistant to work with the goaltenders.
The Saints will be captained on the ice by Alex Dahl and he will be assisted by Sweetman, Masella and Bayreuther.
The Saints have a great schedule this year, highlighted by a great opportunity to see Wisconsin and Minnesota at Appleton. They also face Penn State in College Park to open the season, host UNH and Merrimack, will travel to UMass-Lowell and Providence and play in the Friendship 4 before playing Canisius to close out their non-conference schedules. For the first time in a while, they won't face Northeastern and their two-year tango with Miami will also not continue.
However, the Saints biggest challenge will not come from a single opponent, but rather, from themselves and from recent history. Each of the past two years, the Saints have hit a skid around the holiday break that has bumped them out of contention for an at-large berth. Last year it was a 5 game losing streak from January 8-16, which saw them lose two to Northeastern, one to Clarkson and a series to Harvard and Dartmouth. It knocked them out of the USCHO poll and way out of the top 16 in the PairWise, despite being at ninth when the skid began.
The year before it was an 0-5-1 stretch from the end of November through the first series of January. They went on a tear afterwords to finish second in the conference, but in that stretch failed to win any points in two ECAC games, against Clarkson and Quinnipiac.
This year, that stretch of games from the end of November to the beginning of January, the stretch that has plagued the Saints recently, holds eight games, four of which are ECAC league games and four of which are non-conference (two are the Friendship 4, where the Saints will play Quinnipiac in a league game).
What that means is that if the Saints hope to contend for an at-large bid and a first round bye in the ECAC again this year, they must not go through the same streak of poor results as years past. I say results because the team didn't necessarily play poorly in many of those games, they simply didn't do enough to win. This will be the crucial time for SLU, and with a new coach behind the bench, the Saints stand a good chance of snapping this trend.
The other thing SLU must work on to reach its full potential is to improve their special teams. The penalty kill was always rather strong under Carvel (discount 2013-14), but more consistency would be helpful. The real problem is the power play, which is confounding given the number of puck-moving defensemen that can be deployed on the points to quarterback and man-advantage.
Perhaps all thats needed is a fresh take on how to run the power play to make it more effective. I do know that too many shots by defensemen get blocked, which is something that will require fixing.
However, if the Saints can avoid a mid-season slump and polish up the power play, they will be deadly. The only other worry is the center position. The top three centers of last years team have all graduated, but they do not leave the positions empty.
Joe Sullivan has played center at times and played quite well there. I would look for him to center the second line with Mike Marnell as one of his wingers. But, if anyone is going to have a breakout season for St. Lawrence, it's going to be Ryan Lough.
Lough spent most of his time on the fourth line, yet managed to record 14 points on 11 assists. Lough is a smooth skater with great hands and a high hockey IQ. He lacks the size of incoming rookie Carson Gicewicz, but Lough is a proven playmaker who could see time as the top line center, making him a prime candidate for a breakout season.
What the Saints do boast is what can reasonably be described as the best defensive corps/goaltending duo in the league. Kyle Hayton is unquestionably the #1, but should he miss time, we all saw what Arty Brey can do after his performance against Penn State, in which he stopped 50 of 52 shots in a 2-2 tie that SLU would win in a shootout.
Combine that with a defensive corps with Gavin Bayreuther, Eric Sweetman, Nolan Gluchowski, Ben Masella, Matt Purmal, RJ Gicewicz and Florida seventh rounder Ben Finklestein, which overflows with talent, confidence and just enough size to intimidate, and the Saints will start the season with a strong chance at an ECAC title.
Add in the seasons that Jacob Pritchard and Drew Smolcynski had as the wingers of the top line, and the overwhelming depth that SLU still possesses, and there is plenty of reason for excitement about this years squad.
Every other team in the league has suffered serious losses. The three teams that finished ahead of SLU have all lost big players. Quinnipiac loses Michael Garteig, Sam Anas and Travis St. Denis. Harvard loses Jimmy Vesey and Kyle Criscuolo and Yale loses Alex Lyon, Mitch Witek, Ryan Obuchowski and Rob O'Gara.
The Bulldogs lost the almost all of their fearsome defense and Quinnipiac and Harvard lost key cogs in their offenses, but all three should remain in the top half of the ECAC. Harvard welcomes Adam Fox, a stud defenseman and third round pick of the flames and still have Merrick Madsen, Alexander Kerfoot and Ryan Donato. Yale returns most of their scoring, with John Hayden finally starting to look like the player we all expected him to be from the start and younger players like Joe Snively and Ryan Hitchcock playing well.
Quinnipiac losses are extremely heavy. Garteig, Anas, St. Denis and Jonzzon are all gone for the NCAA runner ups, but some players are waiting in the wings for the Bobcats, like Chase Priskie, Tim Clifton and Landon Smith. Watch for them to become the stars for Quinnipiac, but without an established goaltender, Quinnipiac is in an unfamiliar place.
Don't expect Brown to make much noise they're still a few years away, but they have some strong returners like Tommy Marchin and Max Gottlieb. Their goaltending is just too suspect at this point.
RPI could be quite dangerous, especially with Cam Hackett waiting in the wings to take over for Jason Kasdorf. They return eight of their ten leading scorers, and their best recruit a year ago, center Evan Tironese was limited to six games, in which he had seven points. if Hackett can provide anything close to the goaltending Kasdorf did, the Engineers will be in a great spot.
Cornell is the other team to be especially worried about regarding teams who finished below SLU. Mediocrity has never been a staple of Mike Schafer teams and Cornell winning percentage the last two years, .513, is far below Schafer's career winning percentage of .612. The Big Red return their top seven scorers, most of their D corps, but most importantly, Mitch Gillam. The one caveat for Cornell: their leading scorer finished the year with 16 points, and they'll need to collectively improve on offense if they are to challenge in the ECAC.
I'm still not sure what to expect from Union, except for a lot of goals being scored and allowed by them. That's not necessarily a recipe for success. Colgate is much the same, and the loss of the Spinks is a lot to deal with for a team that didn't win much last year. They'll need Charlie Finn to turn back the clock to 2014-15 if they want to have a winning record in year one of the Class of 1965 Arena.
Dartmouth is intriguing, but the loss of both goaltenders, plus their leading scorer, Jack Barre, is a tough pill to swallow. They do return much of the rest of their scorers, including Carl Hesler and Troy Crema, who finished 2nd and 4th on the teams scoring list last year. It still doesn't seem like enough to, over the course of the season, top SLU.
Princeton looks like they have a chance to battle for home-ice in the first round of the playoffs. They retain their top five scorers, lose only Kevin Liss on defense and still have Colton Phinney, the most underrated goalie in the ECAC. As long as all those players progress well, Princeton may finally make the move out of the basement.
This leaves Clarkson. Clarkson is worrisome. They bring in Jake Kielly, who, barring an injury, should be their starter in net, and Casey Jones was flat out giddy about him when asked towards the end of last season. Now, its Casey Jones, so he could be completely bs'ing, but I've looked at the numbers and watched the video, and this kid is good. He had a 2.33 GAA and .919 save percentage in 37 games last year with Tri-City. Pretty good, yeah?
How about a 1.64 GAA and a .950 save percentage during an 11-game run to the Clark Cup Championship during the playoffs? He's also big, at 6'3". He's just a damn good goaltender.
But more than Kielly, the emergence of Sam Vigneault last season makes Clarkson scary. They retain their top three scorers in Vigneault, Jordan Boucher, and A.J. Fossen and their offense should be very good. The graduations of two of the Golden Knights best defensemen, Paul Geiger and Kevin Tansey will be offset by the maturation of Kelly Summers and the continued presence of James De Haas, and what appears to be an bona fide number one goalie.
That's why I'm picking Clarkson as my favorite in my own preseason poll. God help us all.
1. Clarkson
2. Cornell
3. Harvard
4. SLU
5. Yale
6. RPI
7. Quinnipiac
8. Union
9. Princeton
10. Dartmouth
11. Colgate
12. Brown
This was an especially difficult list to create because, in all honesty, anyone from 1-7 has a realistic chance at winning the regular season title. This could, and almost definitely will, be an incredibly tight race, not just for the title, but also for the top four spots and a first round bye.
As a side note, this is likely the final year of the blog in its current form, unless I find someone who I'm comfortable in handing the reigns to... So thanks for the ride, but there's still one more go-around, and I've got a good feeling about it.
The biggest change from a year ago will be the faces behind the bench for the Saints. With Carvel and DeMichiel now at UMass, the Saints will be lead by Mark Morris, and assisted by Matt Deschamps as well as Hurlbut, Durocher and Elberty. They've also brought on Alex Petizian as a volunteer assistant to work with the goaltenders.
The Saints will be captained on the ice by Alex Dahl and he will be assisted by Sweetman, Masella and Bayreuther.
The Saints have a great schedule this year, highlighted by a great opportunity to see Wisconsin and Minnesota at Appleton. They also face Penn State in College Park to open the season, host UNH and Merrimack, will travel to UMass-Lowell and Providence and play in the Friendship 4 before playing Canisius to close out their non-conference schedules. For the first time in a while, they won't face Northeastern and their two-year tango with Miami will also not continue.
However, the Saints biggest challenge will not come from a single opponent, but rather, from themselves and from recent history. Each of the past two years, the Saints have hit a skid around the holiday break that has bumped them out of contention for an at-large berth. Last year it was a 5 game losing streak from January 8-16, which saw them lose two to Northeastern, one to Clarkson and a series to Harvard and Dartmouth. It knocked them out of the USCHO poll and way out of the top 16 in the PairWise, despite being at ninth when the skid began.
The year before it was an 0-5-1 stretch from the end of November through the first series of January. They went on a tear afterwords to finish second in the conference, but in that stretch failed to win any points in two ECAC games, against Clarkson and Quinnipiac.
This year, that stretch of games from the end of November to the beginning of January, the stretch that has plagued the Saints recently, holds eight games, four of which are ECAC league games and four of which are non-conference (two are the Friendship 4, where the Saints will play Quinnipiac in a league game).
What that means is that if the Saints hope to contend for an at-large bid and a first round bye in the ECAC again this year, they must not go through the same streak of poor results as years past. I say results because the team didn't necessarily play poorly in many of those games, they simply didn't do enough to win. This will be the crucial time for SLU, and with a new coach behind the bench, the Saints stand a good chance of snapping this trend.
The other thing SLU must work on to reach its full potential is to improve their special teams. The penalty kill was always rather strong under Carvel (discount 2013-14), but more consistency would be helpful. The real problem is the power play, which is confounding given the number of puck-moving defensemen that can be deployed on the points to quarterback and man-advantage.
Perhaps all thats needed is a fresh take on how to run the power play to make it more effective. I do know that too many shots by defensemen get blocked, which is something that will require fixing.
However, if the Saints can avoid a mid-season slump and polish up the power play, they will be deadly. The only other worry is the center position. The top three centers of last years team have all graduated, but they do not leave the positions empty.
Joe Sullivan has played center at times and played quite well there. I would look for him to center the second line with Mike Marnell as one of his wingers. But, if anyone is going to have a breakout season for St. Lawrence, it's going to be Ryan Lough.
Lough spent most of his time on the fourth line, yet managed to record 14 points on 11 assists. Lough is a smooth skater with great hands and a high hockey IQ. He lacks the size of incoming rookie Carson Gicewicz, but Lough is a proven playmaker who could see time as the top line center, making him a prime candidate for a breakout season.
What the Saints do boast is what can reasonably be described as the best defensive corps/goaltending duo in the league. Kyle Hayton is unquestionably the #1, but should he miss time, we all saw what Arty Brey can do after his performance against Penn State, in which he stopped 50 of 52 shots in a 2-2 tie that SLU would win in a shootout.
Combine that with a defensive corps with Gavin Bayreuther, Eric Sweetman, Nolan Gluchowski, Ben Masella, Matt Purmal, RJ Gicewicz and Florida seventh rounder Ben Finklestein, which overflows with talent, confidence and just enough size to intimidate, and the Saints will start the season with a strong chance at an ECAC title.
Add in the seasons that Jacob Pritchard and Drew Smolcynski had as the wingers of the top line, and the overwhelming depth that SLU still possesses, and there is plenty of reason for excitement about this years squad.
Every other team in the league has suffered serious losses. The three teams that finished ahead of SLU have all lost big players. Quinnipiac loses Michael Garteig, Sam Anas and Travis St. Denis. Harvard loses Jimmy Vesey and Kyle Criscuolo and Yale loses Alex Lyon, Mitch Witek, Ryan Obuchowski and Rob O'Gara.
The Bulldogs lost the almost all of their fearsome defense and Quinnipiac and Harvard lost key cogs in their offenses, but all three should remain in the top half of the ECAC. Harvard welcomes Adam Fox, a stud defenseman and third round pick of the flames and still have Merrick Madsen, Alexander Kerfoot and Ryan Donato. Yale returns most of their scoring, with John Hayden finally starting to look like the player we all expected him to be from the start and younger players like Joe Snively and Ryan Hitchcock playing well.
Quinnipiac losses are extremely heavy. Garteig, Anas, St. Denis and Jonzzon are all gone for the NCAA runner ups, but some players are waiting in the wings for the Bobcats, like Chase Priskie, Tim Clifton and Landon Smith. Watch for them to become the stars for Quinnipiac, but without an established goaltender, Quinnipiac is in an unfamiliar place.
Don't expect Brown to make much noise they're still a few years away, but they have some strong returners like Tommy Marchin and Max Gottlieb. Their goaltending is just too suspect at this point.
RPI could be quite dangerous, especially with Cam Hackett waiting in the wings to take over for Jason Kasdorf. They return eight of their ten leading scorers, and their best recruit a year ago, center Evan Tironese was limited to six games, in which he had seven points. if Hackett can provide anything close to the goaltending Kasdorf did, the Engineers will be in a great spot.
Cornell is the other team to be especially worried about regarding teams who finished below SLU. Mediocrity has never been a staple of Mike Schafer teams and Cornell winning percentage the last two years, .513, is far below Schafer's career winning percentage of .612. The Big Red return their top seven scorers, most of their D corps, but most importantly, Mitch Gillam. The one caveat for Cornell: their leading scorer finished the year with 16 points, and they'll need to collectively improve on offense if they are to challenge in the ECAC.
I'm still not sure what to expect from Union, except for a lot of goals being scored and allowed by them. That's not necessarily a recipe for success. Colgate is much the same, and the loss of the Spinks is a lot to deal with for a team that didn't win much last year. They'll need Charlie Finn to turn back the clock to 2014-15 if they want to have a winning record in year one of the Class of 1965 Arena.
Dartmouth is intriguing, but the loss of both goaltenders, plus their leading scorer, Jack Barre, is a tough pill to swallow. They do return much of the rest of their scorers, including Carl Hesler and Troy Crema, who finished 2nd and 4th on the teams scoring list last year. It still doesn't seem like enough to, over the course of the season, top SLU.
Princeton looks like they have a chance to battle for home-ice in the first round of the playoffs. They retain their top five scorers, lose only Kevin Liss on defense and still have Colton Phinney, the most underrated goalie in the ECAC. As long as all those players progress well, Princeton may finally make the move out of the basement.
This leaves Clarkson. Clarkson is worrisome. They bring in Jake Kielly, who, barring an injury, should be their starter in net, and Casey Jones was flat out giddy about him when asked towards the end of last season. Now, its Casey Jones, so he could be completely bs'ing, but I've looked at the numbers and watched the video, and this kid is good. He had a 2.33 GAA and .919 save percentage in 37 games last year with Tri-City. Pretty good, yeah?
How about a 1.64 GAA and a .950 save percentage during an 11-game run to the Clark Cup Championship during the playoffs? He's also big, at 6'3". He's just a damn good goaltender.
But more than Kielly, the emergence of Sam Vigneault last season makes Clarkson scary. They retain their top three scorers in Vigneault, Jordan Boucher, and A.J. Fossen and their offense should be very good. The graduations of two of the Golden Knights best defensemen, Paul Geiger and Kevin Tansey will be offset by the maturation of Kelly Summers and the continued presence of James De Haas, and what appears to be an bona fide number one goalie.
That's why I'm picking Clarkson as my favorite in my own preseason poll. God help us all.
1. Clarkson
2. Cornell
3. Harvard
4. SLU
5. Yale
6. RPI
7. Quinnipiac
8. Union
9. Princeton
10. Dartmouth
11. Colgate
12. Brown
This was an especially difficult list to create because, in all honesty, anyone from 1-7 has a realistic chance at winning the regular season title. This could, and almost definitely will, be an incredibly tight race, not just for the title, but also for the top four spots and a first round bye.
As a side note, this is likely the final year of the blog in its current form, unless I find someone who I'm comfortable in handing the reigns to... So thanks for the ride, but there's still one more go-around, and I've got a good feeling about it.
Pretty bold with Clarkson and Cornell
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