dagies

I remember hearing on boards like these about Ryan several years ago, and how he was going to be the next great GF player.

Well, I ran a block down from my house on Columbia Rd to watch the caravan bring the Chief out to the airport

Invited to the US camp are Parise, Smaby, Stafford. With Murray going to the Candian camp, it's a pretty good representation of our recruiting class. Will be interesting to see how many of these guys make the team. I believe I read that Mike Eaves will be the coach on that team. WI has 5 players invited to the US team camp. What if they all make it? No one would be left to play any college games on the schedule!

With the knock on Blais that he recruited some guys too quickly like Brandt and Sedevie it doesn't bother me that he's not locking up high school sophomores. On the other hand, I can understand the concern about whether or not any blue chip players will be be uncommitted by the time they are juniors and seniors. I guess I am ok with losing out on some of the very very top guys if it means you eliminate some of the duds by not recruiting them too early. And enough very good players will still be available later that if you do a very good job of recruiting them you won't have to worry about the few very top guys you never had a chance at. As for numbers, just a couple of years ago Blais had about all his recruiting done about 2 years ahead of schedule, or so it seemed to me. It is a bit surprising we aren't seeing more for the 2004 year even, but I'll be late this summer and fall we'll see slots in 2004 and 05 start filling pretty quickly. It is a daunting list of players that will be gone in 2.

With the knock on Blais that he recruited some guys too quickly like Brandt and Sedevie it doesn't bother me that he's not locking up high school sophomores. On the other hand, I can understand the concern about whether or not any blue chip players will be be uncommitted by the time they are juniors and seniors. I guess I am ok with losing out on some of the very very top guys if it means you eliminate some of the duds by not recruiting them too early. And enough very good players will still be available later that if you do a very good job of recruiting them you won't have to worry about the few very top guys you never had a chance at. As for numbers, just a couple of years ago Blais had about all his recruiting done about 2 years ahead of schedule, or so it seemed to me. It is a bit surprising we aren't seeing more for the 2004 year even, but I'll be late this summer and fall we'll see slots in 2004 and 05 start filling pretty quickly. It is a daunting list of players that will be gone in 2.

This is interesting. Looks like Porter might spend an additional year in Lincoln. That may not be a bad thing. His offensive numbers were average in juniors and IMO the Sioux have plenty of average offensive hard working guys. Let him develop and play vs. sit out games. I guess we'll see.

I think there is another way to look at it as well. Neither of the last couple years if my memory is correct (often isn't) the Gophers did not play as well early as they did late, as stated. One could argue that Lucia is less focused on gaining conference points early on as he is in preparing individual players and the team to be at their best later in the season. Whether it is Lucia's plan to do this, or the above happened due to the coincidential circumstances of a team maturing or possibly just working through injuries I can't say for certain. But if one wants to argue that it is Lucia's plan to not focus so much on the immediate win early on and worry more about developing and strengthening the play of certain individual players at that time, then one could argue skates point in that manner.

Note to self: Don't argue with star2city.

That's pretty old news. And since then it appears Eaves is being successful in recruiting some very strong talent. My guess is this incident will be long forgotten in a year or so. Could be he and Leavitt did not get along and if one makes an assumption that Leavitt was a bit of a problem child maybe the issue isn't all Eaves.

The Wild don't seem to be in a rush to move ahead their young talent. It would seem Bouchard and Gaborik are talents so exceptional they were able to make a contribution at a young age. I'm no expert but from my perspective they seem willing to bring players along slowly. Plus, the Houston team has a number of young talented players on it, so they are not lacking there either. Just my guess.

Great point on goaltending....

On a bit of a side note how would it feel to be Andrew Brunette, who deaked possibly the best goalie of all time in OT of game 7 of a Cinderella play-off series and have it be the last goal scored on the guy?

I agree. These guys had decent numbers in the USHL but weren't the "talk" of the league. I don't think there are many goalies who were average in juniors who were stars in college.

Hammy I'm sure I'm one of those guys you speak of who gets their shorts in a bunch but I'm sure of one thing, when you do it you are not "teasing", you and some others have your core beliefs and you are not afraid to share them in any forum possible. I enjoy your knowledge of the game and in certain things you are insightful, but you have your bias and you are trying to play your maroon and gold hand any time you can. Your motives are clear. Should friends, family or actual recruits at any point be reading these boards, they're bound to run across a post by Hammy. In it they will find out that Blais cuts players at will (seemingly) and that Blais will ruin goalies. I know you will deny this. I know we'll get a bunch of rhetoric about putting words in your mouth, etc. I know by saying this I'm opening myself up to significant criticism from which it will be your word against mine. I know it will be difficult for me to have time to find your posts to create a record of how I am basing my opinion. Much of this is because this opinion is based on a history of discussions with you on 3 different boards. This is why I'll say this on our board, but no where else. I'm in "my" house, and I feel more free to say what I feel. I will grant that at times I believe you are trying to ask a legitimate question. However, your M.O. is so well known that it gets hard to seperate your legit questions from your propaganda. You are subtle enough not to say much of this directly, but anyone paying close attention knows what you are doing. Call a spade a spade. I just did.

Look, I'm as proud of Eddie as any Sioux fan can be and sure he understands "nuts, crazy and insane" with the best of them but I'm not sure that would make him a good coach. Of course, I don't know him from Adam. Maybe he would be.

I doubt they need to read this board to hear that, Hammy. Sounds like they hear it up front. In fact, this issue came up last year on this board. A similar scenario was presented and the parent of a player chimed in to agree that is basically how it worked. Sagard, I agree with you. I think there are more similarities between Blais and Lucia than many Gopher fans would like to admit. Which has been why I have so actively been involved in these discussions here and on others boards. I appreciate your point of view.

And you guys think Eddie the Eagle would be a good goalie coach?

Not that I am a fan of Blais bringing this sort of thing to light in the paper, as someone said earlier, but there could be another angle. Remember the comments about Blais promising to the parents of Parise and Murray? that he would be the coach as long as their kids are playing at UND? If this is true, this could be his way of "alerting" these concerned parents to the situation, resulting in some communication with Roger Thomas about how important it is to lock him up. Still, I'd rather not read about it.

Casey Moreland?

I don't care if they are big or little. Can they see the puck? If so, can they get in the way? That's all I care about.

Seems they discount Ziggy when discussing the competition that Parise would face if he comes.

FYI

You know, in recent memory it seems that happened with another college player. Can't think of who it was but seems to me that player stayed in college.

Good point on Genoway. There is a guy who could have the potential for "most improved player". Let's not forget some other fairly forgettable freshman performances, i.e. Lee Goren and Bryan Lundbohm. I'll give Colby another year before I lose hope. I keep hearing Porter's name mentioned as someone who could have some impact this next year but if you look purely at his statistics he didn't do anything the average USHL'er didn't do. What that means to me is he might be a hard worker but I'm not expecting to see many points go on the board. We've all talked about how the Sioux have plenty of hard workers, but we need to see someone get the points. Porter could be sitting to make room for some of these other guys on game night. That said, Stafford and Murray should be able to make the lineup regularly.

Ranfranz got as much of a shot as was warranted. Ranny didn't do much in his previous shots with the team and last year he did admirably in a tough situation, but just when he was given a couple games near the end of the season to show he was the savior some people thought he was then he suddenly became human. Ranfranz seemed like a good guy who gave it his best and helped the team the best he could given the situation. Ranfranz got a chance to show what he could do and did his best with it, but his best wasn't quite as good as it needed to be. How can you judge what someone else (Sofie) should or shouldn't like or want? Who truly knows what motivates these players to do what they do? You maybe would have done things differently but that is you.