seattleblue wrote: ↑02 Jun 2025 10:25 am
Good game in the first, Cowan/London really broke it open in the second and McKenna's 3d period heroics were not going to be enough. Even if that goal had counted London was on a mission last night. McKenna would go first overall this year, that kid is on another level.
McKenna’s stickhandling ability is simply next level. Elite of the elite. He’s a LW, which is perhaps the least valuable position in hockey but he’s that good. I’d perhaps even put him ahead of Bedard. He’s going to be electric. I bet that was his last Jr game last night.
They had a clip of him and Frankie Corrado doing a one-on-one chat on the ice and he mimicked the Kane "sticklhandling one puck through a maze of pucks at center ice" thing, Corrado asked him if he knew the Kane thing and he said yeah he also practices it then proceeded to do it.
College hockey is going to get much better. My dream is that one year, one day, my team will make the 16 team tournament at the end. It's getting close to 5 decades since that happened, which is pitiful beyond words.
Going to be hard for Dartmouth to compete unfortunately. Just not a big draw for hockey. And do they even lower their academic standards for athletes or do you actually have to be smart to play hockey for them? That’s a pretty limiting hurdle for some athletes…
Agree college hockey is about to get much better. And eventually I think the talent will spread out a bit more. It seems a handful of schools are getting most of these CHL players but my guess is some top prospects will now get disgruntled as they just won’t have the ice time they need to develop. I mean, the Wolverines have gotten so many top recruits that some guys that’d normally slot in on the 1st line with lots of special teams play will now be fighting to get 3rd line minutes. I doubt it trickles down to Dartmouth too much but hopefully it evens out some or there’s going to be 5-6 power schools and then the other 50ish teams that just get clocked by those top 5-6.
With D1 sports there is a bit of wiggle room for the normal academic standards. It'a a team that is often 4th in the ECAC out of 12 and can never ever ever ever ever break through. They have had NHLers and Reid Cashman looks like he's going to be a good coach. They have an awesome recruiting tool for a guaranteed home crowd festival once a year that a student once conjured for them because he loved it when everyone jumped up at The Arena. Maybe McKenna will take one look at Michigan and realize Ann Arbor is not Yukon-ish enough so he'll transfer.
Is the tennis ball thing really that big of a recruiting draw?
Assuming McKenna ends up at Michigan (it’s not official yet), he won’t be transferring to another school. Whether he loves it or hates it, he’ll only be there 1 year and then in the NHL the next.
seattleblue wrote: ↑02 Jun 2025 10:25 am
Good game in the first, Cowan/London really broke it open in the second and McKenna's 3d period heroics were not going to be enough. Even if that goal had counted London was on a mission last night. McKenna would go first overall this year, that kid is on another level.
McKenna’s stickhandling ability is simply next level. Elite of the elite. He’s a LW, which is perhaps the least valuable position in hockey but he’s that good. I’d perhaps even put him ahead of Bedard. He’s going to be electric. I bet that was his last Jr game last night.
They had a clip of him and Frankie Corrado doing a one-on-one chat on the ice and he mimicked the Kane "sticklhandling one puck through a maze of pucks at center ice" thing, Corrado asked him if he knew the Kane thing and he said yeah he also practices it then proceeded to do it.
College hockey is going to get much better. My dream is that one year, one day, my team will make the 16 team tournament at the end. It's getting close to 5 decades since that happened, which is pitiful beyond words.
Going to be hard for Dartmouth to compete unfortunately. Just not a big draw for hockey. And do they even lower their academic standards for athletes or do you actually have to be smart to play hockey for them? That’s a pretty limiting hurdle for some athletes…
Agree college hockey is about to get much better. And eventually I think the talent will spread out a bit more. It seems a handful of schools are getting most of these CHL players but my guess is some top prospects will now get disgruntled as they just won’t have the ice time they need to develop. I mean, the Wolverines have gotten so many top recruits that some guys that’d normally slot in on the 1st line with lots of special teams play will now be fighting to get 3rd line minutes. I doubt it trickles down to Dartmouth too much but hopefully it evens out some or there’s going to be 5-6 power schools and then the other 50ish teams that just get clocked by those top 5-6.
With D1 sports there is a bit of wiggle room for the normal academic standards. It'a a team that is often 4th in the ECAC out of 12 and can never ever ever ever ever break through. They have had NHLers and Reid Cashman looks like he's going to be a good coach. They have an awesome recruiting tool for a guaranteed home crowd festival once a year that a student once conjured for them because he loved it when everyone jumped up at The Arena. Maybe McKenna will take one look at Michigan and realize Ann Arbor is not Yukon-ish enough so he'll transfer.
Is the tennis ball thing really that big of a recruiting draw?
Assuming McKenna ends up at Michigan (it’s not official yet), he won’t be transferring to another school. Whether he loves it or hates it, he’ll only be there 1 year and then in the NHL the next.
I'll tell you what it's the one game per year the place is packed and energized so if they know what they're doing they bring recruits that weekend. It started the same season Jim Montgomery/Paul Kariya took the title for Maine. It's a real tradition, I would be confident any general student body member of the past several decades knows about it and most have participated. See back when you were the BluesTalk sponsor of Lee Stempniak I was always envious.
I got to see Martin St. Louis in college for Vermont. He was definitively the most incredible player I saw.
