Time for a Coaching Change

[Remember Walker]

Another line change, and another line change and another dump and guess what...another line change. And the passing...just poor. No offensive zone pressure, no attack the net, no goals. Yucch.

Here is THE BOTTOM LINE. Tony Collins, I paid $10 to watch the RPI feed tonight and yes, I saw you there in your seats, so please realize what we have here. No, it is not the freakin arena. St. Lawrence's is a dump compared to Cheel, yet they get their talent and DEVELOP THEIR TALENT...even with a new coach. So, Tony, please READ these FACTS:

George Roll: A wonderful coach, who gave as much as anyone to the CU program after stellar years with Oswego, and coming in after a very difficult time with the way Mark Morris had departed, did a yeoman's job but his star, while at CU, has been diminished since his departure. Well, let's look at George Roll's first four years vs. the present coach, Mr. Casey Jones's first four years.

G. Roll's CU teams: 2003-2007: 74 wins, 67 losses, 16 ties
C. Jones's CU teams: 2011-2015: 58 wins, 74 losses, 22 ties

Home Record: (this is what fill's Cheel with local fans and REVENUE - for some strange reason, but people want to see wins and don't like to travel winter roads to see losses.)
GR: 40 - 20 - 11
CJ: 34 - 32 - 08

Road Record:
GR: 28 - 43 - 3
CJ: 22 - 36 - 14

Total Goals: Goals Against: Difference Seasons with positive goals for vs. goals against
GR: 470 437 +33 3
CJ: 376 411 -35 0

League Titles: NCAA Appearances
GR: 1 1
CJ: 0 0

George Roll left CU and landed a position building a new DIII program at Nazareth from the ground up. In three years, he has taken that program to a WINNING RECORD, and perhaps a more potent offensive unit that what CU had on the ice in 2014-2015.

No one should EVER put down George Roll and what he did while at CU. He did a very good job and his teams were pretty competitive...as his record shows.

As a person, I like Casey. He says the right things - when I've heard him - to the fans, the public, to the alumni...but he has no offensive strategy that can be assured to WIN games. Another 20 loss season is unacceptable for the outcome of the E2E program which you, Tony Collins, pushed alumni to believe would drive to excellence.

I saw Marsh leave...a pretty talented forward. I saw Lebreque depart - perhaps the BEST shot on the power play in many years, railroaded away by Casey. Why? We sure could have used him this past year. I saw a TJ Moor come and go - but why? A stellar junior goalie named Briggs was supposed to come in but what happened there? Was his spot filled by the three others you selected? AHA teams have better tenders. Game preparation seems to be lacking, lines were mixed up all year and you continued to play several "offensive" players who couldn't find the net and yet, you sat others who scored in their first few games. Will they come back next year...one has to wonder. Will those who played all year and amounted for less goals than one hand's fingers continue to take roster spots, scholarships and playing time?

Casey, good luck but it is time to step down and find another assistant position somewhere else. I say, call Mark Morris back but there are several excellent coaches that might just want their chance to take this program's horns and redirect the bull to make it as great as it was from the 1950's through to the late 1990's. I'm having a very difficult time knowing that we are just a little bit better than Brown University over your tenure. I'm also having a very difficult time trying to understand how another request for millions of dollars in funding will turn things around with a coach whose offensive zone strategy is comparable to that in a mite program. For now, Tony, my wallet is closed until YOU take action.

[MondayMorningQB]

Wow I absolutley love this kudos to you, this is well written and speaks the truth.

[zekebud]

While I don't entirely disagree with the spirit of your remarks, it's well worth noting that Jones was left to rebuild in the wake of the worst years in Clarkson hockey history. The four year spans of 2007-11, 2008-12, and 2009-13 were (respectively) the 28th, 30th, and 29th worst 4 year runs of the past 30 such combinations. Those are all the responsibility of Roll, brought primarily by the pitiful 08-09 and 09-10 years. Jones was at the greatest disadvantage of any incoming Clarkson coach in program history.

I'm not dismissing your thoughts that Clarkson hockey must be better to retain interest. I am, however, suggesting that one lucky recruiting class is the crux of your comparative argument and the concept just doesn't hold water.

Further, I would suggest patience as the coaching style itself is one that can be conducive to success in the future. Clarkson has the 2nd best shot-based defense in college hockey (as calculated from CHN's new stats page, 33.1 even-strength shot attempts against per game, second only to Minnesota State). The Knights require only one decent goalie (CCT were among the worst in the NCAA), or one decent scorer to change the balance under this system. That's something that actually can change quickly from one year to the next.

I understand the restlessness, it's not a fun era to be a Clarkson fan. I also calmed myself a bit in considering the facts of this year's team. I suggest waiting a bit longer.

(Edit: the link didn't carry over. Here's the CHN stats page. Divide "ES SATA" by GP to get my number)

[MondayMorningQB]

While I don't entirely disagree with the spirit of your remarks, it's well worth noting that Jones was left to rebuild in the wake of the worst years in Clarkson hockey history. The four year spans of 2007-11, 2008-12, and 2009-13 were (respectively) the 28th, 30th, and 29th worst 4 year runs of the past 30 such combinations. Those are all the responsibility of Roll, brought primarily by the pitiful 08-09 and 09-10 years. Jones was at the greatest disadvantage of any incoming Clarkson coach in program history.

I'm not dismissing your thoughts that Clarkson hockey must be better to retain interest. I am, however, suggesting that one lucky recruiting class is the crux of your comparative argument and the concept just doesn't hold water.

Further, I would suggest patience as the coaching style itself is one that can be conducive to success in the future. Clarkson has the 2nd best shot-based defense in college hockey (as calculated from CHN's new stats page, 33.1 even-strength shot attempts against per game, second only to Minnesota State). The Knights require only one decent goalie (CCT were among the worst in the NCAA), or one decent scorer to change the balance under this system. That's something that actually can change quickly from one year to the next.

I understand the restlessness, it's not a fun era to be a Clarkson fan. I also calmed myself a bit in considering the facts of this year's team. I suggest waiting a bit longer.

(Edit: the link didn't carry over. Here's the CHN stats page. Divide "ES SATA" by GP to get my number)

Well we're going to be stuck with these 3 for another season. Think we have to bring in a new assistant one with more offensive knowledge then what we have. Maybe we will have one of caseys players hit double digits in goals next year.

[joecct]

We may have talented players, but we are not a talented team.

Somebody on the tonight's roundtable had a graph with the 4 year winning pct. of every class in the past 20 years (or so). The trend was upwards until 2000 then the trend is downwards.

I know I am beating a dead horse, but the MAAC/AHA changed the recruiting game and we have not reacted/improved our recruiting since then. If we want to get back to the .600 / .700 winning percentages, we need to get better players. Do we need more money in the recruiting budget? Do we need better talent scouts? Crap I don't know, but I do know what we're doing now is not working.

Or, has the Administration realized that we can't compete with the BCS and money schools and have decided that 40% is good enough?

[zekebud]

And as suggested: the one decent goalie or one additional scoring player thing? It can change as soon as next year.

The first problem (the low save percentage) gets fixed in-house by allowing more time for Steve Perry. Goalies are notoriously voodoo at all levels (SV% bounces all over the place, plots of SV% over time looking like seismometer products). With the information we have, Perry is the leading player. He hits over .910 on average in his 44 career games, a much better outlook than either of his current peers. (You'll note, Win-Loss record is not a good way to evaluate goalies. The netminder doesn't control the offense ahead of him, and can't limit the shot total against. W-L is a team thing.)

Should Perry start most of the games in 15-16 and get around his average .913? That's a boost over Clarkson's team-wide .902 on the year. Using this year's shot numbers: subbing in a .913 with 884 shots against is a difference of 9-10 goals on the season. While we don't get to pick and choose where these goals are stopped, this season the Knights suffered 11 losses by 1 goal. It would be nice if a few of those decisions were swapped by the guy in net.

The scoring thing is harder to resolve in-house although the loss off offense to graduation is minimal (part of the problem with this year's team, after all). Should any of the secondary scoring exhibit any growth, there's a boost (and that features 9/10 of the team's point scorers). If any of the recruiting class steps in to make an impact over the minimal losses from the seniors? Yet another boost.

I'll admit completely: the scoring logic is a far more tenuous thing. It is also suddenly fixed with just one player and would come with the defensive mindset already in place.

[CLKnIgHts21]

And as suggested: the one decent goalie or one additional scoring player thing? It can change as soon as next year.

The first problem (the low save percentage) gets fixed in-house by allowing more time for Steve Perry. Goalies are notoriously voodoo at all levels (SV% bounces all over the place, plots of SV% over time looking like seismometer products). With the information we have, Perry is the leading player. He hits over .910 on average in his 44 career games, a much better outlook than either of his current peers. (You'll note, Win-Loss record is not a good way to evaluate goalies. The netminder doesn't control the offense ahead of him, and can't limit the shot total against. W-L is a team thing.)

Should Perry start most of the games in 15-16 and get around his average .913? That's a boost over Clarkson's team-wide .902 on the year. Using this year's shot numbers: subbing in a .913 with 884 shots against is a difference of 9-10 goals on the season. While we don't get to pick and choose where these goals are stopped, this season the Knights suffered 11 losses by 1 goal. It would be nice if a few of those decisions were swapped by the guy in net.

The scoring thing is harder to resolve in-house although the loss off offense to graduation is minimal (part of the problem with this year's team, after all). Should any of the secondary scoring exhibit any growth, there's a boost (and that features 9/10 of the team's point scorers). If any of the recruiting class steps in to make an impact over the minimal losses from the seniors? Yet another boost.

I'll admit completely: the scoring logic is a far more tenuous thing. It is also suddenly fixed with just one player and would come with the defensive mindset already in place.

If you want an example of what Zekebud is trying to say with the one player coming in and turning an entire season around, see SLU and Kyle Hayton. Picked 11th in pre-season and finished 2nd. I couldn't agree more with you on that. We get a guy who comes in and meshes with an upperclassmen and it could completely change how teams have to play against us.

I'm very surprised at the little conversation about the injury bug this year. We lost Perry and Boucher at a pretty crucial time. We were in control of a first round bye when Perry went out. Not saying this would have changed things, but it definitely could have. Asselin missed time early due to injury...lost time as a freshman trying to develop. Meganetty missed time during the year for I believe a concussion, DiNallo same. I think Josephs was out, but that may have been last year. Yeah, lines were different each night but when you look at how many injuries we had this year its no wonder we couldn't find a line that gelled. I feel like I am missing some guys who missed time to injury...Gervais? Tansey? D'Arisso? I could be wrong with those three as well, but still. These guys practice with a linemate for a week or two and then lose a piece of the line and bam a wrench is thrown into the rhythm.

[FireKnight]

There are a lot of good points made in this thread but even more excuses. It is not the MAAC/AHA that had anything to do with it. If that were the case, we wouldn't see Yale and Union winning national championships. It's not the money of the BCS schools or we'd see more than 1 team from the B1G in the top 16 in PWR. In fact, the league that was probably hurt most by the B1G, the NCHC, is top to bottom, the best league in the nation this year. It isn't the injuries...every team has injuries. Honestly, our injuries may have hurt, but it wasn't as if we lost an All American or even an all league player to injury, so the talent drop-off from night to night wasn't that much.

The George Roll era was littered with mediocre talent and resulted in only 2 NHL quality players to get more than a cup of coffee in the big leagues, both defensemen. In the end, Roll barely had a team that could compete in the AHA. Casey's record isn't any better and his style isn't going to draw any decent offensive recruits into Potsdam unless he changes.

Despite the change in landscape, there are more NHL players than ever with NCAA roots. Over 200 players were from the NCAA were on NHL opening night rosters. That's about a third of all players. When you add in AHL players which are about half college alumni (or attendees, not all graduates), there is a tremendous amount of talent choosing the college route.

There are fish in the pond. Other schools seem to be baiting the hook enough to get a few of them and fielding competitive teams. The bait doesn't seem to be the scholarships with the success of Union last year and the success of Colgate, despite the lackluster season. It's surely not the outside atmosphere because there isn't a damn thing to do in Hamden, Hamilton, Ithaca, or Hanover. Union has Albany in the area but Schenectady itself is a dump.

The problem is our recruiting. That falls 100% on the coaching staff. Mark knew the type of player that would come to Potsdam and excel and he developed them. Nobody has done that since. The league should be on a high right now with back-to-back national championship and, although some of our recruits look promising, there is nobody that we can look to and say "that Cole kid; he's our future". It's time for a change. Whether Casey goes or some new blood comes in on the staff with new ideas, something has to change.

[Bill'70]

Another voice crying in the wilderness

I seem to remember that the other coach Jones was brought in because " he is a great teacher of young players and his ties to the USHL as a source of top notch recruits". I don't see any evidence of any of these things happening.
There must be a coach somewhere who knows how to combine a good offense with a strong defensive style.

Pierre McQuire -probably spelled wrong - the analyst on NBC NHL broadcasts seems to know many coaches in the Junior and College ranks. Maybe a call to him could help. N

[PSL79]

Check out video reply of RPI's goals

I enjoy the commentary, as most of you are much more hockey knowledgeable than I. I just replayed all six of RPI's goals over the weekend and it looks like to me that our goalie got good looks on all of them. IMO it looks like 5 out of 6 should have been easy saves. The toughest thing for me to swallow is that we appear to out play our opponents by wide margins and still lose. Case in point, out shot RPI 73 - 37 and won more face offs by 75 - 37 in the two loses.

Seems to me goal tending is our weakest spot. Comments please.

[HellzCowbells]

Warning shots

Jones, Roll, and any successor will struggle with a gradual shift in Junior hockey that has taken place in the past few decades. To explain this, let's compare the men's and women's teams.

They both recruit primarily from Ontario, Quebec and the US northeast. As a general rule, this could be considered Clarkson's "Bread and Butter" for recruiting. Also, generally speaking, they pick up some of the better players in their respective leagues and teams.

Here's the difference, the best male junior players don't play in these leagues anymore. Look at the top players of the CCHL, OJHL, and QCHL. Leagues that many of our current and upcoming players hail from. There are next to no NHL drafts and no players who are committed to the type of quality colleges that always seem to win (BC, BU, Minn, No. Dak, MI) What few there are, we actually get a pretty good portion of the NHL drafts. Summers and Josephs probably represent about 1/3 of all NHL drafts out of the OJHL and CCHL in the last two years. By that measure, Jones is doing really well.

... But, as someone pointed out earlier, we need to recruit from the league that has ALL the best players. That league, as far as I can tell, is unequivocally the USHL, a mid-west American Junior league, loaded with NHL Drafts and top college talent. Even the worst teams in the USHL have a half dozen college level players... the top three players in the OJHL this year, guys with 40+ goals, haven't even gotten a college scholarship.

Clarkson's women's team, by contrast, has tons of top level talent that hail from East. I know plenty of the women's parents who drive down from Ontario and Quebec to watch the games. They love having a top level team so close to home. It is more important for the ladies, because even for a great player, college is often the highest level of the game.

In short, the junior players are leaving Canada to play in the US-midwest and Clarkson and many small schools are having a hard time getting them to come back. However, of the players still in the east, Clarkson has done a good job getting some of the cream of the crop.

[drs1990]

I enjoy the commentary, as most of you are much more hockey knowledgeable than I. I just replayed all six of RPI's goals over the weekend and it looks like to me that our goalie got good looks on all of them. IMO it looks like 5 out of 6 should have been easy saves. The toughest thing for me to swallow is that we appear to out play our opponents by wide margins and still lose. Case in point, out shot RPI 73 - 37 and won more face offs by 75 - 37 in the two loses.

Seems to me goal tending is our weakest spot. Comments please.

I would definitely agree with this. It's not that our goalies are just bad; it's that they are wildly inconsistent. One night Perry is a wall, the next night he couldn't stop anything. We can't win series and have long winning streaks when we are constantly shuffling the starting goalie, and having to pull starters before the 1st period ends.

It's sad that we don't have a recruit coming in next year, and appears we will have more of the same. I'm not ready to give up on Casey, because I do think the program was pretty bad and he's focused on defense first. But the lack of a quality goalie is a HUGE problem, especially when we can't score enough to hide that weakness.

[PSL79]

More Stats

Clarkson also has the top rated PK and 5th ranked PP in the ECAC. These facts along with the others I mention earlier don't compute to a 12 - 20 - 5 record.

[joecct]

Clarkson also has the top rated PK and 5th ranked PP in the ECAC. These facts along with the others I mention earlier don't compute to a 12 - 20 - 5 record.

If you can't put the puck in the net 5x5, you will not succeed.

[MondayMorningQB]

It's time for a change. Whether Casey goes or some new blood comes in on the staff with new ideas, something has to change.

It is time for one of the assistants to move on, need to bring someone in with a more offensive mind. Phil and Andy both played defense in college and Casey played Center in college but seems to have no idea on how to run an offense.