Intro To Recruiting 2012

Minnesota has an excellent chance to repeat.  They bring back a strong core and have done a monster recruiting job as well.  But this has been highly productive recruiting season that could make 2012-2013 interesting in other ways.  Here’s a quick look/predictions, with more detail to follow.

Recruiting Winners:

• Hockey East is returning to the top of the charts. Northeastern and Boston College share two of the best five recruiting classes.
• Another one of those five is, of course, Wisconsin.
• St. Lawrence will continue its rise back to prominence.
• Clarkson’s surprising season can also be built upon, as it adds potentially potent scoring to a strong defense.
• North Dakota picked up a very good class, but it plays in the hockey equivalent of the AL East.
• Yale will scrape itself off the bottom of the ECAC .

Wait and See:

• ‘Hurst continues its tradition of picking up at least one Canadian with the potential for explosive scoring a year, and perhaps not enough defense.  They’ve had some ice-time related transfers and also lost significant senior numbers.  However they’ve also picked up a few NAHA grads.
• Quinnippiac can put its 2012 in the past if the first-years fit in quickly.
• Duluth once again cedes the entire Minnesota territory, but improves as usual via Canada and has relied less on Europe after last year’s disappointment.
• Harvard was a surprise last year and has remained solid in its pick-ups.
• Although St. Cloud State may not have improved as quickly as it hoped, its re-building process takes another strong step forward.
• New Hampshire landed one big puzzle piece with Crossley, but will it be enough to return to the conversation?

Disappointments/Teams That Still Need Work:

• Vermont’s coaching controversy has led to another dismal season of prospects (aka one confirmed recruit).  It will take another few years for this program to right itself
• Cornell’s class would look fine for a team that doesn’t plan to contend for a national title, but may not be enough to keep it in the elite.
• Bemidji State overachieved last year, but with the loss of Tomcikova and other senior,  needed to hit it out of the park with first-years, and did not.
• Minnesota State did get some signers, which is important, but continues to be the red-headed stepchild of the Land of A Thousand Lakes.
• As a new program, Penn State is throwing everything at the wall and hoping some of it will stick.  With a ton of incoming players, either they find chemistry or there will be mucho transfering.  Plus current scholarship players may be replaced with bluer-chip prospects later.
• Brown is doing the same thing with its  rebuilding mode.  Let’s see how many of these new players stay the course.  It does take a special kind of athlete to choose a school like Brown, with its mix of Ivy and counter-culture.
• Lindenwood did well for its current status, but will need several more years of improvement to be competitive.  At least with PSU and RIT entering the mix, it is no longer the newest kid on the block.

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