BU-Acadia/Season Hockey Preview

Hockey season begins for fake this weekend when BU takes on Acadia in an exhibition game this Saturday afternoon at 4:00 pm. Last season the Terriers introduced their high scoring offense to St. Thomas with a 12-1 beatdown. The Terriers hope to start off this season the same way as they take on some 24 year old dusters from Canada. The lineup Saturday night will not be indicative of what it looks like a week later when the Terriers travel to beautiful Schenectady NY for their season opener against the Union Dutchmen. Acadia is 3-0 so far in their season games against Moncton and Brock. Those don't sound like real teams so I'm not too concerned about them being even close to the level an average NCAA hockey team. Also, Acadia has 16 players on their roster who played in the CHL which basically means that 16 of their players will have little to no interest in playing any form of defense.

This should not be a big test for the BU offense who return three 30 point scorers(Grizz, Oksanen, and O'Regan) from a season ago. Robbie Baillargeon also scored 30 points two years ago before mono set him back last year. The three returning 30 point scorers is tied for the most of any team in HE with Lowell. Providence and Northeastern return two while BC and Merrimack return 0. BU is the only one of those teams to return their entire defensive corps while also adding a future first round pick in Charlie MacAvoy. Needless to say BU has a wagon for this coming season despite BC being the sexy preseason pick to win the league. Bracco, Wood, Dudek and Co may be decent freshmen at the bad end of Comm Ave but they are not Jack Eichel so I am not sure why people are acting like they will turn a mediocre team who lost their top two D around to a league champion. Lowell can't stop anyone either and Providence has serious questions in net with the departure of the devil himself Jon Gillies. This is BU's league to lose this year and anyone who pretends otherwise probably drank lead paint as a child.

2015-2016 Pre-season Hockey LEast Awards

(Worst) Coach of the Year- Red Gendron(Maine)- Gendron is taking a very bad team that lost in the HE First round and taking away their best two players(Shore and Hutton) while adding a bunch of overage freshmen who don't seem ready to contribute right away. It could be a very very long year in Orono unless they get lucky with the freshmen class. The popular move right now is to hammer on UMass with their players getting arrested and them coming off a last place finish but they atleast can score some goals and I think that and some good freshmen D give them an edge over lowly Maine.

(Worst) Player of the Year- Kyle Huson(UConn)- Huson is just straight up not good. He recorded a good ole goosegg stat line(0-0-0) in 34 games last year. No goals no assists no talent. Boom roasted. Seriously though, if you play in 34 games, you should probably mix in an assist atleast.

(Worst) Rookie of the Year- Vincent Desharnais(PC)-This Quebec native defenseman arrives at Providence after a stellar 1-4-5 line in the BCHL. Based on last year's production from freshmen defensemen (only 7 of them) Desharnais is projected for a stellar 1.06 points this season. I could line up for the lowest scoring team in the league and put up 2 points on luck just throwing the puck at the net. Providence was third in the league last year so it will be even more embarrassing when Desharnais is involved in .813% of their goals this year. That's not good no matter how you play the game so don't give me the he is a defensive defensman BS. He is ranked by CSS as a potential late round draft pick which is most likely related to his 6'6" frame but I ain't buyin'. This kid is going to suck.

Guest Post from @BurntBoats: BC Misses Cavanaugh

Editor's note: You can follow/tweet at the author of this wonderful post on Twitter (@BurntBoats).  If you have any comments or disagreements with that he said feel free to tweet at him. If you're from North Dakota/Newton, you will probably bitch at us because your reading comprehension is lacking which is fine too because we agree with 100% of things that shed a negative light on BC Hockey/this post.

Hey again, internet pals, thanks to BSRS for continuing to let me, @BurntBoats, use their site to say things longer than 140 characters with guest posts. So let’s have at it:

If I were to walk up to a random BC hockey fan and tell them Mike “Cav” Cavanaugh is a very good college hockey coach, I would be met with thorough agreement. If I instead said it appears the Eagles program significantly misses “Cav” I would probably be told I was stupid, and then I would feel bad. Alas, I will try to fight on, and explain why I believe both of my above statements are true.

Taking a quick step back, your average college hockey program has a head coach, an associate head coach (which is a glorified title for top assistant coach) who focuses on either the defense or the forwards, an assistant coach who focuses on whichever of the previous positions the associate doesn’t, and a volunteer goalie coach. A quick look around the league and it appears to me that
10 of the 12 Hockey East schools have this format for their staff.

One of the two schools that differ from this is UML, which does not have a volunteer assistant position so the (young/virile) head coach has primary responsibility for the forwards and one assistant takes the defense while the other handles the goaltenders.

The other, as you may have guessed, is BC, but has only been in this situation recently. Until late spring 2013 BC had –remarkably – gone nearly a decade without a change in their staff, Jerry York was the head coach, associate “Cav” handled the forwards, assistant Greg Brown coached the defense, and volunteer assistant Jim Logue was in charge of the goalies.

Hockey East Pre-season Predictions

Since Hockey East Media Day is approaching and everyone and their brother is releasing their Hockey East predictions, I figured I had to release mine as well. While making predictions before the season starts usually just leaves you open to look like an idiot, I'm actually smarter than everyone else since I correctly picked BU to win Hockey East last year(and I look like an idiot most of the time anyway). The coaches' poll will come out at media day next week as well and probably be dead wrong per usual (they picked BU to finish 6th last year). Then people wonder why Quinn has such an easy time getting guys on the recruiting trail. It's pretty easy to outsmart a bunch of guys who thought last year's Northeastern and UNH teams were better than BU.

1. BU- Easy choice once again. They are the deepest/best team in the country on defense. They return all 6 of last year's dmen and add a future first round pick in Charlie MacAvoy and a solid add in Shane Switzer. They return Ahti Oksanen and Danny O'Regan up front while adding two 2015 second round picks in Jordan Greenway and Jakob Forsbacka Karlsson. They also add Robert Carpenter and Ryan Cloonan up front where they should be able to contribute to the bottom 6 forwards right away. Connor Lacouvee and Sean Maguire are going to tweet weird things and stop pucks all season. That's what every fan should want in their goalies. No good goalies are normal. Freshman Max Prawdzik seems capable to push them for time if they struggle as well.

2. Lowell- They return basically same team from last year which just missed the NCAA's. They only lose two D from their lineup and no forwards who contributed at all. The problem would be that Kevin Boyle is still their goalie and his 5 hole will probably still be wide open anytime a guy gets to the net.

Summer Update

A few things to catch up on regarding BU hockey the last month or so. First, news broke a few weeks ago that incoming freshman Maxim Letunov would be attending UConn instead of BU this fall. Letunov is a highly skilled second round draft pick. He was apparently set on coming to BU but had trouble being admitted to the university over some classes he took in his native Russia. It is certainly a tough blow to BU to lose a guy this late in the summer but the staff is the best in the country at recruiting(keep reading for further proof) and they will be just fine at forward without Letunov. There is talks that 2016 recruit Ryan Cloonan could be accelerated to this year but that doesn't seem too likely at this point.

The second loss BU suffered this month was when associate coach Steve Greeley was hired by the New York Rangers as an Assistant Director of Player Personnel. It is being reported that Director of Hockey Ops Scott Young will be promoted to assistant coach and someone will be hired to fill his position. This would certainly make the most sense as Young has coached in the past, has tons of NHL experience, is a Stanley Cup Winner, and was basically an assistant coach last year for BU(he can't talk to the players during the game due to some dumb NCAA rule but he was on the bench with the other coaches.) It will be interesting who Coach Quinn would then hire for Young's former role as he has plenty of choice with BU alums still in the game.

OFFICIAL: #NYR name Steve Greeley as Assistant Director of Player Personnel and Nickolai Bobrov as Director of European Scouting.

— New York Rangers (@NYRangers) August 13, 2015

Coach Greeley did a hell of a job in his two years back at his alma mater after he spent years as a scout in the Los Angeles Kings organization. He certainly has a great eye for talent and the type of player Coach Quinn wants on his team. A perfect example of this was a month ago when a 2016 recruit on a partial scholarship, Kole Sherwood, was signed by his hometown Columbus Bluejackets after how impressed they were with him at their developmental camp. Greeley helped find and recruit this player almost a year ago as he went undrafted in both the NHL and the CHL. Greeley helped build quite the recruiting pipeline with Young, Quinn and fellow assistant Albie O'Connell as you can see in the rudimentary slideshow below. Every BU fan should be grateful for everything Coach Greeley did for this program and we wish him luck with the Rangers going forward.