Season 2 Episode 23 of the Chasing MacNaughton Podcast from Tech Hockey Guide; “Old Dog in the House.” This week Tim Braun, Dustin Lindstrom, Rob Gilreath, Matt Cavender and the Old Dog himself, Mike Anleitner discussed Mike’s background, the NCAA Frozen Four, #NewMass, the NCAA Transfer Portal, MTU’s playing style, the CCHA countdown and your questions.
Mike’s Background
Mike has been the “Old Dog” columnist now since 2017. He broke down how he became a diehard Michigan Tech fan and how different the college hockey landscape was throughout is time as a student, etc. It was some nice background on Mike’s knowledge and experience.
NCAA Frozen Four Recap/UMass
We ended up talking very little about the Frozen Four itself, discussing UMass overcoming adversity but we ended up focusing primarily on the Minutemen and their climb from bottom-feeder with seven straight years below 0.440 win percentage, including Greg Carvel’s first year. After discussing how UMD got worn down by UMass’s speed. Tim pondered how a program like UMass managed to build such a fast program and how they climbed from generally irrelevant to two national championship games and a title in the last three seasons (with only two having a tournament).
NCAA Transfer Portal
MTU has apparently added two players via the portal and many other teams are doing similar but it will be interesting to see how MTU and the rest of college hockey deals with all these players in the portal and keeping their existing players and recruits happy.
MTU’s Playing Style
Mike asked what we all thought of MTU’s style and we got into a discussion of how the style helps/hurts the program and flowed naturally into the discussion of Shawhan’s new contract. At some point around this part of the podcast, Tim Braun mentioned Jashvina Shah, accidentally calling her Jashvina Singh. It seemed important to correct that here. We also discussed how many college kids get any chance at pro hockey and how many midget/high school players get a shot at a college scholarship as well and Dustin brought up the Bloomington Jefferson Team 1990s championship team. That team was featured in a great book by John Rosengren called “Bladed of Glory,” check it out on the link:
2021-22 Expectations and Shawhan’s Contract
Joe Shawhan signed a new contract in January which was announced recently. That detail is confusing enough but we had got a copy of the contract and its a very short addendum to the original contract that creates a revolving 3 year contract with two options. A 1-year buyout if MTU wants to sever the relationship or removing the revolving 3rd year added by June 1st of each year. We broke down our thoughts on the contract in more detail so check it out.
CCHA Countdown
Rob discussed how much he’s been enjoying the CCHA countdown to the launch of what we think is a new website. This was even before John Scott’s tweet dropped (see below). The conference really seems to be a good job of getting some big names to participate in this countdown and we look forward to see what the future holds for the league.
Cut For Time
We had a segment related to the transfer portal discussing overrecruiting by Mel Pearson. Mike made a comment about being upset about MTU and it’s history struggling while teams like UMD, BSU, and Minnesota State have success without the history and tradition. On the topic of Joe Shawhan and his contract, we had a long segment cut for time about fundraising and dicussing the locker room culture. The last thing cut for time was a question from a patron about the failure of keeping Carson Bantle make it harder for MTU to get draft pick level prospects in the future.
Learn More
For additional information and more episode liner notes, check out our episode overview on Tech Hockey Guide. To make sure we can afford all our fancy equipment we purchased for the podcast and the THG website in general, please check out our patreon page and consider joining. Patrons at our Black Level or above receive an authentic MTU jersey patch and access to extra podcast content including extended versions of our other episodes. This week’s extended version is about 97 minutes including a 14 minute segment on Minnesota High School Hockey.
Follow us on twitter at ChasingMacPod and you can submit questions through our email address, ChasingMac@techhockeyguide.com. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Please rate and review which will help us reach more people, and tell your friends. Please check out Jonathan Zamaites series previews every Friday and Mike Anleitner’s Old Dog in Texas column every Wednesday (you should definitely read this week’s column). Also, keep an eye out for new recruiting articles on Tuesdays. As always, special thanks to our patron saint Doc McResin for his generous donation to get this thing running, we hope you enjoy. Also, thanks to The Thank You Notes for all the bumpers in today’s episode. If you like what you hear, check them out at thethankyounotes.bandcamp.com
Tim is a 2004 graduate of Michigan Tech. He is a co-founder of both Mitch’s Misfits and Tech Hockey Guide. With recent additions to the staff, Tim is again able to focus on his passion, recruiting. He currently works as an environmental engineer and resides in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Area.
