Season 5, Episodes 29 and 30 of the Chasing MacNaughton Podcast from Tech Hockey Guide; A Big Secret and If Grandma Had. This week, Tim Braun, Dustin Lindstrom, Rob Gilreath and Matt Cavender were joined by THG’s own recruiting guru, Nathan Cima. In these episodes they discussed Michigan Tech’s recruiting, the recently completed World Junior Championship and Michigan Tech’s upcoming series against St. Thomas.
The recruiting trail
Nathan started off the episode sharing his origin story of how he became THG’s recruiting master. He said it was mostly due to Tim pestering him after seeing Nathan posting on THG’s Discord about new recruits.
The guys then took a nose dive into the recruiting weeds and discussed some of Michigan Tech’s upcoming recruits. They started with one recruit who appears to no longer be playing hockey at any level. The next recruit discussed is a goalie and Nathan didn’t think will contribute right away, but could develop into a decent starter.
Matt threw the conversation off the rails and asked Nathan who he wanted to see play more from Michigan Tech’s current lineup. Nathan talked about being a big Henry Bartle fan and wanting to see him on a line with Tyrone Bronte. Nathan also talked about having to be patient with the incoming freshman that Michigan Tech recruits as they may not be used to the speed of Division I hockey.
Getting back to recruiting, Tim brought up that there are five potential forwards that could be coming to Michigan Tech next year. The group was unsure about whether one of them was still committed to Michigan Tech, and Nathan talked about a second having a poor season in Juniors. The guys spent some time talking about the connection to Finland that Michigan Tech developed in recent years. Tim talked about the difficulty in piecing together the recruiting puzzle based on when the Finnish recruits actually come to Michigan Tech. The guys also discussed the log jam of defenseman that Michigan Tech has recruiting. Tim thought some of the jam was created by Michigan Tech recruiting players before the coaches knew who was going to be moving via the transfer portal.
Later in the show there was a listener question for Nathan. The question asked where he would want to see Michigan Tech begin recruiting, what they can improve in their recruiting process and where he’d like to see them recruit from more. Nathan put the recent recruiting success largely on Jordy Murray, and said it was nice to see Michigan Tech get back to recruiting in western Canada. Nathan thought that Michigan Tech could improve its recruiting in the USHL, but said that Michigan Tech will never land the top NHL draft picks and that they should focus on recruiting the second and third tier players. Tim talked about Michigan Tech finding the late bloomers in the USHL.
Exhibition game & St. Thomas preview
The guys briefly discussed Michigan Tech’s exhibition game last weekend against Northern Michigan. They all agreed that they liked seeing Austen Swankler’s play and hoped it continued through the second half of the season.
Moving to Michigan Tech’s upcoming game against St. Thomas, Tim started by moaning about St. Thomas being good which, he believes, caused the upcoming games to be sold out. Tim also talked about the group of Misfits that are making the trip to St. Thomas. The guys talked about the CCHA being a one-bid NCAA Tournament league.
Getting into predictions, Nathan started with picking a split with Michigan Tech winning Thursday (no that’s not a typo, the games are Thursday/Saturday this week) and St. Thomas winning Saturday. Rob also picked a split. Matt and Tim took the homer road this week and picked a Michigan Tech sweep. Dustin was the doom and gloom of the group and picked a St. Thomas sweep.
Cut for time
This week’s cut time for Patrons is approximately 7 minutes long. The guys talked about Canada missing out on the medal round at the World Junior Championship. There was extended conversation on the World Junior Championships. The guys discussed some of the their favorite podcasts.
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 102minutes.
RAW AUDIO: This post is for patrons at the Silver Level ($25/ mo) or above which includes unedited audio and usually drops the night the podcast is recordeded.
RAW VIDEO: This post is for patrons at the Gold Level ($10/mo) or above which includes unedited video and usually drops the morning after the podcast is recorded.
EXTENDED AUDIO: This post is for patrons at the Black Level ($5/mo) or above which includes extended audio content and usually drops the night after or 2nd morning after the podcast is recorded.
Mitch’s Misfits Amazon wishlist is still having items added as we figure it out, but you can take a look by clicking here and a reminder, if you rate the Podcast 5-stars, we’ll read your review on the podcast. Thanks again to our sponsors: Arcadia Insurance Group and Aaron Pieltia, Fiebke Dental in downtown Rhinelander, Wis. and Livonia Technical Services.
Follow us on twitter at ChasingMacPod. Join our Discord server for discussions covering Michigan Tech hockey and more. You can submit questions through our email address, ChasingMac@techhockeyguide.com. Don’t forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Please rate and review to help us reach more people, and tell your friends. Please check out Jonathan Zamaites’ series previews every Friday, Mike Anleitner’s Old Dog in Texas column every Wednesday, Zach Aufdemberge’s Analytics With Augie and Nathaniel Brose’s nationwide hockey columns. Also, keep an eye out for new recruiting articles that Nathan Cima writes. 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.
