Season 6 Episodes 17 & 18 of the Chasing MacNaughton Podcast from Tech Hockey Guide; Youth Movement and Tomato Smoothie. This week, Tim Braun, Rob Gilreath and Matt Cavender were joined by Jack Hittenger, who covers the CCHA for USCHO.com. In this episode they discussed the CCHA’s performance so far this season, everyone’s thoughts on Michigan Tech’s season to date, the early national pairwise rankings and the changes to the NCAA rules allowing CHL athletes to play.
CCHA season review
The guys started off the conversation by taking a twenty thousand foot view of the CCHA to date. Jack had a couple teams he was surprised by and a couple he was not surprised by. He talked about Minnesota State continuing to carry the banner for the league and his lack of surprise at Michigan Tech’s success. Jack also expressed concern at Michigan Tech’s lack of scoring this season.
A lot of the discussion focused on Augustana and the season they’ve been having. Tim didn’t know whether their shortened schedule would be an advantage or disadvantage to their chances of winning the league. Jack talked about Augustana’s roster and some of the success they’ve had in recruiting kids from smaller market locations. Jack thought that Augustana would be in the mix for home ice in the CCHA playoffs come the end of the season.
Jack was most surprised at the seasons St. Thomas and Bemidji State have been having. He struggled to put his finger on what’s happening at Bemidji State and Tim talked about what the team lost in scoring. Jack thought that Northern Michigan has been impressive at time given their roster turnover and Matt talked about the expected growing pains for the team. Tim talked about Northern Michigan having a lot more fight than he expected and how they’ll only get better as they continue building team cohesion throughout the season.
Later in the show the guys circled around to Ferris State and all of them were happy with how Ferris State has performed during their non-conference games. The guys also took bets on when Ferris State head coach Bob Daniels would get win number 500. Rob thought it would happen this upcoming weekend, Matt thought it would happen in early December when Ferris State plays Northern Michigan and Jack agreed with Matt but thought it would be funny if the win came at the end of December when Ferris State plays Wisconsin.
Midco Sports
Along with reviewing the CCHA to date, the guys took a few minutes to share their thoughts on Midco Sports so far this season. Rob and Tim were both happy with the service. Tim made sure to point out that nearly all of the issues that users have been experiencing are caused by the schools not uploading content correctly or in a timely manner. Matt expressed frustration that Flo Sports picked up the AHL rights immediately after the CCHA left.
Michigan Tech season review
With Michigan Tech on a bye this week, the guys took time to review the season so far. Jack said he hasn’t been able to watch much of Michigan Tech’s games but did catch some of their series against Clarkson as well as the condensed games against Northern Michigan. The guys talked about Michigan Tech’s lack of offensive production at times and Tim talked about needing more scoring from the guys who were expected to lead the stat sheet at the start of the season. Rob said he was pleasantly surprised with how the season has started but was sad that Tech couldn’t get a split with Clarkson. Tim agreed the Clarkson series was frustrating and also talked about some of Tech’s players such as Owen Baker need to continue to step up their level of play as the season progresses. The guys talked about how young of a team Michigan Tech is and Matt thought it was great that such a young team has been getting wins early in the season.
Rob asked the group for their thoughts on Tech’s goalie rotation to start the season. Tim was thrilled with how the split has played out and talked about Joe Shawhan’s philosophy of deciding who gets to play the second game of each weekend. Matt talked about the importance of maintaining a good locker room relationship between the goalies and how building each other up can help them play at a higher level.
Random end of show topics
It was one of those weeks where the guys spent approximately half a second on several topics to end the show. Tim debuted a new weekly segment called “JZ’s silly questions”. Rob and Matt talked about souvenir cups at Tech hockey games. Jack plugged his USCHO column and hopefully upcoming conversation with Lake Superior State head coach Damon Whitten. Rob talked about LSSU being ranked first nationally on the penalty kill percentage. The guys speculated on the age-to-NCAA tournament success ratio of hockey teams. Tim plugged all of the social media outlets that THG is active on.
CHL eligibility
A good portion of episode 18 was dedicated to talking about the CHL players becoming eligible to play in the NCAA. The guys discussed rumors that several USHL teams will be moving to the OHL due to the rule change. Tim expressed concern at NCAA coaches already being stretched thin for recruiting time and how adding an extra three leagues worth of teams will add to that burden. Jack thought some of that burden would be mitigated by the connections that NCAA already have within those leagues. Jack also threw out the idea that some of the smaller Canadian leagues might merge and create larger leagues with better infrastructure. Matt was also curious to see how the new eligibility rules affected the landscape of the NCAA. He didn’t think it would change much for the top CHL players, but thought that some of the lower level players could gain a lot by going to play at the NCAA level. Tim added to this point and talked about how the larger pool of available players could help to grow the game.
Cut for time
This week’s cut time for Patron’s is approximately 9 minutes long. There was a conversation about some old traditions of the Lake Superior State hockey team. There was a discussion on the impact scoring players that Bemidji State lost from last season. The guys talked about stats being inflated or deflated early in the season based on teams’ schedules. Matt talked his job driving a zamboni. Matt ranted about his hate for the ACHA.
Learn more
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