Harvard @ Cornell, 12/2/2022

[Chris '03]

I don't have the numbers, but "Harvard had a lot of draft picks in the past" and "they had more than [nationally significant team] in [given year]" aren't claims that dispute whether Harvard, in 2022-23, has the most draft picks of any team.

I don't think draft picks are everything, and if they are a significant measure of talent, then we can all point and laugh at Harvard for underachieving, but Bearlover's point still stands. Either Harvard does or does not have the most draft picks this season. No sense arguing about facts.

I agree with you, Dafatone. Well said.

But I am going to dispute the claim as a fact. I had a few minutes to click links and quickly found at least one team with more NHL draft picks on their roster than Harvard. It took me 3 tries checking the rosters on College Hockey News. Minnesota has 14. Harvard 13. "Harvard currently has more draft picks than any other program" is a false, un-cited claim that we let float around here as "fact" for a week.

BU 12. UND & Michigan 11. Wisconsin has 10. Penn State has 2. "Most draft picks" does not equal "most raw talent." I leave it as an exercise of the reader to see where those teams currently stand. This is why after the early '00s, I stopped caring about the draftees on our or opposing rosters. Sure, it's a neat factoid. If anything, age and maturity (however you define it) mean as much at this level. Quinnipiac has 10 players over the age of 23 and 2 draft picks. There are many formulas for success here. You really have to have the right mix of recruiting, coaching, maturity, and chemistry.  (Oh, those intangibles I hate to mention!)

Rhetorical fail here when you say "Most draft picks" does not equal "most raw talent."

If you had said that most picks <> team with best record on the year, or similar, I'd concur.

I actually agree with bearlover on this one.  # of draft picks is a decent proxy for "raw talent". Absent a metric that factors the actual draft positions this has got to be the best we've got.  It has to be - there's a reason pro teams spend so much money on scouting and drafting, right?

A  better indicator would probably be something like adding up the actual draft positions in some fashion and doing some data massage or normalization, but I've not figured out a simple algorithm at the moment.

For example, With so many first rounders, and a bunch of them top 5 or 10 picks, Michigan probably has  more total raw talent than anyone; and 3 top 10 picks or whatever ought to constitute more aggregate raw talent than having 6 3rd rounders.

Let's not confuse raw talent, which is a measure of potential, with measures of actual success.

I think this draft pick argument is mostly silly because pro potential tomorrow is not collegiate success today.  I also think that if Cornell was the team with 15 draft picks, there'd be a lot of chest thumping around here about how talented the team is because "look at the draft picks!"

That said, I've always viewed the NHL draft as drafting players with *potential* to play at a high level.  A vanishingly few of those picks are pro ready on draft day (and those that are almost never set foot on campus) and for the rest, teams are betting on future development.  They aren't right 100% of the time.  They also aren't drafting kids who are likely to have projected ceilings lower than what would give the club value. College hockey games are won and lost by players on the ice now, not by their potential to be pros.  Duluth and Q come to mind as teams that have built success through older players rather than having success signing blue chippahs.  How many national titles has Michigan and its annual draft bounty won since the turn of the century? The same number as Harvard and Cornell. 19 Michigan alums are in the NHL this year. None have ncaa rings. Does potential talent have a role to play in building a quality team? Of course.  Is it a proxy for success on the ice *today*? In the absence of anything else, sure.  But I don't think it's so simple because the draft is about ceilings and potential.  If it were a great proxy for talent today, you'd expect the Hobey to go to a high draft pick every year.  Of all Hobey winners since 2010, I think 6 are in the NHL today and 2-3 were first rounders. Since I keep using Michigan as an example, its last Hobey winner was drafted 114th.

So I get why it's an attractive debate, I just don't put a ton of stock in it.

[Trotsky]

I don't have the numbers, but "Harvard had a lot of draft picks in the past" and "they had more than [nationally significant team] in [given year]" aren't claims that dispute whether Harvard, in 2022-23, has the most draft picks of any team.

I don't think draft picks are everything, and if they are a significant measure of talent, then we can all point and laugh at Harvard for underachieving, but Bearlover's point still stands. Either Harvard does or does not have the most draft picks this season. No sense arguing about facts.

I agree with you, Dafatone. Well said.

But I am going to dispute the claim as a fact. I had a few minutes to click links and quickly found at least one team with more NHL draft picks on their roster than Harvard. It took me 3 tries checking the rosters on College Hockey News. Minnesota has 14. Harvard 13. "Harvard currently has more draft picks than any other program" is a false, un-cited claim that we let float around here as "fact" for a week.

BU 12. UND & Michigan 11. Wisconsin has 10. Penn State has 2. "Most draft picks" does not equal "most raw talent." I leave it as an exercise of the reader to see where those teams currently stand. This is why after the early '00s, I stopped caring about the draftees on our or opposing rosters. Sure, it's a neat factoid. If anything, age and maturity (however you define it) mean as much at this level. Quinnipiac has 10 players over the age of 23 and 2 draft picks. There are many formulas for success here. You really have to have the right mix of recruiting, coaching, maturity, and chemistry.  (Oh, those intangibles I hate to mention!)

Rhetorical fail here when you say "Most draft picks" does not equal "most raw talent."

If you had said that most picks <> team with best record on the year, or similar, I'd concur.

I actually agree with bearlover on this one.  # of draft picks is a decent proxy for "raw talent". Absent a metric that factors the actual draft positions this has got to be the best we've got.  It has to be - there's a reason pro teams spend so much money on scouting and drafting, right?

A  better indicator would probably be something like adding up the actual draft positions in some fashion and doing some data massage or normalization, but I've not figured out a simple algorithm at the moment.

For example, With so many first rounders, and a bunch of them top 5 or 10 picks, Michigan probably has  more total raw talent than anyone; and 3 top 10 picks or whatever ought to constitute more aggregate raw talent than having 6 3rd rounders.

Let's not confuse raw talent, which is a measure of potential, with measures of actual success.

I think this draft pick argument is mostly silly because pro potential tomorrow is not collegiate success today.  I also think that if Cornell was the team with 15 draft picks, there'd be a lot of chest thumping around here about how talented the team is because "look at the draft picks!"

That said, I've always viewed the NHL draft as drafting players with *potential* to play at a high level.  A vanishingly few of those picks are pro ready on draft day (and those that are almost never set foot on campus) and for the rest, teams are betting on future development.  They aren't right 100% of the time.  They also aren't drafting kids who are likely to have projected ceilings lower than what would give the club value. College hockey games are won and lost by players on the ice now, not by their potential to be pros.  Duluth and Q come to mind as teams that have built success through older players rather than having success signing blue chippahs.  How many national titles has Michigan and its annual draft bounty won since the turn of the century? The same number as Harvard and Cornell. 19 Michigan alums are in the NHL this year. None have ncaa rings. Does potential talent have a role to play in building a quality team? Of course.  Is it a proxy for success on the ice *today*? In the absence of anything else, sure.  But I don't think it's so simple because the draft is about ceilings and potential.  If it were a great proxy for talent today, you'd expect the Hobey to go to a high draft pick every year.  Of all Hobey winners since 2010, I think 6 are in the NHL today and 2-3 were first rounders. Since I keep using Michigan as an example, its last Hobey winner was drafted 114th.

So I get why it's an attractive debate, I just don't put a ton of stock in it.

All of this.  Plus, as has been noted before, picks can come with opportunity cost.  Building your squad around guys who leave early forces you to constantly reload.

So of course it's good to have high draft picks on your team, but there are some downsides too.

[adamw]

I'd disagree that Harvard hasn't underachieved. The narrative still holds. The fact that the large amount of draft picks is being touted - with a bigger discrepancy vis-a-vis Cornell than past years - only proves the point. Just because Harvard has more consistently made the NCAAs recently, doesn't mean anything. With all that "talent," it should be making Frozen Fours. Harvard made the NCAAs 5 straight years, and won two ECAC titles, in the Mazzoleni era and never won an NCAA game. Harvard always underachieves, and it's no different now than it has been. They shouldn't just be making the NCAAs.

[adamw]

But I am going to dispute the claim as a fact. I had a few minutes to click links and quickly found at least one team with more NHL draft picks on their roster than Harvard. It took me 3 tries checking the rosters on College Hockey News. Minnesota has 14. Harvard 13. "Harvard currently has more draft picks than any other program" is a false, un-cited claim that we let float around here as "fact" for a week.

It's 15 - I just updated it. Sometimes when a player is drafted, they are not yet committed to a school so our automation doesn't match them up at that time. I just added Langenbrunner and Ian Moore's draft info.

[RichH]

But I am going to dispute the claim as a fact. I had a few minutes to click links and quickly found at least one team with more NHL draft picks on their roster than Harvard. It took me 3 tries checking the rosters on College Hockey News. Minnesota has 14. Harvard 13. "Harvard currently has more draft picks than any other program" is a false, un-cited claim that we let float around here as "fact" for a week.

It's 15 - I just updated it. Sometimes when a player is drafted, they are not yet committed to a school so our automation doesn't match them up at that time. I just added Langenbrunner and Ian Moore's draft info.

Thanks Adam, and thanks to Dunc & BearLover for posting the source document. I withdraw my dispute of that fact, and want to commend everyone for this interesting and civil  discussion of different viewpoints. ELynah remains the weirdest place to love.

[French Rage]

Harvard made the NCAAs 5 straight years, and won two ECAC titles, in the Mazzoleni era and never won an NCAA game.

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[osorojo]

Currently 5 or 6 other D-1 hockey teams from universities with a fraction of the wealth of Harvard are more highly ranked than Harvard. This is no surprise, it's the norm. Suggesting the success of a college hockey program (see above) results from the wealth of a university is just silly.

[BearLover]

Currently 5 or 6 other D-1 hockey teams from universities with a fraction of the wealth of Harvard are more highly ranked than Harvard. This is no surprise, it's the norm. Suggesting the success of a college hockey program (see above) results from the wealth of a university is just silly.

When/where did anyone suggest the success of a college hockey program results from the wealth of a university?

[Scersk '97]

Currently 5 or 6 other D-1 hockey teams from universities with a fraction of the wealth of Harvard are more highly ranked than Harvard. This is no surprise, it's the norm. Suggesting the success of a college hockey program (see above) results from the wealth of a university is just silly.

When/where did anyone suggest the success of a college hockey program results from the wealth of a university?

See, this is why I think this "guy" is a bot. He's like a college hockey discussion etch-a-sketch. Shake him up and then draw up a completely new, irrelevant troll-ish comment.

[Trotsky]

See, this is why I think this "guy" is a bot. He's like a college hockey discussion etch-a-sketch. Shake him up and then draw up a completely new, irrelevant troll-ish comment.

This is the perfect operational definition of a pundit.

[nshapiro]

Currently 5 or 6 other D-1 hockey teams from universities with a fraction of the wealth of Harvard are more highly ranked than Harvard. This is no surprise, it's the norm. Suggesting the success of a college hockey program (see above) results from the wealth of a university is just silly.

When/where did anyone suggest the success of a college hockey program results from the wealth of a university?

See, this is why I think this "guy" is a bot. He's like a college hockey discussion etch-a-sketch. Shake him up and then draw up a completely new, irrelevant troll-ish comment.

Very funny, but he does often come back with attempts to defend his claims, including quotes from previous posts.  I think he is just a mean old alum mad at the world because they are pureeing his filet mignon.

[osorojo]

I'm a cranky old alum who was fortunate to be around when Lynah was built, when Cornell dominated the Ivy league for years on end, when the Cornell hockey team was the best college hockey team in the nation, when attendance at Lynah was SRO for years on end. This experience makes me cringe when I come across justifications for the status quo of C.U. men's varsity ice hockey. I prefer to harbor unrealistic expectations for success rather than  logical explanations for failure. All us Bots feel this way.

[Scersk '97]

I'm a cranky old alum who was fortunate to be around when Lynah was built, when Cornell dominated the Ivy league for years on end, when the Cornell hockey team was the best college hockey team in the nation, when attendance at Lynah was SRO for years on end. This experience makes me cringe when I come across justifications for the status quo of C.U. men's varsity ice hockey. I prefer to harbor unrealistic expectations for success rather than  logical explanations for failure. All us Bots feel this way.

Fine, fine, fine. I shake your hand after looking through your post history. Yet you were so satisfied back in 2019–20. What happened? That didn't come out of nowhere, you know.

Thing is, I'm a cranky oldish alum, too. And I was a townie before I came: saw Schafer play a game, although I don't remember him or it much. (5–4 win over Western Ontario.) My thought for you is this: You can shake your fist at clouds as much as you want, but we humans have very little control over the weather. The winds of change have blown through college hockey (and higher education as a whole) many, many times since the 1960s, and what was possible then from a coach's standpoint is almost definitely not possible today.

Would I like to see us in the Frozen Four every year? You betcha. Not going to happen. As long as we're constantly competitive in league and often competitive nationally, I'm quite content. I think we've had that ever since Schafer brought the team back from a long downward slide. Everything that comes after that high level of competitiveness is just the result of a number of weighted coin flips. I can be patient. Once I can't be patient anymore, college hockey will not be the first thing on my mind.

[billhoward]

I think he is just a mean old alum mad at the world because they are pureeing his filet mignon.

Perhaps eLynah will be cited as one of the proofs of the Turing Test. The footnote will say that when the maybe-machine injects occasional malapropisms, odd statements and circular logic, the man-thing becomes more believable as human not computer.

[billhoward]

Instead of marching and chanting, "Thanks a lot, Dean Malott," could you have marched in favor of a Lynah roofline say 10 feet higher? We need better video sightlines.