Your top returning D man for next year has 4 points in 22 games. Neither Phillips nor Grimes will come in and do anything offensively. It is an absolute disaster for next year as you have zero top four defensemen and you will not find more than two top four defensemen this late in the game.
I have a pretty solid feeling, if you’re willing to go for it and offer them a role and possible NIL, that there are more than certainly going to be defensemen in the portal who can play top 4 minutes given there are a bunch doing exactly that this year.
Bookman and Wallberg look good at WMU. Robertson has 15 points at Michigan. Ralph has been solid at MSU. ditto on Sabo at OSU. Gadowsky moved (he’s looked meh to me but he still can eat minutes as a top 4). Dubinsky doing same at Wisconsin. Haven’t watched much St. Cloud so can’t speak on smoliniski or loftus, but both are producing nicely
You will have to pay/recruit these guys hard (and have Bob or whoever is the coach actually realize that this is a problem, which it would be pretty hard to realize he realizes that given he’s sat multiple of them this year and is playing Mitts and Thomas 30min a night), but the portal will have help again this year, including one-two year guys who don’t mess much with your future incoming guys timelines as I’m pretty sure we all agree we have multiple guys on the team it would be perfectly fine if they go back to being practice players only
They don’t all need to come in and light up the stat sheets. They need guys who can play smart hockey, play with some speed, and start a breakout while not making the number of mistakes these guys are
I feel alright about whipple playing top 4. The rest yeah it’s hard to feel real good about where they’ll be, but some of this is made worse by how badly they’re hemmed in continually too