Gopher Hockey Recruiting

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Now we wait to see if he accelerates. I think he will and Reid will go elsewhere. One or both of Katz and Nevers could decommit, too.

Good point made on Sioux Sports. Brooks may decommit from MSU as they can now get CHL guys so he could end up a Gopher too if that happens.

This would be a solid forward class.
Kvasnicka
Cullen
Cullen
CHL first rounder
Best of Katz/Nevers/Reid/someone else
 



Brooks: 2025 or 2026
Wyatt: 2025 or 2026
Joey: 2027

I'm blanking. Have the Gophers ever had a line of three brothers?
 

that is a hell of a pull by Bob. really no other way to say it.

and yes, think most MN fans would much rather go this route than CHL (for better or worse; I'd rather have best player, but this is part of the brand).
 


upnorthkid said:
that is a hell of a pull by Bob. really no other way to say it.

and yes, think most MN fans would much rather go this route than CHL (for better or worse; I'd rather have best player, but this is part of the brand).
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Gophers still need a few Canadian superstars to compete.
 

bonin21 said:
Gophers still need a few Canadian superstars to compete.
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high tier guys can come from wherever (whether MN, Canada, Pittsburgh, Arizona, or wherever). if you do what the U should do and pull heavily in the MN crop, that's just fine. you don't NEED canadians but that does mean you need to really excel pulling guys locally and from the NTDP/US. this is next level dramatic.
 

I am not a scout by any means but the few times I have seen Vanek play he doesn't strike me as a high end college player - that said some pro scouts clearly disagree based on where he was drafted.
 

upnorthkid said:
high tier guys can come from wherever (whether MN, Canada, Pittsburgh, Arizona, or wherever). if you do what the U should do and pull heavily in the MN crop, that's just fine. you don't NEED canadians but that does mean you need to really excel pulling guys locally and from the NTDP/US. this is next level dramatic.
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Sure. Top 15 picks. I don't care where they come from. Just seems the American classes have been down lately at the top end.

Before it was first round picks. But now with all the Canadians eligible to come down, the standard has shifted.
 



bonin21 said:
Sure. Top 15 picks. I don't care where they come from. Just seems the American classes have been down lately at the top end.

Before it was first round picks. But now with all the Canadians eligible to come down, the standard has shifted.
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yeah going to vary year by year. you benefit greatly from having 1-2 high end guys. this year and last year looks ugly because the Canadians prospects were way better than the rest of the world and particularly US ones (20 1st round Canadians this year, 19 last year; 13 the year prior, 9 the year before that).

you just need 1-2 of those to put best opportunity forward but its got to be on top of a roster of other good players (there's a reason Providence is not now thought as a contender just because of McQueen).

Going to be really interesting to see how the dynamic changes and if the stream this year looks way "worse" because there were so many Canadians this year who were 1st rounders, or if it ends up being 3-4/year. The McKennas/Celebrinis/Fantillis will still be the rarity of them. The rest I'm super interested to see how it goes, and how many of them have any loyalty to stick around or if they skew back to doing what some are doing and stick to Canada like Carter Bear or what it looks like Desnoyers may do with understanding they're only playing 1 more year prior to going pro. To us in the US it seems like a pretty easy choice from a resources side, but I'd envision this is going to be a call to action on behalf of the Canadian Jr programs to dump in more resources to keep guys now to outcompete the USHL and try keep some of their stars versus see them go play college. You won't compete with the 800k for McKenna, but you can for some of the 2nd tier guys given you're promising staying home.
 

bonin21 said:
Brooks: 2025 or 2026
Wyatt: 2025 or 2026
Joey: 2027

I'm blanking. Have the Gophers ever had a line of three brothers?
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Good question.

Searching the memory banks its micheletti that didn’t play same time.

I don’t believe the Brotens crossed paths.

Maybe the Pohl brothers, but don’t recall if the youngest played.

Maybe Reilly bros?

Trying to think of any other brothers pairs or triples that are possible.
 

I think it's never happened. One of the Reillys was a D man.

The triplets at BSU, of course. I think the Plantes will probably play together in a couple years at UMD.
 

atsgopher said:
Good question.

Searching the memory banks its micheletti that didn’t play same time.

I don’t believe the Brotens crossed paths.

Maybe the Pohl brothers, but don’t recall if the youngest played.

Maybe Reilly bros?

Trying to think of any other brothers pairs or triples that are possible.
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no trios as linemates unless there's someone random from the early years where records were less well kept. Only trios I think were split between forward and D as Bonin mentions
 



Many people sure do seem to act like every commitment is a five star recruit and say "Bob was never out!". Long way to go with that looking at the overall pipeline including getting a 4.5 or 5 star recruit this cycle. Especially on D where you have Phillips who could turn out in many ways and Grimes who is not very good at hockey. And no one else.
 

bonin21 said:
Many people sure do seem to act like every commitment is a five star recruit and say "Bob was never out!". Long way to go with that looking at the overall pipeline including getting a 4.5 or 5 star recruit this cycle. Especially on D where you have Phillips who could turn out in many ways and Grimes who is not very good at hockey. And no one else.
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on facebook or? The only one bringing up star ratings is you man. Great start to this period and adding Brooks adds backwards effectively to what was a dry class before. Hopefully this means, and I'd expect it does, that Bob has no issue with moving on from some of the guys he has committed or telling them they're coming here in a Michel capacity.

Speaking of star ratings given you love them, apparently 4star players (PuckPreps ratings) mean kids who are not very good at hockey. Got it. Really rough seeing 3star guys commit to d1 programs. Probably can't even skate. Grimes just turned 18 and has played 2 years as an underager in the USHL. The good portion is they have not rushed him in. Let's see what the year shows, same as for Philips. Would suspect the D offers are a little smaller so far with 2 guys graduating this year with 2 Fr incoming and 2 more in the pipeline with only Begley and Rud set to leave the following year. Would love to see them try land a higher end transfer/CHLer/or only top tier/1st round pick type player this early

they're good pickups so far. None is an absolute gamebreaker yet (and there's probably not one in this MN class on paper at this point in their development). But this definitely a very solid start to the class.
 

upnorthkid said:
on facebook or?
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GPL and Twitter, but I think it's also because the For You feed on twitter is often the same handful of people many of which I think are basically college students running Gopher recruiting accounts.

As far as D, if you graduate Mittelstadt and Thomas and have this as your D next year, it's going to be PAINFUL and another lost season.

Rud
Begley
Gruba
Whipple
McLaughlin
Rombach
Phillips
Grimes
(8)

You need to add at least a first rounder and a second rounder for that to be a legit potential to contend D unit.

He should be trying to sell Ridder Arena to pay for Landon Dupont for a year.
 

bonin21 said:
GPL and Twitter, but I think it's also because the For You feed on twitter is often the same handful of people many of which I think are basically college students running Gopher recruiting accounts.

As far as D, if you graduate Mittelstadt and Thomas and have this as your D next year, it's going to be PAINFUL and another lost season.

Rud
Begley
Gruba
Whipple
McLaughlin
Rombach
Phillips
Grimes
(8)

You need to add at least a first rounder and a second rounder for that to be a legit potential to contend D unit.

He should be trying to sell Ridder Arena to pay for Landon Dupont for a year.
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yep hence why I say I'm not super "concerned" about the D recruiting for right now as that unit likely needs help for the year after unless we get pleasantly surprised by multiple guys, especially given the runway for defensemen is longer. Rombach hopefully will take another step this year to be your shutdown guy and add some offense. Maybe upper classmen Gruba can look like what Koster was a times, but yes you're lacking a high end offensive defensemen in that crew and hopefully you could bring them in from the portal or CHL so they're ready to go from day 1.

Dupont an option. There are a decent number of 2026 draft eligible CHLers still on market as well
 

bonin21 said:
Many people sure do seem to act like every commitment is a five star recruit and say "Bob was never out!". Long way to go with that looking at the overall pipeline including getting a 4.5 or 5 star recruit this cycle. Especially on D where you have Phillips who could turn out in many ways and Grimes who is not very good at hockey. And no one else.
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You act like 5 star recruit means anything. Parker Trottier is a 5 star recruit and the second ranked MN player and just had one of the worst seasons statistically for a forward for the NTDP ever with 5 points. He went from the lowest scoring forward on his Shattuck team to the lowest scoring forward on the U17 team. Wyatt Cullen had 6x the points while being a grade below. You made numerous posts on multiple forums bashing Bob for missing out on all the Cullens before it even happened and now he seemingly has a chance to land them all but now they don’t have enough stars from some historically inaccurate clickbait website? Give me a break
 

mngopher52 said:
You act like 5 star recruit means anything. Parker Trottier is a 5 star recruit and the second ranked MN player and just had one of the worst seasons statistically for a forward for the NTDP ever with 5 points. He went from the lowest scoring forward on his Shattuck team to the lowest scoring forward on the U17 team. Wyatt Cullen had 6x the points while being a grade below. You made numerous posts on multiple forums bashing Bob for missing out on all the Cullens before it even happened and now he seemingly has a chance to land them all but now they don’t have enough stars from some historically inaccurate clickbait website? Give me a break
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Cullen is still the third best Minnesotan on the team. Good player but we're going to need more to compete with teams getting players like Mckenna and Martone...
 

bonin21 said:
Cullen is still the third best Minnesotan on the team. Good player but we're going to need more to compete with teams getting players like Mckenna and Martone...
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one would hope Porter Martone as a first rounder is better than a kid 2 years younger than him. Would be like comparing his 35 pts in 61 games in the OHL in 22-23 to Fantilli and saying he is meh.

he's a good player. it's a good pickup. it's ok to say so. still a team game and if you purge the rest of PSU or MSU rosters and put it with just those guys they're not going to be great (see providence) the same way both PSU and MSU were still top 5 title contenders before those 2 guys signed to start the year.

Predicting this shit this far out, there are very, very few guys that anyone has any idea about. McKenna is one of those guys everyone has known from day 1. He and Martone are totally different stratospheres. Cullen absolutely could grow on a Martone scale. we'll see. just chill man. it's ok to be happy that bob has shown some life on the trail early this year
 

bonin21 said:
Many people sure do seem to act like every commitment is a five star recruit and say "Bob was never out!". Long way to go with that looking at the overall pipeline including getting a 4.5 or 5 star recruit this cycle. Especially on D where you have Phillips who could turn out in many ways and Grimes who is not very good at hockey. And no one else.
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Some people sure seem to hate every player the Gophers recruit. I guess the 3 recent ones have not read about the crime going on in Dinkytown, right Bonin? I'm sure you will be ripping on the Cullens in the near future.
 


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