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With a schedule with no guaranteed wins, a road win as a dog is a nice way to open the season. The midfield lines remind me of a couple of Big U’s GT teams where the second was really the first.

Carson Brown started out a little shaky but looked really good in the second half. Notable that he, Collison, Phillips were on the field in Q4.

molo wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 9:19 pm With a schedule with no guaranteed wins, a road win as a dog is a nice way to open the season. The midfield lines remind me of a couple of Big U’s GT teams where the second was really the first.

Yep

molo wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 9:19 pm With a schedule with no guaranteed wins, a road win as a dog is a nice way to open the season. The midfield lines remind me of a couple of Big U’s GT teams where the second was really the first.

They seem interchangeable to me and played about the same amount. Americans Bauer, Grimes, and McDermott on line 1 and Canadians Peshko, Phillips, Collison on line 2. Chauvette also got time with the 2s, he's from Ohio but went to Culver so is an honorary Canadian.

And that was without Evans (American) and English (Canadian). Might be some depth there? Still nobody really blowing by their man with athleticism but some good chemistry and finishing, and Collison is still settling in.

Congratulations to the program. A lot of growth and other things to be proud of. The stream was rough maybe for me and I was learning a bunch of numbers.
Up
-Heck of a job from Marcille and the faceoff guys. That's tier 1 d1 depth being able to start guys like that on the road and win games because of them.
-At the end of the broadcast the announcers said "Hopkins is getting 2nd and 3rd chances all night here" "Hopkins is winning contested balls 80/20". Just priceless comments we haven't heard for years. Galloway talked about the hopkins size and speed and you could really see the size. Some of the early goals trickled in-that's extra conditioning and offseason work.
-Petro always made a huge focus of ending and starting halves. the 10-3 run to close the game was huge and we've seen a lot of Hopkins teams in recent years just fall behind and get smoked.
-Dylan Watson was very quiet-that's taking care of the knowns.
-Peshko with the feed to either chauvette or bauer for the finish-that's a lot of growth from the big fella
-Dylan Bauer grew up and made the most of his opportunities tonight
-Crawley, melendez is a new face but the rest of the offense still goes back a few years and for many of them tonight was one of their finer games of their careers. His debut as a player I want to say against ohio state in 14 was a nice win w/contributions from him as well.

Down
-Melendez was quiet and he and mcdermott had 5 turnovers but 9 gbs.
-Ruddy on that busted clear that was vintage end of petro era stuff
-20 turnovers and 50 percent clearing in the first half gets you routed against an Alpha team and a 3 goal loss to an ncaa tournament team

whatever
-I liked the black outfits. the helmets looked nice and the numbers were easy to read. this win won't get us into the tournament, but it won't hurt.
-At the end of the cuse broadcast they had a really nice 3-4 minutes about young dwan, his family and their story-mostly a rehash of that baltimore sun story. Hope the kid has a great career.

DocBarrister wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 9:02 pm Marcille with 15 saves and a 0.682 save percentage.

DocBarrister

Not at all shabby.
Marcille is the MAN.

jhu06 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 9:35 pm -Melendez was quiet and he and mcdermott had 5 turnovers but 9 gbs.

He didn't stuff the stat sheet (credited with 1 assist) but I felt like he was a calming presence on offense. Confident ball carrier and always made the right play. You need someone like that. The points will follow.

A lot to digest but here are my initial thoughts:

- Showed some mental toughness to settle down and really dig in after a pretty bad start.
- I was too quick to judgment on Marcille's clearing early on (blame the PTSD from previous years). He was terrific in all phases tonight. MVP.
- Deans is a player
- Scott Smith's AA campaign begins now. Credited with 5 GBs but I swear he had 10
- Mazzone good
- Offense still isn't blowing me away but the spacing looked improved from last year and the ball was hot in the second half.
- Callahan has the looks of the next Dolente/Poppleton/Kennedy/Moreland/Narewski in a long line of solid Blue Jay fogos this decade+.
- Angelus continue to look very comfortable at his natural position. Shocker
- Degnon isn't going to miss three or four wide open looks like that again.
- Ruddy's first start, he's forgiven for the clearing fiasco(s). He was pretty good in settled situations.
- Agree with the sentiment on Carson Brown — shaky early but settled in and had some nice GBs late. Good sign for his development.
- Collison was quiet but it's only a matter of time. Rev up the big rig.
- We won every stat except clearing/turnovers. That's fine for Feb. 4, but it won't be fine on Feb. 11.
- I'm a bit worried about SSDM depth behind Martin and Jaronski.
- PM managed this game well. Smart timeout to maintain possession with a man down. Good adjustments at the faceoff dot. Clearing vastly improved in the second half (though to be fair it couldn't have been much worse).
- We have a long way to go but for the most part they showed what you wanted to see for a season opener, on the road, down a FOGO and a starting defenseman, against a team that a lot of people thought was going to be good this year. Walked out with a fairly comfortable win even after spotting them a few goals on entirely self-inflicted wounds.

Big test coming up … GT, UNC, and Loyola in 8 days. Will need to win at least two of those.

Other than a rough first quarter, Blue Jays played a solid game tonight.

DocBarrister

From a neutral perspective, I don't think any offense can ever break through to the Top 10ish level without having multiple run past your man threats and at least this iteration of this team doesn't seem to have those. Collison likely becomes that, Peshko has shown flashes of it. I suppose if all goes right with those two and Melendez it could, but seems unlikely. In future years as they add more talent sure, but not 2023.

So the way you get around that is through excellent spacing to set up ball movement that can break teams down, executing that ball movement, limiting turnovers to maximize your possessions, and shooting well. Hopkins spacing was good tonight, thought their ball movement was p good, and until the last few mins I think they only had like 1-2 turnovers on offense. Shooting...yeah that's going to be a real weakness for them still. But it was much improved from a year ago on the whole. If they win faceoffs, you can put wins together with that + that defense + Marcille being solid. 1 game is hardly a season make though

Good Win. Need to clean some things up. Hopefully just 1st game crap. Had 7 different shorty goal scorers which is a nice balance. I think there is room for improvement as on the offensive end as they get more time with the “new” offense.

Goalie play, FO and GBs improved from last year. Once again only one game in. Hopefully it continues.

They dominated the middle of the field - wherever you come down on Jacksonville - it's still a decent sign. They look more athletic. lost in the Ruddy gaffe for the goal was he made a good play to secure the ball at first. No Waldbaum helped in that it allowed Smith to bump down to Greiner and Watson and 6v6 they were pretty quiet. If Smith isn't an AA at the end of this year - well then I don't know what one looks like. People ask why Hopkins doesn't get elite recruits - well they have one. Once again, this opponent is a team that never surrendered more than 12 goals last year to Hopkins, Duke, Denver, Richmond twice. First game of the year Hopkins rings up 12 and they didn't shoot particularly well. Marcille played great - no other way to put it. Jacksonville's schedule is favorable after Duke and of course they beat Duke last year. They could go on a run especially if Waldbaum gets back.

Right now forecast is high 40's with sun by gametime on the 11th. Hope there's a good crowd to give the Jays some energy.

25 played according to Ernie’s boxscore.

Congratulations from Kenya’s Masai Mara. Nothing like coming home from a morning game drive to read the commentary after a Jays’ win. Looking forward to enjoying the Georgetown game from Section 17.

Some folks just looking at this year’s score versus last year might think these two teams are about the same this year (11-8 versus 12-7). But anyone who watched the game saw a complete a$$ whipping from the Jays this year. Aside from some inexplicable clearing mistakes in the first quarter by Hopkins, that lead to 3-4 Jacksonville goals, this was a complete domination by Hopkins.

A very athletic and prepared team versus a team that looked lost in every facet besides goaltending. This could easily have been a 16-4 type game. Not close. When I heard Galloway talk about scrimmage struggles versus Lynchburg I thought he was sandbagging. Evidently not.

This game was labeled the Jacksonville “Beach party” but it looked like the dolphins forgot to apply sun screen. Burned. (Sorry…stupid joke)

Excellent team win. This could be the best Hopkins defense that we’ve seen in quite some time. Obviously going to have stiff competition throughout the season, but I’m much more confident in this unit than I’ve been in years past.

Looks like Milliman , Crawley and Koesterer are getting things under control.

HopFan16 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 9:50 pm - We have a long way to go but for the most part they showed what you wanted to see for a season opener, on the road, down a FOGO and a starting defenseman, against a team that a lot of people thought was going to be good this year. Walked out with a fairly comfortable win even after spotting them a few goals on entirely self-inflicted wounds.

Is there any word on Narewski? Is he still hurt or just held out as a precaution? Did he travel with the team?
He was playing towards the end of last season.....
puzzling....

DocBarrister wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 9:58 pm Big test coming up … GT, UNC, and Loyola in 8 days. Will need to win at least two of those.

Other than a rough first quarter, Blue Jays played a solid game tonight.

DocBarrister

GT has (arguably) the best D man in the country and could use him to shut down either Degnon or Melendez.
UNC is probably the most vulnerable but seems to have had our number in recent years.
Loyola is very tough at their place and is spoiling for revenge after last year.
But with solid play at the X and in goal, upsets are very possible.

One striking observation from last night. The absence of mistakes in 6-on-6 defense was remarkable. Sure, Marcille came up big on many occasions, but notable in its absence were the head scratching "how could they leave that guy open" or "why on earth would you slide there" gaffes from the previous era. All the more remarkable that this was the first game with several new pieces on both close and rope units. Put another way: compare how many times we lost Watson last night (none, on my view; his only goal was in transition off the FO) with how many times we completely lost Mac O'Keefe in previous encounters with Penn State.

Speaking of Ruddy, its too bad people will remember the clearing fiasco because he was responsible for Watson and made great sliding decisions. Agree with the comments about Smith. And I'm stunned that Brett Martin isn't mentioned more as one of the best SSDMs in the country. He's a completely lock-down defender at this point.

Ruddy's length is a major asset. Even if he's a half-step late to slide, his wingspan covers the rest. Our poles were in shooters' hands all night. Mazzone may have provided some intel on what Watson likes to do off-ball.

Something I noticed was Kaufman came on for the 1-minute man-down, but then someone else was brought in for the 30-second one (might have been Brown?). Wonder if they are still figuring out personnel there, or if that was a tactical decision.

Martin was good last night. If you're not really noticing a shortie, they probably had a good game.

Two pole goals and quite frankly there were opportunities for one or two more (Smith nearly had one). Certainly appears as though they want to push it and everyone has the green light. Very happy to see that. You need a good transition game these days.