{"id":30903,"date":"2010-01-07T22:08:41","date_gmt":"2010-01-08T04:08:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uscho.com\/2010\/01\/07\/this-week-in-the-ccha-jan-7-2010\/"},"modified":"2010-08-17T19:57:50","modified_gmt":"2010-08-18T00:57:50","slug":"this-week-in-the-ccha-jan-7-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/2010\/01\/07\/this-week-in-the-ccha-jan-7-2010\/","title":{"rendered":"This Week in the CCHA: Jan. 7, 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"
What a week this has been for hockey in the United States, and what a way to kick off 2010. Congratulations to Team USA for a thrilling overtime gold-medal victory over Canada Jan. 5. What a game. What a tournament. What a bright glimpse into the future of American hockey.<\/p>\n
Congratulations to all the U.S. collegians on the team: Matt Donovan (DU), Jerry D’Amigo (RPI), Jake Gardiner (UW), Chris Kreider (BC), Danny Kristo (UND), Mike Lee (SCSU), Kyle Palmieri (ND), John Ramage (UW), Jordan Schroeder (Minnesota), Derek Stepan (UW) and David Warsofsky (BU).<\/p>\n
Congratulations also to the coaching staff of Dean Blais, Joe Exter, Mark Osiecki and Tom Ward. It’s thrilling that a current CCHA head coach was the driving force behind the team that broke Canada’s five-year stranglehold on the gold medal. Exter is the former Merrimack goaltender who overcame a fractured skull to return to hockey as a player and coach. Osiecki is an assistant at Wisconsin; Ward the director of hockey at Shattuck-St. Mary’s prep school in Minnesota.<\/p>\n
It just doesn’t get any more American than that.<\/p>\n
Congratulations, too, to the U.S. U-17 team, which also captured gold this week by defeating Canada-Ontario.<\/p>\n
There were several players on both the U.S. and Canadian teams who were impossible not to watch. D’Amigo was one of them, as was Kristo. I liked Palmieri’s contributions — solid and often understated — and not just because I’m a CCHA homer.<\/p>\n
The one player, however, who impressed me the most was 17-year-old Jack Campbell, the goaltender from Port Huron, Mich., who was in net when John Carlson scored the game-winner at 4:31 in OT. Campbell was excellent in Team USA’s first game against Canada, which resulted in Canada’s shootout victory, and he was superb in relief of Lee, who allowed the first three goals of the gold-medal game.<\/p>\n
Campbell was also the goaltender who earned a shutout in the gold medal game of the 2009 U-18 tournament, when the U.S. beat Russia, 5-0.<\/p>\n
Campbell, a product of the USA Hockey National Team Development Program in Ann Arbor, was also the guy who was supposed to join Michigan in the 2010-11 season.<\/p>\n
It became clear last fall that something was afoot with Campbell. When the rest of the UM recruits signed their letters of intent, Campbell did not. Then in late November, the Windsor Spitfires of the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) announced that Campbell decided to forgo his college education — he had been offered a full ride at UM — by signing with the Spitfires. <\/p>\n
Instead of playing for the Maize and Blue next season, he’ll be playing for the green — or rather, the loonies and twonies — 75 kilometers to the east.<\/p>\n
In the Spitfires’ release dated Nov. 25, Campbell said the decision was a difficult one. I hate to think of a young kid exaggerating the truth, but how difficult could the decision have been with coaching from current Spitfires Cam Fowler and Kenny Ryan? <\/p>\n
Fowler is the defenseman that had committed to Notre Dame as a scholarship player when he was just 15 years old. In mid-November 2009, Fowler told the Irish that the deal was off. The Farmington Hills, Mich., native said that he listened to his family and “advisors” to make his decision. He’s expected to be a first-round pick in this year’s NHL entry draft.<\/p>\n
Ryan, a second-round pick of Toronto in 2009, walked away from Boston College Oct. 15, 2009, less than a month after his rookie season had begun. Ryan’s departure took BC coach Jerry York completely by surprise and prompted Spitfires vice president Warren Rychel to comment to The Windsor Star<\/I> that the situation was “interesting” and that the Spitfires had “no comment.”<\/p>\n
(In 24 games this season, Ryan has six goals and 10 assists, requiring no comment whatsoever.)<\/p>\n
What Campbell, Fowler and Ryan have in common — aside from a lack of life experience, expectations of ease and entitlement currently endemic among young Americans and an excess of advisors — is an alarming proximity to the OHL. Campbell’s hometown of Port Huron is literally across the river from Ontario and 65 miles from Windsor. Fowler’s hometown of Farmington Hills is a suburb of Detroit and 26 miles from Windsor; Ryan is from Franklin, a stone’s throw from Farmington and 23 miles from all that Windsor apparently has to offer.<\/p>\n
It’s fairly certain that Austin Czarnik, a forward from Washington, Mich. (distance to Windsor: 37 miles), will go from high school to no school soon enough. Czarnik, who plays with the NTDP, had committed to Michigan State for 2011-12 but withdrew that commitment in the fall of 2009. He was drafted by the Spitfires, by the way.<\/p>\n
Of course, Wolverine fans know the pain of losing players early, as the success of that program does draw a lot of attention. Robbie Czarnik, Austin’s cousin, left UM this season for another OHL team, the Plymouth Whalers. Plymouth’s location — 38 miles west of Czarnik’s hometown of Roseville, Mich. — is far more convenient for his family and advisors, who don’t need to cross an international boundary to reap the benefits of his decision.<\/p>\n
These are just a few of the examples of the excellent talent U.S. colleges are losing in battle to the OHL. Oh, yes, it’s a U.S.-Canadian border war. The OHL fired the first shots and has been waging an active campaign ever since. And we are losing so many that it’s hard to keep up. <\/p>\n
The OHL is actively targeting and aggressively pursuing top U.S. (and Canadian) players who have committed to NCAA teams or who are likely to do so. In this war, the OHL is promising what it calls “The Best of Both Worlds,” an allegedly faster track to the NHL and the opportunity to go to college, paid. After all, why should young men with talent be bothered with the requirement to go to college while playing hockey when money can be had for an education in the abstract of the future? The OHL commits to providing one year of post-secondary education for every year a player plays in its league, in theory. The players live the hockey life now and return to school later. In theory.<\/p>\n