Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Pateryn's In...Who's Out?

Nice find--or horrible find, depending on how you look at it--by mgoblog. In an interview with WDAY, Dean Blais, coach of Fargo's USHL team, said that Greg Pateryn will not be joining the Force next year because he is headed to the University of Michigan. Apparently as of three weeks ago, the plan was for Pateryn to head to Fargo, but Red Berenson called him last week and said one of his players "got in trouble academically," opening the door for Pateryn to come in.

Now the waiting game begins. Who won't be coming back? I guess it wouldn't be the off-season without a random defection...

Update: It sounds as if bringing Pateryn in is more precautionary than anything. I would imagine that with Mitera, Kampfer, Vaughan, Llewellyn, Langlais, Burlon and Pateryn in the fold, Chris Summers will be playing forward more often than not. I'm excited about the idea of seeing #4 streaking down the wing again.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, if Pateryn is a RW, my guess is that it is a forward... or Chris Summers?

Anonymous said...

Isn't Pateryn a defenseman??

Packer487 said...

Yeah, Pateryn is a D so it could be pretty much anyone that's gone. If it's a forward, Summers probably moves up front.

Anonymous said...

Yup, my bad. Tim, MGoBlog is backpedaling based on updated info. Something still doesn't pass the smell test.

Packer487 said...

(Packer487 logged in under another email account)

To be fair to Brian, it wasn't a random internet rumor that he reported. When Dean Blais says "Red told me this..." I wouldn't have any problem taking it at face-value. I would've run with the story in a second had I stumbled upon that article.

And based on the fact that no one from our team ended up on the CCHA All-Academic Team, it wouldn't be the most shocking thing in the world to have someone flunk out :-P

You're right though...it is a strange situation. I've convinced myself that Pateryn's not getting a ton of scholarship money so it makes sense to go ahead and bring him in this year. Moving Summers up front without bringing in Pateryn wouldn't make much sense (we'd only have 6 defensemen, so chances are you'd have to end the experiment at some point during the year). Bringing in Greg allows them to move Summers up front permanently and they've still got depth. Then if there was a crisis they could move him back--but more likely than not, they wouldn't need to.

Elmblad performed admirably, but I assume they don't want to replicate that situation again, where a walk-on defenseman has to play his first career game in the CCHA Playoffs.