Saturday, February 07, 2009

Having a Seat Over There: Recruiting Updates

The Hockey News's Prep Watch featured a 15-year-old defenseman by the name of Ryan Murphy, who is probably OHL-bound (he's Canadian and a possible top-5 pick in the OHL draft) but has also fielded interest from Michigan.

Another name that I've heard is worth watching in the future is Alex Guptill, a 6'2" 165 forward with the Brampton Capitals of the OJHL. He leads the team in scoring with 30-34--64 in 48 games. He just received Rookie of the Year honors in the conference. He's a 6th round pick of the Brampton Batallion, so take it for what it's worth that he's also playing for Brampton in the OJHL.

The USA Under-17 team (aka the Michigan Wolverines JV Team) won the Vlad Dzurilla tournament this morning. They won their opening game against Germany by a 3-1 margin. Jack Campbell made 12 stops in the victory.

They lost game two to Switzerland 6-5 in the seventh round of a shootout. Will Yanakeff (future Sparty) was in net for USA in that one. Luke Moffatt had a goal and an assist in the game.

That set up a showdown with the host team, Slovakia. Win in regulation, and they're the tournament champs. They did, by a 7-1 margin. Jack Campbell got the nod and he made 28 stops en route to Best Goaltender honors. A 1.00 gaa and a .952 save percentage will do that. He's now 7-0-1-0 in international play this year, with a 1.17 goals against and a .949 save percentage. (That record is Wins, OTW, OTL, L.) I haven't seen a full box score, but Moffatt and Clare had assists for sure.

The Under 18s are playing in the Five Nations Cup in Sweden and currently sit 3-0 with wins over Sweden (3-2), the Czechs (7-3), and Finland (3-2).

Kevin Lynch leads the Americans with a 3-2--5 line in the three games. Chris Brown has 2-1--3 and AJ Treais has 1-1--2. So three of USA's top six scorers in the tournament thusfar...coming to Michigan next year. Also of note, both Treais and Lynch take a ton of draws for the Americans. USA has only three players that have taken double digit faceoffs in the tournament: Lynch has 50, Treais has 66, and Drew Shore has 55. Treais is at 50% and Lynch is at 54%. Nice to know that we're bringing a couple more players who can take draws.

USA plays the 2-0-1 (That's wins, ties, losses. Yost Built is I18N compliant) Russians tomorrow and can (obviously) wrap up the tournament title with a win.

Hotchkiss Prep is 11-6 at the moment. I know Mac Bennett was out for awhile, but Hotchkiss's site doesn't have stats, so I'm not sure if he's back yet.

Lee Moffie has 3-17--20 for the Waterloo Black Hawks in 33 games, good for second on the team in defense scoring. He's -1 on the season and has 54 PIMs. Waterloo is 4th place in the East Division with a 24-12-3 record, but are just five points out of first. They also have the fifth best record in the entire league.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is Moffie for sure coming next season? Or, does that depend on if Summers is coming back or not (I imagine he will go pro, correct)? Otherwise, we will have 8 d-men next year with Moffie, and we are using up a lot of scholarship money on him instead of picking up another forward.

Anonymous said...

Bennett is back and they are 8-1 since his return as he leads the Hotchkiss Bearcats towards a coveted bid to the New England Prep Championships.

Packer487 said...

@Anon1: I'm really not sure. I've been told that he's "Blue" but I also don't think Summers is going anywhere. I guess we'd have the same number of D as we've got this year, once Mitera comes back. Maybe we'll try Summers to forward yet again? (Watch for falling meteors if that happens...bad things happen when we try to move Chris up front)

@Anon2: Thanks for the info. Is there any good website to follow that kind of stuff? Hotchkiss's site is pretty bare bones and I haven't had any luck tracking down stats from their league or anything. If not, keep us updated! :-)

Anonymous said...

www.ushr.com (US Hockey Report) is the best website to follow the New England Prep Schools. However, it requires subscription.