What to Make of Western Michigan?
by WCHBlog on Mar 4, 2009 12:00 PM PST
4 comments
Jim Culhane hasn't always been a real popular at Western MIchigan. If the majority of their fans had their way--and their athletic department had the money--he probably would have been fired long ago. At the midway point of the CCHA season, I mentioned how hard it would be to justifty keeping him around.
But then a funny thing happened on the way to Culhane's inevitable execution. The Broncos managed to take 12 points--a pretty significant amount when you're talking about teams at the bottom of the standings-- in their final 8 league games, and somehow ended the season in 7th place, and hosting a first round playoff series.
So what exactly do you make of Western Michigan's season? They weren't a very good team by any stretch of the imagination. They finished the regular season with a 12-17-7 record, and a 9-13-6 conference record. They had a -11 goal differential in conference play, and were even in goal differential in their non-conference games. Odds are pretty good that they may sneak through this first playoff series and then get hammered by whichever top four team they draw in the second round.
But at the same time, finishing in the middle of the pack in the league and hosting and winning a playoff series isn't all that terrible. They also had the leading scorer in conference play in Patrick Galivan(He would not have been my first guess for leading scorer in CCHA play. Nor my 100th.) and one of the best defensemen in the league in Tyler Ludwig.
The issue here is something probably half a dozen other programs are going to have to face when it comes to making coaching decisions. College hockey has changed over recent years. It used to be that the smaller schools could compete and win against the biggest programs in the country. That's not so much the case anymore. Even if these teams may play in the same conference, there's a pretty clear line between the major programs and the mid-majors. This year is the 15th anniversary of Lake Superior's last national championship, and since then, no school of their stature has gotten close since.
People want to judge Western Michigan and schools like them based on how they finish in their conference, but is that really fair? I'm pretty sure Western Michigan's football and basketball coaches aren't graded on how they do compared to Michigan, or Michigan State, or Notre Dame, and if they were, they probably wouldn't look that great as well.
The one exception to this would probably be Miami, who is a MAC school, but has put a huge investment into their hockey program and is seeing some nice returns. The lesson here is that you get what you pay for. Schools like Western Michigan, or Ferris State, or Bowling Green, or Lake Superior are going to have a tough time competing with college hockey's major programs. The money to do it just isn't there. So it's probably best to judge them against each other, rather than against schools that hold a big advantage over them. All the coaching in the world isn't going to change that around too much.
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I think you have it slightly off. There is another variable to consider other than just the size of the school. Denver and Colorado College aren’t any larger than the also-rans in the CCHA, and smaller than many of them. The difference is that there aren’t any big schools in close geographic proximity to them. If you’re a college hockey fan in Colorado, you probably would gravitate towards rooting for CU-Boulder, except that they don’t have a team. Denver and CC are your choices.
I think this has as much to do with Miami’s success as putting a lot of money into the program. Most of the CCHA is in the Detroit media market, to the extent that the UP has a market. Miami is not, so they face a lot less competition. Nebraska-Omaha is the other less than huge CCHA team that could take advantage of it. Bowling Green, the other Michigan schools, and the other Minnesota schools are never going to get the oxygen to become perpetually good any longer. North Dakota will, of course, always be able to punch above its weight thanks to the money from the mobbed up Nazi.
This is another one of those reasons I’ve never understood the argument that we should want college hockey to become a big time sport. The effects of any such growth are guaranteed to be experienced unequally, and the large schools will always receive a disproportionate share of the benefit. Since I’m a fan of one of the big schools, this bothers me less than it should other people in college hockey, but I think that those people have never thought through the results of what they proclaim to want.
I certainly don’t want to diminish how Western finished the year. As a WMU fan I am always pleased when the Broncos play competitive. I would just note that the streak to end the year (while fun) seems to be largely due to outstanding goaltending and little else. Here are the results of each of the CCHA wins / shootout losses WMU competed in since January:
January 9: WMU 2 – Ferris 1: Riley Gill makes 38 saves on 39 shots
January 23 WMU 2 – OSU 2: Riley Gill makes 37 saves, WMU is outshot 37-22
January 24 WMU 4 – OSU 1: Riley Gill makes 37 saves, WMU is outshot 38 – 19
February 6 WMU 1 – UNO 1: Riley Gill makes 42 saves, WMU is outshot 42 -20
February 7 WMU 5 – UNO 0 : Riley Gill makes 46 saves, WMU is outshot 46-23
February 13 WMU 3 – AK 0: Riley Gill makes 41 saves, WMU is outshot 41 – 22
February 21 WMU 4 – LSSU 1: Riley Gill makes 37 saves, WMU is outshot 38 – 23
February 27 WMU 5 – BGSU 2: Riley Gill makes 40 saves, WMU is outshot 42 – 23
February 28 WMU 5 – BGSU 3: Riley Gill makes 31 saves, WMU is outshot 34 – 22
My concern watching WMU under Culhane is that every year they have significant difficulty with puck possession (demonstrated by the fact they are consistently outshot) and they take a lot of unnecessary penalties (also a factor that leads to teams getting outshot). This winning streak, while fun, doesn’t seem to demonstrate that WMU has overcome these problems.
Western has not gone to the Joe since I attended the school (1996). They have had some lousy teams, some mediocre teams and a few competitive teams. They have sent several players from their squads to the NHL (Joe Corvo, Mike Bishai, Pat Dwyer, Paul Szczechura, David Gove). Schools like Ferris, BGSU, Northern and Miami have enjoyed small periods of time when they have been quite successful.
Western fans are not looking for national dominance like LSSU had in the early to mid 1990s. They are looking for a competitive hockey team that every four to five years gets a group of seniors together and makes a run at the NCAA tournament. Culhane has had well over a decade to try to get this together and while he has represented the school well it isn’t that far out of line to suggest that maybe someone else should take a crack at making this program more competitive.
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