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DicNavis t1_iu0rwqq wrote

Reply to comment by CHECK_FLOKI in Hockey in Connecticut by poorlywrittenriffs

Yale was a pretty regular fixture in the NCAA tournament in the early 2010’s and won a title in 2013. Taking a full season off for COVID killed them and most of the other Ivy’s. Almost all of their top players transferred. Harvard was really the only Ivy that didn’t suffer heavily last season. Yale’s gonna build back to being in a cycle of periodic contention, Allain is a good coach.

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CHECK_FLOKI t1_iu0wudi wrote

I agree. Allain is a good coach and the players respect him - - for good reason too, but the team has been slowly going downhill since 2015 even before covid.

Yale has never been past the quartfinal stages in ECAC championships since 2016 i believe, and the team has good talent so idk what the problem is frankly. I hear what you say about covid, but I don't think that's strong enough as an excuse for the performance.

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DicNavis t1_iu115ji wrote

Yale’s built to be a cyclical team in college hockey. They were in a low point of that cycle in the last few years leading up to 2020 but you really can’t understate how badly these teams suffered from having to take a full season off while most other programs kept playing. Beyond the players lost, it’s the year of experience lost from the players they were able to retain… that’s huge when it comes to competing with teams like Quinnipiac who’s returning loads of experience and Harvard who’s suddenly carrying more NHL draft picks than anyone in the country because their recruitment timeline happened to be the only one out of the Ivy’s not brutally impacted by the year off. It’s not going to be that easy for Yale to climb out of it quickly because they can’t capitalize on the new transfer rules as well as other programs, and they don’t take graduate seniors at all.

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