Scatter shots: How the Devils help their top goalie prospect, Augustine's decision, Blümel's future
Busy couple days, I finally had time to sit down and write some thing down.
Good morning, happy Friday.
It’s been a busy couple days for me and just now I am effectively having the time to sit down and right out some thoughts that have been rattling around in my head.
On Wednesday, I drove out to Grand Rapids for an AHL check-in with both the Grand Rapids Griffins and Texas Stars. On Thursday, I was down at morning skate for the game between the Detroit Red Wings and Ottawa Senators, then drove to Toledo for the NCAA first-round games featuring Boston University, Ohio State, Cornell, and Michigan State.
So the following is effectively a scatter shooting of thoughts/notes/etc… from the past couple days. Hopefully most of it will make sense.
How the Devils are supporting goalie prospect Mikhail Yegorov
After Boston University’s 8-3 win over Ohio State, I caught up with Terriers goalie and New Jersey Devils prospect Mikhail Yegorov, who has had one of the more fascinating seasons.
Yegorov started the season in the USHL with the Omaha Lancers, one of the worst teams in hockey right now, and put up amazingly respectable numbers. In one of his final games with Omaha, he faced 69 shots in regulation and stopped 66 of them.
With Boston University’s struggles in goal, he enrolled at BU for the second semester and has turned into a rock for the Terriers, leading them to the Beanpot championship and then yesterday providing the stability BU needed when they lost all structure in the first period against Ohio State.
Yegorov has always been labeled as a strong goalie prospect, but never had the chance to really play any big games because of his USHL situation. In the past three months, he’s changed that narrative.
One of the things Yegorov said has helped his process and progression this season has been working weekly with a sports psychologist, which the Devils set up for him.
“It’s just weekly focus on the mental side of the game, the highs and the lows, finding balance,” Yegorov said. “As a goalie, you know, it can be something where that stuff can break you I think. So the Devils asked me before the season started if they could help me connect with a sports psychologist, and give me that resource no matter where I was playing.”
It’s a smart piece of business and investment for the Devils, who hope to invest long-term in Yegorov as an eventual home-grown starter they drafted in the second round.
It’s decision time for Trey Augustine
Michigan State’s season came to an end last night in stunning fashion.
The Spartans led 3-2 in the third period and had dominated play for the first 53 minutes or so before Cornell battled back and eventually won the game on a power play goal with 10 seconds remaining.
For Spartans goalie Trey Augustine, a Detroit Red Wings prospect, it’s now time to make a pretty big decision on his pro future.
In Grand Rapid this week, I was told the Griffins have a couple of plans for the remainder of the season, and one of them includes having Augustine playing AHL games, potentially in a tandem with Sebastian Cossa.
Michigan State coach Adam Nightingale has said in the past that it was probably “50-50” on whether Augustine would turn pro this spring, and last night said he’d support the goalie either way and he also had a plan one way or the other if Augustine signed the pro deal.
Now it’s effectively up to the player, who has been one of hockey’s most decorated goalie prospects in years with two World Junior Gold medals and has already made his Team USA senior debut last spring at the IIHF world championships.
While the loss against Cornell is going to sting, goalie people I’ve spoken to believe Augustine is ready to turn pro, in fact a couple said there’s not much more growth the goalie can have playing college hockey.
Since only one person really knows how this work, the goalie himself, let’s quickly lay out the pros of signing vs. returning to Michigan State next season.
Going back to Michigan State
Gives Augustine a chance to complete some unfinished business and seek a national championship after losing back-to-back years in the NCAA regionals.
Gives the goalie a little bit more control of where he plays, and guarantees a starters net for an entire season instead of splitting one with Sebastian Cossa in Grand Rapids.
Turning pro
Starts to push Augustine into the pro game quicker, and it allows him to get through a bit of that learning curve now, potentially putting him in a better spot to snag an NHL spot in two seasons after Detroit rolls with a tandem of Petr Mrazek and Cam Talbot next season.
Augustine has thrived on challenge before, and while the NCAA will always leave a sour taste, how well is he really going to be challenged at Michigan State next season?
I’m not sure which way Augustine will go, again it’s his decision, but it will greatly shape how the Red Wings approach their goaltending depth and AHL signings this summer.
We need to change the NCAA regional format
I’m not the first person to beat this drum and far from the last, but future NCAA tournaments should feature on-campus sites and not neutral locations.
While there was a good Michigan State crowd in Toledo yesterday, there lacked any student energy beyond the band, and talking to those at the Fargo regional, there was a similar empty feel to the NCAA sites — and these are good hockey towns!
If college athletics are about the tradition and the atmosphere, we need to see on-campus sites for the NCAA tournament. It would also be a reward for the strong regular season of the top seeds, adding some more important to the regular season in the process.
There are conferences and NCAA coaches that agree with this, and it’s one of the reasons we’ll see the NCHC move from a neutral site to campus sites next season for the conference tournament.
Matěj Blümel is going to be an NHLer next season
I’m not sure if this is going to happen in Dallas or not, but the Texas Stars forward is currently leading the AHL in scoring and has become a highly-effective defensive forward at the same time.
He’s also an unrestricted free agent this summer, which means Blümel will have a decision on whether he wants to stick with Dallas or pursue better opportunity elsewhere — with more room on the depth chart.
I spoke to Blümel on Wednesday morning in Grand Rapids about his season, and he’s a pretty confident individual about how/where his game is going. He hasn’t been afraid to take untraditional paths before, leaving Czechia to go to the USHL and then back to the Czechia before signing with Dallas.
Speaking to some scouts I know from other organizations, there’s high interest in Blümel if the Stars don’t sign him.
It’s funny, there’s also been a bit of a positive “Stars effect” to players value for other teams the past couple years. As one scout laid it out to me, “Dallas has done such a nice job developing players that can play in the NHL and fill a reliable bottom-six role, I think more of us want to just scoop up some of the players that they’ve already done the work on to develop for the rest of us.”
Answering some of your questions
This isn’t a proper mailbag, but I had some people ask questions in the chat on Wednesday that I wanted to answer.
For a club like the Texas Stars whose pipeline is dry and draft picks don't exist anymore how does it focus on winning and staying competitive? (This may be a "Sean explains..." type question instead of for the team). (From Tyler King.)
The winning vs. development question in the AHL is fascinating to me. In fact, it’s one of the reasons I wrote a full book on the Texas Stars with my pal Stephen Meserve.
This is also a good chance to explain that winning in the AHL and remaining competitive don’t always mean you are producing top-of-the-line, impact prospects.
When the Texas Stars won the Calder Cup in 2014, only two players from that team became true impact players for Dallas — Radek Faksa and Jamie Oleksiak.
You can win in the AHL with 4A level players and hungry mid-level prospects, Texas is a very good team this season despite not having any realistic “impact” NHL futures on the team.
This is also why some teams have effectively punted on caring about their AHL team when it comes to roster decisions and building a winning product. Winning in the AHL isn’t a bad thing, but it’s not something necessary for NHL development at the same time.
When these NCAA guys come at the end of their seasons to the A, what happens to their college classes? I can't imagine what that would be like if they tried to double duty it, or do they just abandon their semester to chase the dream? Thanks for all you do! We appreciate you so much! (From Ronnie Hughes)
A lot of them just never finish college.
I have had many conversations with players that went the NCAA route that have told me they’ll finish their classes someday, but most haven’t and won’t go back and do it.
I spoke to Shai Buium about it on Wednesday, he left Denver after last season, he hasn’t taken any classes since leaving campus last spring but said someday over the course of his pro career he’ll get to it.
This might a silly question but if a new NHL team expansion happens, is it a definitive 1:1 AHL expansion as well? (From Blessen Brocke)
It might not happen in the same season, but yes, if the NHL went to 33 or 34 teams, the AHL would follow suit and expand as well.
In a salary cap world NHL teams want more control than ever over their AHL franchise, so I would imagine the future teams (Houston and Atlanta?) would want to own their own AHL teams, too.
A good example of this is how the Utah Hockey Club ownership group is still trying to get ahold of the Tucson Roadrunners and would like to eventually wrestle that ownership away from the old Coyotes ownership.