Hopkins had all kinds of issues this year. Their defense was going to be a huge work in progress. It only returned one long stick defenseman and one SSDM that played last year. The other two spots were filled by a freshman and junior transfer. Their starting LSM is a freshman that played attack in HS. Naturally, their clearing game was awful. Their goalie is a sophmore but not very good regardless.

But, before the year even started this year, they lost their 2 top middies for the year - one to NCAA violation, the other blew out his ACL. By 3/4 games in they had lost two additional top 6 middies and then lost another 2 line middie for a few weeks. So at one point, they only had 2 of their top 9 middies playing.

I thought I had read some rumblings earlier in the season about whether Petro was on the hot seat or not. I stand corrected.

he would have been fired. The team was geared for last year. Hopkins would have last made the FF in 2008 (the last Rabil year) and 2016 was the last year of his contract if they didn't make it. Thus, it would have been easier to fire him. He made the FF and was a pipe away from the championship game and got an extension until 2020. I think it was sort of a mistake to give him that long. There is no doubt the program has struggled over the last 6-7 years more than it should given parity.

Most people expected Hopkins to struggle on defense with only 1 real guy coming back and rely on their offense. But, it is almost shocking how bad the defense is. The offense is top 5 or so with 12.8 GAF but defense is an all time worst under Petro at 11.4.