But I don't think our struggles are only about recruiting. We have more draft picks (9) than 8 of the ten teams directly ahead of us in the pairwise. All ten score more goals per game than we do. The team right behind us, RIT, has no draft picks. Yet they throttled us earlier in the season. Even if it was mostly a matter of recruiting, that falls on the staff almost totally.

I also think Jackson's frustrated statements recently about the negative recruiting Notre Dame deals with is purely self-serving rhetoric not based in fact. While I don't follow this sport as closely as I once did, I still watch enough college hockey to know our style of play is almost certainly impacting our recruiting. There is no way that the offensive game plans I saw this weekend are sufficient for the way the game is played nowadays, either to win consistently or to attract offensive players who are more skilled. And it's not like Michigan plays the kind of a defensive game that Wisconsin does. Until we rolled into town they had not played a weekend series where they allowed fewer goals that what the Irish managed. I think no matter how it's sliced we are a poorly coached team when it comes to all facets related to goal scoring.

We may not consistently win recruiting battles with the blue bloods of the sport, those 7 or 8 teams who still have won most of the NCAA titles. There will also always be 2 or 3 teams each season doing something unique in terms of NIL or realizing new-found success who poach a player or two from us on the trail. But we should be in a position to recruit enough talent to score more than 3 goals a game and to be better than a .500 program.