Coached NTDP in 21-22

He had proven success coaching/developing players like Cooley, McGroarty, etc. He also got some decommits/portal help from NTDP kids (Ike Howard and Augustine). MSU also dumped a bunch of money into facilities when he came on campus.

Some of it was luck too -- literally Levshunov came on the market last summer when virtually every team already had their rosters filled out.

They aren't immune to decommits though. Christian Humphreys flipped from MSU to Mich.

It'll be interesting to see how Hastings does with higher end draft picks. He has some high end commits, but this year he benched a couple high draft picks at times that are now in the portal (Stramel 1st Rd, Cleveland 2nd Rd, Whitelaw 3rd Rd). If there's anything that would make agents/NHL teams/players think twice about attending a school it's drafted kids not getting ice time.

It's still hard to tell how much NIL is playing a role in this.

There are a lot of mid-tier teams that are screwed in the current climate. I don't think we're in that crew. There are a lot of positive factors that signal we should be able to compete in recruiting.

B10 and blue bloods have a big advantage when it comes to $$$. I don't know how to post it, but I have a budget graph (think it comes from title 9 data). 3 teams above $5M annually (UND 5.5M, Minn 5.3M, and us at 5.2M). The rest of the top 10 are between 4.1 and 4.5M (Mich, BC, UW, PSU, DU, MSU, Prov). OSU is the lowest B10 school budget at #11 (3.7M). There's a pretty big slope down in numbers after that. I still think we can compete. It's a good setup for both coaches and players (and it's notable that even though we had a tough season we don't have anyone in the portal). That's why I'm still patient at this point and want to see what effect Sheahan may have on this recruiting cycle (assuming he doesn't bolt for another job).

Gopher fans are pretty confident Wood will end up there. But there's another tweet from a couple hours ago from Mike McMahon that now said he's down to Minn, UND, UW, and "other Big 10 schools". So who really knows.