If reports are true of a concussion, expect him to be out no less than a week which means, good season boys... just too much adversity to overcome.
Erie Otters 2024 25 Season Thread Part I
- Thread starter SoupNazi
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If reports are true of a concussion, expect him to be out no less than a week which means, good season boys... just too much adversity to overcome.
Looks like Erie is down Schaefer, Terrance, Erliden, Misiak, and Henry tonight.
Very disappointing how this season ended. I don’t think they get past London anyway but this team never had a full healthy lineup all season.
They have next to no chance tonight missing arguably their best 4 players.
Very disappointing how this season ended. I don’t think they get past London anyway but this team never had a full healthy lineup all season.
They have next to no chance tonight missing arguably their best 4 players.
Dhockey16
Registered User
Did something happen to Misiak last game? Pretty tough for Erie. Misiak, Terrance and Schaefer might all be playing pro next year and none of them are suiting up. I feel like there's gotta be someone telling Terrance and Schaefer not to play. I've seen a lot of broken collarbones in hockey, rarely are players out 12+ weeks.
Checked into boards, possible concussion. Didn't play the last 2 periods of game 3.
London dominated all 4 games, but Charlie Burns deserved a better fate tonight. He played a he'll of a game.
Best game I've seen from Burns. Team played with heart tonight. No complaints.
frontsfan67
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Tough luck for you guys. Not much you can do with the knights rolling like they are likely onto yet another OHL championship
London fan here. Gotta give a tip of the hat to the entire Otters team's performance, and especially, Charlie Burns. Your boys played with heart, and hung in there with the league's top team. Nobody can accuse the Otters of "mailing it in " and they made London earn the win.
frontsfan67
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Would’ve loved to see the series with Schaefer and Terrance. Don’t think you’d win series but perhaps take a game- MAYBE 2 off London and closer games
It’s unfortunate that they never got to have Schaefer / Terrance in the lineup again. With Schaefer especially, it’s just interesting he was never able to make it back like 4 months post injury. Crazy recovery time…
Add in losing Erliden the last 2 to replace with one of the worst BUGs in the league / team history, plus no Misiak late in the series and not sure this roster beats like anyone remaining in the playoffs. Way too much to expect especially with their lack of depth due to poor roster construction and development
Considering everything they went through this year, on and off the ice, it was a solid season. I would consider it a success but when you are about to lose Fimis, Alfano, Misiak and potentially lose Schaefer, Terrance, Erliden, Hughes, McCall… that’s a lot. Losing 4 of your top 6 forwards and some of the remaining players in your forward group don’t even really belong in the OHL so you can’t count on much to improve or step up to fill the voids. For as much as they are about to lose on the roster and thus enter into yet another bleak, rebuilding type season, it would have been nice to have seen a bit more success in round 2. Again, injuries the contributing factor and out of their control in many ways, but it’s hard for me to call the season successful when they went 4-5 in the playoffs and got smoked in round 2, they stand to lose half their roster for next year, and their young talent is underwhelming but they didn’t add any picks or young players at the deadline to improve it because they didn’t sell off.
I just think it’s another example of poor roster management or team construction. They are so desperate to sniff a playoff game that they continue to play this game of long term mediocrity. Never good enough to actually make a real run, and no real assests to add to the team for a real run, but just good enough (or in their case desperate enough) to sneak into the playoffs or be a middle standings team to justify not selling off. So then without the real assets or draft capital, they never build up their young talent in a given cycle in order to improve their roster and make a real run and obviously they then never have the assets or draft capital to add to the team in a given year. Just a vicious cycle that’s led by incompetent management who can’t see the issues or are blinded by trying to turn the smallest of profits in one year just to survive. Until they rip the bandaid off and sell sell sell actual players, they are going to be stuck like this for a long, long time. Problem is, who do they have to sell next year? Spence is the only piece worth anything unless by some miracle we get Schaefer back. But knowing them if that happens.. they keep the roster and try for another 5th seed run!!!
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He just needed more playing time. To say he’s the worst, is a little bit of a stretch.
It’s too bad they had a poor first half with Stan that in the second half you had no choice but to play Erliden. I think we keep Erliden and Burns going into training camp. It would be interesting to see how much work they put in the off season and which prospects come up big.
Given all this team went through, it was a successful season as status quo which this team usually deems satisfactory. The future is concerning. Fimis needs to put on a faceoff clinic because I’m not convinced any of the current centers can fill his void. Offense and defense need huge upgrades from everyone next season. I think Mally will take care of that. He’s big on the off season conditioning. I can see them coming back to Erie in the summer for mini private camps as a team.
Not sure we keep Erliden. OA + Import...even this year keeping Misiak as an OA + Import tag was a stretch IMO. Was he better than Molnar, yes, but Molnar would have allowed for another OA player.
Burns had a couple good games, but so did Gibbons, so did Nicholls, so did Lalonde and Downey. It will be interesting to see how the hiring of Ryan Zapolski plays into our goalie development, or lack there of.
I'm not convinced Burns is the net minder of the future. The one certainty I do know is DB is making it tougher and tougher to make moves and keep us competitive in the long run. We had 1 decent shot at a run since 2017, that's awful. Looking at Erie HC's, there are only 3 in the history of the franchise with above .500 winning percentages, Knoblauch, Dunbar, and MacQueen.
In Kelowna, Mallette was above .500 in 3 of the 4, but inherited a very on the up team. From there it basically went down until his departure.
Is Mallette the guy for Erie, unknown. He didn't get a lot of time with Schaefer or Terrance and we are almost guaranteed to drop off significantly next season so he's likely in a very bad spot already.
One thing is for certain, next year already is an uphill climb.
I believe the CHL is going to allow teams to have a third import spot next season. That could help if Erie does have Erliden back
frontsfan67
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Perhaps he wasn’t just playing for his season- but perhaps a spot next year.
IMO if that’s the case- likely too late for that.
I was being dramatic for the purposes of making a point that their BUG was not a good option, even if he played better in limited postseason action..
Bottom line is that statistically he was bottom 4 among BUGs, minimum of 10gp. And his 21gp was by far the most among those with a similar or worse statistical output. To say he may have just needed more playing time is crazy talk.. The fact that he got 21 games with his performances, he should be thankful because if not for the desperation of the organization and their inability to draft/develop goalies, with nobody else to call up to play instead, Burns was given way more opportunities than he deserved. OliPop made his account today, and that was interestingly his first/only post.. Seems to be a bit biased, unfortunately
Isn’t the CHL rule changing with imports (and for this upcoming year as well) so that now you can roster 3 players? If so, it makes the possibility of keeping Erliden more of an option assuming he wants to be back. Speaking a Misiak- man, do I feel so validated about hating that pick back when they took him 1(!!) overall. Imagine if they took a talented 2006 player that could help them next year. I just can’t believe how ridiculous that pick was both at the time and even now. Misiak wasn’t a bad player but 23 goals per year and less than a PPG for only 2 seasons, 1 where you had to use an OA tag on him, that’s the best they could do 1 overall? Ugh. It’s moves like that that give me no confidence for the future.
As for the future, I don’t like the coaching hire. To me it felt like just another average Joe, cheap hire. If they REALLLLY want to fix things, than you have to spend money and get aggressive with your hiring practices; both with coaches and scouts, and of course with the GM.
In the meantime, they also need to get creative and spend money to fix the roster while their draft capital is still low. Is that why they took so many US players this year in the OHL draft? One can hope. Maybe they are shifting to a new approach now that NCAA rules are changing. I’ve long said they should try to pursue more Americans because they have an advantage with location and some families maybe want to avoid their son living in another country, or needing to navigate the border to watch them play. We know in the past there have been Canadian players that have said no to US based teams for the same situation, they just don’t want to play for an American team. Now, it’s probably a smaller pool of players that might think like that but it’s worth Erie exploring now that they can also keep their college eligibility. IMO, it’s their only option to see real success over the next few years.
As for next year, let’s just pray Schaefer gets sent back. If he does, Erie needs to immediately trade him to maximize return. Also move on from Spence. If they can do that, their draft capital will be in great shape, and we can start to build towards an actual season, have an actual plan.
I 100% agree with you on the Schaefer and Spence moves, however from a semi-casual fans standpoint, that's going to be an apocalyptic scenario if it unfolds. The mutiny from fans would probably be monstrous, unless there were some very likeable young men in return making immediate impacts on top of the draft picks.
DB has proven time and time again he isn't capable of pulling off said trades. We all know we can't stand pat, however. He put us in the most awkward of situations this year at the deadline by doing nothing.
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Dhockey16
Registered User
Glad they were able to win a playoff series this year. Sucks they didn't get at least one weekend playoff game but they were a solid, competitive hockey team all season. Injuries made the situation worse but even with a healthy team it would've been a longshot to compete for a title, they would've had to make major upgrades via NCAA dropouts or otherwise.
Major Junior hockey is going to change quite a bit over the next few years and I very much hope the organization has a plan to adapt and use these changes to their benefit. Fundamentally you can't win in the OHL if you aren't able to attract talent that has other options. Some of getting those players is about development, some about atmosphere, some about the quality of the team as is. Much of it is about money. It's not obvious to me the team is making the right decisions short or long term but they made enough good ones to win a playoff round. That's a lot better than the preceding ~7 years and some credit is deserved. They will have to be aggressive with Europeans and Americans. They simply won't attract as many good Canadians as Kitchener or Windsor, let alone London.
We'll see what happens. Mallette did win a playoff round against a team they struggled with all season so hard not to say he did his part as a new coach. I hope like hell they figure it out, I don't know if the team can survive another 3-5 year stretch of basement dwelling.
Major Junior hockey is going to change quite a bit over the next few years and I very much hope the organization has a plan to adapt and use these changes to their benefit. Fundamentally you can't win in the OHL if you aren't able to attract talent that has other options. Some of getting those players is about development, some about atmosphere, some about the quality of the team as is. Much of it is about money. It's not obvious to me the team is making the right decisions short or long term but they made enough good ones to win a playoff round. That's a lot better than the preceding ~7 years and some credit is deserved. They will have to be aggressive with Europeans and Americans. They simply won't attract as many good Canadians as Kitchener or Windsor, let alone London.
We'll see what happens. Mallette did win a playoff round against a team they struggled with all season so hard not to say he did his part as a new coach. I hope like hell they figure it out, I don't know if the team can survive another 3-5 year stretch of basement dwelling.
The otters should not have any trouble re-tooling. The team will return several good players to aid the development of rookies even if some of the vets are around for just half a season. With a bit of good fortune the otters could get back Erliden and/or Terrance, and have a picks surplus just trading surplus OAs.
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What we lose:
Fimis, Alfano, Misiak (at a minimum). McCall is likely gone.
Then we COULD lose Spence and Schaefer.
What are we getting for the OA's (can only keep 3 out of 5)
Terrance - high value
Edwards mid to high value
Messier - low value
Sauder - low to mid value
Daviault- low to mid value
Erliden- mid to high value
So we get a few probably 5th to 14th round picks? Maybe a decent return for Terrance and/or Edwards, but likely not Messier, Sauder, or Daviault.
Offensively right now we have:
Phillips, Roysten, Challenger, Frasca, Hammond, K. Edwards, and Wozney. I will go out on a limb and say we have Jake Murry and MAYBE Tyler Cooper for rookie campaigns.
Defensively for sure we will have:
Henry, Ambrosio, Holomego and I'm going to say D'Alessio and Knight
Netminders:
Burns and Furlong
We will have to hit big on the import draft, assuming we can roster 3 next season, and pull in two kids who will likely HAVE to report.
Even if Spence and Schaefer return for a full season, are they going to play 30 - 35 minutes a game?
As it stands right now, I see us taking a big hit next season and finishing 8th or lower.
Fastpace
Do extra on every shift and you will be noticed !
Terrance, is your most complete player ready for NHL. This kid has been getting better and better since his first game in the OHL. Very smart player, playing the game both ways are hard to develop at a young age, Terrance is a natural. Another kid from your line-up, who has been progressing every game, is Ty Henry. I have watched this tall, lanky young kid getting pushed around, but he is no longer. He has grown into a solid young man who is pushing others around with confidence. Look out for him, he is going to be a beast as he is filling in his last year of OHL. No doubt, Schaefer is the best you have in your line-up along with Spence. There is something here to work with, but the Otters cannot afford to use two spots for one player, an overage and a European spot for one player, Erliden.
One season of 8th or lower is not all like a 3-5 year stretch in the basement that one poster is concerned about. The roster and pick situation is much different now than it was after the three consecutive runs a while back.
I fully expect Schaefer & Spence returned. I think Daviault, Edwards, Sauder would be good OAs, and would not be surprised if any of Erliden, McCall and Terrance return as well.
I agree with what you said about Henry. Terrance though, I am not sure he has improved much at all in 1.5 seasons since the ‘23 Christmas break. Still, it is possible he develops more in a very limited AHL role than in the OHL traded to a contender. There will be three spots for imports this upcoming season. I’m sure the otters would welcome Erliden back.
Fastpace
Do extra on every shift and you will be noticed !
Don't mix up Terrance overall play to his offense capability or lack of, he's not your player that will score 50 goals a season on a first line, he is not your guy. He will be on your second or third line scoring 25 and preventing another 25 against, that totals up to 50, sort of speak. He is complete and a natural player ready for NHL in that sense, a smart player.
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