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Minnesota-Duluth senior forward Jack Connolly picked up 4 points in a weekend sweep of Alabama-Huntsville this past weekend, bringing his total on the season to 40 points through 24 games, and bringing his career point total to 177 points.
That means Connolly is on/close to the pace needed to reach the pretty significant 200 career point plateau. The last player to do so was Michigan's TJ Hensick in 2006-2007, who finished with 222 points in his four year Michigan career. Nebraska-Omaha's Scott Parse finished with 197 points that same year. Since then, not many players have come close. St. Cloud's Garrett Roe had a chance last year, needing 58 points in his final campaign, but only tallied a career-low 36 points for the Huskies. Carter Camper finished his four-year Miami career with 183 points last year. A few other players would have had an outside shot at it if they had stayed in school for four years, including Connolly's UMD teammate Mike Connolly(he would have needed 64 points in his final year), and Boston College's Nathan Gerbe(he needed 67 points as a senior, after scoring 68 as a junior).
Needless to say, reaching 200 points is a pretty big deal in the modern college game. So what does Connolly need to do to get there?
Minnesota-Duluth has 12 regular season games, at least two, very likely three, and possibly four WCHA playoff games, and at least one NCAA tournament game, barring something apocalyptic happening. We'll stick with the minimum to be safe and he has roughly 15 games left in his college career. If he stays on his current pace of 1.67 points per game, over 15 games, that works out to 25 points, leaving him at 198 career points.
Strength of schedule may factor in as well though. Minnesota-Duluth was blessed with a comically weak cluster of Michigan Tech, Minnesota State, and Alaska-Anchorage this year. That means six of Connolly's remaining 12 games will come against those teams, and Connolly managed 4-point weekends against all three of them in the first half of the season. Add in that their playoff series is almost guaranteed to be against Minnesota State or Alaska-Anchorage, and there should be plenty of opportunities for Connolly to rack up a few extra points to push him over that mark.
If Connolly can't reach that mark this year, it may be a while before someone comes close again. Even if he comes back for his senior year, as rumored, Denver's Drew Shore would need 100 points between now and the end of next year to reach the mark. Notre Dame's TJ Tynan fits the mold of a player that might reach it, and is currently on pace to, but being a 3rd round draft pick this past summer, the chances he plays out all four years seems unlikely, despite his barely 5'8" frame.
0 recs | 7 comments
Another option down the road...
Mark Zengerle has the qualities of a player who would have a shot at it. Smaller undrafted player who has racked up a bunch of points his first two years. He’s on pace to finish somewhere in the 90 point range as a sophomore.
Chuck Schwartz - January 23, 2012
It’s an excellent achievement and I congratulate him. But the reality is it wouldn’t be a big deal if college hockey could manage to hang on to many of its best players longer than 2 years. That barrier would get smashed a lot more if the NHL didn’t raid it as much as it does.
20Forever - January 23, 2012
I had that thought too, but if you look at it, which players in the past five years would have reached that number if they stayed for all four years? Like I said, Gerbe would have had a shot at barely reaching it. Beyond that, how many other names can you come up with?
The problem is that most of the highly drafted players leaving after a year or two are coming in at a young age where they don’t dominate as freshman and start out so far behind pace that there’s no way they would have reached the mark. Jonathan Toews might be an exception since he had 85 points through 2 seasons, where he missed some time with injuries and the World Juniors. But I don’t think adding the rare Jonathan Toews-type into that category cheapens the accomplishment all that much.
WCHBlog - January 23, 2012
Nodl had 90 after his sophmore season. Lasch would have needed 66 his senior year.
The Exiled One - January 23, 2012
Oshie would have had an outside shot in 2009. He had 142 after his junior season.
SJHovey - January 23, 2012
Numerology
200 points a milestone, 198 no big deal. 3000 hits, the BB Hall of Fame, 2977, you’re just another player. Why are the milestones all even numbers anyway?
chuck martel - January 24, 2012
Kids who really want to be hockey players
http://www.mnhockeyhub.com/news_article/show/130697
chuck martel - January 25, 2012
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