Jackson has clearly steered the recruiting ship into finding guys who will be here three or four years, not one or two. Some programs, notably one like Michigan, don't care about that as much.

I don't know that this alone explains why this team has basically no elite offensive talent on the ice though. But we sure don't. We don't have anyone that I see with an NHL level shot, or an NHL level of ability to create their own space on the ice. It's also the slowest ND team overall I have seen in years.

From a distance, I am sticking to a theme I have felt applied for a couple of years now, the whole program is stale. Coaching, recruiting, gameday, it is all stale and perhaps that's because the program has had the same people running it for almost 2 decades now. In some ways the stability is to be envied and celebrated. But no other team, not even the most successful ones since Jackson came aboard here in May of 2005, have had the same head coach and the same 2 assistant coaches for that entire time.

last couple years that end up on Michigan and gophers or OHL. What highly talented forward would want to come to a team averaging one goal a game.!