FLAGLER: Parker must establish program where top players want to stay

For the last two seasons, the Boston University men’s hockey team has fallen short of expectations. It failed to win a Beanpot, it failed to win a Hockey East title, and it failed to make the NCAA tournament both years.

Last week, head coach Jack Parker explained part of the reason for some of that failure. Since the 2009 national championship, the BU roster, loaded with talent, has been decimated by early departures to the NHL.

Colin Wilson, Brian Strait, Nick Bonino, Colby Cohen, Kevin Shattenkirk and David Warsofsky, all key underclassmen on the championship squad, all gave up at least one year of eligibility to play in the pros.

“That’s something we have to look at in who we recruit, what kinds of kids they are,” Parker told The Daily Free Press, referring to the fact that BU needs to find not just talented recruits, but talented recruits who will commit to the program for four years.

But the exodus of BU underclassmen to the NHL is not just about the individual decisions of the players who left. And BU’s struggles over the last two seasons are not all about losing that talent.

Those players left because on some level, they just weren’t committed to the BU program anymore. Maybe they wanted the paycheck, sure, but maybe they thought they had accomplished all they could at BU in their time here and they weren’t going to continue to improve as players.

As unique as each player’s decision is to turn pro or stay, it’s fair to say that a player will be far more likely to stick with a program he believes in and that he buys into. The last two years at BU, that positive team environment just hasn’t been present.

Building a program that players want to stay with through their junior and senior seasons is not an easy thing to do in college sports, especially when those players have paychecks looming. University of Kentucky’s John Calipari hasn’t figured it out, and that’s a huge reason he is still without a ring while Billy Donovan has two with University of Florida.

Over the last two seasons, getting players to buy into his program, not just recruiting the right “type of kid,” has separated Jerry York’s BC squad from Parker and BU.

Parker did accept some responsibility by saying that he and the coaching staff could have run more competitive practices to make sure the team gave maximum effort in games. But he stopped short of accepting a role in what he saw as attitude problems with the team.

Parker also mentioned that the lack of upperclassmen has left the BU team with a young group that oftentimes played against teams with much more experience.

“It’s one thing when we have an 18-year-old freshman and they have a 21-year-old freshman,” he said.

“That’s happened a lot. The problem is, they turn out to be 24-year-old seniors, and our freshman guys don’t wind up to be 21-year-old seniors. They’re already gone. So we’re always playing with 18-year-olds against 24-year-olds now.”

This is also true. The young BU team did show its inexperience in comparison to some of its competition this year.

But this is not the fault of the freshmen alone. The saying goes that by the time the postseason starts, your freshmen shouldn’t be freshmen any more. The underclassmen should be ready to play in high-pressure situations and become leaders.

But for BU this year, the maturity and resolve to make plays when it mattered never really came together as the season progressed.

Players will not just grow into leaders on their own – there needs to be someone there, whether it’s a player or a coach, to guide them along.

Hobey Baker winner Matt Gilroy and Parker struck that balance well in 2009 to help underclassmen like Wilson and Bonino develop, but at the end of 2011, we saw freshmen still playing like freshmen, and the team’s performance was inconsistent because of that.

Parker has been doing this a long time, and to a certain extent the situation is out of his control. As he says, “You’re not going to not take Charlie Coyle. You’re not going to not take Adam Clendening. That’s the chance you take.”

He’s right. You don’t pass up on talent just because the NHL is becoking those players, and when you get down to it, the decision to go pro is up to them.

But it seems that Parker is leaning on his reputation to thrust the failures of the last two seasons’ disappointment solely onto the players when he needs to accept at least some of the blame.That doesn’t make him a bad coach, it doesn’t tarnish his legacy, and it doesn’t mean he’s not capable of leading BU to a national title.

But when a talented group of freshmen and sophomores aren’t ready to fill the void left by departing players, as we’ve seen over the last two years, ultimately, part of the responsibility is his.