{"id":25964,"date":"2003-10-02T13:10:41","date_gmt":"2003-10-02T18:10:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uscho.com\/2003\/10\/02\/200304-northern-michigan-season-preview\/"},"modified":"2010-08-17T19:55:31","modified_gmt":"2010-08-18T00:55:31","slug":"200304-northern-michigan-season-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/2003\/10\/02\/200304-northern-michigan-season-preview\/","title":{"rendered":"2003-04 Northern Michigan Season Preview"},"content":{"rendered":"
“We are all in a situation where we control our own fates. The answer is simple: win.”<\/p>\n
So says Walt Kyle, NMU head coach and believer in the league title. In a time when many coaches begin checking their Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) and PairWise Rankings midseason to determine whether or not they may be invited to the NCAA tournament, Kyle says that he’s not a “big fan” of the RPI. “It’s the chosen method, and there’s only one sure way to have a good RPI, and that’s to win.”<\/p>\n
The second-year head coach, former assistant coach of the New York Rangers, and former Wildcat captain and NMU alumnus, is well aware of his current job description.<\/p>\n
“We’re not in this to finish 14th in the RPI,” says Kyle, whose Wildcats missed the 2002-03 NCAA tournament by inches. “That’s a nice side benefit, but the reality is that it means more to me and the people in Marquette to win a CCHA Championship than for [NMU] to finish third in the CCHA and be high enough in the RPI to play in the NCAA [tournament].”<\/p>\n
Kyle says that his return last year to coaching at the collegiate level after years in the NHL taught him some valuable lessons about how the games differ at each level. “One of the things that came to me at the end of the year is that in pro hockey, you use the regular season as a window to look at your team through, to see what adjustments you have to make personnel-wise, system-wise, role-wise, to be ready to play in the playoffs.<\/p>\n
“College hockey is very different from that. Each season has a tremendous impact on what happens the following year.”<\/p>\n
Kyle says he was “blessed” last year when he inherited a team molded by his former coach, Rick Comley, a team that made the coaching transition after Comley — the only head coach for the first 26 years of Northern Michigan hockey — left for Michigan State.<\/p>\n