According to the @inch list of guys who left early, 7 of 36 are in the NHL now. Only Stepan went straight from college to NHL.According to a Denver Post article Former all-WCHA and DU goalie Marc Cheverie is struggling at the next level of his hockey career. As a matter of fact I was really shocked and surprised to read that Marc Cheverie's save percentage isn’t even above .850. Why am I shocked; in college Cheverie wasn't just a good goalie, he was a dominating goalie during his junior year in the WCHA (24-6-3, 2.08 GAA, .932 SV% 6 shutouts). We are talking about a goalie that was near the top in the NCAA for shutouts, wins, save percentage and goals against average. Cheverie was dominating in all facets of the NCAA statistics, now that all star goalie is struggling in the ECHL.
Some are playing well in AHL and might make it up by the end of the year, but still an interesting stat.
12 WCHA players gave up eligibility to sign pro contracts this summer. Only UW's Derek Stepan is in the NHL right now.
The Denver Post - It wasn't at all shocking when Cheverie decided to skip his senior season at DU and sign with the Florida Panthers last summer. He already was 23 years old and had been the WCHA player of the year as a junior.
The Panthers, who claimed him in the sixth round of the 2006 draft, could sell the notion that he had little left to accomplish — at least on the personal level — in the college game.
But this is a bit jarring: While, in theory, the native of Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, could have been in the net for the Pioneers in the weekend series against Colorado College, Cheverie instead was fighting through a horrible start to his pro career. He's not even in the American Hockey League, but with the Panthers' lower-level affiliate, the Cincinnati Cyclones of the ECHL. And going into the weekend games, he had a 5.04 goals-against average, an .848 save percentage and a 1-2-1 record for the struggling Cyclones, who had won only once in eight games to open the season.
"It's a learning process I have to go through," Cheverie said on the phone last week. "It's not one of my goals to be here, but if this is how I have to get there, this is how I have to get there. I want to be in the NHL someday, but I have some work to do at this level to move up. If I had my way, I'd be in the NHL right now, but obviously, I'm not ready yet, so that's the way it is."
There are worse places to play below the AHL level than Cincinnati, so that's one of the positives.
"I've struggled a bit," Cheverie conceded. "It's been tough mentally, but that's part of the learning experience, part of getting in your comfort zone. You just want to be in a place where you're going to get better, and I think I have that here."
Summer of discontent
Every spring and summer college hockey fans cringe as they wait for fall to come, past experience has told them that some of the better players on their team or on other teams in the NCAA will lose players before they have played their four years of college.
The teams that suffer the most early departures are the teams that recruit blue chip hockey players. I would rather my favorite team recruit these types of players and take the risk that they play 2 or 3 seasons, than to not have them at all. Not many NCAA fans can saw that I enjoyed the likes of Zach Parise, Drew Stafford, T.J. Oshie and Jonathan Toews.
The NCAA coaches are trying to work out a deal with the NHL but I am not all that positive that they will be able to get the NHL to back off stealing their prized players. [Pioneer Press]
