All the college hockey talk these days centers around Friday’s NHL draft and WCHA expansion. But recruiting will intensify soon. College coaches will be going to various hockey festivals to watch prospects.

The Gophers, despite the recent loss of the outgoing, charismatic Mike Hastings, might be OK. Hastings, an assistant coach for one season, has taken a job as associate head coach at Nebraska-Omaha. He left the program in reasonable shape from a recruiting standpoint.

The Gophers have 11 commitments. Eight of the players could join the program as soon as the 2010-11 season. The U of M recruits:

Class of 2010

Mark Alt                 Cretin-Derham Hall               D
Nate Condon           Fargo (USHL)                      F
Max Gardiner         Minnetonka                            F
Eric Haula                Shattuck-St. Mary’s             F
Christian Isackson  St. Thomas Acad.                F
Nate Schmidt          St. Cloud Cathedral             D
Ryan Walters          Des Moines (USHL)            F
Jake Youso              Des Moines (USHL)            F

Class of 2011

Seth Ambroz            Omaha (USHL)                    F
Nick Bjugstad           Blaine                                    F
Ben Marshall            Mahtomedi                           D

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 10:55 pm and is filed under Gophers men's hockey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.