Elliot McDermott and Will Gilson commit to RPI
The Engineers add two play-driving defensemen that the team so desperately lacked last season.
After a season in which the team conceded north of 150 goals, the defense was always going to go through some sort of overhaul. The real question was how much turnover we would see. Would there be a complete rebuild of the blue line with transfers/recruits coming in refill all the key roles? Or would the team stick more with more of a lowkey, traditional offseason with just a couple of freshmen coming in to backfill graduating seniors?
What ended up happening over the past couple of months lies somewhere in between.
CJ Regula had no more NCAA eligibility. Lauri Sertti and Nick Ardanaz both entered the transfer portal. Despite neither having a “flashy” season, Regula and Sertti both ate up a lot of ice time.
In their place, RPI picked up Elliott McDermott, a grad student previously at Colgate/UMass and Will Gilson, a rising junior previously at Alaska-Anchorage.
Let’s break down what McDermott and Gilson bring to the table:
Elliott McDermott
We’ve talked a lot about how RPI struggled to keep the puck last season. I’ll try not to rehash too much of that here, but a key takeaway was: defensemen are critical in maintaining possession.
A good defenseman can’t just excel at puck battles and nothing else. They must also be able to feed the puck back up to the forwards and then help keep it in the offensive zone once it gets there.
Elliott McDermott fits this mold. He’s a puck-moving defensemen who excels at creating space for teammates through his skating and passing. He hasn’t been a prolific scorer over the past two seasons at UMass, but his underlying numbers have been good. He was one of the best play drivers on UMass last year in a very strong league. He fits exactly what RPI needs.
There’s some reason to believe he could take a big leap in scoring as well. McDermott played his first two years of college at Colgate before transferring to UMass. In his sophomore season, he had 2 goals and 13 points in 40 games, most of which came at even strength. Back in the ECAC now, we could easily see some similar numbers.
Will Gilson
Gilson, in many ways, is a similar player to McDermott. He’s another strong skater with good ability to breakout and help the puck on its way to the offensive zone. His underlying numbers are not as strong as McDermott’s, but he still had a net-positive impact on his team in Expected Goal share and Corsi.
The big difference between the two is that Gilson had 9 goals and 29 points in his 61 games in Anchorage. The caveat here is that he played against some easier competition, not having to face Hockey East teams each week. But still, he’s shown he can consistently score at the NCAA level, and that’s not insignificant at all.
Big Picture
Brody Maguire and Gustavs Ozolins (both incoming first years) will join McDermott/Gilson as the fresh faces on RPI’s blue line:
The right-side of the defense is strong, and I don’t think it’s unlikely that all four will play if healthy. Smolinski was the best defenseman on the team by a margin last season and was probably unlucky not to have finished with a higher points total. Goffredo looks poised to take a big step after not looking out of place when he jumped into the team mid-season. And Agnew can penalty kill and get heavy minutes in a shutdown role.
McDermott and Strom will be penciled into the top four on the left, which will leave Ozolins/Matta/Maguire competing for that final spot (assuming the team goes 7D).