theconradwaite

Article in Duquesne’s student paper about Sean 
 

Sean Moloney touched lives of many during time coaching Duq hockey.

It is with a heavy heart that I share the news that beloved goaltending coach Sean Moloney passed away on Friday, January 19th. Sean has coached with me at Duquesne for over half a decade and had an outstanding and immeasurable impact on our program, especially with our goaltenders.  

Sean had an incredible legacy of coaching stops, at the collegiate level with Chatham & Lebanon Valley at the NCAA D3 level, in the ACHA with Robert Morris University, at Indiana University of PA and the former W&J team, in the NAHL with the Keystone Ice Miners, and with countless schools, teams programs and clinics.

Services have not been announced yet, but I believe the family is planning on something over the weekend of February 3rd & 4th, to allow his extended family and members of the hockey community time to travel. I will share any details when they are finalized. 

Our team will be honoring Sean this Saturday at 8pm before our game at Alpha Ice Complex against IUP. I know a lot of his former players, fellow coaches and more will be in attendance. We are also going to host a Teddy Bear Toss at the game, with donations to go toward a local children’s charity. For years Sean loved volunteering to dress up as Santa around the holidays and he spent the last few seasons lobbying for our program to host one of these events. I can think of no better way to honor him, than to have the first one in his memory. 

Those that knew him, know how much he cared about and gave of himself to others. It would be wonderful to see many from the local hockey community out at the rink Saturday night to support these causes near and dear to Sean’s heart and celebrate his life and legacy. 

-conrad 

49 minutes ago, Danner27 said:

Since you felt the need to come on here to reply - proves my point even more. It’s like those montour board memebers that showed up here - guilty. I’m sure you are a nice person, im sure 90% of what you said is true but it doesn’t change anything about the politics creeping into the local acha hockey. That’s why many western pa kids are leaving the area and paying out of state tuition (stupid move imo - just don’t play) the players & parents see the same politics they watched go on during 10 years of youth hockey. It’s almost spring, ya better start putting that vengeance money grab together. 

@Danner27 I came on here last week/weekend because I was hoping to find the midam schedule and results posted. I happened to find this thread because it was fresh, and mentioned ACHA hockey. I created an account and spoke up because you levied accusations against and disparaged our program without any evidence. You can give your opinion on our results, success, wins/losses all you want, I’m not going to take time to debate those things with strangers on the internet. But I will defend unfounded attacks on myself and the program.
 

I’ll admit, I did debate the benefits of responding vs leaving it alone, but honestly I figured one of two things would likely result from a response.
1. You would provide details or evidence that I don’t know about, and I’d be better off with the knowledge so myself and our program  don’t make those mistakes again. Which would be great, because I’ll take any opportunity to learn or get better. 
2. You would prove in your response that the claims are baseless, and as a result they would not go unchallenged to anyone reading this thread.

There was of course the third possibility that you might actually acknowledge or apologize for the claims, but even I knew that was unlikely.

At the end of the day, I’m perfectly comfortable with anyone reading this thread t drawing their own conclusions. I appreciate the response, and good luck! 

-conrad 

1 hour ago, Saucey said:

To be fair, I can't find where Danner said that in connection with Duquesne. I do remember a thread somewhere on this forum where those criticisms were leveled against Pitt.

It’s in the first post of the thread that I quoted. He said that RMU & DUQ are the biggest offenders locally. 
 

-conrad 

On 2/11/2023 at 2:23 AM, Danner27 said:

I’m going to go on a small rant here for a second but this is also to inform parents. Western pa M1 “D1” teams. Pitt has to leave to CHMA that they could never win because they want “better competition”. Their fees to play are in the youth hockey AAA range now. The ACHA favors big name schools and known hockey schools  with their secret rankings. They won’t disclose thier formula. Their ACHA rankings were much better when they used my hockey rankings. Bias was harder to manipulate. Example - in the acha a OT loss counts straight up as a loss, you get zero points. A top 5 ranked team lost in OT last weekend, the acha put the game as a tie in the rankings formula and didn’t even try to hide it. In the standings it’s listed as a loss. 
 

Back to Pitt - the city game last weekend  was pitt vs duqesne. Duquesne is always at the bottom of the M1 rankings. Pitt won by one goal. I watched the live stream, I’m scratching my head trying to figure out how pitt is ranked as a top 20 team (well I know how but that’s another story) 
 

somehow duqense managed to get a series against Adrian this weekend, Adrian is always a top 10 team. I watched the feed for game one. Adrain just rolled lines and mainly played the 3rd & 4th lines. Here are the results of both games. 
 

80 shots a game! That’s like midget PPE or ESMARK playing a PAHL A major team.  this is what happens when western PA acha teams try to play with the real M1 teams. A lot of our western PA acha M1 teams (and Ohio) are run by local politics to a degree. Lots of Pahl & Pihl parent involvement, Elbow rubbing like the good old youth days. RMU & DUQ are the biggest offenders locally. RMU has kids on their top team that wouldn’t crack the top 10 on their second team. 

the point - don’t pick a college because you want the “D1”(M1) name. Pick a school that fits the education your child is looking for along with manageable debt / cost. It’s CLUB hockey - glorified BEER leauge. When a coach or “GM” tells you or your son they will put you on team 1 if you go there, tell them to put it in writting, they won’t. These guys get a bird dog for getting kids to enroll. 
 

/END RANT

 

If anyone wants to talk local acha club hockey, I guess do it here. 

 

@Danner27 as the Head Coach & head of Duquense’s club hockey program for the last 7 years I was fascinated to hear that unbeknownst to me our team is “run by local politics”, and has “lots of PAHL & PIHL parent involvement and elbow rubbing”. I am curious though, can you provide a single example, shred of evidence to back up this claim, or even a detail about our program that would explain what any of that actually means?
 

Further, you choose to disparage the way we run our program and recruit, but I challenge you to find a single player I’ve talked to since taking over, that I tried to convince to come to Duquesne for the hockey and hockey alone. 

I know you can’t, because I’m the one that has talked to every player interested in  Duquense over the last number of years, and they all get the same first question from me: “what do you want to study?” Next we talk about academics & school size/fit to see if Duquesne makes sense for them. All of that long before we talk hockey, because I don’t want to recruit players for hockey and hockey alone. And the funny thing is, that philosophy is definitely one of the reasons why we struggle to compete with the top teams at our level. But I’m just not willing to compromise our ethics for short term success.

On top of that, nearly every single player I talk to hears from me at some point “look, if you decide during your college search that Duquense isn’t a good fit for you anymore, that’s fine. College is one of the biggest decisions you will make in your life, you don’t need added pressure from myself or any other coaches where to go. If I can help you find the best fit for you, I’m more than happy to do it.” And I’ve always stood by that.

So again, please provide a single example to back up your claim about our program. One. I’d love to hear it, because if there is any validity to anything you say, I want to know about it.  But since I’m quite certain you don’t have any example or proof, I would appreciate an apology and clarification of your comments. 

thank you.

-conrad