Each week during the season, we look at the big events and big games around Division I men’s college hockey in Tuesday Morning Quarterback.
Dan: Well, we’re back on the heels of a weekend that wound up being way more entertaining from top to bottom than I ever anticipated.
I don’t know about you, Ed, but I found myself getting sucked in almost every direction. As a noted seamhead, I kept a side eye on the baseball negotiations. As a basketball fan, the weekend gave me some fantastic finishes and solid games at both the college and professional level.
And I mean, it was Super Bowl weekend, so congratulations to the Los Angeles Rams for winning on home field, even though I long for that region to host a Frozen Four at some point (Hey, USC and UCLA, your city has won championships in every major sport over the last 20 years. I think college hockey would look fine on you!).
Quick shoutout to my wife for the stuffed mac and cheese balls that headlined the food table after our daughter went to sleep.
That’s not why everyone’s here, of course, so let’s turn our attention to one of the events that really matters to our readership: that aforementioned college hockey. It was a huge weekend in our world at both the domestic and international level, which is where I want to begin.
I am officially in love with Team USA hockey and find myself letting go in the spirit and pageantry of arguably the Winter Olympics’ most glamorous sport. After being jaded four years ago by the lack of pros, I was excited this year for the college hockey flavor, and after round robin play concluded this weekend, I am ALL IN with how the United States went undefeated. I know we’ve all kept our eyes on it. What’s sticking out the most about the way the college kids are playing?
Ed: I’m with you on the all-sports weekend (though my hoops fandom faded about the time the three-point line became more than an ABA anomaly).
To answer your question, I think the poise and maturity of the collegians are what really jumps out at me. They look completely at home on this stage, no doubt helped by the veterans on the roster and the World Juniors experience among them. They also seem to have come together as a team – something that head coach David Quinn noted – and that should be no surprise since there are clusters of current and former teammates and seven who overlapped at the U.S. NTDP.
Over the weekend, a CNN tweet compared this year’s success to the 1980 gold-medal team. That’s pretty ridiculous on its face, but maybe worth noting why it’s absurd. Certainly, there’s no team in the Beijing Games that’s as talented as that Soviet squad was, a juggernaut that had defeated a bunch of NHL franchises in an exhibition tour. But we also have to compare 2022’s Team USA to 1980, and I think the biggest difference is in the future of the current 15 college players. Five players from 1980 went on to have long NHL careers of more than 500 games, but star goalie Jim Craig played in just 30 NHL contests and hero Mike Eruzione never attempted to play in the NHL. For the 2022 squad, expectations are much higher in a National Hockey League that’s one-third former NCAA players.
What has also impressed me during these Olympics is how the college teams back home have fared minus some key players. Minnesota and Michigan haven’t missed a beat, and in the Beanpot semis, BU’s Vinny Duplessis and especially Northeastern freshman JT Semtimphelter were outstanding for their teams.
Speaking of Minnesota, they’ve lost three players to the Olympics and a goalie to the NHL, but Justen Close is 8-3 as a starter in net and the Golden Gophers are just a point behind Michigan in the Big Ten standings, tied with Ohio State with two games in hand. Minnesota has Wisconsin and Penn State left on the schedule, while Michigan has Ohio State (the last two games for the Buckeyes) and Notre Dame.
On this week’s USCHO Weekend Review podcast, we made the case that the Big Ten is the best conference in D-I men’s hockey this year. Do you agree?
Dan: You know, before I touch on anything, I noted in a text message to a friend of mine that I thought it was only a matter of time before someone made a 1980 reference. I just thought it would last until the medal round knockout stage when the Americans would face the Russians at some point.
Given the world’s geopolitical climate, the mighty Russian KHL all-star team against the underdog American college kids, four years after the Russians won gold and the Americans bombed out – and eight years after they left Sochi without a medal? Yeah, let’s just say that was about as close a gimme putt as any media outlet could have. I’m not criticizing them, I just know it’s about as easy a comparison as possible right now. I don’t like THAT amount of pressure, but I’m more ecstatic to see how college hockey is measuring up on the world stage. You summed it up perfectly, though I understand not everyone on Team USA is a modern college kid.
Anyways, that’s not what you asked. I was more trying to delay the inevitable about having to shove crow directly onto my dinner plate. That’s right, Minnesota. I come to you asking for forgiveness.
I pretty much left the Gophers for dead when Jack LaFontaine left Minnesota to join the Carolina Hurricanes organization, and I doubled down on that take when the Olympic rosters were formally announced. I all but said the Gophers would struggle to make the tournament and that the Big Ten was out of the question. They subsequently responded by beating Michigan before splitting with Notre Dame and sweeping Michigan State and Ohio State. Justen Close is playing great hockey and looked downright silly against Ohio State when he made 61 saves in the two wins, and the defense is emerging as having a good, fundamental system in front of him.
For the most part, the entire team is playing clean hockey and not taking any dumb penalties, though it’s worth noting that it was whistled for eight penalties and 38 minutes when the second game of that Ohio State series got chippy in the third. Two players were politely asked to leave the ice sheet, and the major penalties for face masking and clipping are things that I think happen when players lose their head in a highly-emotional, super-charged atmosphere.
Throughout all of that noise, Minnesota won, 5-1, and jumped into shouting distance of first place in the Big Ten and a No. 1 overall seed.
The curse lives. You’re all welcome. Minnesota. National champions in Boston. Now that I said that, clearly the Gophers bomb out the rest of the season.
But what Minnesota has accomplished underscores your point about the Big Ten, and that’s that the league is the best Division I men’s hockey conference in the nation. We all know I’m not a PairWise fanatic, but if we’re using that as a basis, consider this: all six of the teams in the Big Ten are ranked anywhere in the top half of college hockey, and the bottom of the league – Michigan State – outranks two NCHC teams, slightly edging Colorado College and overshadowing Miami University. It’s a credit to what those teams have built and put together, and top to bottom, I think it’s stronger than the preeminent powerhouse league in the nation right now.
What Minnesota was able to do shows that a team from the middle pack can jump up, even with all that it lost, because of the strength of the overall roster, the coaching, and the administrative infrastructure. Some kudos are due to that entire league.
I’m going to take this conversation in an offshoot direction right now, though. If you look at the NCHC and the Big Ten, one thing they have in common is a relatively low number of teams. They aren’t saddled, for lack of a better term, by the teams fighting and struggling at the bottom of the league. I think we made this point a couple of weeks ago regarding Quinnipiac and the ECAC, that the ECAC is hurting this year because of the issues facing the teams that sat out last year (specifically the Ivies at Dartmouth, Brown and Yale, all of which are in the bottom five of those same Pairwise). The numbers don’t lie, but they also take away some deep context:
Are the Big Ten and NCHC better off for having less teams than the leagues that have more teams? Less teams offers more margin for error against one another, I feel, and it offers a perspective that cuts the losses absorbed by the same conferences that have teams still rebuilding or fighting for harder, tougher wins to come by.
Ed: You’re absolutely right about ECAC Hockey this season.
Taking a year off definitely impacted the Ivies, Union, and Rensselaer, and with five teams from the conference in the bottom 12 of the PairWise, the teams at the top have been pulled down because of that. We’ve written about Quinnipiac in this space, and how the Bobcats would be a top-four team in a normal season, and you need to include Clarkson in that discussion, too. The Golden Knights downed QU 3-1 on Saturday and are 12-0-4 since their last conference loss on Nov. 9 to RPI. Clarkson is on the PairWise bubble at No. 15 but would likely be somewhere like 8-10 in a normal year.
The PairWise Rankings don’t take into account how lopsided a victory is. Those four-, five-, or six-goal wins by Clarkson might have been a lot closer without those teams recovering from a COVID-cancelled – or rather school-cancelled – season. But it’s the record of the opponents and opponents’ opponents of the team you beat that counts, not how badly you defeat the teams you’re supposed to.
That brings me to a subject that comes up every so often because it never gets solved, especially in the east. Aren’t we still way overdue for a restructuring of conferences? I think so. I’m going to toss out some ideas and let you react or add your own, Dan. This is all spitballing here, though a lot of people I talk to around college hockey agree that when it’s time to change, you’ve got to rearrange.
Let’s start with ECAC Hockey. The Ivy League teams clearly have hurt the rest of the conference in 2021-22. With a different schedule of 29 games, and the possibility of lagging in the areas of transfers and graduate players, is this the time for the Ivy League to split off, play a 20-game conference schedule, and grab an autobid? That would allow the remaining six teams in ECAC Hockey perhaps to become eight with some like-minded institutions, say Holy Cross or Rochester Institute of Technology.
Maybe a reshuffling of teams in New England, with a new league featuring teams competitive with each other from Atlantic Hockey and Hockey East? (I can already hear the groans and gripes. Just throwing out ideas here.)
Or an all-New York league from a state with 11 D-I teams and maybe a 12th on the way? Or the seven teams playing D-II with no NCAA championship in the Northeast-10, while we’re at it.
Then there are the independents and new programs around the country: Alaska, Alaska Anchorage, Arizona State, Augustana, LIU, Alabama Huntsville (if they come back), and Robert Morris.
Yes. Robert Morris. (When is Atlantic Hockey going to get off the stick and readmit the Colonials, now that they’ve made a commitment to hockey and seen the instigator of its temporary demise slip quietly out the door?)
Dan: We annually throw pizza against the wall in hopes of finding something conversationally that sticks, but it feels like there’s a great opportunity to create forward momentum with some amicable changes in college hockey.
First, to your point about Robert Morris, it’s unfathomable that we haven’t seen or heard anything about RMU’s positioning publicly. There is no reason why the Colonials shouldn’t be allowed back into Atlantic Hockey, and anything other than welcoming the Colonials back into the fold is a honestly a stain against college hockey. I said it earlier in the season, I’ve said it again, and I’ll continue to say it until the announcement is made. The only decision is to readmit RMU, and that’s that.
Second point – the independents and new programs. Alabama-Huntsville refused to reinstate its program unless it found a secure conference home. When I actually looked at the concept of donations and the college hockey “bake sale,” UAH was very open and honest about the needs and communication within its own program and fan base. That institution had been an independent and didn’t want to relive that history.
The conversation about UAH very quickly shifts our attention to the next point about the Alaska schools. It’s going to be very hard for college hockey to find permanent homes for those schools without more westward expansion, and the western leagues don’t make much sense. The CCHA very clearly won’t want the Alaska schools after geography was a big reason for the WCHA’s breakup, and the NCHC, for the reasons we outlined above, likely won’t take Alaska or Alaska Anchorage, a school that struggled to win games, when strength is found in smaller numbers of stronger programs. As for Augustana, I have no idea what to expect there, but I’m super intrigued by the entire region, Sioux Falls, hockey culture and what happens out there.
That leads us to the last two schools and the ones most likely to make an impact in what happens: Arizona State and LIU. Arizona State has to be attractive for a number of leagues because of its quick ascension to the NCAA tournament and a building that is good enough to host an NHL franchise, not the other way around (in case you missed it, the Arizona Coyotes are going to play at Arizona State’s arena for a few years while they settle their own arena woes in the desert). But ASU is too big and is an “all sports” power conference team, so it remains to be seen what happens there.
That leads me to LIU, the team nobody’s really talking about as the major player in realignment. What happens to the Sharks will likely dictate what happens in some other leagues, at which point the dominoes start falling. If we’re talking conversationally for no reason whatsoever, the easy solution is to add RMU and LIU to Atlantic Hockey, and we all go off on our merry ways. But I think LIU could provide the impetus for the D-II schools to play up in a league resembling the first days of the MAAC, and if that happens, what happens to Atlantic Hockey, which has two NE-10 schools in AIC and Bentley, both of which are significantly stronger in hockey than a league that appears as a startup league in line with the old MAAC. And if Atlantic Hockey starts to show fault lines, do the New York schools then break away, at which point the Ivy League breaks away? And if that happens, is there fallout among the other Ivies to start a new league with comparable teams? Hey, maybe Penn gets into the game!
The conversation is fascinating and, if nothing else, fun to have every now and then. I know this, all I want is for Bentley and Brown to somehow wind up in the same league so I can compete with and against my brother, who broadcasts at Brown and who I partner with throughout the year, twice per year. That would be fun for me.
Bentley and Brown is kind of a strange dream matchup to everyone other than me, even though I’ve gotten it both at Meehan Auditorium and at the new arena at Bentley (and I got another one this year when Boston College came to town), but that’s what makes college hockey great. So, last point of the week, give me your dream matchup somewhere along the line. I know RIT’s been to a Frozen Four but give me the one matchup you wish you could relive. Really interested to see what people think about at a personal level when it comes to this since it’s always unique to them and their emotional center.
Ed: I don’t think anything can top broadcasting the two wins RIT had in the Albany regional in 2010 as games for me to relive. (I do have a personal top 10, but I doubt most of our readers, other than Tigers fans, would care.)
I’ve enjoyed going to so many legendary barns that the list would be pretty long. My favorite of all the “away” venues I’ve been to has to be Compton Family Ice Arena at Notre Dame. It’s a jewel and a nearly perfect college hockey arena. Among more venerable rinks, Yost, Matthews, and Hobey Baker are right up there for their character and charm.
A dream matchup? I’ve wanted to visit Ralph Engelstad Arena for years. If RIT could arrange a pair of games at North Dakota, I’d be elated.
