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.
Ed: For college hockey fans, this season has been loaded with the unexpected. Teams doing better – or a lot worse. Crazy upsets and comebacks. Even what seems to be a resurgence in scoring, the likes of which we haven’t seen in a few years.
This week we’re going to try to narrow things down to one surprising thing going on in each of the six men’s D-I conferences, plus one among independent teams.
Dan, I’d like to start with Hockey East. If people were paying attention last season, they might have noticed Merrimack’s ascension to the middle of that conference. If you haven’t noticed their success this season, well, you’re really not paying attention.
Scott Borek’s Warriors are sitting in third in the PairWise Rankings and were No. 6 in Monday’s DCU/USCHO.com men’s ice hockey poll. They’re tied with Connecticut atop the Hockey East standings but with a couple of games in hand. Merrimack’s goalie tandem of Hugo Ollas and Zachary Borgiel are right around a combined .930 save percentage and 1.80 goals against. While nobody has 10 goals, the team effort in scoring has them averaging 3.4 per game. But what you really can’t argue with is their 13-4 record at the break, including three straight road wins, downing UConn, UMass, and Providence.
I expected an improved Merrimack squad after last season, but this has to exceed most everyone’s expectations.
While we’re out east, how about the league you are covering this season, ECAC Hockey. Seeing Quinnipiac and Harvard out front in the conference was to be expected, but what’s the most unexpected thing so far this campaign?
Dan: This is incredibly hard for me to say, but I think the biggest shocker is at Clarkson because I really thought that team would challenge Quinnipiac in the kind of wire-to-wire separation that exists in ECAC because of the schools starting earlier than the Ivies.
This team looked so good on paper, and I think I had them first in the league because I didn’t believe Harvard’s championship was indicative of a deeper run this season. I more or less split hairs and said that Quinnipiac and Clarkson were the top flight programs while Harvard and Cornell sat a shade behind them in some combination of third and fourth. Colgate was the clear fifth, and then everyone else was under that group, fighting for spots 6-12.
Clarkson is under .500, though, and just lost extra points to both Brown and Yale at home after getting swept by Princeton and Quinnipiac. It’s three points behind St. Lawrence and three points clear of Union, and there’s maybe one weekend’s difference separating the Golden Knights from the bottom four spots in the league. That’s a shocker, to me, for a team that I still believe has some of the best players tied together in a system capable of playing perfect hockey.
By the numbers, Clarkson is middle of the road in both scoring offense and scoring defense, which is why a .500 record is suitable at this point. The output, which has a scoring offense nearly equal to the number of goals allowed, is comparable to St. Lawrence and Princeton. That’s not inherently a bad thing, but I thought this team would be much further ahead from where it is right now.
Now all of this said, I’m going to be really interested at what happens when this team hits the ice for the second half. It’s a real wild card factor, one that we can’t ignore.
I feel like I was a little down on a good team, there, so I’d like to take things into a topic that I know both of us would enjoy.
I have a coin in my hand. I need you to call it in the air when I flip it. Heads, we go to the Big Ten. Tails, we go to Atlantic Hockey.
Call it in the air….now.
Ed: Heads!
Dan: Trick question. It was a double-sided coin.
Big Ten…go!
Ed: Aren’t most coins two-sided?
The answer for the Big Ten is easy: Michigan State. I suppose the Spartans have been unexpected for the coaches in the conference, too, as they picked Michigan State last in their preseason coaches poll. They’re at No. 8 in the PairWise and 11th in our poll this week.
It hasn’t been completely smooth sailing for the Spartans as they ran into a Minnesota buzz saw two weekends ago, but a weekend home-and-home split against Michigan was a terrific series, and Michigan State has taken points in five of six B1G weekends.
Dylan St. Cyr returned to the Big Ten for his graduate year of eligibility and is putting up solid numbers in net. Scoring has been – like Merrimack above – by committee, as nobody has more than seven goals this short season. Not every statistical number is great for Michigan State; the Spartans lag in the faceoff dot and have been average in special teams. Yet the Spartans have found ways to win, especially when leading after two, where they are 10-1.
Adam Nightingale’s palpable excitement and enthusiasm seems to have rubbed off on his team. Nightingale also achieved something that no previous Spartans head coach had done: beat Michigan in his first game against the Wolverines.
I’m going to sneak in two honorable mentions: Penn State, which was picked sixth and has been much better than expected, and the conference itself, which is arguably the best in D-I this year.
I was going to challenge you to rock, paper, scissors for where we go next, but I’ll let you pick where you want to go next.
Dan: My wife beat me the other night at rock, paper, scissors, and it almost resulted in me missing Harry Kane’s penalty kick against France because I was doing naptime. That has nothing to do with what we’re talking about, but I still feel like that was notable.
I’ll take it to the CCHA, where the answer is equally as obvious as the Big Ten’s Michigan State tale with a group of teams locked in the race for first place. If you think about the league dating back to its WCHA roots, it’s often identified largely for Minnesota State and a bunch of teams playing to finish second behind Minnesota State. The league is now running three or four teams deep, and while it’s always been a very good league, we’re now seeing what happens when a dominant team slides backwards enough for the rest of the league to catch it.
You can’t really find a team willing to step out in front of that group, either. Bowling Green is tied with Minnesota State but has a couple of extra games played, and Michigan Tech and Bemidji State are right in there. Our latest and last DCU/USCHO.com Division I poll of the year has Michigan Tech and Minnesota State right on each other’s heels, and the Pairwise Rankings has everyone missing the tournament, though Michigan Tech is tied for 16th and Minnesota State is right in there at No. 20 (right behind a tie between Cornell and some team from Rochester that plays in Atlantic Hockey).
After a few years of Minnesota State being a dominant Division I power, the slightest regression – which honestly could have been expected at some point – opened the door for a wide open second half of the season. It does mean the CCHA is probably going to be a one-bid league, but that one team could be really battle-tested.
Ed, this leaves us with two leagues remaining: the NCHC and Atlantic Hockey. I’ll even throw the independents into the mix. Before we bring things home with our own league, I’ll toss to you for the home of the defending national champions and the current No. 1 team in the nation. Then, if you’ll indulge me, I’ll take care of our independent folks before we each can wrap up with the Atlantic Hockey league that I know we both love so nearly and dearly.
Ed: We’ll also ask our editor to indulge us in a couple extra paragraphs this week to make that happen.
The NCHC just seems a little … down from past years. I mean, sure, Denver is No. 1 in the poll and top four in the PairWise, and St. Cloud State is right on the Pioneers’ boot heels, but overall the conference just doesn’t have quite the luster it has had in recent seasons. North Dakota and Minnesota Duluth have had some rough weekends and have losing records both in and out of conference. Western Michigan is not off to the blazing start it had last season. Miami has had some good wins, including the 5-0 victory over St. Cloud last weekend, but is still finding it a tough go. You could make a case for Omaha at .500 in conference, but the Mavericks have been a bit up-and-down.
That leaves Colorado College as the unexpected team in the NCHC for me in the first half of the year. Kris Mayotte’s Tigers hit the semester break in third place, just six points – or a weekend sweep – behind Denver and three behind the Huskies. Don’t get me wrong; the Tigers aren’t exactly lighting up the college hockey world and are below .500 out of conference. But to be in this position in what in most seasons would be the best conference in D-I is an accomplishment.
Junior forward Hunter McKown leads with 13 goals, including a hat trick last Friday against Omaha, and rookie goaltender Kaidan Mbereko has three shutouts to go with a .927 save percentage.
Colorado College still has a way to go to be a top-tier team in D-I, but they’re off to a great start and should continue to delight fans in the jewel that is Ed Robson Arena. The Tigers are one of the few bright spots in a difficult year so far for most of its conference rivals.
So Dan, that brings us to the six independent teams. What’s unexpected among the unaffiliated?
Dan: You know, I specifically wanted to mention the independents because I wanted to split them into two groups: Arizona State and everyone else.
We all know that Arizona State has a real, live Division I program capable of competing with anyone and everyone. The Sun Devils are going to likely miss the NCAA tournament this year unless they win out (and even then, I don’t know if the math aligns well enough to move them from 24th to a spot where the Pairwise gets them in), but their schedule, their arena, and their overall culture puts them into the conversation on an annual basis.
Given the state of the Arizona Coyotes – even if they beat my beloved Bruins – I can’t get behind Arizona as an NHL market right now. I can, however, get behind it as the perfect NCAA market that’s currently carrying its NHL franchise.
So it’s important to separate Arizona State from the rest of the schools without a conference affiliation, though I’d lodge Alaska into the conversation this year. The Nanooks got lost in the conversation surrounding how Alaska Anchorage saved its program, but they are 7-7-2 with wins over Division I programs.
The weekend splits against AIC and St. Thomas felt modest enough to generate traction, and the wins over Omaha, Northern Michigan and RPI mean the Nanooks still have their mojo. They won the Governor’s Cup weekend series at home by sweeping Anchorage at home this past weekend, and a couple of weeks ago, they lost two games at Penn State where the Nittany Lions slipped past them.
I’m convinced hockey in both Arizona and Alaska has a successful future, and with the Nanooks comes the opportunity to boost Alaska-Anchorage, which holds wins over Western Michigan and Northern Michigan. That opening game in October over NMU felt particularly poignant given everything the team’s dealt with.
But therein lies the surprise because we have to ask a legitimate question: how many wins by teams other than Alaska and Arizona State are happening, and how do we weigh them? I was pretty surprised to see how many club teams played against Division I teams, with UNLV losing a one-goal game to UAA in October before losing a two-goal game against the Seawolves in Nevada.
Lindenwood, meanwhile, won four games by beating Air Force and Bentley once before sweeping Army West Point. LIU beat Ohio State, 3-2, and earned wins over Brown and Wisconsin in overtime and tied Quinnipiac. Stonehill has played largely a D-III schedule, so it’s hard to judge.
Either way, these teams are winning hockey games and looking increasingly competitive. That, to me, is a shock because I had low expectations. Sure, a Division I team should beat Assumption or Franklin Pierce, but the fact that new programs are working the transfer portal and recruiting teams capable of stepping on the ice with immediate success is a sign that the game is growing in the right direction. Now if only we could figure out the conference thing…
Ok, well that leads us back to our home in Atlantic Hockey. Yes, it’s been a year where we’ve talked about just about everything, but I have a feeling that we’re going to have similar opinions and not just about how great RIT’s been across the first half of the year.
Ed: That RIT is in the top four in the league at the break should not be a surprise. But that the Tigers are in first place – three points ahead of four-time champ AIC with three games in hand – might be.
RIT has done it with two elements that have been key to its success when it made NCAA appearances in 2010, 2015, and 2016: offense from the defensive corps, and solid goaltending. The top defensive pair of Gianfranco Cassaro (8-12=20) and Aiden Hansen-Bukata (2-16=18) are the team’s second- and third-leading scorers. Netminder Tommy Scarfone is 11-2 with a .918 save percentage.
Meanwhile, last season’s Atlantic Hockey rookie of the year Carter Wilkie leads the team with nine goals and 22 points. The team is also blocking shots at a high rate, led by graduate student defenseman Spencer Berry with 36.
RIT’s special teams also have been clicking at a hard-to-sustain rate. The power play has converted at .306, while the penalty kill is at .850 – essential for a team leading D-I in penalty minutes per game.
So it’s a case of a team with all of the proverbial cylinders firing.
Dan, let’s wrap this with your thoughts on the Atlantic.
Dan: Like the CCHA, we all knew Atlantic Hockey would have some type of regression to the mean after AIC won four straight championships because it happened after Air Force dominated the league for the better part of its first decade after leaving College Hockey America.
That didn’t mean AIC wasn’t a factor or even that the Yellow Jackets weren’t the best team in the league, but it did translate into seeing someone else jump to the front of the line by way of the regular season.
I’m not surprised that RIT retook the torch to start this year, but I’m shocked at just how good the Tigers looked in doing it. Only one of the four losses involved a bad game, and it’s easily bookended by the 10-4 win over Canisius. I don’t think I’ve been more excited to watch a team ready for a “power conference” opponent, and I think a good showing against Penn State, particularly at home, would work wonderfully for a league that’s battled the reputation of getting steamrolled in those games.
We don’t have any indication that what RIT is accomplishing will slow down, and at this point, halfway through the season, trends are now truths. RIT really has been that good.
I’m with you on all of those points, though I guess I’m more excited to see what the Corner Crew has in store for Penn State on December 30, but I’ll end with an honorable mention about the second half of the season.
The biggest surprise in Atlantic Hockey and maybe college hockey is coming on January 14 when Boston College visits Sacred Heart and opens the Martire Family Arena. It’s going to be a gorgeous place, and the Pioneers are already practicing on their new home sheet. I can’t wait for the reception at that place, and I have a feeling, for all you folks in Western Connecticut, it’ll blow the opening of Fairfield’s Leo Mahoney Arena for basketball out of the water.
