It’s conference tournament championship weekend and by Sunday at lunchtime, we’ll know which 11 teams are heading to the NCAA Tournament this season. The ECAC and WCHA still have semifinal games left, while the other three conferences have played everything but the title game.
The whole sport shifted their postseason schedules a bit this year as the NCAA Tournament Selection show, which had been on Sunday evenings in years past, was moved to Sunday at 12 pm Eastern. (Streamed here).
As of Friday morning, the top ten teams in the Pairwise are:
- Ohio State
- Yale
- Minnesota
- Colgate
- Northeastern
- Wisconsin
- Minnesota Duluth
- Quinnipiac
- Clarkson
- Penn State
The 11th NCAA tournament spot will go to the winner of the NEWHA championship game.
There is still opportunity for movement within that group and upsets in the tournament could impact more than just placement. Clarkson is the team most hoping for straight seed wins in the other conferences while also looking to make a run at their own title.
If you haven’t read up on the changes in how Pairwise is calculated, now would be a good time to try and wrap your head around it. I make no promises that my explainer will actually clarify anything, but an attempt was made.
The math says that barring a lot of wild outcomes this weekend, Clarkson should be a tournament team. But it was just two seasons ago that the Selection Committee decided that they didn’t want four teams from one conference (something they’ll have to grapple with in both the WCHA and ECAC this year) and selected UMD for the tournament, leaving Minnesota at home. They also left out a very talented Penn State team that was 4-0 against other teams in that field and had the second-highest winning percentage in the group out of the tournament.
While the NPI update and an expanded field are certainly new circumstances, what happened in 2021 was a convoluted picking and choosing of which criteria to apply to which teams and that is frankly only easier to do with a bigger field. This baffling field selection is much too recent history for me to feel like we can assume any team is a given based on where they land in the Pairwise and that there are now three more teams in the field.
CHA
Mercyhurst at Penn State – Saturday at 2 PM Eastern
I never count out a coach as experienced as Mike Sisti, which makes this matchup a closer contest than I think it looks to be on paper. This is still very much Penn State’s game to lose, but I also don’t think a win is a given. As mentioned above, the Nittany Lions have been on the outside looking in before and I think it’s hard to not have that in the back of your head. The program’s whole focus this season was to make sure they did everything they could to not be in that position again. They want to control their own destiny and not leave their first-ever NCAA Tournament bid up to chance or the whims of the committee. That puts a heck of a lot of importance on this one game. And while many of the current players weren’t around for the letdown in 2021, what that means is they’re a pretty young squad who have never been in this position before. Penn State has a lot of the mental side of the game to manage this weekend and how successful they are at that will likely determine the outcome of this game.
ECAC
Clarkson vs. Yale – Friday at 3 PM Eastern
Quinnipiac vs. Colgate – Friday at 6:30 PM Eastern
Championship – Saturday at 4 PM Eastern
As mentioned above, I think Clarkson is probably the most vulnerable of the teams that are still playing. The best way to handle that is to win their conference tournament. That’s a tough task any year and even more so this time around, with every other team left in the ECAC ranked above them and Clarkson carrying a season 1-5 record against them. That being said, teams with their backs against the wall are unpredictable and capable of just about anything.
Quinnipiac has struggled to close out the season and need to find their mojo again. They have the talent to win this tournament if they can put the regular season behind them and just play the fast, possession style of hockey that has been their signature. Colgate is looking to three-peat as winners of this tournament and are really just going to go out and play the same loose and flowing game they are known for.
Hockey East
Providence at Northeastern – Saturday at 12 PM Eastern
The Huskies have cruised through their schedule. Their last loss was in November and they seem automatic. They have one of the best forwards in the world as well as a number of scoring threats across their lines. They’re dangerous on special teams. There don’t seem to be a ton of cracks in the armor. But there are three blemishes on Northeastern’s record this season – two losses and a tie. And two of those came at the hands of the Friars, who handed them their last loss and fought them to a 2-2 tie. Northeastern has history and experience on their side as they’ve won the last five Hockey East tournament titles. But whatever the secret it is to interrupting the offensive machine of the Huskies, Providence seems to have figured it out. It has mostly felt inevitable that Huskies would win the regular season and tournament titles, but things became a whole lot more interesting here when the Friars defeated BC in their semifinal.
NEWHA
Saint Anselm at LIU – Saturday at 7 PM Eastern
Saint Anselm have been the team that just won’t quit the past few weeks and enter this title match battle-tested and confident in their ability to grind teams down. They came from behind twice in the rubber match of their quarterfinal series to win in overtime and scored twice in the third period in the semifinal to put the game away. The Hawks don’t quit and they play their best in crunch time. LIU is way more rested, having received a bye into the semifinals. They needed overtime to beat Franklin Pierce, but I think that game was a good wakeup call for the Sharks. In their fourth year as a program, they have an experienced group who went to LIU to build something new and set a legacy and they’ve done that every step of the way. Receiving the conference’s first-ever autobid into the NCAA Tournament would be an amazing cap to their careers.
WCHA
Minnesota Duluth vs. Ohio State – Friday at 1 PM Central
Wisconsin vs. Minnesota – Friday at 5 PM Central
Championship – Saturday at 2 PM Central
Every one of these teams has good and bad results against the other, which makes it difficult to predict any of the outcomes of these games. UMD has the least firepower of the four offenses, but they also have Emma Soderberg, who makes them a contender in any game all on her own. And that’s not to say that the Bulldogs can’t score goals, they just don’t have quite the cache of international-level forwards that the other three have. Ohio State has to manage the game and not let Minnesota Duluth try and slow the pace. They also need a stellar game from Amanda Thiele and a solid showing in front of the net.
The Badgers went into Minneapolis a few weeks ago and gave the Gophers everything they could handle over two games. Minnesota will be eager to erase that from memory and get some revenge. Wisconsin took all six months of the season to put things together and be the team they looked like they could be and aren’t going to want to give up any ground. Both teams need to be smarter – penalties played a huge part in that series a few weeks back and while some of it is to be expected between these two, there were also just some really boneheaded, undisciplined plays that can’t happen ever, but especially in a game like this. The Badgers have had some mental lapses in their own zone and turnovers and poor clearances really bit them in their final regular season series against Ohio State. They have to be smarter with the puck if they’re going to win this game.
