I think we can all agree it’s time for a breather, right?
Hockey East just came off a Saturday when it went a perfect 7-0 against nonconference opponents. Four schools scored season highs in goals — Massachusetts and Vermont each put up eight, Connecticut scored seven and Northeastern tied its season high with five goals in a 5-1 win over Quinnipiac.
No. 7 Maine beat No. 6 Denver 2-1 before a packed house at Alfond Arena, splitting a weekend series where the defending NCAA champion won by the same score the night prior. And now the Black Bears are set to face another top-10 opponent in No. 8 UMass Lowell this weekend.
Time to call off the dogs, right? This is just too much for Hockey East fans, coaches and players to endure, is it not?
Fat chance of that.
“It’s awesome — we love this,” said Maine senior defenseman David Breazeale. “For myself, I’ve come a long way since my freshman year, and for us to be able to play back-to-back top-10 teams, with us being in the top 10 as well, that’s a dream come true. That’s what college hockey’s all about.”
As of this writing, Hockey East is crowding the top of the PairWise rankings with a whopping five teams among the top 11 (Boston College, Providence, Maine, Lowell and New Hampshire). And how about this for a quirk? UNH is in last place in the league standings.
That’s right — the Wildcats, at 2-3-2 in the league, would be in the NCAA tournament if it began today (which would be a little weird because it’s only January).
And in inter-conference play, Hockey East boasts a 68-26-3 overall record (.716 winning percentage), second only to BIG’s 47-15-4 (.742).
Of course, Hockey East’s dominance of the PairWise is due to a number of factors, not the least of which is the quirkiness of the PairWise itself, and things will certainly even out over the next couple of months, beginning in earnest this weekend as every team but Providence is in action — all against each other.
With only a smattering of non-conference games remaining, it’s about to be all Hockey East all the time. And the time is now for teams to solidify their standing in order to face less pressure during conference tournament season.
“I don’t know if I remember a time when any league has had this many teams (this high in the PairWise),” Massachusetts coach Greg Carvel said. “That’s quite a statement for our league. PairWise, for the first half of the year, is determined by your nonconference schedule. Now it’s going to be determined by what you do in the league. And that’s a positive for us, because we’ve got about 10 games against teams in the top 10 in the country. (The) opportunity’s there for us.”
The league’s supremacy comes as no surprise to fourth-year Maine coach Ben Barr, who has coached in Hockey East for 12 seasons including stints as an assistant at Providence and UMass.
“Whether the rankings show it or not, all these teams are really good,” Barr said. “The PairWise is the PairWise, (but) as you go into the second half of the season, every game is a tossup in Hockey East, regardless of whether you’re the first-place team or the 10th-place team. It doesn’t matter.”
Oh, and in a related note that has nothing to do with the league standings or the PairWise, but is a nod to Hockey East’s dominance and worth mentioning — the association had 10 players on Team USA’s gold medal squad at World Juniors, and 36 of 37 goals the United States scored had a BC or Boston University player registering a point, as reported by Andrew Mahoney of the Boston Globe.
“Hockey East is a really awesome conference to be a part of,” Breazeale said. “We’re playing great teams every night. And that’s what you want. You want to play great teams so that when the championships come around, you’re prepared. You know what you’re up against. We love it. We love the challenge. We look forward to it.”
