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Wisconsin, Denver Show Postseason Intensity Isn’t Reserved Just for the Postseason

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MADISON, Wis. — The term playoff atmosphere gets thrown around after weekends like these, but the reality is this type of game most often doesn’t get played in front of partisan crowds.

You usually see college hockey at this level on neutral ice in a conference or NCAA tournament, not when there’s still almost two months until things really get interesting.

What No. 1 Denver and No. 3 Wisconsin brought to the Kohl Center ice in two games, however, had as much intensity as any of those one-off postseason showdowns.

Never mind that it pushed the top five teams in the WCHA standings into a clump where the top is just two points ahead of the bottom.

Never mind that the Badgers had just a little bit more than the Pioneers at the end to come away with three points in the series.

If there was one thing to take away, it was that it doesn’t take the bright lights and national television of the postseason to showcase the top end of college hockey.

“That’s championship level in terms of college hockey,” Badgers coach Mike Eaves said after his team emerged with a 4-3 victory. “The intensity, the battle of two teams that have skill, that have strong will, have a strong work ethic, good goaltending. What better way to prepare yourself for the end of the year by playing these types of games.”

A crowd of 15,237 — Wisconsin’s first home sellout this season — saw the Badgers push, the Pioneers push back and the hosts give one last burst of energy: first to go ahead and then to hold the lead in the final minutes.

“The pace was unbelievable the whole weekend,” Wisconsin captain Ben Street said. “You could never really let up; if you had a bad shift, they were going to make you pay for it. That’s the way it is in playoffs. It felt a lot like a tournament game, where there’s a lot on the line. … That’s why I think we’re so happy that we came out with the ‘W’ at the end.”

Being on the losing end had to sting, especially because the Pioneers were able to point pretty clearly at their downfall Saturday — a start that didn’t match what Wisconsin put forth.

They rallied from two goals down to tie things in the third, but Wisconsin’s Michael Davies got the winner with 6:30 remaining.

“The intensity was great,” Pioneers captain Rhett Rakhshani said. “That’s what makes college hockey so much fun. You’ve got to enjoy weekends like this.”

Probably a little bit more when you get three points instead of one.

“Good to see our kids win these type of games,” Eaves said. “That gives us confidence. We understand from the inside out the type of things you need to do to win these type of games.”

CCHA Suspends Lake Superior State’s Acton for Hit

USCHO Staff Report
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The CCHA on Saturday suspended Lake Superior State forward Will Acton for one game after a major charging penalty in Friday’s game against Notre Dame.

The junior was not eligible for Saturday’s game against the Fighting Irish.

Related link: Will Acton’s player page

Acton was called for a hit on Notre Dame’s Ian Cole, a check that resulted in a concussion.

The league reviewed the play Saturday and imposed the additional penalty.

Acton is tied for second on the Lakers’ roster with 20 points from seven goals and 13 assists.

This Week in D-I Women’s Hockey: January 22, 2010

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Been scanning around the world of women’s pucks, finding things to catch my eye.
One doesn’t have to look far at all.

Camp Randall Shinny

For starters, I noticed that the process of laying down the outdoor rink at Wisconsin’s Camp Randall Stadium is in preparation for the coed (men’s and women’s) college double-dip is now underway.

There’s no doubt that the event, which will feature the Bemidji and Wisconsin women followed by the Michigan and Wisconsin men, will be a memorable one to play in, and to attend.

I wonder, though, what tips the folks running Wisconsin’s soiree may have picked up from the recent Frozen Fenway event.

Dealing with Mother Nature is one thing. If it snows, you break out the shovels. If the mercury sinks to near zero, the ice will be harder than ever.
However, it was clear from watching the Fenway spectacle that the ice-sheet itself began to suffer under the strain of back-to-back games. By the third period of the BC/BU men’s game, the surface seemed to be begging for mercy.

Musical Chairs in the CHA

Ever seen anything quite like the wackiness that is the CHA standings?
Five teams in the league, four teams separated by a measly point, three of them chasing the team (Mercyhurst) that has been second to none in the polls since Week One of the season.

It could certainly make for some interesting hockey during this weekend’s two-game set between Mercyhurst and Syracuse, to be staged in the Salt City.

Rink Goes Pink

The Hockey East-sponsored “WHEA Skating Strides Against Breast Cancer” initiative will take center-stage throughout the league this week. Four tilts being played this weekend have been selected as “Skating Strides” events, namely BU/Vermont (Friday), BC/PC and Maine/UConn (Saturday), and PC/BC (Sunday).

Previously, the league’s four other rinks went pink for a night.
Gate receipts, as well as the proceeds from the sales of pink game-used sweaters, sticks, and the like will all be funneled toward breast cancer charities.

Kudos to the HEA for putting its platform to work on behalf of this critical cause.

Walking On to Greatness

Kudos, too, to Vermont’s Chelsea Furlani – a home grown Catamount – who is now the school’s all-time (Division I) scoring leader.

Furlani, who hails from just up the road in Colchester, notched career point No. 46 last Sunday when she scored in a 4-1 loss to UConn. Not a bad feat for someone who was a humble freshman walk-on, following after her sister Kari.

“If I did this in another state I don’t know if it would have meant anything to really anyone to be honest,” Furlani said. “But all these people that have watched me in youth hockey and high school hockey are still with me, and that’s a really cool feeling.”

Kessler Atop Harvard’s Ladder

Another school career mark fell last week, when Harvard goalie Christina Kessler registered her 64th victory in the Crimson net.

The old mark was held by Kessler’s direct predecessor, Alie Boe, now an assistant at Union, with whom Kessler shared the mark for over a month.
A few small matters such as exams and Canadian national team commitments kept Kessler from seizing the mark outright until last weekend, when she backstopped the Crimson to a 5-1 triumph over Colgate.

This weekend, Kessler will get the chance to increase her win total at Boe’s expense, as Harvard will host Union.

Apropos of Nothing …

My favorite hockey name at the moment belongs to Ohio State freshman, “Hokey” (given name Cassandra) Langan, although one wonders how she would have fared had she attended Virginia Tech. Alas, the VT don’t ice a hockey team, so there is no Hokey for the Hokies.

DeGregorio Signs On as Atlantic Hockey Commissioner Through 2013

USCHO Staff Report
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Atlantic Hockey commissioner Bob DeGregorio has signed a three-year contract extension to lead the league through 2013.

“We are extremely fortunate and please to continue to have him lead this league,” Atlantic Hockey executive committee chair Bill Bellerose said in a news release. “He has guided us through two expansions and continues to improve the visibility of Atlantic Hockey both regionally and nationally.”

DeGregorio has led the league since it began as a nine-team group in the 2003-04 season.

Quinnipiac left for ECAC Hockey in 2005. A year later, Air Force moved from the CHA and RIT moved to the Division I level, making Atlantic Hockey a 10-team league.

Niagara and Robert Morris will join next season, making a 12-team conference.

This Week in D-III Women’s Hockey: January 22, 2010

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At first glance, Middlebury’s 7-4-1 record jumps off the page at you and screams; ‘What the heck is going on over there in Panther country?’

I mean this is the same Middlebury team that has never lost more than four games in a season during the nine years of NCAA sponsored D-III women’s ice hockey and has won more National Championships than any other D-III women’s program, right?

Well, yes that is correct but once you take a deeper look inside the Middlebury games and roster, you’ll realize the Panthers aren’t doing too shabby given the circumstances.

Middlebury lost its top scorers from last season and three of its top five in Molly Vitt (12-20-32), Annmarie Cellino (12-18-30), and Erika Nakamura (11-10-21). The Panthers also lost their leader on the blue line in RBK First Team All-American Randi Dumont.

“We’re a really young team playing a lot of freshman and sophomores,” Middlebury coach Bill Mandigo said. “Against Williams this weekend, we’re going to being playing 11 freshmen and sophomores. We’re having problems putting the puck in the net right now but I think part of that is inexperience and youth. We’ll be okay. The kids are working hard and have a great attitude.”

Teams like Elmira, Plattsburgh, and Amherst lost a lot of players as well from last season but they’ve all taken their fair share of bumps along the way so far in the 2009-2010 season, sans maybe Amherst who has only lost to Elmira.

Elmira got swept in Plattsburgh earlier in the season and also dropped a game to Manhattanville, but then the Soaring Eagles revitalized themselves by winning the Panther-Cardinal Classic in early January.

Plattsburgh has lost only once, but a 3-3 tie against Utica has left the Cardinals steaming a little bit heading into this weekend’s huge showdown with R.I.T.

It’s not hard to distinguish that Middlebury has struggled the most out of the power five programs in the East so far this season but if you look at the Panthers losses a little closer, they’ve been in every game.

Middlebury started the season 5-0 and was riding high heading into the Panther-Cardinal Classic. Then they got the wind taken out of their sails a little bit after dropping a 3-2 overtime game to Elmira and a 4-1 loss to Plattsburgh where the game winning goal was scored with 2:30 minutes left and the final two goals were empty netters.

The Panthers’ slide continued with a 2-1 overtime loss to Trinity, where the game winning goal was scored on a penalty shot. Middlebury rebounded with two straight wins over UMass-Boston and Wesleyan before taking just one point from top-ranked Amherst this past weekend.

Sure a loss is a loss no matter what way you slice it, but just because Middlebury has four losses doesn’t mean you should fall asleep on the Panthers.

Stepping up so far this season for the Panthers have been two freshmen defensemen that have helped try and fill the skates of the Dumont.

Madison Styrbicki leads Middlebury’s defensemen with three goals and four assists on the season. Heather Marrison has also accounted for four assists so far this season to tie for the team-lead for defensemen assists with Styrbicki.

They are both playing very well,” Mandigo said. “They get a lot of ice time killing penalties and on the power play. They are in there at the end of periods and at the end of games and we think they are both very good players and having great freshmen years.

“We had a meeting with all the freshmen Wednesday telling them it’s time to stop thinking of themselves as freshmen and it’s time to step up and play and I think they are two players we can count on to step up for us.”

Middlebury didn’t graduate everybody as they still have some important cogs from last year’s NCAA Semifinalist team that fell to Amherst.

Anna McNally is back and the junior forward has been scoring at a blistering pace. McNally has eight goals and 10 assists on the season to lead the team.

“Anna is doing a very good job leading us,” Mandigo said. “She’s an extremely talented player that skates well. She’s very fast and may be the fastest player we’ve ever had here. Even faster than (Emily) Quizon and that’s saying something. She works hard and plays great defense. She back checks and fore checks relentlessly.

“She’s working hard to lead the group along with the other seniors, we just don’t have many upperclassmen so we’re hoping the team gets better each day and it’s a process as I always say.”

Middlebury also returned both goaltenders from last year’s squad in Lani Wright and Lexi Bloom. They have continued to split time this season with Wright holding a 3-2-1 record, 1.04 GGA, and a .945 save percentage. Bloom is 3-2-0 on the season with 1.98 GGA and a .888 save percentage.

“They are both playing pretty well,” Mandigo said. “I don’t think we’re giving up a lot goals and our defense has improved throughout the season. I think they are both pretty good goalies. I don’t think it’s been an issue from our defensive end, it’s just been an issue putting the puck in the net this year.”

Heading into a home and home series with Williams this weekend, Mandigo sits at 398 career victories in his 22 years of coaching at Middlebury. The next highest D-III women’s coach is Gustavus Adolphus’ Mike Carroll with 225 wins.

“It means I’m old,” Mandigo said with a laugh when asked about how it would feel to achieve 400 wins. “I’ve been doing it longer than everybody else so that certainly makes a difference. You certainly don’t get that many wins without having good players and we’ve had a bunch of them. The success we’ve had doesn’t come without outstanding players and that makes my job a lot easier.”

Mandigo said he expects two tough games with an improving Williams team that is 5-5-2 on the season already after winning just eight games last year.

“I think they have definitely improved this year,” Mandigo said. “It’s a little bit of a different game now because my daughter goes to Williams so that makes it a little bit of extra special game.

“They work hard and have some good freshmen that have come in and produced. I think Sara Plunkett is one of the best goaltenders in the league so that will certainly make it tough for us. They should be two really good games, but I hope we can find a way to put one or a couple past Plunkett.”

Around The Country

Once again, as seemingly every weekend there are a few match-ups that I’ll be keeping my eye on, as should you for important NCAA implications.

First up, the Plattsburgh/RIT rivalry will be renewed this weekend as the two ECAC West powerhouses meet at the Ronald B. Stafford Ice Arena in Plattsburgh for a pair of games. Plattsburgh can basically wrap-up the ECAC West with a sweep or at least three points from the Tigers. Even two points will give Plattsburgh a stranglehold on the top spot since the Cardinals swept Elmira earlier in the season.

Out West, Wis.-Stevens Point and Wis.- Superior will renew their rivalry with a pair of games at Wis.-Superior’s Wessman Arena. The Yellow jackets are 7-1-1 in their last nine games including wins over Gustavus Adolphus, St. Thomas, and Wis.-River Falls.

Wis.-Stevens Point is 9-4-1 on the season and is coming off two blowout wins against first year program Marian. Before that though, the Pointers had a three game winless streak tying Lake Forest once and then losing to the Foresters and dropping a game to Gustavus Adolphus as well.

One other game I’ll be keeping my eye on is Salve Regina hosting Manhattanville on Saturday. Salve is a very quiet 10-3-3 on the season with its only losses coming to Potsdam, Holy Cross, and Trinity. The Seahawks have tied Norwich and beating UMass-Boston and will have an excellent chance to make another statement and put their name in the mix for the ECAC East crown with UMass-Boston, Manhattanville, and Norwich with a win over the Valiants.

This Week in the CCHA: Jan. 21, 2010

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Fighting to Death

Quick: What’s the roughest neighborhood in the CCHA? If you answered, “Bowling Green,” or, “Big Rapids,” you’d be right — at least as far as last weekend’s action is concerned.

In Northern Michigan’s 6-0 win over BG last Friday, the teams combined for 99 penalty minutes, in large part because of a fight at 17:32 in the third. At that point, the game was over. NMU was already up by six goals and there was some pushing and shoving around the Wildcats net.

Then, as freshman defenseman Robert Shea was being led off the ice, he punched Wildcats goaltender Brian Stewart, who was minding his own business in the crease, as goalies often do when the mayhem ensues.

That made things worse, of course. In the end, 10 players were assessed penalties in the altercation. Shea received five minutes for fighting and a game disqualification; it was Shea’s second five-minute major for fighting this season. Bowling Green’s James McIntosh and Northern’s Erik Spady — who defended Stewart — also received DQs.

Things were just as pretty in Ewigleben Arena. Here were two of the league’s top teams battling for position in the standings. Ferris State had already gone taken four points from Miami in Oxford earlier this season by winning two shootout contests in Steve Cady Arena.

In Friday’s 4-0 Miami win, there were four penalties that were contact to the head. In Saturday’s 5-4 Miami win, there was one contact-to-the-head penalty, two calls for grasping the facemask and the incident at 18:34 in the first that resulted in the RedHawks’ Andy Miele’s five minutes for kicking with an accompanying game disqualification and an additional two minutes for roughing. That late-first-period stoppage of play saw six penalties called — three to Miele, and three more minors to another RedHawks skater and two Bulldogs.

This is a rough season for the CCHA, in more ways than one. Three of the league’s top teams are among the top teams in the country for penalty minutes. Ferris State is second in the nation in PIMs, averaging 20.9 per game. Miami is seventh in the nation, averaging 18.2 per game. Michigan State is ninth, with 17.6.

If these were garden-variety slashes, roughs and the occasional knee, there would be no call for alarm. These is, however, a whole lot of contact to the head. Whether that’s in the form of an elbow or a hand to the face mask, it’s all dangerous.

In December, Notre Dame coach Jeff Jackson was down to three defensemen because of injuries, and he was a bit hot about concussions that Ian Cole and Eric Ringel had sustained the week before while playing Miami. These were, said Jackson, “… direct results from high hits that weren’t called.” In other words, contact to the head.

This week, Jackson’s bench is still shortened by injury. Ringel is still out with that concussion, and Billy Maday sustained a concussion and shoulder injury in a Jan. 10 game against Ferris State. Also out as a result of a hit in that game is ND’s Teddy Ruth. Jackson called the plays that led to injuries in that game “blatant head blows” and told Steve Lowe of the South Bend Tribune that the hit to Ruth “could have been life-threatening.”

As a result of further review of that game, FSU freshman Travis Ouellette was given an additional game suspension by the league. He did receive a major penalty and game DQ for hitting Ruth during that contest, but the hit that injured Maday was never called.

Just a glance at this season’s box scores from CCHA games alone shows an alarming number of CTH penalties and separate infractions involving face masks, a point of emphasis for the league this year. No team is sainted, not even the Irish.

These numbers are anecdotal, as I went through the boxes once. They are, however, interesting. Seven teams have 10 or more CTH penalties this season, with Western Michigan leading (17). The Bulldogs, RedHawks and Spartans, however, each have fewer than 10, as do the Irish.

There are players that stand out in surprising ways. Blair Riley, Ferris State’s leading scorer (16-11–27) and arguably the Bulldogs’ best player, is responsible for five of FSU’s nine CTH penalties. Bowling Green’s best player and lead scorer, freshman Jordan Samuels-Thomas (8-11–29), has three of BG’s 11 CTH penalties.

There are other non-CTH trends that are a bit disturbing. Shea, the guy who was kicked out for punching Stewart, is the only player to have been called for fighting this season, and he was called for it twice. Lake Superior’s Dan Barczuk distinguished himself one game, a 5-1 win over NMU Dec. 11, for two goalie-contact penalties, one at 19:59 in the second and one at 19:58 in the third.

For teams on a losing end of game — like Bowling Green last weekend, and when the Wolverines took 65 minutes in penalties in a 5-1 home loss to Miami Nov. 7 — sometimes an unraveling is unavoidable. These are young kids. Emotions run high.

But one of the more disturbing things about some of these games is the fact that the players taking the penalties are on the teams with the upper hand: FSU and Miami, for example, when playing Notre Dame.

And all of this is especially disturbing because someone has died recently from injuries sustained in a hockey fight. Donald Sanderson of the Whitby Dunlops, an amateur team near Toronto, hit his head on the ice when he fell during a fight Dec. 12. He died Jan. 2 after remaining comatose for three weeks. Granted, his injury was sustained from a fall to the ice and not a direct blow to the head from another player, but the fall was the result of a fight — and it seems these days as though players are ready to throw down for any reason, at any time.

In December, the New York Times published an article that linked head trauma in hockey players to permanent brain damage. It’s the kind of thing that we’ve come to associate with boxers and football players, but an autopsy performed on Reggie Fleming — an old-school bruiser from Montreal who had a journeyman’s career in the NHL — showed that Fleming had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a neurological disease that leads to dementia.

I don’t buy the theory that full face masks alone are the reason that young hockey players are more reckless and likely to fight. That may be a contributing factor, but there are still plenty of players who grew up wearing full protection and do not hide behind the cages waiting to scrap. I do applaud the league for taking the additional step with Ouellette, and would like to see even more review — and more often.

The sport must self-police, from the coaches to the fans. I love the action, without question. I enjoy a good scrum. But everyone needs to call for the deliberate contact to the head to cease.

In another New York Times article about Sanderson’s death, his teammate Kyle Musselman, unintentionally summed up part of the ongoing problem.

“The refs only call so much,” said Musselman. “You have to protect each other as well as you have to protect yourself.”

Sanderson was fighting to protect one of his teammates when he fell and hit his head on the ice.

Perhaps we need to reconsider what comes to mind when we think of protection.

Also Unsportsmanlike

This boggles the mind.

In an article dated Jan. 20 on Gann Matsuda’s blog Frozen Royalty, Los Angeles Kings president and general manager, Dean Lombardi, completely ripped Michigan coach Red Berenson.

This is no-holds-barred stuff.

In the article, Lombardi said that defenseman Jack Johnson had no coaching and development at UM. Johnson left the Wolverines at the end of his sophomore season in 2007 and has been with the Kings ever since.

“Michigan is the worst,” said Lombardi. He said that he’d steer players toward Boston University rather than UM because “Red doesn’t coach.”

Lombardi claims that the reason Johnson hasn’t lived up to his potential in Los Angeles is because of his days at UM. “Jack just did what he wanted” at UM, said Lombardi, and the Kings have had to teach him the very basics. Lombardi said that Johnson “struggled with” the criticism he received upon arriving in Los Angeles and hearing that he wasn’t quite yet a superstar.

Twenty-two former Wolverines have seen ice time in the NHL during the 2009-10 season. The fact that Johnson was playing college hockey, may not have been a team player in Ann Arbor (because talented young men never believe their own press), may have been uncoachable (again, young) and left after two seasons (while very young) has nothing to do with his current mediocrity in the NHL, right?

In other words, the Kings are unhappy that Johnson’s progress hasn’t been more rapid in Los Angeles during the last four years because of the two years he spent under Berenson?

Perhaps Lombardi missed out on a couple of college classes, too, like the courses that address logic.

He could certainly use a refresher in etiquette.

Soon, I Think

I know it’s a two-note column this week. It’s January and I get tired of saying, “Hey! I just saw a great series!” Besides, there are important issues to hash over. I think.

Last week, I said that I’d talk this week about Lake State and how small CCHA schools like LSSU have difficulty recruiting. That has to be tabled because I’m still gathering some information.

Next week, a retro column with — perhaps — a game of the week thrown in for good measure.

A North Andover Twist

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While watching a Boston University-Merrimack game earlier this year, my friend pointed out an interesting little wrinkle in the Warriors’ game plan: practically any time the puck was in ‘Mack’s zone, one of the Warriors would skulk the neutral zone, looking for a breakout pass.

I was fascinated, but didn’t look into it too much after the fact. I figured it was an experiment by Merrimack head coach Mark Dennehy to find his spunky but often-out-gunned squad an edge.

Much to my surprise, a full two months later, Dennehy is still running the same wacky play.

“To be honest about it, I don’t know that I’d want to talk about it too much because I think it’s still catching a couple teams by surprise,” he reluctantly stated. “What has amazed me is that more people don’t recognize it. There’s still an element of surprise,” he said, though he was quick to state that it’s not an original strategy.

“If you knew me, you’d know that this is one of the most difficult things I have to say, which is ‘no comment,'” he laughed.

The sixth-year head coach, in his fifth season in the Merrimack Valley, did indicate that the Warriors have used the “cherry-picker” tactic all year long, with varying levels of success.

“I’d be more than happy to sit down with you at the end of the season and talk about the nuances of it, how we run it,” Dennehy said, but was obviously tight-lipped beyond that.

The reasons for running the play remain a mystery, but a few possibilities came to mind: a) Dennehy feels that his team has better odds playing four-on-four defense rather than five-on-five, and evacuating a forward and an opponent to cover him give Merrimack that desired advantage; or b) a select group of the Warriors’ forwards are dynamic enough to break free from their coverage on a consistent basis when their teammates get the puck out of the zone.

Chances are that there are other, more intricate and subtle reasons for running the play, but one thing’s for certain: Dennehy isn’t afraid to take the game in new directions if the tweaks will benefit his budding program.

This Week in the ECAC West: Jan. 21, 2010

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Mediocrity

With all but one non-conference game now behind the ECAC West teams, it is a good time to take stock of the season so far and see what teams need to do with the remaining league schedule.

The teams of the ECAC West did not fare well in non-conference play this season. Over the past five years, the league has won 66.4% of its non-league games overall, and has enjoyed a 61.2% success rate against its arch-rival SUNYAC.

But this season, the league was woefully mediocre in outside play, with only a .508 record overall and .512 against SUNYAC.

The lone remaining non-conference game will be played this Sunday when Manhattanville travels to SUNY Morrisville. All of the ECAC West will be watching this game as the Valiants will look to ensure that the league maintains its long-standing tradition of a winning record against the SUNYAC. Currently the league is only one game up on the state schools at 20-19-4.

League Stretch

With non-conference nearly finished, all eyes are squarely focused on the remaining league schedule as the teams sprint to the playoffs. Just five weeks remain in the season, and all six teams are jockeying for playoff positions.

Here is a rundown of each team, their current position, and what they need to do to end up on top.

Elmira Soaring Eagles

Elmira was the only team to go a perfect 6-0 in the first half of the league schedule and is sitting pretty with a game in hand on all teams except Utica. The Soaring Eagles’ schedule includes a single home game against Hobart and a pair of games against all other ECAC West teams.

The key to Elmira’s success so far this season has been its power play. When it is clicking, the Soaring Eagles have been unstoppable, but when it goes cold, they struggle. Take this past weekend as an example.

Elmira rolled in four power-play goals on 11 opportunities on Friday against Potsdam, dominating the game from the start. But the extra attacker units went cold on Saturday — they were shutout on all nine power plays they had — and Elmira struggled to a 3-0 victory over Cortland, which included a late empty net shorthanded tally.

During the first half of the league schedule, Elmira scored 15 goals on 41 power plays. If the Soaring Eagles can get their special teams rolling like that again, they might be unstoppable down the stretch.

Manhattanville Valiants

The Valiants currently stand in second place in the ECAC West, only two points behind Elmira. However, three of Manhattanville’s five league wins were against Lebanon Valley and the Valiants have the toughest remaining league schedule.

To make matters worse, Manhattanville ended the first half of the season on a down note with a pair of home league losses against Elmira and Hobart.

Things have been looking up for the Valiants since then, however. Manhattanville has rolled off seven straight non-conference victories, outscoring its opponents 34-15. Manhattanville has a tradition of going on long winning streaks, which would bode well for the Valiants down the stretch.

Junior Mickey Lang has been a scoring monster so far this season and is tied for the lead in the nation with 17 goals.

The Valiants have owned the second period throughout this season, scoring 24 more times overall than their opponents during that stanza to take control of games.

With home weekends against Neumann and Utica, and an all important road weekend finale at Elmira, February is going to determine Manhattanville’s fate in the regular season standings.

Hobart Statesmen

Hobart currently sits in third place in the league, but the Statesmen’s 3-3-1 league record doesn’t fully show the struggles that the Statesmen have faced.

Injuries have ravaged the team, particularly early in the season. Just two weeks ago, nine players were out for various injuries. The resulting changes have rippled through the lineup and special team units as freshmen have been called on to step in earlier than expected.

Hobart hopes to start getting some of those missing players back into the lineup, and it can’t come soon enough. Five of their remaining eight games for the Statesmen are on the road.

Hobart will need to string wins together — something it hasn’t done all season — for at least three quarters of those games if the Statesmen hope to see themselves at the top of the leader board.

Neumann Knights

Outside the league, Neumann posted a solid 7-3 record this season, but inside the conference was another story. The Knights struggled during the first half of conference play, posting a disappointing 2-3-1 record.

What really hurt the defending national champions early was an abysmal penalty kill. The Knights only killed off 65.5% of the opposing power plays during the opening conference schedule.

Neumann has been working long and hard on its penalty killing strategy since then and has shown marked improvement, limiting non-conference opponents to a much more respectable 20% success rate on their power plays.

Fortunately for the Knights, all but two of their remaining games will be played in the friendly confines of the Ice Works, and that has the team looking to move up the standings.

“We are in pretty good shape,” said Neumann coach Dominick Dawes. “We have started to find some line combinations. The kids are excited about getting to play at home.”

Utica Pioneers

Utica finds itself in fifth place, one point behind Neumann in the standings but with a game in hand.

The Pioneers are another team that just hasn’t been able to find a way to get on a roll. The longest unbeaten streak all season has only been 2-0-1, something Utica has done twice only to promptly drop a game or two.

It is hard to put a label on why: scoring is up so far this year, mainly thanks to the 12 goals scored by sophomore Tim Coffman.

The Utica power play is also performing spectacularly well compared to past years, scoring an amazing 34.2% of the time in league play.

And yet the Pioneers find themselves near the bottom of the standings with a very difficult path upwards. Utica will need to figure out how to be road warriors as the season winds down, when six of its last nine games are away from the packed house of The Aud.

Lebanon Valley Flying Dutchmen

There is little doubt that Lebanon Valley continues to show improvement this year. The Flying Dutchmen have not allowed any team to run up double digits on them yet, something they failed to accomplish since joining the league five years ago.

Scoring is up also, averaging nearly three goals per game since the holiday break.

Victories, however, continue to elude Lebanon Valley which is proving very frustrating. With league games remaining against ever team except for Manhattanville, the Flying Dutchmen are poised to play spoilers, trying to finish off the season on a high note as they continue to rebuild the program.

Late Wednesday, Lebanon Valley Athletic Director Rick Beard announced that head coach Ted Russell has resigned effective immediately, after slightly less than three seasons. Russell was an assistant coach with the team from 2001-2006.

Coaching duties for the remainder of the season will be handled by assistant coach Brendon Herr, with help from current senior captain Spiros Anastas who is currently out of action due to injury.

Beard will be responsible for day-to-day operations of the team.

Game of the Week

Eyes this week turn to Manhattanville’s visit to The Aud to play Utica. The Pioneers need to take advantage of their few remaining home games and hold serve against the Valiants.

Manhattanville, on the other hand, is riding a seven game winning streak and would like nothing better than to extend that momentum into league play.

It should be a war in front of a huge crowd in Utica and is certainly the place to be this Friday night.

This Week in Hockey East: Jan. 21, 2010

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A Zero-Sum Game

If the season ended today, Hockey East would get three teams into the NCAA tournament but none would be seeded highly. According to the current PairWise Rankings, Boston College would top the league teams at No. 9, followed by Massachusetts (tied for 10th) and Vermont (tied for 12th). On or outside the bubble would be New Hampshire (tied for 15th), Maine (20th) and Massachusetts-Lowell (22nd).

All of which means that as the Hockey East teams got assigned to one of the four NCAA regional sites, not one would deserve higher than a No. 3 seed.

Which, if those numbers hold up, means the toughest possible paths to the Frozen Four at Ford Field in Detroit. No first-round cupcakes, if there is such a thing anymore. And conceding faceoff matchups throughout the entire NCAA tournament.

Of course, there’s a lot more hockey to be played. Unfortunately, the supply of nonconference games has been nearly exhausted. Only the Beanpot games against downtrodden Harvard (4-10-2) remain to fatten up records against the other conferences.

In other words, it may be early. But it’s also late. (How’s that for a Yogi Berra-ism?)

How did we get to this point?

Well, unlike last year when the league took no prisoners in the early nonconference games, Hockey East has posted indifferent results, especially with respect to the two Western conferences. Although Hockey East has gone an almost perfect 11-1-0 against Atlantic Hockey and the CHA as well as 15-9-2 against the ECACHL, its record against the CCHA (6-6-1) and WCHA (4-8-0) leave a lot to be desired. (By comparison, Hockey East teams last year went 10-4-2 and 7-4-2 against the CCHA and WCHA, respectively.)

So what’s the solution?

In short, it’s now a zero-sum game. The only way to move up in the PairWise will be at the expense of other Hockey East teams.

Riding High

Going into New Hampshire’s Nov. 14 game against Massachusetts, Wildcats fans might have wondered if it was time to think about next year. Their boys had just lost an agonizing game at UMass, giving up an extra-attacker goal with 11 seconds left in regulation and then the game-winner in overtime. Even though it was the toughest of losses, that wasn’t the worst part.

The worst part? The result left UNH with a 2-6-2 record.

Since then, however, the Wildcats have gone 8-1-2 with the only loss coming in nonconference play. They now sit atop Hockey East a point ahead of Boston College and three points ahead of UMass, with a game in hand over both.

“Obviously, where we are sitting right now is a nice position,” UNH coach Dick Umile says. “We have quite a way to go but we had a good end of the first half and other than our game [coming out of the break] against Cornell, I think we’ve been playing well.

“I said it right from the beginning: I really like the chemistry of the team, the makeup of the team and we’re getting better each weekend.”

The turnaround has been no accident. At the depth of the Wildcats’ misery, they were giving up an average of 4.22 goals a game, worst in the league. Since then, they’ve been allowing an average of 2.67.

“We just got better defensively,” Umile says. “Everybody can say they’ve got younger players, so I’m not going to blame it on that. But I think as a team we figured out some combinations and figured out who we were and how we were going to play.

“More importantly, we’ve played pretty well defensively as a team. I’m talking about as a team playing off the puck defensively. I think that’s been the biggest change we’ve made since the beginning of the season to what we’ve accomplished since then.”

Fortunately for their position in the league standings, most of the lumps the Wildcats took in the early going came against nonconference teams, most notably Miami and Wisconsin.

“We probably weren’t ready to play some of those teams,” Umile says. “We took our lumps, but I think everybody realized we’d be OK. We just had to get better defensively and have some patience and we could become a good team.

“That has happened. Now we have to continue to do that and play consistently each and every night.”

At the same time that UNH has tightened up its play defensively, it has continued to put the puck in the net. Since turning the corner after that agonizing loss at UMass, UNH has averaged almost four goals a game.

“We have one line that is playing extremely well, that being the DeSimone-Butler-Thompson line [Phil DeSimone, Bobby Butler and Paul Thompson],” Umile says. “We’re getting some production from our other lines as well and hopefully we’ll get a little bit more as we keep tweaking things.”

Butler, who leads Hockey East in league scoring, has taken his game to another level as a senior. Always a threat, he’s already matched his point totals from last year.

“We’ve been fortunate in years past to have players who become [over the seasons] a real offensive threat, and Bobby Butler is someone we felt could do that,” Umile says. “He’s playing extremely well.

“A big part of that is his work ethic. He’s a scorer. He’s got a great shot, a good release, and he’s got confidence when he’s shooting with accuracy. But he’s not waiting for things to happen. He creates opportunities with good aggressive play along with his playmaking ability.

“His linemates, DeSimone and Thompson, have developed a great chemistry with him. Paul Thompson is kind of following Bobby Butler’s path as a junior, [elevating his game], so that line has become a very, very solid line.”

Defenseman Blake Kessel adds a lot more offense from the blue line, giving UNH a hard-to-match weapon. He totaled four assists in UNH’s most recent game, lifting his overall total to 26 points. He leads Hockey East defensemen in scoring and ranks fifth overall in league points.

“He’s got as much awareness as any kid that we’ve had back there,” Umile says. “He skates with his head up, he’s a great passer, he anticipates, he creates offense.

“You just look at the type of player his brother [high-scoring Toronto Maple Leafs forward Phil Kessel] is. His sister is an Olympic-caliber player. Blake has some pretty good genes there.

“He’s a very, very talented hockey player who really understands the game extremely well and sees the ice extremely well.”

The challenge for UNH, of course, will be to keep the good times rolling. It doesn’t take much within Hockey East to knock you off the pedestal.

And five of the next six games come on the road, starting with games this weekend at Providence and Boston University and ending with two games at Maine.

“No doubt about it, this weekend will be a difficult task,” Umile says. “We’re going down to play Providence, who is coming off the biggest weekend they’ve had in a while. They’re a good team. We played them just before the break. [Alex] Beaudry, their goaltender, played extremely well. They play hard, they’ve got some skill and they’re playing right now with a lot of confidence.

“Then we go to BU the next night. That’s how it is in our league, and we’re ready for that.

“We struggled on the road early on this year, but we became a good road team by the end of the first half. Hopefully, we’ll continue to do that.”

Surprisingly for a first-place team in Hockey East, UNH has little margin for error down the stretch. The Wildcats’ nonconference struggles — a league-worst 0-5-1 before defeating Dartmouth last weekend — have put them in a precarious position in the PairWise standings. The current tie for 15th place won’t be good enough.

But the Wildcats are employing the oldest of cliches — take it one game at a time — figuring that if they can take care of business within Hockey East, the NCAA tournament picture will take care of itself. Even, that is, if they don’t get an automatic berth by winning the league tournament.

“We know that if we play well and continue to play at the top of our league, we will be an at-large team,” Umile says. “It’s all about Hockey East right now, and that’s what we’re focusing on.

“Obviously, we want to get into the tournament. The way we do that is by winning games in Hockey East.”

Expectations and the River Hawks

It might be easy to ask, “What’s wrong with Lowell?”

After all, preseason expectations were high for the River Hawks. Impressed with their play last season down the stretch and the return of virtually the entire roster, league coaches pegged them to finish second. Jim Connelly and I both upped the ante, picking the Hawks to take first.

After dropping both games last weekend to UMass, however, Lowell fell to fifth in Hockey East with a 6-6-2 league record, 12-9-2 overall.

Is the correct question, “What’s gone wrong for Lowell?”

Or is it, “How did the preseason expectations get over-inflated?”

“When we were successful last year, we managed games and got some breaks,” UML coach Blaise MacDonald says. “It was always a slim margin of error that we were on the right side of. For us, it’s a team game, [not overwhelming individual talent].”

Looking at the rosters, MacDonald has a point. Unlike a BU or BC, which have 13 and 11 NHL-drafted players, respectively, Lowell has one, fewest in the league. (The one is Chris Auger.)

Which is not to say the River Hawks roster is the equivalent of chopped liver. But when so many in the media, yours truly included, rushed to anoint them favorites — declaring them the Flavor of the Month, if you will — it almost certainly set the bar unrealistically high for a team that wins by managing slim margins of error.

Unfortunately, the breaks that went Lowell’s way last year, have not been going its way much of late.

“Quite frankly, we played phenomenal Saturday night,” MacDonald says. “We out-chanced and out-played UMass by a huge margin. We lost 2-1 on a five-on-three power-play goal with a minute left. I don’t think that really tells the story.

“The night before, we played a great road game, tied up with a little more than four minutes to play, and then they got a kind of crazy four-on-four goal. They got the bounces, we didn’t. It could have been so easily us on the other side of it. That’s the way it goes.

“The weekend before, we got 3 out of 4 points on the road, and in Hockey East that’s pretty good.

“The weekend before that, we lost to Northeastern, 2-1. Same deal. We out-chanced them, 2-1.”

The team defense ranks first overall in Hockey East. Lowell’s special teams are strong. The offense, however, ranks seventh.

“We’re just having a hard time scoring goals,” MacDonald says. “We’ve essentially lost all our games by a goal. We’re still playing well. There’s a big difference between that and losing games 5-1, 5-2 and 6-3.

“As coaches, we’re happy with how we’re playing and where we’re going, but we’re not defining the game the way we need to in critical moments. We just need to solve fixable problems and penalties are certainly one of the areas we can fix. We’ve been taking far too many penalties in the third period. That’s something we’re addressing.”

Could the team’s offensive struggles be because the players are pressing because of those high preseason expectations? MacDonald doesn’t think so.

“That’s very difficult to measure, but it’s an easy conclusion to draw,” he says. “I just don’t see a difference in our players’ anxiety, frustration level, or work habits. We still go about our business like we have for years.

“I just think we’re going through a stretch where — and a lot of teams do it — where something in your game is off a little bit. In this league, if you’re off your game just a little bit, it’s a one-goal loss.”

One of the positives has been the play of senior goaltenders Carter Hutton and Nevin Hamilton.

“They’re both playing great,” MacDonald says. “Since the break they both have played really at a higher level and done everything to give our team a chance to win. That gives us the confidence going into games, regardless of the great opponents in our league, that we have a chance because we have really great goaltending.”

The ingredients are there for a strong stretch run. Great goaltending and team defense. Good special teams. The River Hawks just need a little puck luck, especially in their offensive end.

It wouldn’t take much for their fifth-place position to turn into a home-ice berth of some type.

“We’re not a team that focuses on our record or on our positioning in the league or our statistics,” MacDonald says. “We do a critical analysis of how we’re playing and how we’re preparing and putting the right pieces in the right places.

“We just feel we have tangible experiences, great leadership and health and hard-working, honest players and things will come our way as long as we stay strong physically and mentally. We feel good about our play.

“We really, really like our team a lot and we know we can continue to get better. We have a good group that can meet those challenges.”

Tough Times

For a while there, Merrimack was turning many heads. After opening the season with two losses at North Dakota, the Warriors won a stunning six of seven games, including wins over BU, BC, and Vermont.

Unfortunately, those good times have ended. Merrimack has now lost six straight and nine of its last 10.

Which is not to say the Warriors are getting shellacked. They aren’t.

Two weekends ago, they were tied at Maine, 2-2, until the Black Bears got the game-winner with 17 seconds remaining in regulation.

Frustrating?

No doubt.

Then came last Saturday’s loss at BU, perhaps the most frustrating of them all. The Warriors outshot BU 43-27 but lost 6-4 with BU’s final goal coming into an empty net with four seconds remaining.

“I thought we played really well for large stretches of that game,” Merrimack coach Mark Dennehy said after the loss. “At the end of the day, this time of year you just want to be playing well, and I thought we played real well.”

Warriors’ captain Chris Barton elaborated on the recent tough luck.

“Any time you put 44 shots on the net, you’re doing some good things,” he said. “One bounce or another and that game’s different. I think that’s been the story for us the last few games.”

While the shot totals reflected Merrimack’s dominance in the first two periods — this was no “dump it on net” mirage — they also reflected Dennehy’s demand that the team avoid the one-pass-too-many syndrome.

“We want to shoot the puck more than we have in the past,” he said. “At times, too many of our players think pass first. With a 250 dollar, one-piece stick, if they want me to keep buying them for them, they better shoot more.”

Contributing: Scott Weighart

This Week in the CHA: Jan. 21, 2010

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Looks like Bemidji State is human after all.

After being swept by Minnesota State five weeks ago, Bemidji State still had hopes of being undefeated in CHA play this season.

Niagara, the only team to have ever gone undefeated in league action, wanted it to stay that way and now it will after the Purple Eagles upset the Beavers, 6-4, last Friday night on Monteagle Ridge.

The 1999-2000 NU squad, which had current assistant coach Greg Gardner in net, rattled off a 15-0-2 CHA slate.

Gardner downplayed numbers and stats after the game last Friday.

“To go undefeated in 1999-2000 was a credit to the team, along with some lucky bounces and timely wins,” Gardner said. “For us [Friday] night, we look at it as a nice victory against a ranked opponent.”

Niagara scored six consecutive goals in the win, also Dave Burkholder’s 150th as NU’s head coach.

Ian Lowe and Ryan Cramer staked BSU to a 2-0 lead after 20 minutes.

Marc Zanette scored twice to help Niagara to a upset of Bemidji State (photo: Niagara Media Relations).

Marc Zanette scored twice to help Niagara to a upset of Bemidji State (photo: Niagara Media Relations).

After that, it was all Niagara as Marc Zanette scored a pair and C.J. Chartrain, Giancarlo Iuorio, Derek Foam and Bryan Haczyk added singles.

Jordan George and Brad Hunt scored late to end the scoring.

“We clearly had a bad start,” Burkholder said. “For the rest of the game, it was simple. The team wearing white outworked the team wearing green.”

The Beavers were understandably in a sour mood afterward.

“The first period might have been one of our better periods of the year,” Bemidji State coach Tom Serratore said. “Whether we self-destructed after that, I don’t know, but once we took a few shortcuts and they converted on them, momentum began to shift.

“You knew those kids were going to play a better second period after that tough first period. I wish we would have responded a little better, kept our foot on the gas and paid more attention to detail, but you have to give credit to Niagara. The bottom line is that they played with a lot of intensity. They took it to us in the second and third periods and they earned it.”

Chris Noonan finished with 35 saves for Niagara, while Dan Bakala and Mathieu Dugas combined for 26 in the Bemidji State goal.

Saturday night, Niagara again faced a 2-0 hole early on, but didn’t recover this time as the Beavers escaped with a 4-3 victory.

Brance Orban (first NCAA goals) scored twice and Matt Read and Dan MacIntyre also scored.

Iuorio, Paul Zanette and Ryan Olidis tallied for the Purple Eagles, who got a 27-save outing out of Noonan.

“I liked our spirit and how we kept coming back tonight,” said Burkholder. “Overall, there are a lot of parts of our game that I liked, but we just didn’t put together a full 60-minute effort.”

Bakala stopped 26 shots for Bemidji State.

Orban, on a line with Read and Lowe, also added an assist in just his fourth career game.

“Brance is a smart player,” Serratore said. “We put him in there with a couple other smart players in Matt Read and Ian Lowe for Jordan George [a healthy scratch] and Brance filled in just great.”

NU now has a 21-20-8 advantage since the series with the Beavers began in 1999. The Purple Eagles hold a 14-8-3 record over BSU at Dwyer Arena, but Bemidji State has won four of its last five there.

And with the final CHA tournament going down at Dwyer in March, anything can happen.

Colonials Sustain, Sweep Alabama-Huntsville

Robert Morris coach Derek Schooley harped last week that sweeping Miami was a great weekend, but sustaining it in league play against Alabama-Huntsville would be critical.

The Colonials sustained and swept the Chargers at home last weekend and seem to be peaking at the right time.

“I’m just really pleased with this weekend,” Schooley told USCHO. “We couldn’t have written a better script. It’s been an emotional two weeks.”

Friday night, Ron Cramer scored on a 5-on-3 power play at 17:36 of the third period to give RMU a 3-2 win in front of a sold-out, standing-room-only crowd of over 1,000 spectators.

Davide Nicoletti opened the scoring for UAH, only to have Trevor Lewis and Denny Urban put Robert Morris ahead.

RMU kept the lead until 13:40 of the third when Keenan Desmet lit the lamp for the second time in as many games. 

That set the stage for Cramer’s late heroics.

Cameron Talbot took the loss in net with a 38-save outing, while Brooks Ostergard earned the win stopping 30 shots.

“Well, you know when you come into this building you have to match their intensity,” Alabama-Huntsville assistant coach Chris Luongo said to USCHO. “Their calling card as a team is intensity and we’re familiar with them enough as an opponent to know that if you come in here flat, they’re going to be all over you. We really felt overall that our game was really solid. It was just a play here or there at both ends of the ice that made the difference.”

RMU tallied three third-period goals on Saturday night and came back for a 4-2 win, but it wasn’t without delay.

Just seconds into the second period, a hard hit shattered a penalty box door and forced the game into a 40-minute stoppage. 

After a scoreless first period, the Colonials opened the scoring at 4:08 of the second when Chris Kushneriuk scored. Desmet scored his third goal in three games in the final minute of the period.

Nathan Longpre gave RMU a 2-1 advantage only 20 seconds into the third stanza and then Andrew Blazek then made it a 3-1 lead at 7:49 with his first collegiate goal. Cramer pushed the lead to 4-1 at 17:09 of the third to round out RMU’s scoring.

Chris Faribanks scored with 18 seconds remaining to make it a two-goal game.

Ostergard made just 18 saves and Talbot finished with 33 stops.

“That was a pretty complete hockey game on our part,” Schooley said to USCHO. “That third period might have been our best period of the year. We kept getting pucks deep and they couldn’t get anything going.”

And the Colonials keep it going.

RMU Goes To Boot Camp

It might be called Boot Camp Hockey, but the experience Robert Morris went through just prior to the Miami series two weeks ago was essentially a series of motivational lectures by Major Dave Anderson, an ex-Marine.

This was the second time that Anderson, based on Long Island, has worked with RMU. The first time he came to Pittsburgh was January 2007, just before a weekend series with then-No. 2 Notre Dame.

“The leadership training that Major Dave Anderson provides is excellent,” Schooley said. “He provides in-depth analysis of your team, as well as teaching life lessons to your players. Dave puts your team in the right frame of mind, which is what he did before we played Miami. The players played the game, but their minds were in a team-first mentality.”

“I think we would have done more ‘boot camp’ activities if it was not so cold outside,” said RMU senior captain Dave Cowan. “We stayed inside and pretty much just talked for a couple hours. We did a couple team activities that entailed us to work and think as a team. Other than that, the only real thing that would be considered ‘boot camp’ would be the videos we watched on the Marines. The main focus of the whole thing was leadership.”

Cowan added that the session with Anderson could very well be a turning point to this season.

“I think that this session was good for the guys in a couple ways,” Cowan said. “I feel that it brought us closer as a team and kept us pointed in the same direction. We have always thought that we had a good team that was capable of playing with top teams. Our mind-set throughout the year has never really changed, even after attending ‘boot camp.’ Our team is a really tight-knit group as is, and it was just another chance for us to be together and have some fun.”

Once the games started with the then-No. 1 RedHawks, things seemed to fall into place.

“Going into the weekend, we were focused on just playing the first period and going from there,” Cowan said. “We broke the game down into smaller parts and just tried to win each part. Nobody was talking about the Sunday game at all until after the Friday night game. I think that if you get too far ahead of yourself in big situations like this, it ends up coming back to hurt you. All the guys were really focused and determined. We had tremendous goaltending by Ozzy and we came out on top. The whole team had a very confident attitude going into the series with Miami.”

Taking four points from Miami was a historical series for RMU and that in itself brings a sense of pride to Cowan, who was playing in his first games since tearing ligaments in his thumb and having surgery in December.

“I think the wins against Miami would probably be the biggest at RMU,” said Cowan. “Our last really big win was against Notre Dame, who was second at the time, and Boston University, who was eighth. So I would have to say that they are the biggest and I am very proud to be a part of it.”

This Week in Atlantic Hockey: Jan. 21, 2010

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Playing With Heart

Don’t look now, but the hottest team in college hockey is the Sacred Heart Pioneers, who are riding a seven-game unbeaten streak. After a 3-9-2 start to the season and some time in the basement of the Atlantic Hockey standings, Sacred Heart has turned it around by improving on all fronts: offense, defense and special teams.

“It’s been a combination of things,” said Pioneers coach C.J. Marottolo, in his first year at Sacred Heart. “Home ice, solid goaltending and senior leadership. It sounds cliche, but I attribute it to not making too much of things; not getting too high or low, just doing the things it takes to win games.”

Marottolo says the turning point was the Pioneers’ last loss, to Army on Dec. 5. It was the team’s seventh straight game without a win.

“We drove back from West Point and had a long talk as a team,” he said. “We watched the video and learned a lot.”

Sacred Heart won at Dartmouth the next weekend and then came back to an eight-game home stand after the holidays. The Pioneers are 5-0-1 so far and wrap it up with a pair against Canisius this weekend.

“Canisius is a dynamic, offensive team,” said Marottolo. “We’re going to have to be at our best.”

The Pioneers have offensive prowess as well. Sacred Heart is third in the AHA in goals per game (3.33), including averaging four and a half goals a game over their last six league contests. The Pioneers power play is tops in the league at 23.3 percent, including 4-10 last weekend in a sweep of Mercyhurst.

“Power plays are streaky,” said Marottolo. “Sometimes you do everything but don’t score and other times you can’t do anything right and still get a goal. We have the approach where we’re always working hard and moving the puck.”

Rookie goaltender Steven Legatto has allowed just 11 goals over his last seven games, and made 56 saves on 61 shots last weekend.

“He’s been solid,” said Marottolo. “He’s been making adjustments as he’s moving on through the season.”

The coach can’t say enough about his seniors, who provided a smooth transition when Marottolo came in just as the season began after the sudden departure of Shaun Hannah.

“I can’t speak highly enough of them for the great job they did pulling this team together,” he said. “There was a process we all had to go through with a new coach. They did a great job of harnessing things to get us where we are now. I won’t name names because they have all been great, scoring goals, big goals, blocking shots, doing whatever needs to get done.”

Seniors Nick Johnson and Dave Jarman are tied for the team lead with 27 points each. Freshman Eric Delong’s 16 points are tops among AHA rookies.

“We’re very pleased [with Delong],” said Marottolo. “He started the season a little banged up but is better [now]. He’s got a great attitude. He’s so eager. He’s always working on the details of his game.”

Over the past three weekends, the Pioneers have gone from last to fifth place in the conference, and trail Canisius by four points for the final home-ice spot. The teams face off this weekend.

“The important thing for us is to not let up,” said Marottolo. “We realize that we haven’t done anything yet. There’s a long way to go.”

Getting Better

Teams at the bottom of the standings picked up some well-needed points last weekend. American International took three points from Holy Cross and Connecticut earned a home split with RIT. The wins were the third of the season for both the Yellow Jackets and the Huskies.

AIC goalie Dan Ramirez stopped 38 of 39 shots in a 1-1 tie with Holy Cross on Friday, and teammate Ben Meisner stopped all 39 shots he faced in a 1-0 win on Saturday. All three of AIC’s wins this season have been by shutout, and Meisner has them all, already setting the school record for shutouts in a season.

At UConn, the Huskies came back from a 4-0 loss on Friday to defeat RIT 2-1, snapping the Tigers’ 13-game unbeaten streak. Rookie goaltender Garett Bartus made 30 saves for his first victory.

Weekly Awards

Co-Players of the Week for Jan. 18, 2010:
Cory Conacher — Canisius

The junior forward continued his scoring streak, tallying five more points last weekend. He had an assist and pair of goals, including the game winner, in a 5-2 win over Army on Friday, and two assists in a 4-4 tie on Saturday. Conacher is riding a 12-game scoring streak.

Patrick Knowlton — Sacred Heart

Knowlton also had five points last weekend, helping the Pioneers to a sweep over Mercyhurst. The junior had a goal and two assists in Friday’s 6-3 win and two assists in Saturday’s 3-2 victory.

Goalie of the Week for Jan. 18, 2010:
Andrew Volkening — Air Force

Volkening wins the award for the fourth time this season, this time allowing just three goals in a sweep of Bentley. The senior has a 1.94 GAA in league games this season.

Rookie of the Week for Jan. 18, 2010:
Ben Meisner — American International

Meisner stopped all 39 shots on Saturday for a 1-0 win over Holy Cross. He has three shutouts on the season, already a school record.

Good News, Bad News

Friday’s 4-0 victory over UConn was the 200th career win for RIT coach Wayne Wilson. But on Saturday the Tigers lost 2-1 to the Huskies, ending their 13-game league unbeaten streak and dropping them out of a first-place tie with Air Force.

A Lot of Firsts

Speaking of Air Force, the Falcons picked up their first road sweep of the season, taking two games at Bentley. It was also the first time the Falcons from Colorado had swept the Falcons from Massachusetts since joining Atlantic Hockey. The wins put Air Force into sole possession of first place.

Moving Up

Army’s Owen Meyer scored two power play goals in the third period on Saturday to help the Black Knights to a 4-4 tie with Canisius. Meyer now has 58 goals in AHA play in his career, moving into seventh place all time. Sacred Heart’s Pierre-Luc O’Brien holds the record with 67.

This Week in the WCHA: Jan. 21, 2010

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The gap is expanding.

21 points separate first (Minnesota-Duluth, 25 points, by virtue of Denver’s bye week) and last (still Michigan Tech, still with four points).

The gap is still close.

Six points separate first from sixth place. Eighth place is six points down from that (for clarity’s sake, eighth-place Alaska-Anchorage is 10 points behind second-place Denver).

The gap doesn’t matter.

We’ll still watch anyway.

Red Baron WCHA Players of the Week

Red Baron WCHA Offensive Player of the Week: Kevin Clark, UAA.
Why: Scored six points (four goals, two assists), including his first collegiate hat trick in the Seawolves’ sweep of Michigan Tech.
Also Nominated: Brian McMillin, CC; Jordan Baker, MTU; Jacob Cepis, UM; Michael Davies, UW.

Red Baron WCHA Defensive Player of the Week: Alex Kangas, UM.
Why: Stopped 64 of 68 shots to help his Gophers earn three points from North Dakota.
Also Nominated: Jon Olthuis, UAA; Brendan Smith, UW.

Red Baron WCHA Rookie of the Week: Zach Budish, UM.
Why: Scored three points (one goal, two assists), including Saturday’s game winner, to help his Gophers take three points from North Dakota.
Also Nominated: Andrew Hamburg, CC; Danny Kristo, UND; David Eddy, SCSU.

Hardship Waiver? What’s That?

The NCAA’s hardship waiver is what’s more commonly known as a medical redshirt.

Why am I bringing this up? Well, as the season drags on, I know there have been a few rumblings among Sioux fans about whether Sioux defenseman Chay Genoway will apply for this hardship waiver. He’s still having after effects from the concussion he suffered and his status from week to week doesn’t change (out indefinitely).

Given said rumbles, I was curious to know exactly how the process works and what he (or, say, Jay Barriball) would have to do to earn one of these hardship waivers.

Step One: Before the injury/illness, the player must not have “participated in more than three contests or dates of competition (whichever is applicable to that sport) or 30 percent (whichever number is greater) of the institution’s scheduled or completed contests or dates of competition.” (NCAA rule 14.2.4(c)) and the injury must have occurred in the first half of the season (14.2.4.(b)).

I think both WCHA examples are good here.

Step Two: The team can supply proper “medical documentation, from a physician (a medical doctor) who administered care at the time of the injury or illness, that establishes the student-athlete’s inability to compete as a result of that injury or illness” (14.2.4.3.3).

This is apparently a really big thing with the NCAA and players have been denied hardship waivers because their teams didn’t have their paperwork in proper order.

Step Three: If an injured player tries to come back late in the season, say, for the playoffs (a la Air Force’s Eric Ehn a few years back), “and then is unable to participate further as a result of aggravating the original injury[, he] does not qualify for the hardship waiver” (14.2.4.3.5).

In other words, if Genoway seems to be concussion syndrome-free and his Sioux make it to the Frozen Four and he plays and gets an errant puck off the helmet that brings back all the dizziness … no waiver for him.

(My personal question on this step is, what if Genoway becomes symptom free by the end of UND’s season and Sioux staff still choose not to play him just in case? Does that negate the waiver eligibility? Given Step Two, I would presume so given that his paperwork would say he’s A-OK, but it’s not clear in the rulebook.)

Step Four in theory should be the deadline for which UND or UM would have to apply for the hardship waiver, but there’s nothing within the two pages of wording for rule 14.2.4 that says. The power of Google brought a Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference medical hardship waiver application form that says: “Note: An application should be submitted no earlier than the conclusion of the season the application relates to and no later than September 15 of the next academic year.”

Of course, the form also says it’s for rule 14.2.5, which is now the Season-of-Competition Waiver — Competition While Eligible rule, so take that for what it’s worth.

In any case, it sounds like both Minnesota and North Dakota can choose to wait until the end of the season before they have to apply for the hardship waivers. Whether they will, however, is a completely different story given that both Genoway and Barriball are seniors.

The Power of Three

Goals, that is. In perusing this week’s series game notes, both Minnesota and Minnesota-Duluth had tidbits about what happens when either they, a) score three or more goals a game, and/or, b) when they allow their opponent to score three or more times a game.

Courtesy of both schools:

“GOOD THINGS ALSO COME IN THREES: The Bulldogs have yet to lose when scoring three or more times this season (15-0-1) and are winless when they’ve failed to do so (1-7-0 — with the lone victory coming last Friday night in Mankato).”

“Third Time’s the Harm
Minnesota is 12-0-0 this season when holding opponents to two goals or fewer and 0-10-2 when opponents score three goals or more. The Gophers are also 11-1-2 when they score three or more goals with the only blemish being a 4-3 overtime loss to Minnesota-Duluth.”

Given that this three-goal deal is apparently a big one, I looked through the rest of the league.

Every team has a fantastic record when scoring three or more goals per game (except Tech, which is 3-3-0. One must note, however, that Tech has only three wins this season).

Also unsurprising is that most teams have a poor record when allowing three or more goals a game. Denver is the closest thing to an exception, with a 4-5-2 record in that situation.

While this may be worthy enough to stick in weekly game notes, to me, it’s not, as the whole thing makes sense.

Looking at stats and what teams ideally want their goalie to do, a team should hope to score about three goals per game to be successful. Although I’m sure it varies, I heard once that one ideally wants one’s goalie to have a goals-against average of 1.9something at the very least (meaning, of course, that if all goes well, the goalie will only let in just under two goals a game). If that’s the case, logically, a team wants to be able to score at least three goals per game just to win.

If said goaltender (and said goalie’s defense) break down to the point that he is allowing three or more goals per game, it’s not often the case that the offense can keep up the scoring to the point of a victory.

The teams that can, however, are usually successful. Therefore, it’s really no surprise that the four teams with the best records when allowing three or more goals a game are also top-four in the league: UMD (4-7-1), DU (4-5-2), CC (3-7-2), UW (3-6-0). St. Cloud State, tied for fourth, is somewhat of an outlier (1-5-3), but not by much.

Around the WCHA

In league news, one of my predecessors and current writer/blogger for USCHO.com, Todd Milewski wrote a good piece on what league expansion may do to our beloved Final Five.

CC — Before last Friday, when CC lost 4-0 to Wisconsin, can you guess the last time the Tigers were shut out?

Think back, way back, to March 2007 during the WCHA playoffs when Michigan Tech beat CC 1-0 to advance to the Final Five. After that loss, CC went on a 100-game scoring streak, going two and a half seasons before being shut out again.

UAA — Anchorage’s sweep of Michigan Tech was noteworthy for the WCHA’s most northern team in a couple of ways.

• The sweep helped the Seawolves take the lead in the all-time series against MTU.
• The 11 goals UAA scored are the most the school has scored in a series under Dave Shyiak.
• The 11 goals also tied the program record for most goals in a WCHA road series.
• Said 11 goals are three shy of the most UAA has ever scored in a WCHA series since joining the conference in 1993 (that would be 14 in a sweep over UND in 1994).

UM — Just as the Gophers were starting to turn things around, they got some bad news in the form of Mike Hoeffel. Hoeffel, the team’s leading goal scorer and in a three-way tie for team’s overall leading scorer, will be out for about two weeks thanks to a bout of mono.

UMD — The Bulldogs’ No. 4 ranking in this week’s poll is the highest ranking nationally since they held the third spot way back in early November 2004, the season after their Frozen Four run.

Matchups By the Numbers

Three conference tilts, two non-conference series and Michigan Tech and Minnesota State get the weekend off.

Colorado College @ Alaska-Anchorage
Overall Records: CC — 13-8-3 (9-6-3 WCHA). UAA — 8-13-1 (6-11-1 WCHA).
Head-to-Head: CC leads the overall series, 47-13-3, or 49-13-3, depending on whom you ask.

Minnesota and St. Cloud State, Home and Home
Overall Records: UM — 12-10-2 (7-7-2 WCHA). SCSU — 14-7-3 (9-5-2 WCHA).
Head-to-Head: UM leads the overall series, 47-23-12.
Notes: UM is undefeated in the last eight meetings. … Saturday’s game is part of “Hockey Day in Minnesota.”

Denver @ Wisconsin
Overall Records: DU — 14-5-3 (10-3-3- WCHA). UW — 13-6-3 (9-5-2 WCHA).
Head-to-Head: UW leads the overall series, 71-55-9.
Notes: DU will be without defensemen John Ryder and William Wrenn on Friday due to their automatic one-game suspension thanks to their game disqualification penalties in the UAA series.

North Dakota @ Cornell
Overall Records: UND — 12-7-5 (8-7-3 WCHA). CU — 9-4-3 (7-2-2 ECACHL).
Head-to-Head: UND leads the overall series, 4-2.
Notes: This will be the first meeting in Ithaca.

Minnesota-Duluth and Bemidji State, Home and Home
Overall Records: UMD — 16-7-1 (12-5-1 WCHA). BSU — 15-5-2 (9-1-0 CHA).
Head-to-Head: UMD leads the overall series, 18-7-0.

Future WCHA Team Watch

Bemidji State split with Niagara and next plays a home and home series with Minnesota-Duluth. Nebraska-Omaha was swept by Lake Superior State and next hosts Northern Michigan for a pair in Omaha.

No. 11 BSU: 15-5-2 overall, 1-3-0 vs. WCHA
UNO: 10-11-5 overall, 1-1-1 vs. WCHA

On Voting

From following college hockey for about the last decade, I know that one of the more commonly discussed items is the weekly polls.

As much as people grumble about them, many others insist that “polls (or poles, for those of you who post on the USCHO.com Fan Forum) don’t matter,” … and I’m here to say that, in some senses, I agree.

This is an odd statement coming from me, given that I’m one of the 50 voters in the USCHO.com men’s D-I poll.

Every week I vote and almost every week I’m unsatisfied with how my top-20 end up. Take last week, for example. Most of the top eight teams didn’t do so well. Numbers nine through 14 did, while the rest of the poll (save Nos. 19 and 20) did badly.

So you think, well, Ferris State got swept so they should drop, but on the other hand, they were swept by the second-ranked team in the country, so they shouldn’t drop down too much. Yes, the nine through 14 teams did well, but not really well enough to move them up much. Yeah, Nos. 15-17 all had two-loss weekends, but many of those losses were to teams above them so how much weight does that carry?

When it’s a month or two into the season, I wonder how a team with a .500 (or just below a .500) record could still be ranked, because for me, that just doesn’t seem right.

Granted, my mind probably works in a different capacity than the vast majority of my fellow voters, but ranking the top-20 of college hockey’s 58 teams is one of the hardest things I do every week. I even wonder about the polls as a voter, curious even now if UND should really be ranked as high as fifth, when I had them dropped out of the top-10. I know I follow them on a regular basis, with the Sioux being in the WCHA and all, but I just don’t think they deserve to be that high, still-good record notwithstanding.

This Week in MIAC: Jan. 21, 2010

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Weekend Roundup

Coming off the last weekend of non-league games, every team in the MIAC was focused on one thing: conference matchups. With most non-conference action out of the way, the vast majority of games left on the schedule are league games, which will determine the five teams that have a shot to make some noise in the postseason.

Some teams came in fighting to rise in the standings while others were struggling to keep their status as one of the league’s top teams. Some were riding winning streaks while others were coming off bad losses. No matter what each team was coming into the weekend with, when it’s time for league games, you can throw most of it out the window. This is the real season for most teams in the MIAC, with non-conference games being a chance to test yourself, try new things, and get tuned up for the battle for the playoffs.

The top of the league remains mostly unchanged, with Gustavus Adolphus sitting atop the conference standings. Right behind them though is Hamline, who has played two fewer games than the Gusties. In third place is a team that may be a surprise to some people after their ninth place finish last season: the Concordia Cobbers. We’ll catch up with them and coach Howe later on.

Bethel fell from second place into a tie for fourth with surging St. Olaf. Sixth place is an unfamiliar spot for St. Thomas, as they currently sit outside the playoff picture. Following them in seventh is an Augsburg team that struggled this past weekend after running off a seven game winning streak. In a tie for the last two spots are St. John’s and St. Mary’s.

No team is separated by more than two points from the team ahead or behind it, so each weekend provides an opportunity for plenty of movement in the standings. These last five weeks of the regular season are guaranteed to be action packed as teams jostle for position and their playoff lives.

Cobbers Climbing Up the Ladder

Concordia (MN) has had one of the toughest non-conference schedules of any team in the country. Some of their more notable opponents from outside the MIAC include the two winningest teams in the NCHA (St. Norbert and St. Scholastica, ranked fourth and seventh in the USCHO.com Division III poll, respectively), the top team from the MCHA (Adrian, No. 12), and if that wasn’t enough, they’ve also played the team with the most wins in the MIAC (Hamline, ranked eighth.)

Given that the Cobbers finished last in the MIAC last season, some might have thought that they were taking on more than they can chew.
Concordia head coach Chris Howe has a different perspective on this kind of schedule.

“Every game we’ve played, we’ve taken something from it,” he said. “When we play teams like Adrian or St. Norbert, we see what it takes to be that kind of team, and how we need to elevate our play to match it.”

The Cobbers are a team that shows up to play hard for 60 minutes every night. They try to play physical, smart, and focus on their defense and special teams. After losing to UW-Stevens Point 7-1 in their last non-conference game, some teams may have been disheartened returning to league games. And when the Cobbers trailed 3-0 to St. Thomas midway through the second period on Friday, it looked like that very well may have happened.

But starting from 12:25 in the second period until 15:01 in the third, the Cobbers ripped off five straight goals to take a 5-3 lead that they would never relinquish.

“That was huge,” said Howe. “Coming off that loss to Stevens Point, and being down early, being able to go on a run like that was a big confidence builder. I’m proud of the way the team responded to that situation.”

Sophomore forward Jared Collen scored three goals during that five goal outburst, including the tally that gave the Cobbers the lead and well as the game-winning goal.

This is a team that’s primarily made up of freshmen and sophomores, with their top seven scorers being underclassmen. The leadership from the team’s three seniors is not to be overlooked, though.

“Each one of those seniors brings something to this team that will be missed when they’re gone,” Howe said. “Whether it’s leadership, pumping up the team, or keeping us focused, each one of them brings something that helps us as a team.”

After Friday’s emotional comeback win, the Cobbers faced St. Thomas a second time on Saturday. They never held a lead in the game, but were never out of it either. Concordia battled back from 2-0 and 3-1 deficits before netting the tying goal in the dying seconds of the third period.

While he didn’t score a single goal on the weekend, sophomore defenseman Erick Galt was a big key to the Cobbers’ success. On Friday he had two assists, getting a helper on Concordia’s first goal, as well as the one that gave them the lead. On Saturday he did even better, getting assists on Concordia’s first two goals, as well as the one that tied the game.

“He’s one of the most unselfish players on the team”, said Howe. “If he could give his assists to his teammates, he would. All he cares about is doing what he can to help us win.”

Another key to the Cobbers’ success so far has been goaltender Jacob Vatnsdal — also a sophomore. His overall numbers are solid — a 3.07 goals against average and .907 save percentage — but he has stepped it up a notch in conference games, posting a stat line of 2.53 and .917. After last year’s four win season, Vatnsdal has backed the Cobbers to a 3-2-3 MIAC record and four wins overall, with still around half the season left to play.

This isn’t a team that’s built around a top line that provides all the scoring; instead they are built on hard work, defense, and special teams.

Last season, the Cobbers finished dead last in league power play and seventh on the penalty kill. Those two combined to give Concordia the league’s worst overall special teams. This season, though, the Cobbers are in the top half of the league in both categories. They rank fourth in power play percentage and fifth overall on the penalty kill. Combined, they have the league’s second best special teams.

Their biggest improvement — up seven percent from last year — has been while down a man on the penalty kill. This means that if someone takes a penalty playing physically, the team knows they have a good shot to go out and kill it off. Their penalty kill could be tested this coming weekend, as they face Augsburg who is armed with the league’s second best power play.

“With Augsburg coming up this weekend, we’ve put some extra emphasis on defense and the penalty kill,” said Howe. “They’re a very talented team offensively, and if you make a mistake, they can make you pay.”
On top of returning most of last year’s potent offense, the Auggies have also improved their defense immensely this season, giving up one goal fewer per game.

With Augsburg sitting in seventh place and three points out of the final playoff spot, this is a huge weekend from them. If Concordia can take three or four points, it will be very difficult for the Auggies to climb back into the playoff picture, but if Augsburg manages at least a win and a tie, they’ll be breathing right down Concordia’s neck in the standings.

After facing Augsburg at home for two games, the schedule turns even rougher for Concordia. Their final six games are all on the road, and the last two weekends pit them against the current top two teams in the MIAC: Gustavus Adolphus and Hamline.

This is the time of the year where their difficult non-conference schedule could pay dividends, as squads have seen what it takes to be a top team. Now they have the chance to show that they can play at that level as well, as they fight to keep climbing up the standings and clinch a spot in the MIAC playoffs.

As the team’s young players mature and gain experience, the Cobbers could make themselves the surprise story of the league down the stretch. With Howe leading them and getting them to play hard every night, this is a team that is fun to watch and tough to play against.

One part of the job I enjoy the most is following teams like this, and seeing where they end up. Where they finish is entirely up to them, but if the first half of the season is any indication, it’s going to be a wild ride to the end of the season.

Hockey Weekend at the Xcel

This weekend’s games bring hockey fans around the Twin Cities a special treat. On Saturday, St. Olaf will face off against the University of Wisconsin-Stout at the Xcel Energy Center, home of the NHL’s Minnesota Wild. The game is at 1:30 p.m. and admission is free, so if you’re in the area, take advantage of this rare chance to see Division III hockey on center stage!

Not to be outdone, Sunday’s matchup between Gustavus Adolphus and St. John’s will also take place at the X. Faceoff is at 10:00 a.m. and will not be free. Tickets can be purchased through Ticketmaster beforehand or at the Xcel box office the day of the game. Minnesota Wild players will be signing autographs throughout the arena during the game and ticket purchases also include admission to the Minnesota Wild skills competition that takes place immediately after the game.

These games should be great for exposing D-III hockey to fans who might not otherwise know what they’re missing, plus they give you a chance to see some good hockey at an excellent arena. Don’t miss out on these chances to see some great teams face off at the home of the Wild.

This Week in ECAC Hockey: Jan. 21, 2010

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Midseason Report

Every team in the league has now played at least 10 games of the ECAC Hockey variety, with a few having already passed the 11-game halfway point of their conference schedule. It’s time for a look back at the first half of the 2009-10 campaign.

Note: league stats are the focus, but overall figures will be listed in parentheses when pertinent.

Top Goaltender
Ben Scrivens, Cornell

The senior goalie is just doing his thing, stopping 93.6 percent of league shots (92.8 overall) and holding up his end of the bargain for a very talented Big Red brigade. His 1.71 (2.04) goals-against average is once again one of the best in the nation, and he gets the nod as much for his consistent presence as for his consistent performance: He is the only goalie in the league to have played every minute of his team’s netminding minutes.

Honorable Mention: Kain Tisi, St. Lawrence; Keith Kinkaid, Union

Tisi’s only shortcoming in this debate is his meager playing time when compared to Scrivens’ — the Big Red backstop way beyond doubled the SLU ‘keeper’s minutes in league play so far. Otherwise, the Saints senior’s 1.07 (1.99) GAA is better in both categories than Scrivens’ numbers, and his .957 save rate is 21 points better than his southern foe.

Props to Kinkaid in his rookie campaign as well, for posting a 2.12/.923 league half-season in seven games’ work.

Top Forward
Mario Valery-Trabucco, Union

This was in no way an easy decision. “MVT” doesn’t lead the league in points (though he is second, with 17), but he does lead the pack with 10 goals. What sets him this sliver above the competition, however, aren’t his raw numbers — it’s his numbers relative to his teammates’, and relative to his team’s success. Valery-Trabucco has accounted for over 27 percent of the Dutchmen’s goals this season, and second place on the team (senior classmate Jason Walters) has potted only four. These two players are also the only two under coach Nate Leaman who have achieved double-digit conference scoring this season, which is ridiculous when you consider that we are talking about the ECAC’s sole undefeated team right now.

Honorable Mention: Chase Polacek, Rensselaer

Cornell’s Blake Gallagher may also merit mention, but really, this fight was between Polacek and Valery-Trabucco. RPI’s slick-sniping junior leads the league with 19 points in 10 games, and has also scored more than a quarter of his team’s goals, with eight. Polacek leads the Engineers in every major offensive category, and he faces most of his opposition’s pressure on a nightly basis. The team’s other top players (Brandon Pirri, Jerry D’Amigo and Marty O’Grady) are all freshmen with four goals or fewer. The deciding factor, for better or worse, was that Union is atop the ECAC Hockey standings, while RPI is battling to pass the .500 mark.

Top Defenseman
Nick D’Agostino, Cornell

Freshman D’Agostino probably hasn’t turned your head if you’ve seen him play, because he’s not a flashy player — two goals and five assists aren’t exactly world-beating numbers, even from a defenseman. What the rookie may sacrifice in points he makes up for in absolutely rock-solid defending. The 6-foot-2 native of Bolton, Ontario, has registered a plus-10 rating through nine games, and hasn’t sat a single minute in the sin bin.

Honorable Mention: Peter Child, St. Lawrence; George Hughes, St. Lawrence; Mike Schreiber, Union

Child’s plus-8 in his sophomore year is enough to warrant his place on this list, while Hughes’ and Schreiber’s plus-6 ratings are too similar to separate — both also mustered nine points apiece in 10 league games, but kudos to Hughes for doing it in his rookie season. (Thomas Dignard’s league-leading 11 points from the rear are all well and good, but his pedestrian plus-1 on a stacked Yale team boots him from contention.)

Top Rookie
Louis Leblanc, Harvard

There was some significant early-season doubt as to the slope of this blue-chipper’s learning curve, with only four goals and 10 points in his first dozen NCAA games. (Not that those are bad numbers, but they didn’t meet expectations that many held for the first-round Montreal Canadiens draft pick — especially when paired with the Crimson’s dreadful 2-10-2 start.) Many doubts have been salved of late, though, as Leblanc buried four goals in his last two games to propel him up to eight for the year. The Montreal native is leading the conference in rookie goal- and point-scoring, doubling up second-place and aforementioned O’Grady of RPI in the goal department. Not to be ignored is Leblanc’s responsibility at both ends of the ice, sporting a nifty plus-9 to date.

Honorable Mention: Brandon Pirri, Rensselaer; Jerry D’Amigo, Rensselaer; George Hughes, St. Lawrence; Nick D’Agostino, Cornell

A lot of honorable names here: Pirri and D’Amigo have been absolutely essential elements to RPI’s recent surge, and D’Amigo’s big-stage, gold-medal performance at the World Junior Championship are certainly taken into consideration here.

Hughes and D’Agostino have already been mentioned above in the Top Defenseman category, and while each is doing his part in his own end, these two youngsters are also third and sixth in ECAC rookie scoring, respectively.

Top Coach
Nate Leaman, Union

It’s not that Leaman has coaxed a pack of troubled young misfits to Olympic gold or anything, but the fact that his squad remains the only team in the conference with a zero in the loss column is something worth celebrating. His skaters are seasoned by and large, and the fact that the Dutchmen are good really shouldn’t come as any surprise. With that said, the team was picked sixth in the Media and Coaches’ Polls (and seventh by yours truly), and … um … zero? That’s way beyond good. That’s almost perfect, by hockey standards.

Honorable Mention: Joe Marsh, St. Lawrence; Rand Pecknold, Quinnipiac

In the preseason, the Saints were tagged for seventh, 10th or 11th depending on who you asked (the media, coaches, and myself), but are currently occupying the sixth spot with a 5-3-2 record. SLU is 5-1-3 at home, and is 4-2-3 since the start of 2010.

Slotted between eighth and 11th in preseason polling, Quinnipiac was sensational (12-1-0) off the bat but has hit a serious slick spot on the road to the postseason with a 1-8-1 overall record in its last 10. The mere fact that the Bobcats started 7-0-0 in league play, though, may be enough to land the team a first-round bye with a merely adequate second half.

Most Valuable Player
Mario Valery-Trabucco, Union

In addition to what I said about his offensive prowess, Valery-Trabucco is also extremely savvy defensively (plus-9 in league play so far) and has taken only two minor penalties. He has four power-play goals, a short-handed tally and a game-winner to boot, and ranks in the ECAC top-10 in six major categories: goals, power-play goals, points, plus/minus, short-handed goals, and shots.

Honorable Mention: Chase Polacek, Rensselaer; David McIntyre, Colgate

Before Cornell fans get all in a tizzy, I did consider Scrivens as a candidate, but couldn’t include him in good faith. This is because as I see it, the team is a compilation of very talented, versatile, strong, and well-coached parts, and the Big Red is — as a cohesive unit — greater than the sum of its parts. This makes each individual part look (statistically, at least) better than it probably is, in actuality.

On to those I do mention: Polacek, for obvious reasons, and McIntyre. Polacek is a solid plus-6 with only 10 penalty minutes, but both numbers lag when compared to Valery-Trabucco’s. (Polacek is also only top-10 in four categories: goals, assists, points, and short-handed goals.)

McIntyre has been the focal point for every opponent to play Colgate in the last two years, and for good reason — he’s an outstanding player. But with a “mere” 16 points in 11 games, “Mac” may be among the leaders, but he’s not actually carrying the flag. He’s a superb plus-9 on a middling team, and ranks in the top-10 in six ECAC categories, including penalty minutes, with 24.

Second-Half Predictions

Making a Move
Princeton

This pick is conditional on the Tigers successfully nursing themselves back to health. Currently 10th in the charts, Princeton has been all kinds of beat up, missing games from reliable producers like Cam MacIntyre, Matt Godlewski, Kevin Crane, Kevin Kaiser, Jody Pederson … the list goes on and on. With a team boasting merely moderate health, the Tigers ought to find themselves at home in the first round.

Honorable Mention: Dartmouth; Rensselaer

Dartmouth is just about a sure thing to improve. It’s fast, hard-working, very physical and simply a good team. It’s not nearly as bad as its 2-8-0 record, and the Big Green, too, should be fighting for a 4-8 spot when all is said and done.

RPI isn’t as safe a bet, but I will point out that the ‘Tute is a poor 0-4-0 in ECAC play in one-goal games. Odds say that number will improve over time.

Taking a Tumble
Union

Don’t get me wrong; I’m in no way hoping that the Dutchmen stumble … I just think that their pace is a bit too quick right now. For starters, the best finish by any ECAC team since the 1984-85 switch to the current 12-team, no-division format was ’84-85 RPI, at 20-1-0 … which is to say, nobody goes unbeaten in this league. Secondly, Union is 4-0-3 in one-goal conference games (including games where Union scored an empty-netter on top of what had been a one-goal difference). As I just pointed out one paragraph prior, one-goal games tend toward .500. Ergo, all probability suggests that the UC is due for a bit of a letdown.

Honorable Mention: Colgate

The Raiders don’t dress a goalie with a save percentage above .890, but at least they’ve got a productive offense this year. I’m concerned about their viability against teams that can match the Austin Smith-David McIntyre-Brian Day line, not to mention the stamina of that lethal trio. Finally, and this is a bit of a stretch, but the Raiders have been winning the close games this year as well, at 3-1-1. Success in one-goal games is not, statistically speaking, a repeatable skill.

Readers’ Poll

Last week’s question regarding league dominance didn’t deliver many surprises, though I’m sure most of us saw that coming: Eighteen of our 32 voters picked “none” when asked who ECAC Hockey’s dominant team is, with second place being an easy 11 votes for unbeaten Union.

This week’s question will be part history, and part future: As Cornell and Harvard ruled the league early in this millenium, who will be the next consistent ECAC Hockey power?

Yale and Princeton have been strong of late, while Cornell never took much of a step back from the podium. Quinnipiac has burst onto the scene in its few years in the league, while the other programs have certainly had their share of high notes in recent years. Have at it; can’t wait to read the responses.

Help Wanted

A repeat of last week’s note: if anyone is interested in writing recaps for home games at Brown, Clarkson, Colgate, Cornell, Dartmouth, Rensselaer, St. Lawrence, or Yale, please contact us. Journalism experience is mandatory. The gigs are unpaid, but hey — free hockey, and valuable experience for media majors out there as well.

This Week in SUNYAC: Jan. 21, 2010

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Non-Conference

With just two non-conference games remaining for SUNYAC teams (Morrisville at Manhattanville on Jan. 24 and Plattsburgh at Middlebury on Feb.2), the SUNYAC has done extremely well against other conferences.

They currently hold a 6-2-3 margin over the ECAC East, 8-2-0 over the ECAC Northeast, 2-0-0 over MASCAC, 1-0-0 vs. MCHA, 4-2-1 over NESCAC, and 3-0-0 versus Northeast-10. They were even (1-1-0) against the MIAC. Finally, against their arch rivals, the ECAC West, the SUNYAC is 19-20-2 with one game left.

This totals up to a 44-27-6 against all non-league competition, an impressive winning percentage of .610.

Granted, making these comparisons isn’t completely legit unless there is a complete interlocking schedule between two conference like the ECAC East and NESCAC. For instance, Plattsburgh only played one ECAC West opponent, the recent tie against Elmira. Some SUNYAC teams never play Lebanon Valley. The ECAC West can also point to matchups that never occurred that could have boosted their record.

Nonetheless, this year is one of SUNYAC’s strongest performances outside of their league; the main reason for this were the “mid-pack” teams holding their own against the other leagues.

“It says a lot for the competitiveness and depth of our league,” Morrisville coach Brian Grady said. “We’re in the basement of our conference, and we played tough against two top teams from another conference.”

Against the ECAC West, Morrisville went 2-2, Geneseo went 3-3, while Brockport and Potsdam were just one game below .500.

“Every time we play an out of conference team we talk about how this is for bragging rights for our league,” Grady said. “Whether we play a top or bottom team in another conference, we want to prove ourselves.”

This past weekend, the Mustangs proved themselves again with a split at Neumann, winning the first game, 3-2, while dropping the second, 7-4.

“I thought it was a great weekend for both teams,” Grady said. “It was tough, toe-to-toe, physical hockey for both teams for all six periods. Friday, we were able to grab the lead and then hold on for the win.”

After a scoreless first period, Neumann tallied early in the second. Then, Dave Schultz scored twice, the first on the power play, and Nick Kulas delivered the third unanswered goal, as Morrisville outshot its opponent in the middle period, 15-5. Neumann got one back early in the third, but Caylin Relkoff held on making 32 saves, including 15 in the final period.

“All in all, a real turning point for our team,” Grady said. “It was the best hockey we played all year. In fact, it was the best hockey we played since I’ve been here for three years. It was very gratifying to have played a complete 60 minutes for both games.”

Conference games may count more and may be the only means for certain teams to make the NCAA playoffs, but with such a short schedule, every game needs to be taken seriously.

“The way we look at it, you have 25 games in the year and that’s not a lot of games in a year, so we consider every game to be important,” Geneseo coach Chris Schultz said. “It helps you prepare for your conference play. We make our guys prepare equally hard for all of them.”

This philosophy has paid off for the league as a whole against all comers from other conferences.

Conference

Competitiveness against non-conference opponents is great. But, now it’s time to get back to SUNYAC play. Outside of those two aforementioned non-league games, it’s all SUNYAC all the time the rest of the way.

“It will be a war,” Oswego coach Ed Gosek said. “Everybody is still alive. Obviously, Potsdam is playing extremely well. Plattsburgh always plays well. Geneseo, Brockport will be difficult in their barns. Morrisville has everything to gain and nothing to lose. Cortland is playing better.

“I know it’s not easy this time of year. The intensity level increases, the desperation increases. Every game has playoff implications. This time of season, the second half, it’s like the playoffs started. Every team is fighting for their lives. You can’t just come in and take it for granted. And everybody will be in the same boat.”

“It’s crunch time,” Grady said. “The distance between fourth and us is very small. It’s wide open. It’s anybody’s game. It’s going to come down to the team that is most consistent.”

The distance Grady mentions is only three points between six teams. Potsdam leads the bunch with seven points. Brockport, Cortland, and Geneseo all have six, while Buffalo State and Morrisville each have four. That doesn’t mean the third place team, Fredonia, has a big margin. They are only three points ahead of Potsdam.

Oswego is the only team entering this weekend with two weeks rest. The Lakers host the westernmost contingent, Buffalo State and Fredonia.

“I didn’t [like the week off] at first,” Gosek said. “But right now with the injuries mounting, I’m glad we got the week off. Originally no, you want to keep going. You hate to keep having these breaks.”

On the flip side, Morrisville doesn’t return to SUNYAC play till the week after. But when they do, they will be ready thanks to some new players this semester.

“I’m expecting big things from our guys,” Grady said. “We got some new faces, transfers Nick Kulas from Utica and Jonathan Cristini from Neumann who are becoming familiar with us. Kulas already has two goals and two assists for us. We’re starting to peak a little bit which is nice to see.”

It’s going to be a fun stretch run.

SUNYAC Short Shots

Brockport scored three times in the third period to break open a 2-2 tie to defeat Lebanon Valley, 5-3 … The Golden Eagles beat Lebanon Valley again the next day, 6-3, by going five for 10 on the power play with Ian Finnerty scoring four times … Fredonia unleashed 60 shots in their first game against Western New England College in a 4-2 victory … The Blue Devils scored more often in their second game against Western New England on 51 shots with a 7-1 win as Bryan Ross got a hat trick and Mitch Kulikoski scored twice.

Tyler Soehner on power plays and Justin Knee each scored twice and Ryan Ramage got three assists in Buffalo State’s 7-4 victory over Johnson & Wales … Plattsburgh got absolutely no penalties in their 1-1 overtime tie against Williams where both goals were scored 42 seconds apart in the second period as Josh Leis made 25 saves … Oliver Wren made 33 saves for the shutout in Brockport’s 4-0 victory over Assumption with assistant captain Ray Tremblay scoring the final two goals, the last short-handed.

Game of the Week

There is the M&M game — Manhattanville at Morrisville — which is the SUNYAC’s last chance to even up their series with the ECAC West. For Morrisville, it also is a family feud.

“A lot on the line here,” Grady said. “My dad is an assistant coach for them now. So there’s family ties involved also. It’s another great challenge for us.”

However, with the return of conference play, we need to pick a SUNYAC matchup. And, we should probably stick to games in that fourth to ninth place cluster. Thus, three tilts qualify: Potsdam at Brockport, Potsdam at Geneseo, and Buffalo State at Cortland.

Schultz said of his team’s game against Potsdam:

“I would expect it’s going to be a very good hockey game. It’s going to be one of those games where both teams will go up and down the ice. Both teams like to generate offense. They have three to four difference makers in forwards that can change the game. So, we have to make sure our defense stops them.”

Somehow, I get the feeling after the weekend is over, the only thing that is going to change amongst this cluster is some shuffling around within. This is a battle, from top to bottom in the entire league, that is going to come down to the final buzzer on Feb. 20.

On The Periphery

This is going to come off a bit biased since I am a lifelong New York Jets fan. However, I am getting a bit tired of hearing how the Jets are getting lucky in their playoff wins and how the other teams are losing games as opposed to the Jets winning them.

I have one thing to say to those critics — defense wins in the playoffs in every sport in the world. Always has. Always will. And the Jets have by nearly every measurement the best defense in the National Football League.

Great defense makes other teams look bad. Great defense pressures other teams into making mistakes. Even silly mistakes good teams shouldn’t be making. Don’t you think that quarterbacks that play against the type of defense the Jets possess have in the back of their minds the thought that at some point in the game they are going to get slammed to the ground by 300 pound linemen, and don’t you think that plays into the decisions they make when they drop back? Is that what ultimately made Philip Rivers look bad as the game wore on?

Whether it’s football, hockey, basketball, soccer, baseball (in the form of pitching), constant defensive pressure is going to make the opposition look bad to the point where people have a tendency to explain it away by thinking a team didn’t play up to their potential or choked as opposed to being forced into those modes by the great defense they faced.

Are the Jets boring to watch? I admit, yes they are. Are their games typically ugly without any flair? I admit, yes they are. However, flair and pizzazz alone never won championships. Even the great open skating style of the Edmonton Oilers never won a Stanley Cup until they finally locked down their defense.

The New Jersey Devils were one of the most boring teams to watch during their championship runs. Ditto the Baltimore Ravens nine years ago. Same with Villanova in their famous upset of Georgetown.

The Jets coach Rex Ryan is correct — the Jets make no apologies in how they are winning. Nor should any team that wins on stifling defense. And the critics should stop also.

This Week in the ECAC Northeast-MASCAC: Jan. 21, 2010

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For anyone familiar with Boston sports history, St. Botolph Street should be right up there with Yawkey Way and Causeway Street. It’s the home of Matthews Arena, which outdates the more famous current homes of the city’s pro teams. The world’s oldest indoor hockey rink underwent major renovations over the summer (USCHO.com photo gallery poll; shameless plug).

But while the building’s primary occupants, the Division I Northeastern Huskies, have endured an up and down season, Matthews’ other tenants from nearby D-III Wentworth have enjoyed a flawless start in ECAC Northeast play (5-0) and ridden a 12-1-1 overall mark to the No.13 spot in the latest USCHO.com Division III poll.

The Leopards swept non-conference opponent Hobart last weekend, marking the first time Wentworth had beaten the Statesmen in the program’s history. It also pushed the Leopards’ winning streak to five following their first loss of the season to non-conference opponent Williams on Jan. 2.

“I think Hobart is a really talented team,” Wentworth head coach R.J. Tolan said. “They were both close games. It was nice to go up there and be able to compete and played six really good periods.”

Wentworth topped Hobart 2-0 and 4-2 on the weekend, adding an empty-net goal each night. Senior goalie Justin Marriott and forward Skylur Jameson played a key role in the sweep for the Leopards, earning conference goalie and player of the week honors, respectively. Marriot stopped 44 shots in the opening game before giving way to freshman Michael Jarboe (48 saves) in the finale.

Marriott’s shutout was his seventh, which ties the program’s career record. Jameson assisted on freshman Dylan Barbieri’s first collegiate goal in the opening game before adding an empty netter to seal the win.

He added an assist on Jeff Olitch’s game-winning goal in Saturday’s game.

“I think Justin had played almost every games since I’ve been the coach,” said Tolan, the former Massachusetts-Lowell blueliner and Northeastern assistant who took over at Wentworth before the 2006-07 season. “I couldn’t ask anything more of a kid. He’s once of the nicest kids I’ve ever had an he’s a heck of a goalie. We go as far as Justin goes.”

Despite being only a sophomore, Tolan said Jameson had already left his mark on the Wentworth program.

“In his two years here I don’t know if one kid has had a bigger effect on myself or the program,” said Tolan. “He’s essentially a winner. He has almost straight A’s in the classroom. Ever since he got here, we seem to have started to win just a bit more. I think that’s directly attributed to Skylur and a few of the underclassman. They’ve really meshed well with some of the older guys.”

Wentworth will travel to Curry Thursday for its first conference game since Dec. 4, a 4-3 win over Suffolk. With seven points in conference play, the Colonels sit only three points behind the Leopards.

“It’s become a pretty rivalry because of how close [Curry is], ” Tolan said. “We have a lot of respect for how they do things over there.”

Wentworth will host Salve Regina at Matthews Monday, the Leopards’ first home game since the win over Suffolk.

“We’ve been unbelievably fortunate,” Tolan said of playing at the historic arena. “To come in and be five minutes from Fenway and play and practice every day at Matthews, you can’t ask for much more as a college hockey player. It’s made my life a little bit easier.”

Around the Rest of the ECAC Northeast

The aforementioned Colonels enjoyed a successful week, using a third period goal in each of their games to knock off non-conference opponents Utica and Geneseo. On Thursday, Curry allowed Utica to tie the game with two final frame tallies before Ryan Barlock netted the game winner at 15:26. Jerry Hotarek’s goal broke a third period tie between Curry and Geneseo, allowing the Colonels to escape with a 3-2 win. Curry forward Josh Kamrass posted two goals an assist on the week, earning the conference’s Rookie of the Week honors.

A host of other non-conference games were played over the weekend, including Salve Regina falling 6-1 to MASCAC opponent Fitchburg State. On Friday, Johnson & Wales lost to Buffalo State 6-4 and Western New England dropped a 4-2 decision to Fredonia. Becker posted a 3-2 win over Franklin Pierce.

On Saturday, Nichols downed Worcester State 5-4, while Western New England and Johnson and Wales capped off winless weekends with losses to Fredonia and Buffalo State, respectively … Suffolk was easily handled by Tufts, 7-1, on Tuesday. Wednesday saw a pair of ECAC Northeast conference games as Nichols beat Johnson & Wales 7-2 and Becker slipped by Salve Regina, 2-0.

Hanging in There

The bookends of 2009 and 2010 certainly won’t bring a lot of fond memories for Plymouth State.

After starting 6-1, the Panthers lost two in a row to close out 2009 and had to wait almost a month to get back into action, where they promptly lost their first three games of the new year, albeit all to non-conference opponents. But Plymouth State put an end to the skid last week grabbing an important four points in conference play with a 7-1 dismantling of Worcester State Thursday and a 4-2 win over Salem State Saturday.

The Panthers’ win over the second place Vikings further clustered the already tight race in the MASCAC. Westfield State (14 points) holds a narrow lead over Salem State (13) while Plymouth State and Fitchburg State aren’t far behind with 10 points apiece. The Panthers emerged with a win Saturday despite allowing a shorthanded goal to cut their lead to 3-2 in the third.

Bryan Kriner broke the tie earlier in the period with a power-play goal and buried the Vikings with an empty netter to cap the scoring. The sophomore added a goal and two assists in Plymouth State’s win over Worcester State Thursday and was the MASCAC Player of the Week. Senior Aaron Runner shared Goalie of the Week honors with Fitchburg State’s Bobby Leiser after stopping 29 shots Thursday and a career-high 38 Saturday.

Elsewhere in the MASCAC

After downing Salve Regina in non-conference action Thursday, Fitchburg State throttled Framingham State 9-1 Saturday. Leiser had 30 saves against Salve Regina after posting 52 last Tuesday in a 4-1 win over New England College. Overall, he was 3-0 with a 1.13 goals against average on the week. Forward Chris Costigan posted eight points (three goals and five assists) in Fitchburg’s three games.

Westfield State extended its unblemished mark in conference play with a 6-1 win over Framingham State Thursday. Prior to falling to the Panthers Saturday, Salem State shutout the University of Massachusetts-Darthmouth, 3-0. Nichols downed Worcester State, 5-4, on Saturday while UMass-Dartmouth lost to non-conference opponent (and in-state rival) UMass-Boston on Tuesday, 5-0.

Loose Pucks

It’s still a ways off, but I am excited for spring training to roll around. Especially since the Jets are one win away from the Super Bowl … Any mid-major hoops aficionados in the New England area should check out the Northeastern-VCU game at 2 p.m. on Comcast SportsNet New England … Best wishes to former Northeasten and current Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun.

Chirps

Suggestions? Comments? Send them to [email protected].

This Week in the NCHA/MCHA: Jan. 21, 2009

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This week’s USCHO.com Division III men’s poll dials up five NCHA and MCHA teams in the same manner it did a week ago, but some interesting results have shuffled the five around a bit.

St. Norbert is still the top ranked team in the region, but the Green Knights dropped a spot into a No. 4 tie with Elmira following a split at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

St. Scholastica fell from fifth to seventh after scoring only a single point from UW-River Falls at home, while the three point weekend vaulted the Falcons up two positions to No. 11.

A UW-Stout sweep over UW-Superior was enough for the Blue Devils to score a pair of votes for themselves; it was also enough to cost the Yellowjackets the votes it had a week ago.

Adrian scored two road wins over league rival Milwaukee School of Engineering, but took it on the chin from the pollsters nonetheless as the Bulldogs dropped a spot to No. 12. They remain the only MCHA to receive votes.

Lions Trying To Roar

As previously reported, the Finlandia program experienced a bit of a shakeup earlier in the season as the university announced on Nov. 23 that popular head coach Joe Burcar had been removed from his position. The official school release simply cited violations of institutional policy as the reason for his dismissal.

Though the university is in the midst of a national search for a new head coach to take the reins beginning next season, the job coaching the Lions for the remainder of this season fell to Athletic Director Chris Salani on an interim basis.

Salani is no stranger to hockey, having played at Division I Michigan State for two and a half seasons. He has coached at the high school, junior, and collegiate levels, most recently serving as the Finlandia women’s head coach from 2004-08.

Thrust into the unenviable position of stepping in as men’s hockey coach in an awkward setting. Salani says it was certainly a difficult situation.

“I think from the timing of the sequence of the events it was not very favorable towards the mindsets of our athletes,” he said. “The challenges that were there of keeping an open channel of communication between the athletes and myself, as well as the parents and families made it pretty tough.

“They emotionally and psychologically had to go through some adjustments and I honestly think some of them are still trying to make the adjustment.

Obviously many of them had a very good relationship with coach Burcar. He was able to connect with his players so that was the initial challenge.”

The Lions lost five consecutive games following the coaching change, including a sweep at the hands of Northland in their first action since the shake up.

“The first two weekends it was really trying to gauge the environment and the sensitivities of the student-athletes at that time,” said Salani. “It was not good hockey from a Finlandia standpoint with all the variables that were in play. Without making excuses I think we were out there all trying to figure things out as we went.

“It was really a transition period in every sense of the word.”

Losses to Gustavus Adolphus, St. John’s and Augsburg followed, but the Lions finally got pointed in the right direction as they scored three points in a home series with Concordia (WI) two weeks ago.

The Lions stepped it up another notch last weekend as, despite only getting one point in the series, they went on the road and scored a tie and an overtime loss at Lawrence. The Vikings were the second place MCHA team at the time.

“Going into last weekend I think everyone was on the same page,” said Salani. “They knew where there teammates were going to be and what their teammates were supposed to do. Now it’s just a matter of executing whereas perhaps before it maybe more of a read and react thing.”

Salani hopes the weekend at Lawrence is indicative of a turning point for a team that, on top of this season’s off-ice turmoil, features 19 underclassmen.

“After last week at Lawrence there are a lot of positives,” he continued. “We need to go into the mindset in this last push to be in position to gain access to the playoffs. If we can play like we did last weekend and be motivated I anticipate we’ll be in every single game regardless of our opponent; and that’s the way we have to practice and that’s the way we have to play.”

Finlandia hits the road to take on rival MSOE this weekend, but closes the season with four straight home series with Adrian, Marian, Northland and Lawrence. Salani hopes that the recent improvements, along with the home ice advantage is enough for the Lions to turn the corner, finish in the top six in the league, and make the postseason.

“We’ve been able to get our systems down and been able to get done in practice what we have to,” said Salani. “We now feel very confident about our 5-on-5 play. The guys have improved by leaps and bounds and understand that they have play at a high level consistency.

“We should be running down the road firing on all cylinders here and we aren’t looking back.”

Fat Tuesday

While nearly all MCHA games are contested on weekends, a key MCHA tilt snuck into the fold this past Tuesday as Marian traveled to Lawrence for the first of four meetings between the two this season.

Lawrence entered the contest with a one point lead over Marian for second place in the MCHA, but by nights send it was Marian who stood alone in second place.

The Sabres jumped on the Vikings early, and notched late first period goals from Todd Collins and Chris Thompson to take a 2-1 lead into the first intermission. Lawrence was outshot 17-5 in the opening frame, which was not the start Vikings’ head coach Mike Szkodzinski was hoping for.

“Marian’s forwards were excellent and got on our defensive corps quickly,” Szkodzinski said. “They are big and strong and dominated a majority of the first period. [Lawrence goaltender] Evan Johnson made a number of key saves and luckily we were still in the game after [the period].”

Matt Hughes tied it up for the Vikings 1:15 into the second, but Marian’s Brian Pierpont put the Sabres up 3-2 a mere 23 seconds later.

Brendan Hull extended the lead to 4-2 early in the third period while a Lawrence tally by Brad Scurfiled with just over three minutes remaining in the game set the stage for a frantic ending.

Marian penalties at 18:12 and 18:27 afforded Lawrence 1:18 with a 6-on-3 advantage once Johnson was able to get off the ice, but Marian goaltender Cullen Caldwell and the Sabres’ penalty killers were up to the task and kept the puck out of the net.

Actually, the puck did find its way in once during the frenzy, but the officials ruled the net was off its moorings and the Sabres held on for the 4-3 win.

“We had been moving our feet and luckily got a couple of calls,” Szkodzinski said. “We had our chances and scored a goal that was waived off, but give the Marian guys credit. They battled their tails off right to the last buzzer and got the victory.”

The loss was Lawrence’s fifth in its last seven games. The Vikings are 1-5-1 in the stretch which includes the league tie with Finlandia and a loss to Lake Forest.

“Our league is much more competitive than maybe some of the records show. Anytime Lawrence and Finlandia play it’s going to be a war. Lake Forest is a hungry team right now,” Szkodzinski said.

The stretch has been enough to drop the Vikings into third in the MCHA, two points ahead of fourth place Lake Forest and three clear of fifth place MSOE. With hopes of a home series in the opening round of the MCHA playoffs and an eventual Harris Cup playoff championship, Szkodzinski says some things will have to change for those goals to be attained.

“We have not put together 60 minutes to this point and that’s going to be the key if we expect to contend for any sort of title in our league or to even put ourselves in position for home ice in the playoffs.”

Falcons Still Flying High

Earlier in the season, this column featured River Falls as the Falcons 5-1 start was a stark contrast from the 1-6-1 start they got off to a year ago.

It’s now two months later and very little has changed as River Falls now stands at 10-5-2 on the season and are the No.11 ranked team in the country.
At 4-4-2 and in fourth place in the NCHA, it hasn’t been all roses for the Falcons, however. Most difficult to stomach was a pair of home losses to rival Stout in their final series prior to the holiday layoff.

“It’s always pretty devastating getting beat at home, especially by the team right up the highway here, but I think we learned a lot from the series,” said Falcons’ head coach Steve Freeman.

The Falcons were routed 6-1 in the opener before coming out on the short end of a 6-5 shootout the following night.

“We didn’t play with much discipline and they really took it to us on their power play,” Freeman said. “The second game was pretty wide open game and really could have gone either way. We did play well offensively but did not play well defensively at all and our goaltending was shaky, too.”

After the layoff, River Falls righted its proverbial ship with wins over St. Thomas and St. Mary’s and made its first real legitimate noise of the season last week with a three point weekend at then No. 5 St. Scholastica.

The Falcons jumped on the Saints early in the series opener as they jumped up 3-0 after the first period before ultimately pulling away for the 5-0 win.

“We came out of the gate really, really well,” Freeman said. “We were skating and moving the puck well and played with a lot of structure. Our positioning, especially, on the defensive end was really good. They had a lot of shots but we kept them to the outside of the rink and didn’t give them many second look chances and [goaltender] Bo Storozuk was extremely sharp.”

The tact of the series finale was a bit different as the Saints came out firing and jumped up 2-0 after the first period while piling up a 17-8 shot advantage.

In what is becoming a trend this season, the Falcons would not roll over and quit and notched three second period goals, though they still trailed 4-3 at the second intermission.

The Saints tallied early in the third to go up 5-3, but the Falcons received some late second heroics, again, and scored two extra-attacker goals by Josh Calleja in the final minute of the game to force overtime, and ultimately, the 5-5 draw.

“We knew they were going to come out hard and weather the storm but they jumped on us pretty good,” Freeman said. “We’ve been able to score goals in bunches though and scored three in the middle of that game and got the two with the goalie out at the end.”

It might be safe to say that a year ago River Falls would not have pulled the tie out last Saturday, but a year older and wiser than the young team that struggled last year, late game heroics are becoming somewhat of a trademark of this year’s team.

Aside from Calleja’s goals in the waning seconds last weekend, he also scored
a shorthanded overtime goal in the St. Mary’s game and tallied man-down with under two minutes remaining to propel the Falcons to a 2-1 win over Eau Claire back in November.

“The guys that were young last year are really motivated to be successful,” Freeman explained. “Now they have a taste of it and they just keep playing hard right to the end which is terrific. Even when we were down two late last weekend with no time left in my mind I was pretty satisfied because we were playing so hard, so as long as we can keep doing that we should be in pretty good shape.”

If the postseason began this weekend, the fourth place Falcons would be hosting a playoff series. With eight league games remaining, however, and the volatility the NCHA is able to unleash on itself, Freeman is taking nothing for granted.

Case in point: A sweep over visiting UW-Stevens Point this weekend has the potential to elevate River Falls into contention for a league title, while two losses would bring the sixth place Pointers into a fourth place tie with the Falcons.

“We know [Stevens Point is] playing terrific hockey, but they have such a new team we are excited to look at them and see what they are about,” Freeman said. “We kind of went into the series last weekend the same way. [St. Scholastica] is playing so well we wanted to see how we measure up. In the NCHA it’s so tight it’s not so much that one team is better than the other team but it’s more a clash of styles, so it’ll be interesting.”

Indeed it will.

This Week in the ECAC East-NESCAC: Jan. 21, 2010

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Just five weeks and 10 games remain for most teams in the league and already the races are tightening up. In the NESCAC, first through eighth are separated by just four points and only two points lay between first and sixth place.

Over in the ECAC East, Norwich is comfortably atop the standings. Further down, however, the teams bunched up between second and seventh are only separated by four points. So a good or bad weekend can have a major impact on your team’s playoff prospects.

If there is a key word from the coach’s handbook on clichés right now, it’s consistency. The teams that have it want to keep it and continue to improve while other teams still looking for it know that now is the time to find their game. The sense of urgency is becoming palpable. Here is a snapshot of a host of teams in the ECAC East — and Trinity from NESCAC — striving to get their respective games fine-tuned for the end of season run that will lead into the conference tournament in February.

Huskies on the Prowl

When you start the year with a strong group of returning players mixed in with 15 new freshmen on the roster, the likelihood is you are going to take a little bit of time to figure out all of the moving pieces in getting the team to play cohesively and consistently.

For Southern Maine the process has helped to add some needed depth and mature some of the younger players quickly in support of proven players who have met expectations and in most cases exceeded them by their coach’s standards.

“We are playing well despite our losses,” noted Huskies head coach Jeff Beaney. “Sometimes I forget how young we really were when we started the season. We probably could have shortened the bench earlier in the season and maybe benefited from a couple of more wins as a result but giving these players a chance to develop has really added to our overall depth as we have searched for the right combinations in the line-up.”

Right now the Huskies are skating two freshman lines that have been effective on the ice despite not necessarily showing up on the scoresheet.

“In our game last week against Colby, it’s a 1-1 tie in overtime and obviously a tight game,” said Beaney. “I look out on the ice and I have four freshmen and a sophomore out there against a very strong team and really had no issues about putting them out there in that situation.”

The freshmen have been able to develop this season largely because of the supporting cast of upperclassmen that lead the team in scoring and continue to show the way for Southern Maine. Sophomore Dan Rautenberg (six goals, 10 assists, 16 points), junior Chris Travis (5-10-15) and junior Paul Conter (5-9-14) are part of a core of players leading the offensive part of the game along with goal scoring leader Zach Joy.

Joy (17-2-19) is a power forward by any definition of the position. He leads his team in goals, hits, finished checks and finds a way to position himself to make the most of his chances. His goal against Colby tied the game and was typical of his drive to the net and commitment to battling for loose pucks and finding a way to score.

“It’s interesting that when I speak to other coaches, they will more often ask about Travis and Rautenberg,” said Beaney. “Those guys can absolutely fly and shoot the heck out of the puck. Zach skates very well too and can also score outside the circles but his game is less flashy so he probably gets less attention because of it. What is really special about Zach is that he is a great kid and good student but his conditioning as a hockey player goes way beyond any player I have seen here in my tenure.

“He never gets tired and goes 100% every time on the ice in any situation. He is obviously not a playmaker with just two assists this season but is really a throwback player in terms of his physical play and doing the difficult things in tough parts of the ice to get his scoring chances.”

Work ethic and talent have Southern Maine’s Zach Joy leading the ECAC East in goal scoring.

Work ethic and talent have Southern Maine’s Zach Joy leading the ECAC East in goal scoring.

With the offense taken care of, the Huskies will rely on the play of sophomore Mason St. Hillaire (2.99 goals against average, .919 save percentage) in goal as the early season starter, Koray Celik, will miss the remainder of the season with an undisclosed injury.

“Other than the game against St. Anselm where they seemed to score from everywhere and anywhere,” Beaney said. “Mason has been solid and the team has confidence in their ability to win with him in goal. We have two league opponents this weekend at home that are big games. All points are valuable now so we need everyone to start playing their best hockey.”

The second half has always been the strong part of the season for the Huskies. If that trend holds true, Southern Maine should be playing for a home-ice berth in the conference tournament.

Thoroughbreds Running Wild in the League

If you just look at the record, you might be missing a lot about the Skidmore Thoroughbreds, who have showcased a classic hockey case of multiple personality disorder when comparing their conference and non-conference records so far this season.

Out of the league against a very difficult non-league schedule, the team is just 1-5 with a minus-17 goal differential. In the conference, also against very difficult competition, the team is 6-3-0 and has scored 11 more goals than their opponents. They are currently in second place in the ECAC East.

“We play a tough non-league schedule so we can get better,” said head coach Neil Sinclair. “What I would really like to build on is the success we have had in the conference and gain the consistency we are going to need every night to compete in this league at a high level.

“There are still parts of our game that we need to continually work on including some goal scoring but if we continue to play as we have in our conference games this team will be fine coming into the last few weekends of the season.”

Leading the Thoroughbreds are juniors Alex Mykolenko (12-16-28) and Hunter Thayer (6-7-13) who have been consistent scorers all season for coach Sinclair’s team. A key to the second half has been the resurgence of senior Matt Czerkowicz (4-7-11) who has regained his scoring touch at the right time of the year for Skidmore.

“We moved Matt around a lot early,” said Sinclair. “We were trying to find the right combinations and add some depth to our scoring across our lines and it took awhile to get him in the right situation. Matt is very skilled and works hard so I am not at all surprised to see him showing up on the scoresheet more which is good for our offense.”

Senior Matt Czerkowicz has Skidmore battling near the top of the ECAC East standings.

Senior Matt Czerkowicz has Skidmore battling near the top of the ECAC East standings.

In his last five games, Czerkowicz has scored two goals and added three assists for five points in helping the Thoroughbreds improve to 6-3 in the conference following last weekend’s road wins over Babson and the University of Massachusetts-Boston.

Another key piece of the puzzle for Skidmore is sophomore goaltender Colin Bessey.

Like his team, Bessey has struggled somewhat outside of conference play while playing with the form that earned him post-season honors last season as a freshman. With a 2.55 GAA and .916 save pct., Bessey can give the team a chance to win on any night and has provided timely saves to a very effective penalty killing unit for Skidmore.

Skidmore plays six of its final 10 games at home with another pair of tough games this weekend against Amherst and Hamilton from the NESCAC conference. If the Thoroughbreds can keep of their consistent league play, they certainly have a good chance at keeping other ECAC East teams chasing them down the homestretch.

Bantam Road Warriors

For Dave Cataruzolo’s Trinity Bantams, the season has been bookends on a schedule that has seen a lot of miles and bus time. The team played eight of its first 11 games on the road and for the season has an unbalanced schedule that sees them play only nine home games versus 15 contests on the road.

Trinity netminder Wes Vesprini looks forward to more offensive support from his teammates.

Trinity netminder Wes Vesprini looks forward to more offensive support from his teammates.

“It’s a little bit unusual,” admitted Cataruzolo. “I think I need to talk to the guy that makes up the schedule and let him know we might want to build a rink here on campus so we can play at home more. Seriously, I don’t think it really has fazed us as the younger players don’t seem too phased by either the travel or the game situations they find themselves in.”

Like many other teams, consistency is what Trinity is looking for and they need some goals to help their cause. One area that would help is an improved power play where Trinity is connecting at under 15% efficiency with the man advantage.

“We definitely need to improve on the power play which would help our offensive output for sure,” said Cataruzolo. “Other than Wes [Vesprini] in goal, we really need to be more consistent in all facets of our game and build on some strong results. We took three of four points last weekend against two very good teams in Middlebury and Williams and didn’t make up any ground in the standings so we have our work cut out for us these last few weeks.”

Two guys that will be looked to for increased scoring beyond their solid overall play this season are sophomores Paul Jaskot (1-3-4) and defenseman Mike DeMayo (0-4-4). Last season was a 20 point player with 10 goals and 10 assists while DeMayo chipped in with 15 points on seven goals and eight assists. While there are high expectations for both to contribute more offensively, their coach is pleased with the overall level of play that his players have provided to date.

“We asked Mike to really be a leader for a core group of young defensemen,” said Cataruzolo. “We wanted him to focus on the defensive zone first while we matured as a group on the blueline and he has more than exceeded those expectations on the ice and in the locker room.

“Paul is battling through the point scoring issue but has contributed solid overall performances in his game doing a lot of other things to help us be successful. Certainly we need his points, especially at this point of the season and will be looking more to him to add some numbers like he did last season.”

Starting out the season as a fairly young team, Cataruzolo is pleased with the development of his young players and hopes that they will now find their stride at the right time of year.

Freshmen brothers Jeff Menard and Chris Menard from Burlington, Mass. and Governor’s Academy typify the maturation process and have set greater expectations for their play in the second half.

“I think that after the first-half the freshmen have adjusted to the schedule, academic requirements, school life and the demands of playing two games a week in less than 24 hours,” noted Cataruzolo. “I don’t think they are really freshmen anymore after the break based on their playing time and overall adjustment to league play which creates greater accountability for their game as their confidence builds and they find their role on the team.”

This weekend finds the Bantams once again on the road. Matchups with St. Michaels and an unbeaten Norwich team will go a long way in forecasting the level of consistency Trinity to can attain over the last month of the season.

“We have had real problems with St. Mike’s over the past few years and there are no gimmes in this league so this weekend will be a good challenge for our team and hopefully a chance to build on what we accomplished last weekend,” Cataruzolo said.

The season is more than half over and already the races and individual matchups are beginning to have implications in the league standings.

Consistency is what everyone wants over the final five weeks of the season and those teams that can keep grinding it out or find that “on” switch will be setting themselves up for some important hockey in late February and early March.

Drop the puck!

WCHA Expansion Likely Won’t End ‘Final Five’ Name; 12-Team Postseason Expected

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The WCHA Final Five moniker may hang around, even as the league expands to 12 teams next season, but a handful of changes to the WCHA’s tournament format appear to be in the making.

League officials did not come up with any final decisions when they discussed the future of the two-week postseason last Thursday at a meeting held in connection with the NCAA convention in Atlanta.

However, there were indications that the WCHA would prefer to keep the Final Five name that it has used since 1993, even if the tournament includes six teams, a league source said.

It appears that the postseason will include all 12 teams once the WCHA expands to include Bemidji State and Nebraska-Omaha next season. That would push six teams to the league’s playoff championship and require a reformatting of the three-day tournament at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minn.

Currently, the Final Five includes five games — a play-in contest Thursday night, two semifinals on Friday, a third-place game Saturday afternoon and the title game Saturday night.

The leading thought out of the meeting, the source said, was that the league could still use the Final Five title with a simple redefinition — five games, instead of five teams.

The third-place game has long been a source of contention in the league. While that game can be important — winning the 2006 version gave Wisconsin the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA tournament over Minnesota, which it defeated — it also has been detrimental to some.

In 17 years of the Final Five, the consolation game loser has made the NCAA tournament 10 times. Seven times — including the last four years — that team has lost its first NCAA game.

The third-place game is important to the league’s coffers however, because it is a separate ticket that provides revenue, and therefore the league is reluctant to give it up.

Having six teams involved would allow the WCHA to keep a five-game format — two play-in games Thursday involving the teams seeded third through sixth, two semifinals Friday and the championship game Saturday — and please a vocal group of coaches by dumping the consolation game.

The sticking point, the source said, was in trading a Saturday afternoon game that has averaged 14,282 in attendance since the tournament moved to the Xcel Energy Center in 2001 for a Thursday afternoon game. One remedy that has been floated was to play the Thursday games consecutively, without requiring fans to leave and re-enter on a new ticket.

The idea of keeping a 10-team postseason by eliminating the bottom two teams from the playoffs altogether — like is done in Hockey East — didn’t go far, the source said. Coaches indicated that if they were stuck at the bottom of the standings late in the season, they wanted to keep alive some hope in their season by looking toward the first round of the playoffs.

Other issues that remain to be resolved:

— Whether teams would be reseeded after the Thursday games to allow the top seed to play the lowest remaining seed. A fixed bracket — the No. 1 seed playing the winner of the play-in game between the fourth and fifth seeds and the No. 2 seed playing either the third or sixth seed — could aid in scheduling.

— Whether Minnesota would automatically be assigned to the night game on Thursday and Friday (if it is still alive in the tournament) to maximize local ticket sales. The so-called “Minnesota rule” currently sets the Gophers up with the prime-time semifinal spot, even if it causes the Thursday night winner to play Friday afternoon.

When Nanooks Destroyed the Earth, or When Pregame Graphics Go Too Far

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Maybe you’ve seen this already. If you haven’t, it’s worth a look for the production value if nothing else.

Like most schools with a video board, Alaska has an intro sequence that plays before the game. I’m not sure anything I’ve seen tops this in terms of graphics talent, but there are some head-scratching moments here.

I’ll get to those after the video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8THGqrjUDGI]

So, if I have this correctly, the Nanooks’ polar bear mascot is awakened by The Seawolf, a ship, and emerges from the ice to destroy it. The bear then takes aim at opposing team campuses with bombs from a fighter jet. And, if that wasn’t enough, the bear destroys earth.

Um, yeah.

Again, points for the graphics, but isn’t this just a little over the top? Maybe the polar bear is just getting its revenge for that whole climate change thing.

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