{"id":1365,"date":"2013-02-24T15:44:33","date_gmt":"2013-02-24T21:44:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uscho.com\/ecac-blog\/?p=1365"},"modified":"2013-02-24T15:44:33","modified_gmt":"2013-02-24T21:44:33","slug":"hopes-dreams-and-comebacks-with-one-week-to-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/2013\/02\/24\/hopes-dreams-and-comebacks-with-one-week-to-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Hopes, dreams, and comebacks with one week to go"},"content":{"rendered":"
There are two regular-season games remaining. Here is where your team, your rival, and everyone else may finish.<\/p>\n
Controlling fate<\/b> Help to rest<\/b> Hoping for a hand<\/b> Also, this is cool.<\/a><\/p>\n With games at Harvard and Dartmouth remaining, the Bobcats are hoping for as uneventful a weekend as possible. Wins are certainly a priority, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to presume that remaining healthy is the<\/i> priority. QU already has the Cleary Cup, and likely has very little else to do in order to secure a top seed in the NCAA Tournament… though a few bad losses certainly wouldn’t help the cause.<\/p>\n Lost in the statistics about the best season in program history is that it is also one of the most remarkable seasons in league<\/i> history… and ECAC Hockey is a league with history<\/i>, man. While QU is not going to finish with the best regular-season record the conference has ever seen (Cornell famously fielded an undefeated team in 1969-70, which went 29-0-0 overall ), it will be up there. Harvard went 20-2-0 in 1986-87 and<\/i> ’88-89. Vermont went 17-2-3 in ’95-96. Cornell, 19-2-1 in ’02-03 and 18-2-2 two years later. This year’s team is likely to be held in such high regard as these squads, but has a chance to do something no other program in the league has done since the end of the division format in 1983-84: Win the league by double-digits.<\/p>\n Since Hockey East’s split from the ECAC 29 years ago, the league has consisted of one 12-team table. (It had formerly been divided into four uneven divisions prior to the rupture.) In the three decades under this arrangement, no team has ever separated itself from the peloton quite as substantially as Quinnipiac has this year. In fact, the greatest gulfs between first and second place in the “modern” era (since ’84-85) have been nine points, witnessed four times:<\/p>\n QU is currently a dozen<\/i> (12! XII! Doce, for our Spanish readers!) points ahead of second-place RPI. Two points won (or lost, by RPI, or one point lost by St. Lawrence) makes the ’12-13 Bobcats the greatest runaway winner in ECAC Hockey’s recent\/relevant history. <\/p>\n This league constantly touts itself as one of the tightest and toughest conferences in the nation, top to bottom. This is no small feat by the boggling Bobcats.<\/p>\n Two key figures returned to ECAC action this weekend, and each played a major role in his respective team’s success.<\/p>\n Sophomore defenseman Spiro Goulakos played his second and third games since returning from cancer treatment, and scored the game-winning goal on Friday against Union in his return to Starr Rink. <\/p>\n
\nFor three teams, a bye is theirs to lose. Ok, so QU has it wrapped up.<\/i><\/p>\n\n
\nFive teams are scoreboard-watching with an eye on a bye.<\/i><\/p>\n\n
\nThese teams need help if they hope to play at home again.<\/i><\/p>\n\n
in Hamden<\/strike> the fifth-place team in two weeks, though there is an insignificant chance that Harvard could finish 11th.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nQuinnipiac making league history<\/h4>\n
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Don’t call it a comeback<\/h4>\n