One could argue that there’s not a better player in Hockey East than Ed McGrane, but you wouldn’t know it from the accolades. Or lack thereof. <\/p>\n
He’s tied for the league lead in goals scored and is a terrific defensive forward, but he has yet to win a league award this year. Not a single Hockey East Player of the Week. Not a single Player of the Month (although he was a runner-up in October). This legitimate Player of the Year candidate fails to show up anywhere on the league’s list of ITECH Three Star leaders. Check out the 13 names and they’re all good players, but there are many that even their mothers would trade even-up for McGrane.<\/p>\n
The lack of attention given the Massachusetts-Lowell captain stems almost certainly from two factors. The first is his consistency. Unlike players who pile up big points one week and gain a lot of notoriety only to fizzle the next, McGrane has maintained a remarkably steady pace. He’s recorded points in all but three of the River Hawks’ 16 games. He’s scored goals in 11-of-16. The River Hawks know they can count on him game in and game out, but it tends to be hat tricks and five-point nights that grab the attention. <\/p>\n
“A true test of an athlete is his consistency and Eddie certainly brings that,” says UML coach Blaise MacDonald. <\/p>\n
Just don’t equate consistency with a plodding grinder. McGrane can bring members of Lowell’s Blue Fan Group to their feet.<\/p>\n
“Eddie is such a dynamic player because he has great instincts and he just has such incredible internal drive,” says MacDonald. “He just works so hard all the time, every shift. It doesn’t matter who the opponent is. So he’s so consistent. That comes from how he approaches every day at practice, too.”<\/p>\n
McGrane has been matched in goals so far this season only by Maine’s Colin Shields and Northeastern’s Mike Ryan. He’s been topped in points only by New Hampshire’s Lanny Gare, Providence’s Peter Fregoe and Jon DiSalvatore and Maine’s Martin Kariya. All those players are terrific performers. In fairness, though, Kariya and Shields play on the same line; Ryan plays with one of the league’s top playmakers in Jason Guerriero; Gare plays with the country’s top returning scorer, Colin Hemingway; and Fregoe and DiSalvatore play together, along with Devin Rask, a former 51-point producer.<\/p>\n
McGrane, on the other hand, plays with Peter Hay and freshman Danny O’Brien. No disrespect is intended toward either one, but neither is a Kariya, Hemingway, Guerriero or Fregoe. <\/p>\n
“You look at those players [ahead of McGrane in points] and they’re playing with guys who have really arrived in Hockey East as good players,” says MacDonald. “Eddie has guys on his line who are working towards being that type of player. That’s the difference.<\/p>\n
“He’s clearly our go-to offensive guy, so he gets a lot of attention. I almost think he thrives on that because it makes him a better player.”<\/p>\n
McGrane is also the antithesis of a cherry-picking stat hound. If you watch him in the defensive zone, you really gain an appreciation for how well-rounded his game is.<\/p>\n
“He’s a driving force in our defensive play down low,” says MacDonald. “He can really separate people from pucks. He plays gritty. And then he’s able to quickly transition out of that defensive zone coverage. He creates a lot of his offense from 200 feet from the net. It may be easier for a lot of players to create offense when they’re 70 feet from the opponent’s net, but Eddie creates a lot of it from 200 feet.”<\/p>\n
Without question, McGrane’s biggest problem in gaining recognition has been the team’s lack of success this year. The River Hawks may be 7-2-0 outside the league, but they’re still last in the standings, waiting for their first Hockey East win. When your team isn’t winning, the individual awards tend to evaporate. Nonetheless, the losses have had a lot to do with goaltending (an 80.7 save percentage in league games), something McGrane doesn’t have control over. All he can do is perform at his highest level and then as a leader hold the team together.<\/p>\n
“He’s played a lot of big hockey games for us,” says MacDonald. “The fact that we have Ed McGrane is the reason why we’ve been close in a lot of our games. He’s a leader by example. He’s vocal when he needs to be. [If you’re a player,] you see how hard he works and he embarrasses you not to work as hard as he does. It’s that big of a gap.”<\/p>\n
A slam dunk. Hands down selection. Unanimous pick.<\/p>\n
Whatever the term used, Massachusetts’ Don “Toot” Cahoon is the clear choice for Coach of the Year at the halfway mark. No team in the league has exceeded expectations as dramatically as UMass has. Since joining Hockey East in 1994-95, the Minutemen had entered the holiday break with a winning record only once and that was seven years ago. Until this season, they had recorded a cumulative first-half mark of 37-76-8. With only five juniors and seniors combined, the team would have had every excuse to stumble out of the gate.<\/p>\n
Instead, the young squad has foregone excuses and won far more than its originally expected share of games. Going into the Everblades College Classic last week, UMass had a 10-6-0 record and in this writer’s estimation deserved a Top 15 vote. That’s a terrific coaching performance.<\/p>\n
Kudos also are due runners-up Chris Serino (Merrimack) and Tim Whitehead (Maine). Serino’s Warriors have similarly defied expectations almost to the level of UMass. Most years, he’d be the hands-down winner. Maine, on the other hand, was expected to be very good. Whitehead has gotten the Black Bears to be exceptional, arguably the top team in the country.<\/p>\n
Hockey East did itself proud over the holidays with all eight teams participating in tournaments reaching the championship game. Maine, Boston University, Merrimack and Northeastern took their respective title games while Boston College, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Massachusetts-Lowell all finished second. In a sense, the UMass loss can’t count against the league since the Minutemen lost to a Hockey East foe, Maine.<\/p>\n
In case you’re keeping score, that runs the league’s nonconference record to 52-16-9. (That excludes Northeastern’s two wins on the weekend since they were against Canadian teams and treated as exhibitions.)<\/p>\n
Last column’s trivia question asked what Hockey East’s collective record was last year in the Christmas and New Year’s tournaments and also which league teams won the tourneys. The answer was 9-5-0 with UNH and BC winning the Bank One Badger Showdown and Silverado Shootout, respectively. <\/p>\n
(This was an extremely easy question to research. For example, you could have clicked on “Hockey East” on the left sidebar and then “Composite Sked” and then just clicked on “2001-2002” under Schedule Archives. Or you could have gone to the nine individual team schedules and then clicked on last year on the left sidebar. Or clicked on Archives at the top of any page…. You are using the archives, aren’t you?)<\/p>\n
In any case, the first with the correct answer was Ankur Patel, who had won the previous week. Ankur joins Todd Cioffi as a two-time winner this year. Anyone with four wins in a year gains entry into the Trivia Hall of Fame and is retired for the year to give mere mortals a chance. Ankur’s cheer is:<\/p>\n
“Go Cats. Time to take care of business in Hockey East.”<\/i><\/p>\n