As we creep closer and closer to conference tournament time, these league games start to mean more and more now that pairwise and the overall tournament outlook is coming together in the final stretch. This week, some top teams continued to roll through their schedule, while one team played spoiler and forced an upset.
Amherst continues to roll
#4 Amherst (14-1-0), (currently #1 in pairwise) has arguably looked like the best team in the country so far considering what they’ve been able to accomplish and the games they’ve won. Sitting at #1 in pairwise, this means if the season ended today, they’d host the frozen four if they were to win their first game in the NCAA tournament (depending on the NCAA seeding, however, pairwise is typically always the main factor). This past week/weekend the Mammoths won three games, sweeping #14 Connecticut College, winning 3-0 & 3-1. They then shutout #8 Norwich 5-0. The point leaders across all three games were Rylee Glennon (1 goal, 4 assists), Anna Baxter (2 goals, 1 assist), Alyssa Xu (1 goal, 2 assists), & Avery Flynn (3 assists). Goaltender Natalie Stott added a trio of wins to her record, making 38 saves over the three games.
The stat sheet is really where Amherst stands out. #8 Norwich only recorded 9 shots on target in the game, three in each period. Meanwhile, they did the same thing to Middlebury earlier in the year when they swept them, allowing very few shots throughout the game. The defense and overall puck control from Amherst is the most impressive statistic so far considering who they’ve played and how convincingly they’ve won all but one of their games so far.
Amherst visits Wesleyan this weekend for a pair of road games against a Wesleyan team who’s showing a lot of potential this season.
Williams pulls off the upset
Williams College, sitting at 8-6-0, has had an up-and-down season, won some ranked games while also dropping some winnable ones. When competing in the top NESCAC conference, winning games is no easy feat, however, anyone can win on any given night in this league. That happened this past Friday, Williams defeated #6 Hamilton 1-0 on the road to split the weekend series as Hamilton won 4-1 the following night. Snapping the Continentals eight-game win streak (six of those games involved a ranked-opponent).
In this game, the lone goal scored which turned out to be the winner was scored by Maddie Tix, assisted by Maddie Zack & Ellia Chiang at the 12:29 mark of the 2nd period. Two penalties committed by each team, shot totals were 30-15 in favor of Hamilton, faceoffs were tied 22-22, even game for the most part statistically. Goaltender Erin Pye of Williams had a great game, getting the 30-save shutout victory, while Hamilton goaltender Mac Donovan made 14 saves in the loss.
Williams’ is home this weekend for a huge two-game series with #10 Colby.
Hello, Western New England
I previously talked about the Golden Bears earlier this season after their huge 3-2 OT victory over (at the time) #11 Endicott, to move to 4-2-0 on the season, well, they now sit at 11-3-2. Being their 2nd year as a program, they’ve already smashed their program-best in terms of wins, now they sit #3 in the CCC behind Endicott and Suffolk. Most recently, WNE won four games in eight days, defeating New England College 4-0, Salve Regina (twice) 1-0 in OT & 4-1, then Rivier 4-1. Now, many may say the SOS (strength of schedule) isn’t great compared to others but considering where this second-year-program was last year (7-15-4), they’ve made great strides under Head Coach Katie Zimmerman.
Western New England faces Worcester State this weekend in a two-game home/away series.
Utica, where did you come from?
Utica is currently sitting at a quiet 12-1-1 ranked #13 in the USCHO poll (#12 pairwise) and just had one of their most, possibly the most impressive win yet, a 5-0 shutout victory over formerly ranked Oswego State. This past week, the Pioneers went 3-0, defeating Oswego 5-0 in a Tuesday night matchup, and sweeping Chatham over the weekend, winning 4-0 & 5-2. I was high on Utica to start the year due to them returning an older roster and solid goaltending, also with their newly upgraded facilities with the “Nexus Center”, everything seemed to be shaping up for them to perform well. Last season, the Pioneers had their best season as a program, finishing 21-6, but failed to get past Manhattanville in the second round of the UCHC tournament.
Non-conference games for Utica are massive as the UCHC isn’t giving them much help in terms of SOS rankings, whether we agree with it or not, the conference as a whole doesn’t stack-up statistically with others, so winning non-conference games is a must for them. They have an important stretch of games upcoming, this weekend, a two-game series with Manhattanville, then a few days later on Tuesday, they host #7 Hamilton in their biggest game of the year so far in the Nexus Center. These games, especially Hamilton, will show us Utica’s true potential as we’re late in the season so most of the early season/semester break rust should be gone. It’ll be interesting to see how the UCHC tournament fares with defending champion Nazareth looking more beatable this year than they were last year and Utica showing lots of promise.
