Last season introduced a bit of anarchy to the ECAC Hockey postseason race when the league abandoned a best-of-three first round series in favor of a single-elimination, one-game playoff.
It almost instantaneously became one of the league’s most unpopular decisions, but the overall reaction ranging anywhere from tepid to downright unhappy quickly gave way to a situation where two lower-seeded teams earned their way into the best-of-three quarterfinal by winning on the road.
One of those teams wound up winning the whole thing after No. 5 Colgate went undefeated through St. Lawrence, Quinnipiac and Harvard, but the idea of a one-and-done first round stuck around long enough for the Raiders’ championship run to quickly dissolve into this year’s upset by 12th-seeded Rensselaer over fifth-seeded Clarkson.
RPI had been lightly regarded as one of the lower tier teams in the Division I Pairwise Rankings, but the Engineers built a 3-0 lead before Clarkson stormed to within a goal in a wild third period that featured a 22-3 shot advantage for the Golden Knights. That they held onto their victory fell to the shoulders of goalie Jack Watson, and in an instant, the team that struggled to a last place finish is on the verge of earning Cinderella’s glass slipper in a league tournament that otherwise advanced according to chalk.
Nobody could have seen it coming, but the beauty of playoff hockey leaves the second round with a loud exclamation point possibly permeating through its ranks. RPI became the first No. 12 seed to win a series since it lost to bottom-seeded Colgate in double-overtime during the three-game series at Houston Field House in 2011, and potentially winning at Quinnipiac leaves them as the first No. 12 seed to possibly advance to the semifinals since those same Raiders defeated top-seeded Union in three-games.
No team lower than a No. 8 seed has made the semifinals over the past 13 years, but 2011 is ringing pretty loudly through a second round that features a home series for Dartmouth for the first time since that 2010-2011 season.
Quinnipiac, meanwhile, begins its bid for its first Whitelaw Cup since 2016, but the Pairwise Rankings continues to haunt the Bobcats while second-seeded Cornell tries to play its way back into the bubble with a three-game series against archnemesis Harvard. Through it all, Colgate has a chance to defend its league championship against the team it eliminated last year, but St. Lawrence is heading for Hamilton with an upset on its mind.
It’s unclear or unlikely if the ECAC quarterfinals can match the drama of those first round matchups, but one thing’s for sure: it sure as heck is going to try.
Quarterfinal Round: Best-of-Three Series
Friday-Saturday, March 15-16 (If Necessary: Sunday, March 17)
No. 6 Union at No. 4 Dartmouth
No. 7 St. Lawrence at No. 3 Colgate
No. 8 Harvard at No. 2 Cornell
No. 12 RPI at No. 1 Quinnipiac
Championship Weekend: Single Elimination
Friday-Saturday, March 22-23
Semifinal 1: March 22, 4 p.m.
Semifinal 2: March 22, 7 p.m.
ECAC Championship: March 23, 7 p.m.
Pairwise Fallout
Quinnipiac spent most of the season as an NCAA tournament lock with a No. 1 or No. 2 seed, but a couple of ill-timed losses to St. Lawrence and Clarkson dropped the Bobcats to eighth in a Pairwise Rankings that’s starting to pick up some major steam ahead of next weekend’s conference championship and selection weekend.
Wisconsin can’t catch Quinnipiac after Ohio State eliminated the Badgers from the Big Ten postseason, but Michigan, Colorado College, Omaha, Western Michigan, Providence and UMass all possess pathways to vault over the Bobcats if they absorb the wrong loss. Given that their opponent this weekend is the No. 53 team in the Pairwise Rankings, it’s likely that even one loss is potentially problematic towards their national championship defense.
I don’t think much of the conversation would change if Clarkson had won, but the marginal drop-off from Harvard to RPI is enough to generate a bit of heat around Quinnipiac’s national tournament hopes. One loss could be bad enough to drop the team down to No. 11 or No. 12 in the rankings, and even with the Providence-UMass game serving as an elimination game to the Hockey East postseason, a second loss is a nuclear option that knocks the tea Bobcats out of the national tournament altogether.
Cornell conceivably benefits from a possible drop in the Quinnipiac prospects, but the Big Red’s recent skid knocked them down to No. 17 while needing two wins against the aforementioned Crimson. Needless to say, a loss in any situation isn’t great for a team that looked bound for a No. 2 or No. 3 seed less than one month ago.
Previewing the Quarterfinals
Union at Dartmouth
How we got here: Union advanced to the quarterfinal after beating Brown with a handy 6-0 win at home last weekend, while Dartmouth clinched its first second round home series in 13 years by beating Yale, 4-1, on the last day of the regular season.
H2H: Union looked sharp in a 5-1 win over Dartmouth back during a five-point weekend against the Big Green and Harvard, but Dartmouth responded with a wild win on the Garnet Chargers’ Senior Day, 5-4.
Key to the series: Dartmouth was exceptional at avoiding regulation losses this year, but a lost footnote is how good the Big Green played at Thompson Arena. They haven’t lost a regulation game at home since that Union game in late January, and an overtime loss to Colgate one weekend later marked the last time they dropped a game on their own ice. They haven’t lost a game at all since Quinnipiac scored a 5-1 win in Connecticut, and comebacks against Harvard and St. Lawrence allowed the Big Green to stay afloat with key standings points.
Union’s inconsistency is well-documented on the season, but pay attention to what happens if the Garnet Chargers score first and early. They entered the playoffs with an 11-1-2 record when scoring first versus 4-15-1 when giving up the first goal, and their perfect 10-0-0 record when leading after the first period was a stark contrast from their 5-14-3 record when tied or trailing. Last weekend against Brown, both very obviously happened.
St. Lawrence at Colgate
How we got here: St. Lawrence deleted Yale with a 4-2 win that featured five goals between the two teams in the second period. The Saints never trailed, but they broke three different tie scores before adding an insurance goal with under six minutes remaining in the frame.
Defending league champion Colgate finished third by going 10-3-1 in the second half of the season. Of those 14 games, four went to overtime, but the Raiders clinched their bye with a six-point performance against RPI and Union on the final weekend.
H2H: St. Lawrence’s 4-3 overtime win during the penultimate league weekend added a bit of intrigue to Colgate’s 3-2 victory at home three weeks earlier.
Key to the series: 73 percent of Colgate’s goal scoring occurred in league play, and the Raiders enter their playoff series with the second-best offense in conference games with 85 goals scored. That’s 30 more goals scored than a St. Lawrence team that allowed the same number of goals as its opponent for the quarterfinal. Considering they take the same number of shots per game, that means Colgate is playing with one of the league’s most efficient and best offenses while facing a team that’s had trouble scoring at various times during the year.
Harvard at Cornell
How we got here: Harvard defeated Princeton at home while Cornell clinched the No. 2 seed.
H2H: Harvard’s only win during the first half of the season came when the Crimson won at Lynah Rink, but the Big Red retaliated with a 2-0 win at Bright-Landry Hockey Center in late January.
Key to the series: Aku Koskenvuo hasn’t allowed more than two goals in a game since surrendering five goals to Dartmouth, and playing the full game against RPI, Yale and Princeton produced less than a goal per full 60-minute game. Last weekend’s shutout over the Tigers was also the second 1-0 game of the Crimson’s season after he previously backstopped the team to a victory over Yale in January.
Cornell is one of the league’s most decisive teams in the playoffs and hasn’t been swept in a best-of-three series since the seventh-seeded Big Red dropped two games at home against No. 10 Yale in 2015. Their last sweep loss in the second round was a two-game sweep at the hands of Quinnipiac…in 2007.
RPI at Quinnipiac
How we got here: RPI defeated Clarkson, 3-2, to become the first No. 12 seed in 13 years to advance out of the first round. Quinnipiac clinched the Cleary Cup with a full weekend of hockey remaining in the regular season.
H2H: Six points in Quinnipiac’s coffers came at the expense of the Engineers after the Bobcats won 5-1 on the road in the first half of the season and 7-2 at home during the Cleary Cup-clinching weekend in February.
Key to the series: RPI’s penalty kill went 3-for-3 last week against Clarkson, and Quinnipiac’s power play finished 26th in the nation at just over 21.5 percent. That said, Quinnipiac has one of the nation’s best goals against averages and gave up more than two goals in regulation in just three games this year, two of which were in the first half of the season.
