Each week during the season, we look at the big events and big games around Division I men’s college hockey in Tuesday Morning Quarterback.
JIM: Dan, this was a pretty light weekend for college hockey because of the Thanksgiving holiday, but there were still plenty of games and results that carried meaning. And it shouldn’t be surprising to anyone paying attention that we’re going to start with Dartmouth given that the Big Green remain college hockey’s only perfect team.
Dartmouth manhandled Vermont on Friday 7-2 and then rode its goaltender and defense to a 1-0 win over Merrimack on Saturday. That improved Dartmouth to 8-0-0. And right now, it’s proving it can win any type of game.
The Dartmouth offense is averaging 4.25 goals per game while its goaltending tandem of Roan Clarke and Emmett Croteau has been nearly impossible to beat. Croteau, especially, stands out with a .970 save percentage and a 0.75 goals-against average through his first four starts.
I know people will harp on Dartmouth’s schedule to date — none of its opponents to date has a record above .500. But you can only win the games on your schedule and to this point, Dartmouth has done that.
What stands out to you about Dartmouth at this point?
DAN: It’s a point that you mentioned, that Dartmouth can win any type of game.
I wish it were as easy as pointing out an outlier number, but the start to this year’s Ivy-based season has this team humming in any type of matchup. Through eight games, it’s been a near-even split in occurrences of outshooting an opponent versus getting outshot. Two of the eight wins are one-goal games, which fits with the blowout goal differential that you mentioned, and the vast majority of those games involve Dartmouth scoring an early lead. Special teams are clicking to the tune of a 25 percent power play and a 91 percent penalty kill, and the Big Green are nearly even in outshooting an opponent through the first and second periods, which points even more directly at a more even third period that’s involved more defensive styles to protect leads.
Part of this is statistical, but numbers are the byproduct of a team culture that’s built to this level. I went back a couple of years to the 13-10-9 season from 2023-24 and looked at some of the similar situational numbers because I once deemed Dartmouth as a team that knew how to “not lose” games. Unsurprisingly, the roster was 10-1-2 when scoring first, and the only loss occurred in the single-elimination, neutral-site playoff game against Cornell. The Big Green were also 4-2-0 in one-goal games and 1-1-9 in games that went to overtime. When leading after one period, they were 7-1-1, a number that accelerated to 11-1-1 when leading after two periods.
Coaches often talk to us about starting on time and needing to dictate the pace and tempo to their liking, but Dartmouth spent the last two-plus years embedding that custom into its practice. I once said that Dartmouth was five or six flipped goals away from winning the Cleary Cup because the players and coaches had to learn how to change “not losing” into “winning.” It appears, at least, that Reid Cashman’s figured that out — at least at the start of the season — and it’s making for a nice story that’s honestly different from the same national brands atop the polls.
Speaking of which, a number of preseason favorites backslid through the first couple of months, so I can’t understate the importance of Boston University’s win over Cornell. Those same Terriers that started the year as a No. 2 team with first-place votes landed all over the place in the first two months, and those same situational numbers are equally chaotic. As a example, BU scored first in 11 of its first 15 games but is just 7-4 in those situations while 0-3-1 when opponents score first.
The win over Cornell kept the Terriers hanging around the likes of Connecticut and Boston College in the early-season NPI. I know the true tracker in us doesn’t kick into gear until January, but is BU kicking the tires on that same nervous conversation that encircled Minnesota from a month ago?
JIM: I think Boston University is just one of many teams who are feeling a little nervous right now. Most of those teams, ironically, hail from Hockey East.
There is probably no conference whose teams misalign right now in the comparison between the national polls and the current NPI. Take Maine, for example, which is 10th in Monday’s poll and the top team from Hockey East in this week’s poll. The Black Bears are currently 28th in the NPI and are the sixth-best Hockey East team.
Similarly, Connecticut is currently ranked 14th, Boston College is 15th, Providence is 16th and Boston University is 18th. That would suggest they are all right around that bubble area, right?
Not even close. The closest any of those teams are to the bubble in the NPI is Providence at 20. Boston College is 22nd, Connecticut is 25th, and Boston University — you referenced its tough start — is all the way down at 27.
(Note: I left out Northeastern, the only Hockey East team close to aligned — eighth in NPI, 12th in the poll).
That’s a massive discrepancy between perception (the USCHO poll) and reality (the NPI) and seems more out of line than in years past when comparing the PairWise and poll. That could be a lot of misremembering. But it also makes me wonder if this is brand-name inflation by the poll or a quirk of the NPI?
DAN: I remember discussing this issue with Paula when Minnesota was on the verge of dropping out of the polls. Now that we have more sampling and more results and numbers, I’m leaning even further into my point that voters have a hard time buying or biting teams that they just don’t follow or know. I think I used Bentley at the time because that was the best example at my fingertips, but I also mentioned Union as a team suffering from the same oversight — or overslight, if you will.
The polling and belief factor breaks down into a couple of different tiers. We’re quick to believe in the Big Ten or Hockey East because they represent the hockey versions of the Big Ten or the SEC at the national level, and I’d even throw the NCHC into that list for its obvious membership with Denver, Minnesota Duluth and North Dakota. I also think there’s always that one team that’s perceived as the best team out of a persistently-strong-but-not-as-powerful-as-the-other-leagues (essentially Quinnipiac as hockey’s Gonzaga) and that one team that’s a magical darling that folks want to hold onto (Atlantic Hockey’s postseason bid). It wasn’t always like this: I think I compared AIC to Gonzaga a while back and that, needless to say, didn’t work out for me in the long run.
The Big Ten rightfully deserves those flowers, but I believe that teams fight an uphill battle whenever they start to encroach on that top-ranked territory. The Ivy League teams especially live in that world because they’re more limited by games. Dartmouth is still just 8-0-0 compared to the 18 games for Michigan, and the fact that ECAC isn’t Hockey East is enough for people to plant the Big Green lower in their poll.
The beautiful thing is that the NPI is the great equalizer, and this is coming from a guy who notoriously hated statistical algorithms for the past few years. If I’m Hockey East, I guess I’m encouraged that the pollsters still believe in my league, or I’m discouraged because the NPI isn’t backing up what people are saying.
Oh — and my best-ranked team is Northeastern, which is about to lose its home ice at the end of the calendar year.
Leading myself here, we’re down to the last two weeks of Matthews Arena. At the risk of being too much of a northeastern guy (pun intended) this week, what are you going to remember about the original Boston hockey building?
JIM: Well, now you’re taking me down a rabbit hole. Readers, please bear with me. And I swear I didn’t prompt Dan to ask this question.
Matthews Arena was my start in hockey. I didn’t grow up in the sport, despite living in Boston. My father hated what fighting had become in hockey in the ’70s, so when he was in control of the TV, which was most nights, we didn’t watch hockey. That said, I had hockey in my family roots. My godfather is in Northeastern’s hockey Hall of Fame. And he, in fact, unknowingly started my career.
He was the hockey coach at my high school, Boston Latin, and in ninth grade he told my mother that I was going to be his water boy. This wasn’t a question. He told her, likely because he knew otherwise my lack of social acumen would make me a wallflower in high school, at best. He gave me the chance to work around the team and grow my knowledge of the game. I fell in love.
With hockey — and Matthews Arena. That was Boston Latin’s home ice and I spent a lot of time in the bowels of that arena. In college, I kept on my water boy path and became an equipment manager at UMass Lowell and absolutely loved every time I got to return to Matthews Arena. It was like the one place I felt like I was at home.
To this day and my many, many years now as a journalist I’ve loved being in that building. I’ve seen some crazy nights there (anyone out there remember the Surge game circa 1997?), watched Northeastern build to a powerhouse under first Greg Cronin, then Jim Madigan and Jerry Keefe. And it will be sad to see that building go. But it is what is needed for college hockey.
Thank you for the indulgence as I walked through the last 40 years of life. You must have a memory or two from there?
DAN: Without question, and I’m glad this got tossed back at me, even though I didn’t expect it and didn’t ask you strictly for you to tee me back up.
So I didn’t grow up in hockey. My grandfather took the streetcar to watch Dit Clapper’s Bruins at the old Boston Garden and my dad had Bobby Orr, which is enough for him to claim that he witnessed the greatest hockey player to ever live, but we had limited involvement until my brother became the manager of Brown’s team in the late-1990s. Malden High School discontinued its team, but I didn’t watch that team because Malden didn’t have a home rink until Valley Forum II was built on the faculty parking lot at Malden High School. I went to Malden Catholic, but I didn’t play and the hockey team wasn’t as good as basketball. Plus, it was off-campus and across the street from MHS, where I swam with MC’s team, so it wasn’t a big deal for me.
My brother’s involvement with the Brown team gave me the entry point into college hockey, but I was more likely to go on ECAC road trips with him. Matthews, for me, was the first home of the Bruins, which was great for my love of old-time sports history. And, for what it’s worth, my grandfather went to Northeastern but we always knew him as a butcher who really knew his way around a prime rib.
Ironically, my best memory for Matthews Arena therefore had nothing to do with Northeastern. To set the stage, let’s go back to early March 2004. George W. Bush was still in his first term in office, and the Zakim Bridge was barely open in both directions. The new tunnel might’ve been open, might’ve been leaking, might’ve still been under construction. I was a freshman at UMass-Dartmouth, and my middle brother Joe was a senior. The fact that he was a bit of a hell-raiser on campus made it easy for me to get along with his friends, and they were always in tight with the hockey team.
March 6, 2004, UMass Dartmouth played Curry — our hated rival — in the ECAC Northeast semifinals in the early afternoon, and we rented a school bus to drive students to Boston for the game at Matthews. My brother had a fish in his possession because he didn’t spend the money on an octopus, and I’ll never forget the look from the member of Boston’s finest when we walked into the building with that horrible smell in a brown paper bag. It never got thrown, largely because we lost, but that same BPD officer warned us not to do anything that would get anyone in serious trouble … so we listened.
I readily admit that I didn’t have the best college experience because I was socially awkward and wasn’t sure how to come into my own, but Big Joe always looked out for me. Going to hockey games with him were the best, and the relationships brought the right attention from people like John Rolli. Having that one game at Matthews, every time I walk in, brings me back to a place when we were young, stupid, and insanely proud to go to UMass-Dartmouth.