DAN: Well, Ed, the temperature in Massachusetts nearly hit 50 degrees this past week. To be honest, it felt a little bit like spring was coming, and I laughed to someone that the last 45 degree day was considered “cold” because we were coming down from the 60 degree temperatures from late September and early October.
Maybe it’s a coincidence that we’re heading into the postseason. Six months after 60-odd teams began their rush to the NCAA Tournament, the process of weeding and eliminating them on an individual basis is hitting the college hockey landscape. As colleague and friend Chris Lerch likes to point out, the conference tournaments are sometimes more enjoyable and more competitive than the national tournament.
Are you ready to dive into this and get our postseason underway? We whipped around the picture last time out, but now comes the conversation of how coaches adapt to the single game or two-loss elimination format.
It’s someone’s time to shine, no?
ED: Dan, the best part of the playoffs is that everyone starts out 0-and-0. So you can make up for a part of the season where you had some injuries or some bad bounces and try to play your way into a championship and an NCAA berth.
The Big Ten and Hockey East still have one more weekend of the regular season remaining, but the other four leagues are already in the postseason.
Atlantic Hockey America starts tonight with the bottom four teams playing one game to narrow the field to two, and the ECAC has its bottom eight play single-elimination this weekend to cut the remaining teams to four. Two teams are out of the conferences after the past weekend: Arizona State from the NCHC and Northern Michigan from the CCHA.
Let’s take a look at who could get an upset in these first round single-games. I’ll start with the AHA. Canisius hosts Mercyhurst, a team that has limped into the end of an injury-riddled season with a depleted bench. It should be a Golden Griffins win. Army, however, has some good wins in the second half of the season, including one over Northeastern, so a Black Knights upset at Niagara isn’t too far-fetched.
What about the ECAC, a conference where playoff upsets are the norm?ᐧ
DAN: It took RPI five months to find its groove under new head coach Eric Lang, but the Engineers enter the playoffs as one of the hottest teams in the league. A three-game winning streak to end the season included a road sweep over Brown and Yale after a split against Dartmouth and Harvard, and a 4-point weekend against Cornell and Colgate is enough to turn a few heads along the way. The only losses in February came at St. Lawrence, which is always a notoriously tough trip, and at home against the Big Green, which was playing for the right to chase down Quinnipiac.
Including the road from mid-January, RPI was 5-17-0 at one point and finished its season with an 11-22-1 record — which means that the team’s been over .500 since beating Brown on January 17. A rocket ship to ninth place ensued, and we all know that Lang’s teams are insanely competitive when the lights get highest. This year’s team was also one win away from hosting this week’s game against Clarkson.
Further down the list, I also think RPI is the only team that doesn’t have one glaring piece ahead of its playoff game. Yale has exactly one win since its Capital District sweep in the middle of January, but traveling to Colgate is brutal. Brown, meanwhile, just lost to Union, 3-0, in its season finale and now has to travel to Schenectady to play a team that missed a first-round bye because it lost a shootout to Dartmouth. St. Lawrence is intriguing because its hot finish contrasts with Harvard’s struggle to the finish, but four of its six league wins were against RPI, Brown or Yale.
That said, two of the three years of a single-elimination format produced upsets, even as last year went chalk and advanced the four home teams.
One thing’s for sure: the top four teams likely aren’t advancing to Lake Placid in two weeks, and seeding is likely going to require some fallout from the CCHA and Hockey East. SInce you mentioned how Hockey East isn’t quite at its postseason, good luck on unpacking what might happen in the Midwest… in other words, it’s all yours.
ED: In that case, I’m going to move the discussion to the NCHC.
Of the best-of-three series this weekend, the most competitive one to me seems to be fourth-seeded Minnesota Duluth hosting fifth seed St. Cloud State. Starting with the first season of the conference in 2013-14, the Bulldogs lead the series 31-29-3, so it has been a pretty even rivalry. Duluth would appear to have the edge in this one, but if I had to pick only one to go the full three games, it would be this series. And for what it’s worth, the Huskies had a bye week this past weekend. Some rest this time of year is often welcome.
I probably would have given Miami a bit more of a chance this weekend against Denver if you’d asked me in January. But the RedHawks dropped six in a row after five straight league wins and finally got a W to end the regular season against Omaha on Saturday.
Colorado College had a strong finish against Duluth and could give Western Michigan a battle. North Dakota and its fans would consider it a disaster to not take the series vs. Omaha.
Still, if push comes to shove, I’ll have to go with the higher seeds in all four, with my least confidence in the 4-5 matchup.
It was chaos in the CCHA to end the regular season. How do you prognosticate the quarterfinals in that conference?
DAN: Oh I see, dump it right back on me. Thanks a lot. Now see if I buy you a beverage if RIT comes to Bentley for the quarterfinal series.
I think the CCHA is a complete toss-up, and it’s going to get wilder before it gets easier. A grand total of two points separated first place Minnesota State from fifth-seeded Bowling Green, and the fourth place tie between Bowling Green and MIchigan Tech resulted from Bowling Green’s ability to beat the Huskies with a third period rally from Tyler Hotson and an overtime goal in the first minute of the 3-on-3 from Jackson Niedermayer.
Multiple series should go the distance in this quarterfinal, and I’m kind of eyeballing Bemidji State for a potential upset bid over Augustana. Yes, Augie finished tied for second with St. Thomas and sat one point behind the Mavericks for first place, and the eight points from beating Bowling Green and sweeping the Tommies — albeit with a shootout win in the first game of that series two weeks ago — positioned the Vikings for a possible spot in the NCAA Tournament. I just really like Bemijdi’s makeup and the way that the season ended for a Beaver team that’s been in the thick of games against every single one of the teams that it needs to beat.
Now all of that said, we could look at Hockey East and the Big Ten, but how about some love for the five indepedents gathering in Missouri for the first United Collegiate Hockey Cup. A field set by the NPI rankings awarded a bye to top-seeded Alaska, and Thursday kicks off the first round with fourth-seeded Stonehill facing fifth-seeded Alaska-Anchorage before Lindenwood and LIU play out a game between No. 2 and No. 3. Once complete, the losing sides will play on Friday while the Nanooks play the winner from the game between the Skyhawks and the Sewaolves. All of this points to a Saturday night championship game while the losing side from the game between Fairbanks and the Stonehill-Anchorage winner faces off in a third place game against the winner from the consolation bracket game.
Nearly every team has one signature win in the field, so who takes it?
ED: My gut and some research points me to Lindenwood in this one. The Lions have had some solid wins this season, including an upset of then-No. 5 Denver. This is the program’s best record in its four seasons, 14-14-0, under first-year head coach Keith Fisher.
That was brief enough to give me space for a tilting-at-windmills comment and a rant. I guess I’m being quixotic, but I’m asking for men’s D-I hockey to create a new conference or two so everyone has a home. Maybe it’s an impossible dream, but it needs to happen — no matter how hopeless, no matter how far.
And now the rant. Stop it already with the flashing lights and strobes on goals. A premature electrification at UMass in overtime resulted in UConn rushing the other way only to have the lights turn off completely. Let’s ban these in the rulebook. They disrupt broadcasts and keep fans from seeing the goal celly.
If we’re not going to ban them, at least give the home team a bench minor if a light show interrupts play. I’ve seen enough of these from trigger-happy light guys or reacting to shots off the post and never want to see another one.