Last season continued to prove that ECAC is rarely as straightforward as the broken record surrounding its paper preview.
Yes, Quinnipiac is the defending regular season champion for the sixth consecutive year, and yes, the Bobcats failed to win a postseason’s Whitelaw Cup for the sixth time over those six years. And yes again, they didn’t make the conference championship game for the third straight year and fourth time since they started winning those Cleary Cup titles.
But — and maybe this is good for one last affirmation — nearly everyone in ECAC played in a championship game with only one team repeating as champion over that time, so the lesson about the upcoming season is simple: the straightforward approach to the conference requires acceptance of a league that is never straightforward.
“It’s a tough league,” said Yale head coach Jeff Hamilton during his preseason preview. “The margins are very, very thin and always have been that way, which is a testament to all of the great players and coaches in this league. Anyone can beat anyone on any given night, and
that’s the most exciting thing about the ECAC. You’re not walking into any game with any expectation other than it’s going to be hard.”
Hamilton’s hire at Yale headlines a spate of sudden and shocking changes that rocked several of the league’s programs since 2023. Gone are the legends and names that built decades-long backbones within the conference, replaced instead by a younger and newer group of coaches who are willing to step foot into the murky waters surrounding the NIL and transfer portal eras.
The losses of Keith Allain, Ted Donato and Brendan Whittet at Yale, Harvard and Brown are now replaced by people like Hamilton, Rob Rassey and Tom Upton — all of whom have experience in the modern world of development and recruiting.
They join a league that now boasts just two coaches with more than five years at their current program, one of which is Rand Pecknold, who stands alone as the certified godfather of Quinnipiac hockey in his fourth decade.
“If you’re going to win championships, you have to have a locker room full of leaders,” said seventh-year St. Lawrence head coach Brent Brekke. “They’re going to lead in different ways. We have a couple of different leaders who played limited minutes, but what they lend to
the program is incredible and awesome. They bring it every day, and guys are going to look up to them every day.”
Maybe it’s fitting, then, that the league’s championship weekend in Lake Placid is known as the home of the greatest underdog and Cinderella hockey story to ever take place. Even with the changeover, the backdrop of a league that’s loaded with uncertainty plays out with
championship-caliber programs emerging from its lower seeds. Glass slippers are routinely headed for the Herb Brooks Arena, and after five years of watching the post-Covid era establish the chaos, a sixth year is likely going to serve no differences.
ECAC HOCKEY
2025-26 regular season champion: Quinnipiac (17-4-1, 27-10-3 overall)
2025-26 tournament champion: Dartmouth (No. 2 seed, defeated No. 4 Princeton, 2-1 in overtime)
2025-26 NCAA tournament teams: Dartmouth (AQ, lost 5-1 to Wisconsin in first round); Quinnipiac (at-large, lost 5-0 to North Dakota in regional final); Cornell (at-large, lost 5-0 to Denver in first round)
Preseason coaches poll No. 1: Quinnipiac (10 first-place votes)
Players to watch: Remi Gelinas (Clarkson, So., F); Isaiah Norlin (Colgate, Jr., D); Owen Van Steensel (Clarkson, So., F); Ryan Walsh (Cornell, Sr., F); Xavier Veilleux (Cornell, So., D); Hank Cleaves (Dartmouth, Jr., F); Emmett Croteau (Dartmouth, Sr., G); Hayden Stavroff (Dartmouth, Jr., F); Mick Thompson (Harvard, Jr., F); Matthew Morden (Harvard, Sr., D); Elliott Groenewold (Quinnipiac, Jr., D); Ethan Wyttenbach (Quinnipiac, So., F); Tyler Dunbar (Union, Sr., D)
USCHO 2026-27 PREDICTIONS:
Regular season champion: Quinnipiac
Playoff champion: Cornell
Tournament teams: Cornell, Quinnipiac
Dark Horses: Harvard, Princeton