Brian SullivanLast Year The Dutchmen had a fairly successful campaign last season, in no small part because they finally ditched their postseason albatross. On the way to vanquishing Clarkson in the first round, Union also came across some young point-producers and didn’t stumble through many prolonged ruts. The team endured only four losing streaks, the worst … Read more
Last Year Yale was simply magical last season. The Bulldogs wrested their first-ever league championship in the same year that they claimed the regular-season crown. The Elis featured four 30-point scorers despite the abbreviated 34-game Ivy schedule, and three players who averaged better than a point per game. The Blue and White dropped consecutive games … Read more
Last Year The Bears struggled mightily in what was to be Roger Grillo’s 12th and final year behind the bench. A shocking first-round sweep at fifth-place Harvard did little to ease the pain of a three-win regular season, a campaign in which the team scored fewer than two goals a game and featured only one … Read more
Last Year Despite formulating a single set of back-to-back wins through the entire regular season, the Engineers whipped up three straight W’s to open the playoffs to off Dartmouth and agitate Cornell. The Big Red finally ditched the pesky ‘Tute, but not before RPI had finally reached the 10-win mark on the season. The offense … Read more
Last Year A 4-1 record after five games had folks hopeful in Hamilton, but that was just about all she wrote for the Raiders in 2008-09. Colgate’s 3-0 start wound up being the only winning streak of the Raiders’ whole season, as the team bellyflopped into an 8-17-7 tumble following the early five-game burst. The … Read more
Last Year Cornell was just about as good as you could hope for, dropping consecutive games only once all year during a single three-game losing streak in early February. The only problem was, Yale was just slightly better. The Big Red played classic Big Red hockey, scoring modestly but defending with ferocious efficiency en route … Read more
Most leagues have one or two clear-cut frontrunners and some well-defined strata before anyone even dons a sweater. Yale’s Sean Backman is back after a 20-goal campaign (photo: Melissa Wade). Not in ECAC Hockey. Four teams seem to have legitimate claims to the title of Fall Favorite, but only one squad can be tagged as … Read more
Last Year The Golden Knights were positively wracked by injuries last season, and found themselves at 3-13-4 before cobbling together their only consecutive victories of the season in a false-hope-feeding four-game win streak. The season had effectively ended long before its formal termination, a defenseless double-drubbing by Union in the Dutchmen’s first-ever playoff series triumph. … Read more
Last Year The young team that everyone had pegged for a first-round road series would settle for no such nonsense. Dartmouth shrugged off two season-opening losses to reel off five straight wins, and were 8-4-0 entering 2009. The Big Green struggled a bit down the stretch, culiminating in a disappointing home sweep at the hands … Read more
Last Year The Saints finished one goal away from an NCAA at-large bid, but instead settled for a season-ending tie in the ECAC Hockey consolation game against Princeton. The team finished fourth in the league on the strength of an 8-1-2 finish to league play, and derived much of its success from its dynamic transition … Read more
Former Brown defenseman Brendan Whittet has accepted his alma mater’s offer to return to Providence as the Bears’ 22nd head men’s hockey coach. Dartmouth Athletics confirmed initial reports of the move on Tuesday, as the 11-year assistant to Bob Gaudet — who himself coached Whittet at Brown in the early 1990s — moves back to … Read more
Arguably the decade’s most successful sports town recognized two of college hockey’s most successful coaches Wednesday night. Boston College’s Jerry York and Boston University’s Jack Parker were honored with the Special Achievement Award at this year’s Tradition, a fundraising who’s-who of Boston sports that benefits the New England Sports Museum. “We were up at Clarkson … Read more
The nation’s capital exemplifies a common duality between hockey and pro hockey. Like April’s cherry trees, D.C.’s interest in the professional team, the Washington Capitals, has been blooming all over, but the region’s hockey awareness tends to stop at the letters N.H.L. That presented a challenge to the Greater Washington Sports Alliance (GWSA) and the … Read more
The nation’s capital exemplifies a common duality between college hockey and pro hockey. Like April’s cherry trees, D.C.’s interest in the professional Washington Capitals has been blooming all over … but the region’s hockey awareness tends to stop at the letters N, H, L. Thus was the challenge presented to the Greater Washington Sports Alliance … Read more
Secret Revealed All season long, Boston University sported t-shirts bearing the phrase “Burn the Boats.” The team swore itself to utter secrecy, only promising to divulge the meaning and origin of the slogan after the season ended. Well, the season ended, all right. “Coach (Jack Parker) read us a story at the beginning of the … Read more
Boston’s National Team Crosstown rival Northeastern’s head coach, Greg Cronin, recently called BU “the best professional team playing college hockey.” Professional? Try national. The Terriers boast seven players who were recruited out of the U.S. National Team Development Program in Ann Arbor, Mich., including standouts Colin Wilson, Jason Lawrence and Brian Strait. Strait captained the … Read more
There is always a lot of noise about “experience” every postseason. No matter the sport, fans, coaches and players alike can’t get enough of it. Who’s got it, who needs it, where it came from. What it means, what it’s worth, what it fosters on the ice. Cody Reichard proves that pundits can posit what … Read more
Friday’s Facts Air Force finished with only 13 official shots on goal in its first-round upset, the fourth-lowest total in NCAA tournament history. The only service academy to ever play in the tourney, the Falcons got their first national tournament win on Friday. Upending Michigan may have felt catastrophic for the Maize & Blue, but … Read more
For an NCAA game, the teams were about as disparate as could be. The second-seeded Yale Bulldogs took the ice riding a four-game winning streak, scoring 15 goals on the way to their first-ever ECAC Hockey Championship. Vermont, on the other hand, had dropped to a No.3 seed, in part because of a three-game losing … Read more
The Wisconsin Badgers weren’t broke entering their fourth national title game in a row. So they didn’t fix a thing. The sure-fire combination of suffocating offense and unbeatable goaltending served UW well, as the Badgers parried every valiant Mercyhurst thrust in a 5-0 romp. Sophomore superstar Hilary Knight scored a goal with an assist, as … Read more