Archive of USCHO’s blog content
Early in tonight’s contest, I wondered what had happened to the Elmira squad that had skated so well with Middlebury last spring. St. Thomas was blowing right past them up the ice and it was looking like a long night for the Soaring Eagles. That late power-play goal by Ryan Arnone seemed to stem the … Read more
Two more goals for the Soaring Eagles and it’s now 4-2. Derrick Ryan beat Maida glove side with a backhand at 4:22, and Russel Smith’s power play goal from the slot has made it 4-2 at 6:20.
Elmira looked awful in the opening minutes of this one, but has rallied back from an early 2-0 deficit. St. Thomas opened the scoring at 2:20 when Ryan Hoehn got his second of the season off a feed from Alex Coles. Just 1:22 later, Hoehn struck again, blowing down the left wing shorthanded, and beating … Read more
I’m in the pressbox at the new Campus Center Ice Arena on the campus of Oswego. I’ll get to the action between Elmira and St. Thomas in the opening game of the Pathfinder Bank Oswego Classic in a few minutes, but for now, I’m taking in this gorgeous facility: 1. It’s big, bright and open. … Read more
You can read my recap here. A great gameplan by Curry. Coach Rob Davies still doesn’t like all the penalties his team is taking. “We’ll be running again at 6 a.m. Monday morning,” he told me. But he has to be happy with his team’s performance. Geneseo looked out of sync for most of the … Read more
7:00: I’m in the pressbox in Geneseo, looking forward to seeing my first D-III action of the season. I passed on broadcasting RIT-Mercyhurst tonight to catch this one. I’ll make the trip to Erie tomorrow, with a stop in Jamestown, NY with my son for his Bantam game. First Period 0:00 Let’s play hockey! 0:15: … Read more
In the just plain weird department – St. Olaf and Augsburg tied twice this past weekend. That’s kind of unusual, but not unprecedented. But these were the seventh and eighth consecutive ties between the two schools, dating back over the last four seasons! Is there a stat geek that can help me compute the odds … Read more
Every college team has its ups and downs, but we’re at the point in this season where some trends are beginning to emerge. Over the past few seasons we’ve seen some teams that had previously been doormats ride up and have breakout seasons. This year is no exception. You have to wonder which team will … Read more
It’s a common line when teams become No. 1 in December — it’s being No. 1 in March that matters. But is being No. 1 in December a good predictor of being No. 1 in March? We’ll take a look at the history. Here are the No. 1 teams in the last November poll, since the USCHO poll … Read more
One agonizing consequence of handing out weekly awards is that timing is everything – it’s possible for the best weekly performances of the season to all happen in one week, yet only one individual can be honored. I think that’s the case this past weekend, in the case of USCHO Defensive Player of the Week Kim Martin and first runner-up Laura Hosier. Hosier’s 30 of … Read more
If Mercyhurst ascends to No. 1 in the USCHO poll for the first time in program history on Monday, the Lakers will be the just the 10th program ever to earn that distinction, since the poll started in the 1998-99 season. The other nine teams and the dates of their first No. 1 ranking are listed below. What … Read more
It’s tournament time. Here’s an outlook on this week’s action. In many cases, one of the semifinals features the two best teams in the tournament, IMHO. Augsburg Tournament When: November 22 & 23 Who: Augsburg (host), UW-Superior, Finlandia, Bethel Outlook: It’s rare that a Thanksgiving Tournament is actually played on Thanksgiving. The winner of the … Read more
Fans like to argue about which conference is the strongest, top to bottom. A case can be made for three leagues, and I’ll make them now: NESCAC – The key here is Middlebury, which has won eight of the last 11 national titles, including the last three. One powerful team doesn’t make for a powerful … Read more
Thoughts on the week that was: More domination for the NCHA. The league went 13-3 against the neighboring MIAC to improve to 25-6-1 so far this season in interconference play. MIAC teams dropped in the poll as a result, while upstarts like UW-Stout are ranked on the basis of their success the past two weekends. … Read more
Another Monday, and another weekend passed with no hockey for the the ECAC East and NESCAC. Hang in there – games start this weekend! Here at USCHO, we’re happy about that. The Division III Men’s Poll will be more meaningful once all the teams have actually played games. It’s a fine line for us here … Read more
Time for some thoughts on the Four Nations Cup: First, congratulations to Wisconsin coach Mark Johnson for leading Team USA to a 7-0 win over Sweden on Friday (USA Hockey press release), as well as assistants Erin Whitten Hamlen of UNH and Hilary Witt of Yale. Also props go out to Wisconsin sophomore Erika Lawler, who … Read more
First off, let me say that I was really impressed with the response I got from my first Blog post. And even more impressive is that what was written didn’t turn into a message-board-like flame fest. That said, I wanted to take the opportunity to respond to a couple the comments that were left by readers. … Read more
Well, maybe I jinxed a few teams this week. In my 10/30 blog entry, I had Plattsburgh and Fredonia as teams off to good starts…and looked what happened. Platty goes 0-2 in Western New York and Fredonia loses on home ice in the regular season for the first time in two years – 26 games. … Read more
This is about as much shakeup as I can recall seeing in a single USCHO women’s poll. This kind of thing happens regularly on the men’s side, so it’s a good thing to see. I’ll admit I’m a little surprised that the Gophers jumped four spots, as impressive as the UMD sweep was. Though it’s natural that … Read more
With four of the top six teams losing, and some impressive results from teams No. 7 through No. 10 (though Princeton still has a game to play at Yale Sunday), it’s going to be the one of the toughest weekends ever to rank the top teams going into Four Nations Weekend (a break for most … Read more