Columns, excluding “This Week” columns
As a Philadelphia native and a veteran of two Frozen Fours, I can tell you without question that Philadelphia, my hometown, would be the perfect host city for the Frozen Four. The City of Philadelphia is an unbelievable hockey town and the fans are extremely knowledgeable about all levels of hockey, including college. Who can … Read more
The NCAA men’s ice hockey committee is currently mulling over possible sites for the 2009-2011 Frozen Four. After receiving written bids, the field was narrowed to six for the three slots: Boston, St. Paul, Detriot (Ford Field), Tampa, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. This week there will be site visits. In the mean time, the lobbying … Read more
What happened? Colorado College imploded. The Tigers took too many penalties, their team defense was shoddy at times, and their goaltender, who should be the best player on the penalty-kill unit, wasn’t. Because of that, Colorado College went home empty-handed from Columbus after a great season in 2004-2005. “We shot ourselves in the foot,” said … Read more
Chris Lerch looks back at the Mens’ D-III championship and shares his All-USCHO teams choices.
Since October, I’ve been crisscrossing the Northeast catching almost every men’s and women’s D-I hockey team that I could, so when the end of the season rolled around, I figured I had to go out in style. I decided — with some amount of egging on from my colleague Eric Mirlis, I might add — … Read more
Are you as tired as I am hearing about how great this past weekend’s college basketball regional finals were? Yeah, three games went to overtime; yeah, maybe it was the best weekend ever of college basketball. But you know what? This was also the best weekend of college hockey ever. Yes, you heard that right. … Read more
Just Like Last Year This year’s NCAA field and match-ups — Minnesota vs. Dartmouth and Harvard vs. St. Lawrence in the semifinals — were the exact same as the 2004 tournament. Moreover, the outcomes of all four games followed the same script as the year before — Minnesota defeated Dartmouth and Harvard downed St. Lawrence … Read more
I still can’t get that play out of my head. The sight of it. The sound of it. The result of it. The violent and illegal hit that Denver’s Geoff Paukovich leveled against North Dakota’s Robbie Bina in the WCHA Tournament in St. Paul, Minn., last week has resonated all across our game. I worry … Read more
Record Book With this being just the fifth season of the Women’s Ice Hockey NCAA Tournament, new records are commonplace. Minnesota’s Natalie Darwitz scored just 13 seconds into the game, marking the fastest opening goal in the tournament. However, Darwitz did not break the record for fastest goal to start a period, as that record … Read more
The NCAA tournament is upon us, and this week, I thought it would be good to take a look and see who some of the key players to watch are going to be in this weekend’s regionals. It was a bit harder than I thought, because there are so many great teams in this year’s … Read more
To close out last December, Dartmouth and Minnesota played a rivetting two-game series at Thompson Arena that was packed with offense and one comeback after another. There was a feeling that day the teams would meet again in the Frozen Four, and here they are, although they are not meeting in the final as many … Read more
OK. I am officially sick of myself and all the talk about Pairwise and KRACH. So let’s move on and talk hockey, with some random thoughts as we approach Regionals. East Obviously, Mercyhurst will have a tough time dealing with Boston College, just as Holy Cross did last season. BC is not explosive these days, … Read more
Why one simple move may have opened Pandora’s box.
Two Dynasties As far as bringing home the hardware, there are no other teams in Division III women’s hockey that can compare to either Middlebury or Elmira. Middlebury won the titles in 2000 and 2001 that were held by the AWHCA. Elmira took the first two championships sponsored by the NCAA in 2002 and 2003. … Read more
Last May, after the ECAC athletic directors announced the league was officially severing ties with the main ECAC office and forming, in essence, an independent hockey league, Steve Hagwell was named the acting commissioner. In an article called “Seize the Momentum,” we applauded the move, but implored the ECAC not to sit still, and take … Read more
The selections are out and they differed from the brackets that we had projected on Saturday evening. We had all 16 teams picked correctly, but had some of them in the wrong spots. So what happened? Here was our bracket projected on Saturday evening with a .003-.002-.001 bonus: West Regional: 13 Maine vs. 4 Minnesota … Read more
Freshman Ross Cherry and Sophomore Scott Gray started the season as backups for Middlebury and New England College, but have been huge in net for both teams down the stretch.
Wisconsin provides us with a perfect case study for why a more pure ranking system is needed right now.
Boyhood friends Joe Ori and Doug Kisielius grew up outside of Chicago, but came east to Trinity College. In their senior year, they find themselves battling for a national championship.
The Division I men’s ice hockey committee can avoid some common sense pitfalls in creating the NCAA tournament bracket if it decides to give itself room to maneuver.