Columns, excluding “This Week” columns
Another year in college hockey is gone, and it’s time to look back on what has occurred. We saw the usual assortment of scandals, suspensions and coaching changes. We also saw another exciting year on the ice, culminating with North Dakota’s second national championship in four years. We saw the continued reemergence of ex-collegians making … Read more
Friday, April 7th I have no life during the college hockey season. My friends and family know that. My fellow U.S. College Hockey Online staffers know it (like they should talk). I write for USCHO and a couple other publications. But USCHO is my favorite. Really. I do radio for RIT, about 30 broadcasts a … Read more
Thursday, April 6th, Noon Thursday is my favorite day of National Championship week. Why? Twice as much hockey! The pressure is intense for these teams, which have come so far and are now just a win away from playing for the national championship. To get to Providence and then go home after just one game … Read more
Monday, April 3rd, 10:15 PM — Rochester, N.Y. I’m watching squeakball on the tube. Mateen Cleaves just hurt his poor wittle ankle. Woogums has to get taped up in the locker room, missing several minutes. If he were a hockey player, he would have tied his skate tighter and stayed on the bench so he … Read more
Welcome back, old friend! Haven’t seen you in five years. For the first time since 1995 and the seventh time overall, Providence, R.I., is the host for the NCAA Hockey Championships — the Frozen Four. And with all due respect to Colorado Springs, Detroit, Milwaukee and Albany, to name a few, there is no better … Read more
Sometimes games come down to Xs and Os. A brilliantly designed faceoff play. A game plan that strikes at an opponent’s Achilles’ heel. A power play that breaks down a penalty kill with the precision of a Swiss watch. Blake Bellefeuille rose to the occasion in the semifinal against St. Lawrence, sending the Eagles to … Read more
The fate of the longest game in NCAA tournament history was in their hands. Freshmen goaltenders Rick DiPietro (Boston University) and Derek Gustafson (St. Lawrence) combined for 149 saves — shattering the old NCAA tourney record of 99 set in the 1995 Maine-Michigan triple-overtime semifinal — before Robin Carruthers scored the game-winner at 3:53 of … Read more
“Hey, buddy, you’re outta here!” ECAC partisans were dying to say that after Saturday’s Michigan-Colgate clash. Passions run high in any postseason, but even more so in this CCHA-ECAC tilt. Michigan coach Red Berenson and his colleague at Michigan State, Ron Mason, created a stir this past week, complaining about their seeding in the NCAA … Read more
Once again this year, the NCAA used an objective selection process (the decision regarding Niagara notwithstanding) to pick the national tournament field. And once again, U.S. College Hockey Online’s Pairwise Rankings (PWR) correctly predicted the field that was selected, for the fourth straight year. Why is this so accurate? Well, it’s not because anyone at … Read more
In past seasons, the selection of teams for the NCAA tournament was absolutely straightforward. Last year, however, a new wrinkle created some ambiguity in the process when the selection committee added language that allowed it to reject a team based on conference strength. This was put into place primarily because of the insular nature of … Read more
As you could imagine, we received more mail, and more passionate mail, about the Vermont column from the last BTL than any other topic. I wanted to take the time to run some of these letters, and respond a bit. Most of what I received, even from those who vehemently disagreed, were very thoughtful and … Read more
Much of what there is to say about Vermont’s hazing situation was covered in the last BTL column. The recent report by Vermont’s Office of the Attorney General only confirmed what seemed obvious — that Vermont’s administration mishandled the self-investigation into the party that led to hazing charges and a lawsuit by former walk-on candidate … Read more
Much of what there is to say about Vermont’s hazing situation was covered in the last BTL column. The recent report by Vermont’s Office of the Attorney General only confirmed what seemed obvious — that Vermont’s administration mishandled the self-investigation into the party that led to hazing charges and a lawsuit by former walk-on candidate … Read more
The NCAA Ice Hockey Championship Committee met Tuesday morning via conference call (seems like a lot of conference calls these days) to talk about additional issues affected by Vermont’s cancellation of the remainder of the 1999-2000 season. The most significant decision reached was that Vermont will continue to count towards the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) … Read more
The 12 ECAC athletic directors got together Monday morning to decide what would happen as a result of the University of Vermont’s decision to cancel the remainder of its 1999-2000 season. With Vermont having played seven league games already, there were questions to be answered. This morning, the athletic directors came to a decision. But … Read more
Friday night’s stunning announcement, that Vermont is canceling the rest of its season, sent shock waves through college hockey. But what does it all mean? There are as many questions as answers: How does this affect the remainder of the schedule? Does Vermont forfeit the rest of its games, giving all scheduled opponents an automatic … Read more
I received a lot of response, as expected, from our last installment of Between the Lines, which featured a story on the NCAA’s proposed deregulation of amateurism. It’s still not a topic that’s being talked about at all in the national media, perhaps because hockey is the sport most impacted, and the national media mostly … Read more
Often, this column will be the place for a lot of random musings. But this month, there’s a lot of meat here, as we delve into hot-button topics like new NCAA regulations, the upcoming World Junior Championships, and coaching shifts. Hopefully it’s not too much to digest at once. A lot of people wrote over … Read more
Welcome to our first “Between the Lines” column. The goal is to give a different take on the issues than you may see elsewhere, or cover topics that don’t get covered anywhere else. College hockey has a lot of interesting stories, but ESPN isn’t knocking down the door to cover them all. If you disagree … Read more
California — knows how to partyCalifornia — knows how to partyIn the city of LA— “California Love”/2Pac Saturday, April 3, 1999 “Go west,” they all said. “Go west and find the promised land,” they said. Right now the only promised land is a comfortable bed and some extra sleep, as the idea of getting up … Read more