The Gridiron Club of Greater Boston has announced the 26 NCAA Division I players that are semifinalists for the 72nd Walter Brown Award, presented annually to the best American-born Division I college hockey player in New England. The nation’s oldest nationally-recognized college hockey honor, the Walter Brown Award was established in 1953 by the members … Read more
A watch list of 33 first-year NCAA men’s hockey players was announced Thursday by the Hockey Commissioners Association. One of these talented rookies will likely receive the Tim Taylor Award as national rookie of the year as voted by the nation’s assistant coaches. At season’s end, a ballot consisting of each Division I conference’s Rookie … Read more
The conversation about on-campus regionals and conference championships is nothing new to college hockey. It’s a near-annual exercise, much like the Pairwise Rankings, that enables fans and analysts to debate and coalesce around how to improve a postseason known for its ability to generate organic thrills at a moment’s notice. Much like realignment, NIL, and … Read more
Brown coach Brendan Whittet understood the importance of what he saw at the start of the 2023-2024 season. His Bears were trending younger after turning over their roster, and virtually everyone predicted a last-place finish for a team reliant on newcomers in all three phases. Nearly every metric pointed towards a reboot after the team … Read more
The Hockey Commissioners Association has announced a watch list of 32 goalies who will compete for the Mike Richter Award, given annually to the top goalie in men’s NCAA Division I hockey since 2014. The 32 goalies come from the United States (19), Canada (7), and Sweden (5) and Slovakia (1). Of the U.S. goalies, … Read more
The semester break often sits silent for college hockey teams. The World Junior Championship ramps into gear around the holidays, but aside from the occasional four-team tournament, movement almost never occurs within conferences until players return from their individual and collective layoffs. Standings don’t change, and only the limited game offers the rare opportunity for … Read more
The holiday season is a relatively dead period in the hockey world, but it felt exceptionally low-key this past week when Buffalo Sabres head coach Don Granato missed a pair of games with an undisclosed illness. It wasn’t contagious per his own admission in the interim period after the team’s loss to Boston, but a … Read more
College hockey was never built to stay in one place for an extended period of time, but the difficulty in finding stability over the past two decades was largely reinforced by two major sides of the same argument. The unprecedented and positive expansion of teams exploded in recent years because of the unprecedented popularity of … Read more
The first month of the season wasn’t necessarily the best of times for the Union hockey program. The Garnet Chargers had a new logo, a new name and a new identity, but they also had four losses in their first six games. They’d been wildly inconsistent in their results, and they bookended flashy scoring in … Read more
It was almost unfair how the start of the college hockey season saddled this year’s Quinnipiac team with the expectations and overarching shadow cast from last season. In a way, it was ironic because it built requisite pomp around a situation that this iteration never experienced. For the first time in program history, the Bobcats … Read more
Last year presented me with an opportunity to reintroduce a slightly different format to our weekly column. It was a take on former colleague Dave Hendrickson’s list of 20 things that made him thankful for covering Hockey East, and it gave me a real chance to sit back and talk about the things that made … Read more
Ron Fogarty didn’t mind waiting another few days to start his season. It was the first weekend in November, but the appearance of Fogarty’s Princeton Tigers on Harvard’s Bright-Landry Hockey Center ice sheet marked the team’s first appearance of the 2023-24 season. The previous weekend, before Halloween, had been the first games for five of … Read more
One of Boston’s most hallowed traditions, the Beanpot, returns to TD Garden this year with more prestige than ever – and with double the impact. The annual men’s college hockey tournament returns on the first two Mondays in February for the Dunkin’ Beanpot. And this year, for the first time ever, the women’s Dunkin’ Beanpot … Read more
It’s impossible to win a college hockey championship in November. A hot start doesn’t translate to the March postseason, and plenty of gelling rosters don’t reveal their true potential or greatness until league schedules buckle down for the post-New Year’s Eve second semester schedule. Ask any coach or player throughout college hockey about when they … Read more
The Odyssey Trust has announced the continuation of the Friendship Four men’s college hockey tournament into 2024, in conjunction with the official launch of ‘Ring the Bell!’ – a new book centered around the history and legacy of the event. Held annually in Belfast since 2015, the Friendship Four is designed to promote education, social … Read more
Jack Bar assumed his night was over. The junior defenseman was seated on the Harvard bench next to Kyle Aucoin, and the duo had every reason to believe their night was over. For the past three hours, they’d skated their season opener in a conference game against Dartmouth, and a third period goal by the … Read more
College hockey spent the last three weeks raging its way through a number of different storylines. Top-ranked teams came and went as early season wins and losses piled up. A couple surprising outcomes raised eyebrows and drew eyeballs to potential risers and fallers. Hotshot prospects and seasoned veterans battled into corners and along the walls … Read more
Anthony Romano never realized how loud Cheel Arena’s goal horn really got. The Clarkson senior heard the steam whistle’s piercing blast for three-plus years, but it felt different in the stands. He appreciated how the crowd contributed to the overall volume and vibration rattling his bones after the Golden Knights scored, and he felt how … Read more
The NHL has announced that Joe Bertagna has been named the recipient of the 2023 Lester Patrick Trophy for outstanding service to hockey in the United States. The annual award, one of the most prestigious in hockey, was presented to the NHL by the New York Rangers in 1966. It honors the memory of Lester … Read more
Last year was a perfect capstone for the ECAC Hockey’s previous era. The league, once taunted, for its inability to win a national championship since 1989, dominated the national headlines and tied the Big Ten for most teams sent to the NCAA tournament. Four teams in total qualified, of which two won their first-round matchups, … Read more