Pickin’ the Big Ten Tournament: March 14-16

After a shortened season with heightened anxiety, we’ve finally arrived at the Big Ten tournament. First, here’s how Drew Claussen and I finished up with the regular-season picks. Last week Drew: 4-4-0 (.500) Paula: 8-0-0 (1.000) This season Drew: 63-35-4 (.637) Paula: 61-37-4 (.617) A truly stunning comeback by yours truly after a rocky start … Read more

Bentley withdraws from Atlantic Hockey playoffs, advancing American International to semifinals

Bentley will not continue in the 2021 Atlantic Hockey tournament and has ended its season. A statement from Bentley cited new on-campus restrictions “to protect students, faculty and staff after an uptick in positive COVID-19 cases on campus.” The Falcons were scheduled to play a best-of-three quarterfinal series in Springfield, Mass., against American International starting … Read more

This Week in Big Ten Hockey: With conference tournament looming, teams thankful for season as ‘this pandemic has affected everybody’

Are we there yet?

It’s a valid question, given how long this COVID-compressed season has felt, given how easily the season could have been derailed, given the intensity of competition that’s taken place in mostly empty arenas.

As each team in the Big Ten prepares for the three-day, single-elimination playoff championship tournament that begins March 14, a picture of a unified, almost defiant conference emerges along with snapshots of the unique, specific experiences that define each team in the league.

This Week in Atlantic Hockey: No longer an underdog, AIC wrapping arms around fact school is now a ‘hockey destination’

“Our guys embraced, initially, that underdog role, and I think that has morphed and transformed itself into the fact that we wanted AIC to be a hockey destination. There’s not a lot of people that knew where Gonzaga was, but there’s a lot of people that know that they’ve got a really good basketball team. That’s the goal here for AIC. They might know that there’s this little school in Springfield, Massachusetts, but that school has a pretty good hockey team. We’re pretty proud of that.” – AIC coach Eric Lang