This Week in … columns; weekly columns on a league, region or gender-division
With 34 programs competing in Division I conferences this season, opportunities for young women to play college hockey at that level are at an all-time high. A typical roster has more than 20 student athletes, so that means over 700 players were competing at D-I. While that seems like a decent number, the slots available … Read more
Which team brings the most experience to this year’s Frozen Four? That depends on how the question is phrased. Mercyhurst is playing in its ninth straight NCAA tournament. Boston University’s senior class has been to the national tournament every year, and played for the national title as sophomores. Minnesota has the experience of winning last … Read more
Readers of this article likely fall into one of two groups: people who are Minnesota fans and already know about all that it has accomplished this season, and those who are sick of hearing about the Gophers, their records, and streaks. Sorry, you’ll have to either indulge me for one more milestone or skip … Read more
At this point of the Atlantic Hockey season, I’d normally report that four teams are going to the championship in Rochester, N.Y., and that only one would move on. But this year may be different. [scg_html_aha2013]Niagara is tied for ninth in the PairWise Rankings entering the conference championship weekend. The Purple Eagles would just assume … Read more
It’s down to four teams for the Hockey East title. [scg_html_hea2013]The way the matchups line up, it’s a pairing of similar teams in each bracket. It’s also a championship that is as much up for grabs as any in recent memory, which is befitting of a league that went into the final weekend of the … Read more
One of the only events North Dakota’s seniors haven’t experienced is defeat at the Final Five. UND has won eight straight games at the Final Five and three championships going back to 2009, the year it fell to eventual champion Minnesota-Duluth in the semifinals. That was a season before any of the current players joined … Read more
Well, we’re down to it. [scg_html_ccha2013]The final battle for the Mason Cup pits Ohio State against Notre Dame and Michigan against Miami. Could anyone have predicted that at the beginning of the season? As the CCHA prepares to write its final chapter, let’s look at the stories. Each is a good one. Michigan (17-18-3, 10-15-3-3 … Read more
Another March, another final ECAC Hockey notebook. Let’s save the sentimentalities for Twitter and get right down to brass tacks. Seventh-seeded Brown will take on regular-season champion Quinnipiac at 4 p.m. EDT on Friday, while third-place Yale will get the last change against fourth-seed Union at 7:30. Tons of information can be found here on … Read more
What a difference a week makes, at least on the scoreboard, as Norwich made up for a 2-1 loss in the conference championship game with Babson by posting a 4-0 win in last weekend’s NCAA quarterfinal that earned the Cadets a fourth-straight trip to the Frozen Four. The win over a game Babson squad was … Read more
You can’t really automatically pencil Oswego into an annual trip to the Division-III Frozen Four. It just seems that way. Four FroFour appearances in the last four years — including this one — is reason enough to think that. Stretch it to five FFs since 2007, all of them coming under coach Ed Gosek, if … Read more
It’s only fitting that the Wisconsin-Eau Claire men’s hockey team ends its historic season at a place where the most memorable hockey game in U.S. history occurred 33 years ago. On Saturday, the Blugolds continued their best season ever by upsetting defending Division III national champion St. Norbert, 3-1, to advance to the Frozen Four … Read more
The season is down to seven games and three days. The first four contests are all scheduled for Saturday. Compared to last season’s field, Wisconsin and St. Lawrence are out, and Clarkson and Harvard are additions. The following is a glimpse at the eight teams whose championship dreams are still intact and how they match … Read more
Utica College took a major step last week by earning its first-ever at-large berth in the NCAA Division III Tournament. The seventh-ranked Pioneers then did even better on Saturday night by defeating No. 5 Bowdoin, 4-2, to move on to its first-ever Frozen Four this weekend in Lake Placid. “It’s still sinking in,” said Utica … Read more
It’s hard to believe we’ve reached the final weekend of the season already again, but here we are down to the final four teams set to collide in Superior, Wis. for the right to claim the 2013 NCAA Division III Women’s Ice Hockey National Championship title. This year’s field is made up a familiar cast … Read more
The apparent nosedive Nebraska-Omaha experienced at the end of the regular season is nothing new to Minnesota State coach Mike Hastings. He experienced something very similar with UNO last season. UNO lost each of its last four regular season games last season before crashing out of the first round of the playoffs at St. Cloud … Read more
The past two weekends have been a microcosm of the up-and-down 2012-13 season for the Rochester Institute of Technology Tigers. The final series of the regular season saw any momentum Wayne Wilson’s team had established come to a screeching halt in a pair of losses to I-90 rival Canisius. Those losses dropped RIT into eighth … Read more
Before we get into anything this week, first off we must tip our caps to Massachusetts-Lowell, the first team to break the Big Four Stranglehold — the quartet of Boston College, Boston University, Maine and New Hampshire — and win a regular season title. The photos that came from the Lowell locker room after the … Read more
The schedule says Rensselaer’s hot streak began Feb. 1, when the Engineers blanked Harvard 3-0 to start a 9-1 stretch that helped lock up the program’s first-ever bye in the ECAC Hockey tournament. But that’s not how coach Seth Appert sees it. “These things are never one moment,” Appert said. “Despite what everybody thinks, that’s … Read more
Going into last weekend’s first round of CCHA playoff hockey, I said that the only series about which I felt any certainty was the one between Northern Michigan and Michigan in Yost Ice Arena. I wasn’t the only one who was certain about that series. After the Wolverines beat the Wildcats 6-2 Saturday night to … Read more
The Wisconsin-Eau Claire men’s hockey team is hoping to add another milestone to its historic season with a trip to the NCAA Division III Frozen Four. First however, they face the daunting task of knocking off defending national champion St. Norbert. For the fifth time this season, the Blugolds clash with the Green Knights, with … Read more