This Week

This Week in … columns; weekly columns on a league, region or gender-division

This Week in Hockey East: Offensive catalysts Thompson, Trivigno leading Providence, UMass into conference semifinals

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When Providence and Massachusetts square off this evening for a spot in the Hockey East title game, there will be two players on opposite sides who have evolved significantly this season to become offensive leaders of the respective clubs.

UMass’ Bobby Trivigno and Providence’s Tyce Thomspon each lead their respective clubs in scoring, but both played have evolved throughout this season to each be playing their best hockey down the stretch.

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

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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’

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“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

This Week in Hockey East: Northeastern seeing Murphy ‘carry the load the whole year’ from between the pipes

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Connor Murphy has played roughly 1,100 more minutes than he did a year ago.

He went into the season expecting to fight for the top Northeastern goaltending job with Devon Levi, who spent the first part of the season with Team Canada for World Juniors.

But Levi broke a rib, and hasn’t seen game action with Northeastern yet.

This Week in NCHC Hockey: Minnesota Duluth reboots, looks to capture second place in NCHC with finale in St. Cloud

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Entering last Saturday’s game against then-No. 6 St. Cloud State, Minnesota Duluth was in a slump.

Admittedly, the slump was only three games, but for the team that has won the last two national championships and played in three straight national championship games, it was cause for concern that the Bulldogs had lost three straight.

While a win wasn’t necessarily going to be a surprise, it’s likely that few expected the Bulldogs to roll to a 5-1 triumph over St. Cloud.

This Week in WCHA Hockey: Conference coaches closer to each other than ever before, giving players ‘a really good experience’

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It is natural to assume that college hockey coaches are cordial, especially when they share the same conference.

It would also be very normal to assume that coaches in a given conference actually despise each other, given that they are often in competition for the same potential student-athlete, whether to an incoming freshman or a transfer student.

What is happening in the WCHA in its final season in its current iteration is a microcosm of what seems to be happening throughout college hockey.

This Week in NCHC Hockey: Conference embracing involvement with College Hockey for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

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More and more, athletes and coaches around the sports world are increasing their commitment to positive cultural changes while making their spheres more welcoming.

The same goes for college hockey, including in the NCHC.

League commissioner Josh Fenton, Omaha assistant coach Paul Jerrard and North Dakota forward Jasper Weatherby are each involved in College Hockey for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, a task force that was unveiled earlier this month but has been meeting since last summer.

This Week in Big Ten Hockey: ‘All of the coaches are in support of’ moving up start of postseason tournament to March 14

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On Tuesday of this week, Todd Milewski wrote in the Wisconsin State Journal that the Big Ten will likely be moving up the start date of the playoff tournament to Sunday, March 14. That is something that Wisconsin coach Tony Granato let slip, apparently, before anything official had been announced by the league.

This Week in Hockey East: ‘Adapting to whatever situation I’m thrown into,’ Boston University goalie Duplessis helping Terriers to national ranking

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Three weeks ago, Boston University freshman goalie Vinny Duplessis wasn’t sure he’d see much — if any — action this season.

Then he was in net against Boston College, the top team in Hockey East, and he shut them down in one of BU’s best wins all season, a 3-1 victory on Feb. 6.

This Week in Atlantic Hockey: Army West Point tasting success, figuring out ‘who we want to be as a team’

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The preseason media call is always an exercise in routine.

Coaches talk about their excitement for the upcoming season and touch upon the optimism of their team’s hard work and commitment, and everyone stresses the need to get better as the season advances.

The goal, everyone says, is the same every year: to be playing “your best hockey” when the March postseason rolls around.

This Week in Hockey East: Due to schedule imbalance, new power index assuring teams that ‘every game matters’

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In a very challenging year, one thing was clear to first-year commissioner Steve Metcalf early in the 2020-21 Hockey East campaign

It took just a couple of weekends of canceled games and teams and the league working to change opponents to make Metcalf realize come season’s end, there would be a significant imbalance in both number of games played as well as the strength of opponents each team faces.

Thus, Metcalf turned to a somewhat familiar formula to help determine the Hockey East standings: the PairWise.