{"id":30064,"date":"2008-10-30T18:30:18","date_gmt":"2008-10-30T23:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uscho.com\/2008\/10\/30\/this-week-in-ecac-hockey-oct-30-2008\/"},"modified":"2010-08-17T19:57:17","modified_gmt":"2010-08-18T00:57:17","slug":"this-week-in-ecac-hockey-oct-30-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/2008\/10\/30\/this-week-in-ecac-hockey-oct-30-2008\/","title":{"rendered":"This Week in ECAC Hockey: Oct. 30, 2008"},"content":{"rendered":"
Ready or not, here they come!<\/p>\n
No, I’m not talking about the ECAC regular season games. I’m talking about all the dreadfully punny and ubiquitous headlines you’ll be seeing over the next seven days. Halloween and Election Day? These are the events that make editors’ lives worth living. If any of them could write, they’d probably have a trade journal dedicated to witty titular wordplay. Keep your eyes peeled (who are we kidding, these titles will be everywhere) for headers beginning with “Votes Are In …” and “Trick, No Treat For …”<\/p>\n
But hey, I suppose even editors have to get their kicks somewhere.<\/p>\n
Hey, check it out, the regular season is coming up after all.<\/p>\n
Oddly enough, Harvard plays two league games before almost anybody else even plays one. The Crimson hosts Dartmouth to kick off the league’s 2008-09 campaign on Friday, and then does some quick housecleaning before RPI comes to town on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Just as odd is the fact that those Cambridge club’s games come on All Hallow’s Eve and voting day. Shouldn’t affect the game on the ice of course, but hopefully the stands will contain some characters. I’ll be there, but I’ve been discouraged from appearing in costume. At least it will make recap leads pretty easy.<\/p>\n
And as for that big election dealy, Cambridge is pretty much the hub of Northeast political activism. With any luck, there will be some clever signage in the crowd. Do you think public address announcer John Dolan will call polling updates with the out-of-town scores?<\/p>\n
“… and in the third period, Obama leads McCain 48,721,606 to 45,912,937 …”<\/p>\n
Just kidding, Harvard doesn’t give out-of-town scores.<\/p>\n
And no, I checked … neither Harvard nor Rensselaer have ever played on Election Day before. Not that I’d know what to make of the results if they had.<\/p>\n
The Dutchmen are on a little bit of a high after winning the Governor’s Cup in Albany last weekend. Union claimed its first tournament championship of any kind in 15 years, but after a fourth-place finish ended in a home-ice playoff loss to Cornell, coach Nate Leaman and the Dutch aren’t about to throw a parade for the October title.<\/p>\n
If anything, Leaman wants his charges to believe that anything less<\/i> than a trophy would be a disappointment.<\/p>\n
Not only is this a different team, and a group that has tasted some measure of success before; “we have a better team, too,” Leaman stated. “We really expect to win that [championship] game, and every game we prepare for,” he said.<\/p>\n
The coach was pleased with his boys’ attitudes over the weekend, showing a level of aggression and intensity that has been missing in past editions of the Dutch On Ice.<\/p>\n
“What I liked best was after Mario [Valery-Trabucco] scored the eventual game-winning goal, I saw our intensity go up<\/i>, our [aggression] go up … that’s as important as anything.”<\/p>\n
John Simpson didn’t turn many heads last season, but for those who paid attention, it should come as no surprise that the sophomore now leads the team with three goals and five points through four games.<\/p>\n
“He had one point at Christmas last year, but he led the centers in the second half [of the season],” Leaman pointed out. “He scored three goals in the Canadian Christmas tournament last year, and that really boosted his confidence. He’s one of the best skaters we have.”<\/p>\n
Simpson demonstrated that earlier this year, burying an unassisted shorthanded goal to open (and unfortunately close) Union’s scoring at Nebraska-Omaha.<\/p>\n
Rookie Kelly Zajac isn’t going to let Simpson steal the entire spotlight though. Leaman said that “The One NoDak Let Get Away” (my words, not his) was the team’s best forward Friday night against RPI.<\/p>\n
While the team is looking fairly sharp, the coach expresses concerns about the Garnet & White’s slow starts thus far, pointing to first-period deficits in three of the team’s first four games. The power play is struggling at only eight percent as well, but Leaman isn’t worried about that. He counted 14 “grade-A opportunities” generated by the unit over the weekend, and is confident that the bounces will come with time.<\/p>\n
Joe Marsh is a world-class talker.<\/p>\n
He’s one of those classic New England story-tellers; he’s a guy with a low, grinding, consonant-killing Boston rumble who could turn a trip to the mailbox into a thoroughly riotous two-hour yarn. To his great delight, I’m sure, his team is set up to guarantee him a captive audience straight through next summer.<\/p>\n
His Saints carry a league-high 34-man roster, four more than runner-up Quinnipiac and 10 more than ECAC Hockey’s smallest squad, Colgate. The throng is composed of nine freshmen, five sophomores, a dozen juniors and eight seniors. What is Joe doing with all those guys?<\/p>\n
“We have a couple of guys [in situations] like [junior defenseman Pat] Kelliher, who is going in for surgery” and is not expected to play this year, Marsh began. “You can have no more than 30 ‘counters’ for the NCAA,” he added, explaining that financial compensation (room, board, books, tuition, other fees) can only be split up a maximum of 30 ways on a team, so a number of his players are considered true walk-ons.<\/p>\n