Notice anything familiar at the top of the Hockey East standings?<\/p>\n
How about the re-emergence of the old Big Four? <\/p>\n
New Hampshire, Boston College, Maine and Boston University have once again claimed Hockey East’s top four spots and are all now in the driver’s seat for playoff home ice.<\/p>\n
Until last year, you had to go all the way back to the 1995-96 season to find a playoff without at least three of the four defending home ice during the league quarterfinals. And the 2004, 2005 and 2006 playoffs featured all four at home.<\/p>\n
Last year, however, showed how the increasing parity in the game had eaten away at the perennial powerhouses’ stranglehold. And when this season Maine and BU both got off to brutal starts — 1-5-0 for the Black Bears and 4-9-3 for the Terriers — it looked as though “the good old days” were over for those programs as a whole.<\/p>\n
But like Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator<\/i> (or Jack Nicholson in The Shining<\/i>, depending on your perspective), the collective Big Four is baaaack.<\/p>\nBut on the Other Hand<\/h4>\n
A look further down the standings shows something even more interesting.<\/p>\n
If Merrimack wins its game in hand, then every team but Providence is within three points of home ice.<\/p>\n
So parity is back after all and with a vengeance.<\/p>\n
Which means three huge<\/i> weekends remain.<\/p>\nDefinitely Part of the Picture<\/h4>\n
For a while there, it looked like the two teams left on the outside looking in come playoff time would be Providence and Merrimack, a repeat of last year. <\/p>\n
Now, that isn’t so certain. Providence remains in trouble, but Merrimack injected itself back into the playoff race with three of four points at Vermont last weekend. If the Warriors win their game in hand, they’ll be tied with Vermont for the final playoff berth and as noted above, a mere three points away from playoff home ice.<\/p>\n
This is no two-game fluke. The weekend before, Merrimack beat Massachusetts-Lowell and the one before that it split with New Hampshire. In their last seven league games, the Warriors are 4-2-1. It’s a stark difference from their record preceding the hot stretch: seven straight losses and a 1-10-0 record over 11 games.<\/p>\n
“I think if you look at our schedule and you look at the areas where we struggled, a lot of it had to do with scheduling,” coach Mark Dennehy says. “We went 49 days between home games. So that in and of itself put our team in a difficult situation. <\/p>\n
“Some of that was our own doing in the sense that we probably bit off more this year with our nonconference schedule than we had in the past. That was by design. I felt like we were ready for it and also thought we needed to strengthen our nonconference schedule a little bit to prepare us more for league play.”<\/p>\n
The Warriors played two games at No. 11 North Dakota early this season and the Badger Showdown against No. 3 Wisconsin and No. 14 Ferris State. All were losses but two were by a single goal. Not to mention in hostile environments.<\/p>\n
“I honestly think that had a lot to do with it,” Dennehy says. “That’s not an excuse; it’s an explanation. <\/p>\n
“We still hadn’t figured out a way to win on the road. I don’t think it had anything to do with our athletic makeup as much as it did with our mentality. But I saw that continuing to improve all year long. We were close. We were playing well enough [on the road] but not well enough to win.<\/p>\n
“Then this weekend [at Vermont] we found a way. It was a long time coming.”<\/p>\n
Virtually every team has a better record at home than on the road, but Merrimack’s home-away splits boggle the mind. The Warriors are 10-2-0 at home, losing only to New Hampshire and Northeastern, but 1-12-1 on the road. For the mathematically challenged, that means they were 0-11-0 on the road until this past weekend.<\/p>\n
How can a team that had been winless on the road be so dominating at home?<\/p>\n
“We’re in a results-oriented business,” Dennehy says. “I understand that. At the end of the day it’s about wins and losses. But when I think of the word dominant … we didn’t blow too many teams out at home. A lot of those games were close. So the results may be dominant but if you look at the games themselves, a Hockey East game is going to be decided by a play or two per game. <\/p>\n
“Then if you look at our road record and you look at how many one-goal games we’ve played there, especially if you take out the empty-net goals, we’re right there [with everyone else]. <\/p>\n
“What we’ve been able to do, whether it’s at home or on the road, is make it a one-goal game. Last year we had an abysmal one-goal record, but we put ourselves in those positions. Now, I think we’re better so we’re winning more of them. We’re good enough and we’re a little bit more battle-tested than last year’s team.”<\/p>\n
Still, there does seem to be something special going on at the J. Thom Lawler Arena. You don’t beat teams like UNH, BC, BU, Vermont, Lowell, Northeastern and Providence by accident.<\/p>\n
“There’s definitely a positive vibe in our rink,” Dennehy says. “[Athletic director] Glenn Hofmann and his administration, as well as our players, have done a good job of ingratiating this team with the student body. <\/p>\n
“We’re averaging over 500 students a game and that is roughly 39 percent of our student body.”<\/p>\n
Go ahead. Read that statistic again. Thirty-nine percent!<\/i> <\/p>\n
“When you’re at a small campus, if you have a group of guys that people don’t like then I don’t care how successful they are, people aren’t going to support them,” Dennehy says. “We have a good group of young men. <\/p>\n
“You look at our achievements off the ice in the classroom, where we had 16 All-Academic team members. These guys come in here and they are here for more than just hockey, but it’s the hockey that drives them.”<\/p>\n
Often what drives a team is a look at the standings. Sometimes it drives in a negative way and sometimes positive. You can bet the Warriors are taking a peek these days.<\/p>\n
“It’s part guilty pleasure and it’s part my responsibility to pay attention to some of those things, but I talk to our guys all the time about not being distracted by that,” Dennehy says. “If I let myself get distracted by that, then it trickles down from the top.<\/p>\n
“We need to pay attention to things, but what we really need to focus on is our own play. I believe if we take care of our own play, we’re going to put ourselves in a position to compete for a playoff spot. <\/p>\n
“You’ve got to live in the day. When we have a practice, it has to be the most important part of their day. We need to put together a good practice every day and that will make us better the next. <\/p>\n
“We talk it; we’ve got to live it.”<\/p>\n
This weekend, the Warriors will take on a team that’s lately been going in the opposite direction. The Massachusetts Minutemen have lost three straight and five of six. There have been some ugly scores to boot: 6-2, 7-1, and 6-3.<\/p>\n
“I said this to my team and I believe it: ‘There may be two teams at the top of this league that can put together a sub-par performance and take points and then there’s everybody else,'” Dennehy says. “I think we’re one of those [everybody else] teams.<\/p>\n
“When one of those teams is playing each other it comes down to will, it comes down to who wants the game more that night, shift to shift, drop [of the puck] to whistle. I’ve seen it, I believe it. <\/p>\n
“As a coach, you look and say, ‘We’re undefeated in three games.’ There’s that balance between feeling good about yourself and thinking your poop doesn’t stink. <\/p>\n
“With UMass coming in without winning in three games, there’s going to be some fire there. I know [UMass coach Don] Cahoon, he’s going to have his guys ready to play. They’re going to be amped up, so if we don’t match that, we won’t succeed. It’s that simple.”<\/p>\n
Can there be any doubt as to this year Hockey East rookie of the year?<\/p>\n
Merrimack forward Stephane Da Costa ranks sixth overall among league scorers (fourth in league games) and may well be a unanimous pick. Since scoring an eye-popping five goals in his first game, he’s continued to be a force, getting held off the score sheet in only four games. He dazzled in the game-winner against Vermont.<\/p>\n