Each week during the season, we look at the big events and big games around Division I men’s college hockey in Tuesday Morning Quarterback.
Ed: Jim, I know you remember the days when the semester break was filled with holiday tournaments. Those are mostly a thing of the past, but the end of 2021 did have two tournaments and I guess what you would call three-quarters of a showcase. Meanwhile, the two weeks since the last TMQ had no lack of controversy.
Let’s start with the tournaments – just so we begin 2022 on an upbeat note.
It’s been a rough start to the season for Wisconsin. Tony Granato’s Badgers entered the Kwik Trip Holiday Face-Off with just five wins but picked up a 3-2 overtime win over Yale and a shootout tournament win after a 2-2 tie with No. 16 Providence. Those were hardly dominating performances, though Wisconsin scored twice in the third to knot the game against the Friars.
Back east in Dartmouth’s Ledyard Bank Classic, Boston College put together a 4-2 win against Mercyhurst and a 6-1 smackdown of the host Big Green. The Eagles are 4-0-2 in their last six games, and after dropping out of the USCHO men’s D-I poll in December, now stand at No. 18.
Unlike Wisconsin, which finds itself quite a distance down both the Big Ten standings and the PairWise Rankings, Boston College is one weekend out of first place in Hockey East and not too far from an at-large spot at 18th in the PairWise. Winning some in-season hardware can help a team turn the momentum around. Will this be the case for BC and Wisco?
Jim: I love in-season tournaments and I miss their presence during the holidays, whether around Thanksgiving, Christmas or New Years. I have always believed that these events mimic NCAA regionals and can be beneficial to the participants.
Despite that, the lack of tournaments still produced two great events last weekend.
I loved that Wisconsin came away with the championship at their own tournament in Milwaukee. It’s been a long time since that city has seen college hockey games and the ability of the Badgers to host two games at FISERV, the home of the Milwaukee Bucks, was a major positive for college hockey. It also could be a big step forward for the Badgers, which need a bit of a push into the second half.
Boston College’s wins at the Ledyard Bank tournament also help the Eagles move up the PairWise. BC was pretty solid in wins over Mercyhurst and Dartmouth, but now need to carry that back to Hockey East play.
The one tournament not mentioned was the Great Lakes Invitational – the GLI – which went from a tournament played in downtown Detroit to a “showcase” placed on the campuses of Michigan and Michigan State to a three-team event, when Michigan decided not to play both games on the weekend, and just one against Michigan Tech.
The Wolverines, shorthanded headed into the break and then missing five players at World Juniors, had their administration decide they couldn’t play two games of the tournament. The move was controversial to a social media world looking for news during the break. But talking to Mel Pearson, I am sympathetic to the fact his staff was left without any input on the final decision. Still, it didn’t look good for Michigan, which fell a few spots in the USCHO.com poll to sixth overall.
What are your thoughts?
Ed: We’ve gotten to know Mel Pearson pretty well over the years. He’s always been a forthright and standup guy, and it looks like he was put in a bad situation. But it’s hard not to blame the poll voters – the majority of whom are D-I coaches – for taking it out on the Wolverines, especially when the depth chart for the Michigan Tech game they did play showed a full lineup replete with multiple NHL draft picks.
What’s really troubling to me is where situations like this might lead, especially with COVID positives skyrocketing.
Last season, college hockey commissioners spent every week rescheduling games and recalculating standings. It wasn’t fun for anyone – players, coaches, or fans. I don’t think we’re heading into that sort of situation (I hope), but I am concerned about games getting canceled or postponed under cover of COVID. What’s to stop a team – or an athletic director – from declaring that they are short of players because of protocols when they could reschedule a game to when they’re completely healthy and more competitive?
I’m not pointing fingers at any team doing this, but eyebrows were also raised when Yale nixed its New Year’s Day game with Merrimack for “non-COVID” reasons. I know there are those who say that athletes shouldn’t play if they are sick or injured, but I’ve seen many games with short benches over the years. If you’re scheduled, you play. Or at least that was how it once was.
And since I mentioned it, the notion that nobody should play injured would mean that there’d be no hockey season past October.
There has been some conjecture on social media that canceling a number of games would mean scrapping the PairWise for a second season. Is that really a possibility?
Jim: No, no, no, no, no, no and no. I’m not even sure at the end what I am answering with the word “no.” But just no.
We can’t have teams simply canceling games without a massive lineup absence due to COVID or any other reason. We can’t have weeks where games are continuously rescheduled. We can’t have leagues spending time figuring out which teams can and cannot play. We can’t have a ranking system figuring out the final champion of a league (even if I supported Hockey East’s efforts last season to do as such)
And most importantly, we can’t have the NCAA Men’s Ice Hockey Committee abandon the PairWise as they select the 2022 NCAA men’s ice hockey championship field.
Right now, close to 90 percent of the non-league games have been played, and of the remaining, most involve the three independent teams – Arizona State, Alaska and LIU. As a national body, college hockey understands how the six conferences rank in comparison to one another. The PairWise makes 100 percent sense.
Though that brings a question to bear: if a team is above the NCAA bubble, say 13th, and decides not to play a late-season series, can that be another problem? If we’re not policing why a team decides to play or not play, could that become an issue with the PairWise bubble?
Ed: Now that’s a question I don’t think I can answer. We are going to have to trust people to be sportsmanlike and honor the game. Either that, or deploy undercover agents and listening devices in college hockey dressing rooms.
Jim, I know you’re a Red Sox fan and this question brings to mind September 28, 1941. Ted Williams started the day with a .3995535 batting average and was aiming to be the first player since Ty Cobb to hit .400 in the major leagues. The Sox had a doubleheader against the Philadelphia A’s on that last day of the American League season. Williams was given the option to sit out to preserve a .400 batting average that was really a smidgen below. “Teddy Ballgame” played game one and got a hit in his first at-bat. He could have sat out right then and there since he was over .400. Long story short, Williams stayed in, played both games, and ended at .406 on the season.
“The Splendid Splinter” would still be remembered for the never-eclipsed record, but he also would have been known, ignominiously perhaps, for leaving the game to avoid missing the mark.
Now, back to 2022. Just look at the uproar one canceled midseason game caused. Can you imagine if that happened in February? Peer pressure and reputation would mitigate against it.
Let’s end this on a positive note. This season is turning out to be “the year of the goalie.” There are eight goalies with a .930 save percentage or better as of today. Five with goals-against averages below 1.5, and two of them – Yaniv Perets and Dylan St. Cyr of Quinnipiac – are on the same team!
With multiple netminders putting up numbers like Ryan Miller did when he won the Hobey Baker award at Michigan State in 2001, can the Hobey committee not have multiple goalies as finalists? And how the heck will the Mike Richter Award committee ever decide?
Jim: Well, I am a Boston fan that lost love for the Red Sox, so I’ll abstain from any comparison to Ted Wiliams, particularly given the fact that we’re nowhere near season’s end.
As for goalies, this is a crazy season. You can look at five – Perets and St. Cyr, who you mentioned – and include of course Dryden McKay at Minnesota State, Devon Levi at Northeastern and Owen Savory at UMass Lowell. All five of these goaltenders are in position to set a goaltending record in one of more categories. All need to be up for the Hobey, forget about the Richter.
But that brings in the additional quagmire: If you have five goalies in contention for the Hobey, can anyone get enough votes against a point scorer or a player who typically wins the award?
I hate the fact that goalies seem passed over for the Hobey. And I acknowledge that the invention of the Richter, much warranted of course, killed most any hope for a future goaltender winning a Hobey.
