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.
Dan: Happy Tuesday, everyone.
Well, we’re back for another week, and it’s safe to say that the end of the season is getting wild. Incredibly wild. So wild that I don’t know that we can cover everything…but we’ll at least try to do what we can.
There’s the matter of the Beanpot on Monday between Northeastern and Harvard, but as we log this conversation on a Monday, we don’t know the outcome in the first-ever championship meeting between the two teams in the tournament’s long, storied history. Because we don’t know the outcome, I’m going to avoid the conversation… for now.
That’s because we have A LOT to unpack in the Big Ten, starting with Michigan-Michigan State, where the two teams received 91 penalty minutes largely due to a couple of altercations, largely in the second period.
NINETY-ONE.
There were literally two two-minute minors called in the first period, but the second period got real weird. Ethan Edwards got himself ejected, and Adam Fantilli and Nash Nienhuis got involved in a situation that you can’t have in college hockey. By the end of the third period, we had multiple game misconducts and an abuse of officials penalty. I’m not sure, but I’m guessing someone probably got charged with the Kennedy assassination.
Reading the game story in the Detroit News after the game, Michigan coach Brandon Naurato was quoted as saying, “They can’t play with us unless they goon it up.” His captain, Nolan Moyle, said, “We hate these guys, and we always say you can’t beat these guys good enough.”
Ed, you saw the video before I did. It was wild. What’s your take on it?
Ed: Well, with all due respect to Naurato, there seems to have been plenty of gooning it up to go around.
(And having been present at one of the mothers of all college hockey fights, with a combined 54 penalties and 251 minutes – and a bucket load of multi-game suspensions – it’s honestly not really up there too far on my list.)
It’s good to have a hated rival. What this does tell me is that the Michigan-Michigan State rivalry is back. The Spartans have had a couple of down years which has put a little damper on things. With two new head coaches who are both alumni of their teams, and with both teams really competitive, I look forward to continued heated games, and perhaps even a Big Ten playoff series this year.
Even though the term “instant classic” is bandied about too much, Saturday’s last second overtime game-winner from Luke Hughes capped a game that will go down as one of the best between these two programs. That more than 18,000 fans were at Little Caesar’s Arena bodes well for college hockey in Detroit, perhaps even including a Frozen Four.
While we’re talking Big Ten, Notre Dame got itself right back into the mix by picking up five-of-six points at home against Ohio State, including a shootout win in a 2-2 tie that saw Ryan Bischel make 49 saves for the Fighting Irish.
Minnesota’s split with Wisconsin meant that the Golden Gophers have yet to clinch first place. In fact, no team has clinched any of the six conferences yet.
You’re on the ECAC beat this season for us, Dan. Only Quinnipiac and Cornell have locked up a first-round bye. What’s that playoff race looking like, especially with St. Lawrence and Colgate vying for that fourth bye?
Dan: I wish I could sit back and tell you that the standings are exactly what we thought they were, but with two weeks left in the season, it’s probably going to look more like the Atlantic Hockey postseason races that we grew accustomed to during the 2010s.
Look at Union. Two weekends ago, the Dutchmen went up to Colgate and Cornell and beat the Raiders on Friday night before giving up 10 goals to Cornell on Saturday. They then returned home and swept Yale and Brown. Just like that, a team that was on the road in the first round moved up to seventh with a one-point differential separating it from sixth. There’s a seven-point difference between Union and a first round bye, which seems like a lot, but this weekend is sending them to Harvard and Dartmouth before returning home for Quinnipiac and Princeton.
That’s the same Princeton team that was once in third but is now sitting in eighth, though I think it was in third because it played more league games than anyone else. There’s a three-point difference back to ninth and RPI, which is Union’s travel partner. All of those teams have seven league wins, meaning if they don’t hold a head-to-head tiebreaker, we could be looking at cumulative points against the top four as a tertiary tiebreaker.
Given that Quinnipiac, Harvard, and Cornell are sitting atop the league, the whole dynamic is going to change depending on which team gets into that fourth spot. St. Lawrence, for example, swept Union and RPI at the start of the year but lost to Union in regulation and RPI in overtime in January. Colgate beat Union but lost to RPI in January, then lost to both in February. Considering what happens this weekend with Harvard, these are all critical tiebreaker points.
There is literally no way to predict what’s going to happen. A couple of weeks ago, I would’ve sat back and had Brown penciled into one of those home games after the Bears beat Harvard. Then Mathieu Caron went out, and the Bruno gave up 12 goals to St. Lawrence and Clarkson. Then they beat RPI. Then they lost to Union.
Nothing really makes sense, which makes it feel like Atlantic Hockey’s typically-recognized postseason.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that not all of us can enjoy the view from the top like you, Ed.
Ed: Yes, but the view has gotten less lofty.
Atlantic Hockey is also coming down to the last two weekends, and despite the public statements of its commissioner and the private druthers of its coaches against it, the bottom two teams will be eliminated from the postseason. Every other conference includes every team. Any conference with an unbalanced schedule should include everyone. (Jot that one down on new commissioner Michelle Morgan’s to-do list. Next year’s schedule will be even more unbalanced with teams playing each other four, three, or two times.)
Rochester Institute of Technology, which came out sluggish on Thursday and which has been abysmal on the man advantage in 2023, got swept on the road at Niagara last weekend, precluding the Tigers from locking up the top seed. Meanwhile, Sacred Heart split with Air Force and American International, now precluded from higher than second place, salvaged two points at Bentley.
A surging Air Force and a hanging-on Bentley face the biggest risk of elimination – with Bentley needing help to finish eighth – while only Sacred Heart and RIT have clinched the first round. It’s down to a two-horse Tigers and Pioneers race. Both teams of Falcons have series at RIT, while Sacred Heart has a road pair at Canisius and home-and-home with AIC. Every team other than the top two can still finish out of the playoffs as of Monday.
Before we head back out west, there’s even more uncertainty in Hockey East. Nobody has secured a first-round bye. Providence can still win the league or finish in 10th; Maine can get the second overall seed or drop to last place. Who’s likely to prevail in that conference, Dan?
Dan: Hockey East, to me, is a two-team race at this point, with the popular assumption being that Boston University is going to win.
I think the Terriers are the more likely option, and removing the Beanpot loss to Northeastern, they haven’t lost a league game since that weird 9-6 game on Jerry York Night at Boston College. They dropped 14 goals on Maine – which included another weird 9-6 outing – and beat up BC pretty good in a home-and-home. The Beanpot loss didn’t count, and truthfully, as much as the tournament has its great storylines, that’s the key thing for a lot of teams at this point.
BU has a super manageable schedule over the rest of the season. It plays BC in the Beanpot consolation game, but a home-and-home with Merrimack comes against a team that hasn’t been playing its best hockey. Vermont is the last place team, and the race could be over by the time Providence rolls around, especially the Saturday road matchup.
It’s a one-point difference to Northeastern, but the Huskies have to go through UMass and UMass Lowell with a single game at Vermont. It’s a much different, much more difficult schedule, even though UMass is tied for ninth in the conference because it’s just been a bad year in Amherst.
That’s the one thing about Hockey East, though. Teams that we didn’t expect to compete are in the top half of the league, and BC and UMass are lurking at the bottom of the conference. Given their cumulative success, it’s hard to think someone won’t score a major upset along the way, no matter how poorly the perception is of those teams. To me, that’s probably the definition of wide open.
I’ll let you wrap up out west with the CCHA and NCHC, if you’ll indulge me, largely because I want to cycle back to one last thing that’s been pointed out multiple times over the course of the weekend.
Ed: While nothing is settled mathematically in the NCHC, the top four are pretty much set. Denver, Western Michigan, St. Cloud and Omaha all control their own destiny into home ice in the first round as we head into the last three weeks of the NCHC season. The jockeying will be for position in that round, but nobody is going to be an easy out. A 4-5 matchup between Omaha and either Minnesota Duluth or North Dakota would be a fun series.
Denver can lock up at least home ice on Friday with a win or overtime vs. UMD. No other team can clinch on Friday.
In the CCHA, despite a split with Bowling Green, Michigan Tech became the first team to clinch home ice. Minnesota State, idle last weekend, can move ahead of MTU with at least a split against Bemidji State this coming weekend while the Huskies have a late-season bye week. Don Lucia’s conference has brilliantly scheduled a pair of games between Michigan Tech and Minnesota State for the final weekend with the conference title in play. Bowling Green can catch Michigan Tech in its last weekend of play hosting Northern Michigan but would need to sweep the Wildcats in regulation and the Mavericks to sweep the Huskies without OT.
It’s great to see every league still in play this late.
Dan, you’ve got some “bonus” TMQ, I take it?
Dan: Just one last thing, and I know you mentioned it in the USCHO Monday 10 – and it’s been mentioned several times over – but Atlantic Hockey announced this weekend that its regular-season championship trophy would be renamed in honor of current commissioner Bobby DeGregorio.
I say this as someone who has been with Atlantic Hockey as a broadcaster, journalist, fan, and all of the above, but it’s been a real thrill seeing how the conference evolved over the past 20 years. That Holy Cross victory in the 2006 NCAA Tournament is considered the greatest upset in college hockey history, and it’s because the league was, at the time, a cost containment structure designed to allow teams to play into Division I without having to invest the same resources as the bigger programs. Wins by AHA teams are now more commonplace, and though the league is still fighting for respect, the wins by AIC, Air Force, and others – even the Frozen Four run by RIT – isn’t so much of an upset anymore.
Much of that is because of Bobby’s diligence and commitment to the league. He’s been a friend and colleague in college hockey for a number of years and talking to him about things not related to hockey made me really enjoy my affiliation with Bentley and the league. I’m very excited for the future, but it’s worth noting that none of this happens without his commitment to growing the product. He’s not done in hockey, and i refuse to believe that he’s going to quietly retire to Florida to play golf (even though that’s my retirement dream). I think we’ll see him again, very soon, with some other project, but I know that this is a very different viewpoint to Atlantic Hockey.
A lot of leagues have respect for their commissioner, but I truly felt like we all worked with Bobby to build the AHA. All of us who had a hand in covering the league worked with him, and that’s why it’s “our league.” He had a big hand in steering that ship, and even though I’m excited to see what Michelle Morgan brings to the table (I’m actually beyond excited for the future and what I’ve been told about what she’s bring to this conference), I’m also going to miss my occasional phone call to Bobby just to check in. This is a brilliant honor, and it’s a great parting gift from a conference that wouldn’t exist without him.
