As ECAC Hockey began the final descent into its postseason tournament last weekend, the element of surprise didn’t totally exist like other conferences.
Quinnipiac cruised past Yale and Brown with its second and third consecutive five-goal games, and with Saturday’s 5-2 win over the Bears, the Bobcats clinched the Cleary Cup as the regular-season champions for the third consecutive season.
In second and third place, Harvard and Cornell continued a season-long duel to determine seeding for the second round of the tournament, and the Crimson grabbed the inside track by sweeping Union and RPI at home.
Colgate remained the pace-setting program behind those two, and St. Lawrence continued to nip on the Raiders’ heels in a statistical tie for 34 points.
The bottom of the league finally thinned out, and Brown’s losses to Quinnipiac and Princeton all but formally relegated the Bears into a first-round road trip with Yale, which beat Princeton, and Dartmouth.
The last transfer spot into a first-round home game settled nothing between RPI and Union, though it seemed increasingly likely that the Capital District teams would meet up in the postseason.
Nothing felt different, though there was one notable exception when Clarkson rocked the ECAC boat by taking four of a possible six road points from Cornell and Colgate.
A preseason favorite to compete for the Cleary Cup, the Golden Knights languished behind their own standards as a team placed well outside the league’s top-four, and while there is no mathematical route to a home series in the quarterfinals, a trip to Potsdam all but ensures someone from that bottom four is heading for a nightmare matchup against a team finally hitting some stride.
“We had to really make sure that we were in playoff mode [during the season],” said Clarkson coach Casey Jones. “We talked about it [a couple of weeks ago] that we had to be in that mode already. Every game has been so critical to us. We had some games that we probably deserved to win that we lost points on, and that put us in the situation that we’re in. So we’re in a situation where we have to find ways to win hockey games and get the job done and be effective and still trust the process to build trust because we still know what we need to do to be successful.”
ECAC’s last weekend is circling its postseason runway without too many surprising elements, but the number of storylines still hanging in the balance are all centered around the swing spots for either home ice or the first-round bye.
Colgate and St. Lawrence are tied for fourth in the spots directly ahead of Clarkson, and while the Raiders have the inside track to the first-round bye, they’re on the road at Brown and Yale while St. Lawrence plays at home in the North Country. That said, St. Lawrence and Clarkson are drawing Harvard and Dartmouth.
The Saints could lose the No. 4 slot as early as Friday with a regulation loss to the Crimson and a Colgate win in regulation over Yale, but that would eliminate Clarkson from its outside shot at fifth place. Any number of Colgate points would further that elimination, meaning the most likely scenario slots Clarkson into sixth with St. Lawrence sitting in fifth.
That would mean teams from further east would have to travel to the North Country for a single-elimination game in the first round. Princeton is only two points back of Clarkson for fifth, but the Tigers have to contend more with RPI and Union for a home game in New Jersey. In theory, it would take a single point to clinch at least home ice because the head-to-head matchups this week send Princeton into games with those two teams – along with its travel partner, Quinnipiac.
The road trips involved could then send a team like Yale or Brown to either Clarkson or Princeton, with Dartmouth heading to either Colgate or St. Lawrence, while the Capital District teams play one another in a rubber grudge match for the right to meet either Quinnipiac or Harvard in the quarterfinals.
“We have enough guys from a core group that have that experience, that have played in some key moments,” Jones said of his team. “Our freshmen aren’t young players anymore because we’re over 30 games into the season. So we just have to understand that we should be dialed into every team that we play, and we’re going to play down the stretch knowing that you just want to give yourself the best chance to advance in the playoffs. That’s the goal, to put your best foot forward to make noise come playoff time.”
Pairwise Watch
While the ECAC playoff race is obviously front and center, it’s worth taking stock of the teams currently in and around the NCAA Tournament picture. As it stands entering this weekend, Quinnipiac is the No. 2 overall seed in the national tournament and likely won’t catch Minnesota, though the RPI differences aren’t as far apart as the implied strength of the two conferences indicate. The Bobcats are a lock and will likely end up as the No. 1 seed in one of the regionals.
Harvard is also a near-lock to make the tournament as the No. 10 team in the Pairwise. The Crimson have an opportunity to push into a No. 2 seed if they can pass Boston University, though the strength of the Big Ten makes it difficult for them to catch Penn State or Ohio State without a deep postseason run.
Cornell is the team currently sitting in the most precarious position. The Big Red are tied for 14th with Northeastern and Notre Dame, and while the Fighting Irish are teetering on landing under .500, the Huskies are one of the hottest teams in the nation. Given that at least one bid is going to a team guaranteed to land outside the Top 16, the Big Red are then the last team into the tournament, assuming the Atlantic Hockey champion eliminates Notre Dame.
Six Hockey East teams are currently slotted between Nos. 19-30, and the likelihood of those teams making a run through the championship rounds means the Big Red have some huge games this weekend in New England. A loss to either Yale or Brown would prove disastrous, as would a potential series loss in the best-of-three quarterfinals.
