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.
Jim: Happy belated Thanksgiving, Ed. There were plenty of leftovers to go around in college hockey this weekend as one of the bigger nonconference weekends of the year took place.
Taking a look over the results, the conference that probably feels most full is the NCHC. The eight-team league posted a 9-2-1 non-conference record over the weekend including a 4-0-1 mark on Saturday night. The NCHC now has the second-best out-of-conference winning percentage at .685, just decimal points behind the B1G at .704.
It’s a tiny bit early to get into the PairWise, but if the season ended today, the NCHC would once again get half of its teams into the NCHC field as Denver is currently fourth, North Dakota sits sixth, and Western Michigan (12th) and St. Cloud State (13th) hover around the bubble.
Despite North Dakota sitting atop the USCHO poll last week, I still feel like there hasn’t been enough buzz around the NCHC to this point in the season. Do we need to really begin pumping this league’s tires?
Ed: Jim, I think somehow the NCHC has been flying a bit under the radar. And I’m not sure why.
North Dakota’s slip from No. 1 to second place in the USCHO men’s D-I poll this week really surprised me as I don’t think you penalize a team for winning in overtime that much. But it seems like a lot of people had BC at No. 2 on their ballots while many might have had the Fighting Hawks at No. 3 or No. 4.
I think all eyes in the college hockey world should turn to what is the premier matchup of next weekend as North Dakota visits No. 3 Denver for a pair of NCHC games. Both teams are in the top 10 in scoring, with Denver’s nation-leading 5.5 goals per game helped a bunch by 5-0 and 9-0 stompings of Yale. Meanwhile, North Dakota has the second-best goals against in the nation at 1.93.
However, nobody’s overlooking NoDak or DU. I’m interested in seeing what Western Michigan and St. Cloud do over the next couple of weeks. The Huskies got off to a slow start but strung together six league wins in a row, while the Broncos have put together four straight, including a pair over St. Lawrence last weekend. Omaha has quietly put together a solid record and is just outside the poll. Maybe the one big disappointment in the conference is Minnesota Duluth, winless in NCHC play and just 3-7-3 overall.
In any case, I’ll wager that we’ll pay more attention once the national broadcasts of NCHC games start in January.
You mentioned the Big Ten at the top of the national nonconference standings. Five teams from that league are inside the PairWise bubble right now. How likely is it that conference play will cannibalize that?
Jim: I think the B1G is the most interesting league when we look at today’s PairWise.
The league has the highest out-of-conference winning percentage. Everything about the league is strong, but you don’t have any team at or near the top and probably most concerning is having both Michigan and Penn State right on the bubble.
It seems very early to be concerned about anything related to the NCAA field, but in reality there aren’t a ton of major weekends of nonconference play that will significantly move the PairWise needle.
Speaking of concerns, how concerned do you think the ECAC and CCHA be at this point? The ECAC only has Quinnipiac in the top 16. The CCHA has no one with St. Thomas ranked 30, ineligible this year for the NCAA tournament, and Minnesota State at 37.
Things will change as the season goes along, but are the red flags raising on the ECAC and CCHA?
Ed: Red flags are definitely up for both conferences.
I think that the ECAC has the better prospects of the two, but not great. I expect Cornell to have a winning percentage high enough to overcome the league’s poor nonconference schedule, especially with a strength-of-schedule bump coming up with a holiday tournament and a pair of games with Arizona State. Harvard could be in that mix, too, assuming a strong record in conference and a possible lift from the Beanpot and Arizona State’s Desert Hockey Classic.
The CCHA will be hard pressed to get more than one team in. I don’t see a scenario there unless one team runs away with the league and gets upset in the finals.
Atlantic Hockey is in its best position for an at-large in several years, at least at this point. American International at No. 17 is closest, but the Yellow Jackets have played seven of their eight nonconference games and have little room to improve there. Rochester Institute of Technology is at No. 21 and moved up from the mid-30s with the pair of games against New Hampshire last weekend. The Tigers still have Maine, Dartmouth or Lake Superior State, Clarkson, and St. Lawrence on their docket, so I might even give Atlantic Hockey a better chance than the CCHA.
Around this time a year ago, Hockey East was in a similar position as it is now with six teams within the bubble. But only Boston University and Merrimack made the NCAA tournament. How is it looking this season, especially with the early success of Maine and UNH?
Jim: You bring up painful memories for those around Hockey East from a year ago. Yes, around this time last year Hockey East had six teams in PairWise position, but the league was horrific in non-conference play during the Thanksgiving week and again through the two weeks following the late-December exam break.
The conference has already improved a bit on that. Hockey East was 9-5-1 over the weekend and, if you add in Boston University’s win over Quinnipiac on Wednesday, finished 10-5-1 over the holiday weekend. That’s better than decent.
Now the question is how strong the league can perform over the remaining major nonconference weekends. New Year’s is always a big one and you have matchups in that span like UMass traveling to the Adirondack Winter Invitational, Northeastern heading to Wisconsin for the FISERV Holiday Faceoff and Maine at the Ledyard Bank Tournament.
You also have the possibility that the Hockey East standings could become an accordion like a year ago, where conference place decimates some of the top teams.
Right now, it’s certainly all roses for Hockey East, though.
Ed: “But I thought it was too early to look at the PairWise,” several readers who made it this far are saying.
Jim noted why it might be in his bitter remembrance of last season for Hockey East. Still, every game counts, whether it’s in October or late March. Enough games have been played on the non-conference schedule to show us some trends.
Before we wrap, we haven’t mentioned independents. A month ago, this column and its rotating columnists – as well as our USCHO Weekend Review podcasts – were talking about one or two unaffiliated teams getting into the NCAAs.
Arizona State still has the best chance, but as in past years, it needs to win the games it should and needs to do well against top teams on the schedule to make it. That would be an excellent conclusion to the Sun Devils’ indie era.
