It goes without saying that every team near the top of the Hockey East standings wants to finish first just for the sake of taking the regular season crown. If you’re a competitor, you naturally want to be number one. That said, this year the stakes are even higher because the playoff implications of finishing first rather than second are enormous.<\/p>\n
Take a look at the current standings. (All teams have played 20 league games except Providence and Merrimack with 21.)<\/p>\n
1 New Hampshire (13-4-3) 29 points
2 Boston University (13-5-2) 28
3 Maine (11-5-4) 26
4 Northeastern (10-8-2) 22
5 UMass-Lowell (9-8-3) 21
6 Providence (8-10-3) 19
7 Boston College (8-11-1) 17
8 Merrimack (5-14-2) 12
9 UMass-Amherst (3-15-2) 8<\/pre>\nThis observer would argue that six teams have an excellent chance of winning the Hockey East tournament. (More on that next week.) One of those is Boston College. Until buried under an avalanche of injuries, the Eagles were a Top 15 team themselves and, if healthy, are clearly the most dangerous team in the 6-to-9 positions in the standings.<\/p>\n
No one feels this more acutely than BU coach Jack Parker, who right now stands to draw BC in the quarterfinals. Of course, the Terriers have an even greater motivation to avoid their archrivals.<\/p>\n
“I’d rather play UNH or Maine or anybody than BC in the first round,” says Parker. “To wind up finishing second place in our league and get a fully healthy BC team would be [tough]. We’ve had it happen a couple times before in the past where we’ve played them in the first round of the playoffs, but that’s our big rival. To do this all year long to wind up with BC?<\/p>\n
“But really, who do you want? Everybody says you’d like to get first, you’d like to get second, you’d like to get third. Who would you like to play, Lowell again? You want to play Northeastern again? You want to play Providence, a team that has really had our number the last couple of years?<\/p>\n
“We want to play the Belmont Bantams. But they’re not available.”<\/p>\n
Hockey East fans who go back a handful of years will recall that BU had an even more unfortunate draw in 1993-94. That season the Terriers finished first only to face a very strong Maine squad in the quarterfinals. The nationally-ranked Black Bears had been forced to forfeit 14 games, 12 of them league ones, because of using an ineligible player. <\/p>\n
As a result, their 12-8-4 Hockey East record became 3-20-1 and they became the bottom seed in the then-eight team league. Although the Terriers prevailed in two games, the matchup was hardly the expected reward for winning the regular season title.<\/p>\n
To a lesser extent, the same holds true this year with a scary BC team. Unlike 1993-94, though, the solution is to finish first.<\/p>\n
As for teams near the bottom looking up, the quarterfinal opponent of least preference has got to be New Hampshire. While any of the top teams will be tough to upset by the bottom seed, the Wildcats pose the most insoluble matchups and boast a major home ice advantage to boot.<\/p>\n
“I think everybody wants to avoid New Hampshire in the first round,” says interim Merrimack coach Mike Doneghey. He adds with a laugh, “Playing on Lake Winnipesaukee up there is difficult…<\/p>\n
“But who do you want to play? BU is number six in the country and Maine is number nine.”<\/p>\n
Giant Killers<\/h4>\n
On Jan. 18, Merrimack entered a 10-game stretch in which all but one game were against teams that were in the Top 15 at the time. That lone exception was Northeastern, which has since entered the national rankings. Admittedly, two games were against BC, which fell out of the Top 15, but even those two contests were against a healthy Eagle lineup as opposed to the injured-riddled one which prompted the fall.<\/p>\n
With 10 straight against the nation’s best, Merrimack’s prospects appeared grim. Losing the first six of them did nothing to change that view. <\/p>\n
The last couple weekends, however, have seen the Warriors not only knock off a couple of the nation’s best teams, but do so in very impressive fashion. Two weeks ago, they rebounded from a 5-2 loss to Northeastern to stun Maine by the same score. Last week, BC squeaked out a win, 2-1, before Merrimack clobbered the Eagles, 5-2.<\/p>\n
“Maybe the light has gone on,” says Doneghey. “We beat Maine pretty good. The thing about that is that the night before we played Northeastern and we played just as well, but we just gave up a couple [lousy] goals and Keni Gibson, as he’s been doing, stole [one]. He made 19 saves in the first period. We played the same way against Maine and beat them.<\/p>\n
“Then Friday night, we lost to BC, 2-1, and if you listen to their radio guys, it was the best game [goaltender] Tim Kelleher has played in three years. Then in our building, we played really well.” <\/p>\n
Overall now, the Warriors may be 10-19-2, but are 5-4-2 at home, where the two impressive 5-2 wins came.<\/p>\n
“We’re pretty good in our building,” he says. “It’s small and [with] our quickness, we’re able to get into guys.”<\/p>\n
The first weekend, the top line of Anthony Aquino, Ryan Cordeiro and Marco Rosa were the big offensive contributors. Last weekend, it was the Matt Foy, Alex Sikatchev and Nick Parillo second line that lit up the scoreboard.<\/p>\n
“That [second line] is a pretty good line,” says Doneghey. “The weekend before against Maine, they probably had as many chances as Aquino’s line. They just couldn’t finish. <\/p>\n
“Vice versa against BC. Aquino’s line had just as many chances, but it was Parillo and Foy’s line that was getting the points. They’re kind of having a friendly battle within themselves trying to outdo each other.”<\/p>\n
More ice time has helped both trios.<\/p>\n
“We’ve been doing a lot of conditioning, [so] I’ve shortened the bench a little bit,” says Doneghey. “I’ve gotten Aquino’s line out there and Foy’s line out there every third shift. I’ve been going 1-2-3-1-2-4, so I’ve been getting our skill guys and our high-end guys out there as much as we can.”<\/p>\n
Another big difference has been the goaltending of Joe Exter. Midway through the season, he seemed to wilt under the pressure of playing every game and seeing more shots than any other league netminder. <\/p>\n
On Jan. 8, Jason Wolfe was called on to make his first career start as a senior and give Exter a breather. Since then, he has taken the crease another five games, giving Exter an important respite.<\/p>\n
Apparently rejuvenated, Exter has now won two of the last three games for the Warriors, allowing just two goals each night.<\/p>\n
“Joey is playing now like what got him on the All-Rookie team last year,” says Doneghey. “He played 19 straight in the middle of the year and we were losing a lot then. The shots were lopsided. <\/p>\n
“If you know Joey, he takes everything personal. He takes the whole burden on his shoulders whether they score on four breakaways or he gives up three bad goals. He takes everything personal as if it’s his fault.<\/p>\n
“So we got him out of there. It was a good time to give Wolfie some games and give Joey a rest. Right now, it’s worked for us.”<\/p>\n
It has also helped that the defense has seemingly matured. <\/p>\n
“For the most part we’ve played four sophomores on defense,” says Doneghey. “The last 10 games of last year, they really started to come on. <\/p>\n
“Like most [players], they went into a sophomore slump this year. There was a lot of indecision, but they’ve worked their way through it and right now all the guys seem to be on the same page, clicking together.”<\/p>\n
Based on these recent performances, the Warriors are gelling at just the right time.<\/p>\n
“We’re playing some pretty good hockey right now,” says Doneghey. “We’re getting some timely scoring, the lines are clicking — everybody’s clicking. There is a certain attitude developing around here. It’s taken us five months to develop it, but we’re developing it at the right time. This is the right time of the year to start getting it together….<\/p>\n
“As the late Shawn Walsh used to say, it doesn’t matter where you are in November; it’s where you finish in February and March.”<\/p>\n
Where the Warriors finish is almost certain to be eighth place. For them to finish any higher, they’d have to win out while BC loses out. For UMass-Amherst to catch them, the Minutemen would have to stun either Maine or UNH before also defeating Merrimack. <\/p>\n
But there are eighth-place finishers that are cannon fodder for the playoffs and then there are eighth-place finishers that make opponents nervous.<\/p>\n
A few weeks ago, the Warriors were looking like the former. Now, they could just be the latter.<\/p>\n
Return Of The French Olympians<\/h4>\n