NCAA Hockey 101: Breaking down bizarre first half; holiday tournament preview
(Ed. Note: Ryan Lambert is our resident NCAA Hockey nut, and we decided it’s time to unleash his particular brand of whimsy on the college game every week. So NCAA HOCKEY 101 will run every Tuesday on Puck Daddy. Educate yo self.)
With last weekend's lone series between Omaha and Huntsville now officially done, that closes the books on the first half of the college hockey season.
And so far, it's been a weird one.
By the numbers, the best two teams in the country as far as the Pairwise rankings — used to set the NCAA tournament bracket at season's end — are Minnesota State (13-4-0) and Harvard (9-1-2), which is in and of itself strange enough. But traditional powers like North Dakota, Minnesota, and Boston College haven't quite been their dominant selves either, coming in at Nos. 10, 11, and 23, respectively. Nebraska-Omaha has a great record, Bowling Green has a great record, Merrimack has a great record.
Robert Morris has the best offense in the country. Vermont has the best defense. None of these things could have been predicted to start the year, and it just doesn't make a lot of sense.
Observers of just about every conference in the country have grumbled about how it's a “down year” for the league they watch, which is funny, right? With the exception of the NCHC, that's more or less true across the board, and even the most dominant teams there aren't exactly ripping the nation apart.
For the first time in forever, the best player in the country is an out-and-out freshman, with Jack Eichel looking for all the world like he's going to lead the nation in scoring pretty much straight across the season from front to back. He's so much better than everyone I've seen play this year — and I've been to 25 games or so live — that I don't think you can even make an argument that someone else should be in the Hobey Baker conversation. You see 1.69 points per game with some amount of frequency, but never from freshmen, and certainly never from 18-year-olds. Boston University right now looks like one of the best teams in the country (they're ranked No. 1, at any rate) and with apologies to Matt O'Connor, he's more or less the only reason why.
With all that having been said, I still think 9-4-1 Minnesota is the best team in the country by a comfortable enough margin that even their relatively low position in the nation isn't enough to dissuade me from thinking they can win the national title with ease come April.
What's interesting is that, as with any season in which you can say weird things are happening, this is because percentages haven't gone as the numbers dictate they should.
Right now, UMass Lowell is the best team in Hockey East play, having gone 7-0-2 to start the season. But their PDO is somehow 107 in those games, so even as they control play, it's tough to say with certainty that they're as good as a more dominant BU (7-1-2) or Vermont (7-3-1). And as mentioned, Boston College has been only-okay (4-4-1), while traditional top team UNH is just 1-5-1 because they have no goaltending to speak of at just .884 as a team.
Meanwhile, Quinnipiac once again looks like the best team in ECAC play (6-2-0) right along with Harvard, but in non-conference play they were a pedestrian 4-3-1 because they, too, have gotten atrocious puck-stopping. Meanwhile, the reigning national champions Union surged out of the gate but have sputtered since, going 9-6-1 overall but sub-.500 in league play despite possession and goals-for numbers favoring them pretty heavily.
And Michigan is awful. Just a disorganized mess. But they have so much talent that they're still 8-7-0 and dominating the Big Ten. Zach Nagelvoort was great last season, but this year he and the other Wolverine netminders have been catastrophes.
Penn State? Arguably the class of the conference right now, just two years into their real Division 1 era.
As mentioned, Minnesota is still good, but not where they should be given the on-paper talent. It's tough to know what to make of this league, especially because teams have played, at most, four conference games to this point.
As mentioned, the NCHC is the only place normalcy reigns. North Dakota and Miami are great. Minnesota Duluth is in the same ballpark. Omaha has been getting the bounces as has been well-documented in this space, but they're going to fall back to earth. Maybe you say St. Cloud shouldn't be this bad, but Denver's made a good accounting of itself to more or less make up for it. Have to like the job Jim Montgomery's done there, really.
Finally we come to the WCHA and Atlantic Hockey, where there are really only three teams total worth talking about at any great length: the former's Michigan Tech and Minnesota State, and the latter's Robert Morris. Tech is good but not great, despite their 13-3-0 record, State is just a dynamite team and should probably be a little better than they are (62.1 percent possession, and the only team north of 60 in the country!). And Robert Morris is just feasting on the worst AHA in years.
As always, it's important to note that the teams which are riding percentages tend to crash back to earth a little more heavily and quickly in college than they do at the NHL level, and those that have lagged behind because of bad bounces tend to start getting them to go their way more quickly by the same token. So these weird things that keep happening across the country probably won't continue much longer.
Expect a return to normality once the holiday tournaments over the next two weeks come to an end.
Post-Christmas tournament preview
Speaking of which: While there aren't a lot of games this weekend, the vast majority of those that are being played are part of a small handful of tournaments taking place across the country.
Saturday and Sunday
Frozen Holiday Classic in Bridgeport, Conn
This is the only one that starts on Saturday, and its gets under way at 3 p.m., as Lowell will face off with and probably destroy Sacred Heart (this game is only important because last year No. 59 Sacred Heart knocked off No. 1 Lowell in Lowell to open the season). Then at 6:30, UConn will take on Union, and probably lose. The championship will be the next night at 6.
Sunday and Monday
Great Lakes Invitational in Detroit
This is the big tournament between four Michigan-based teams: Michigan and Michigan Tech at 2:30 p.m., then Michigan State and Ferris State at 6. It so happens that the two best teams in the field play each other in that first game, which makes the championship the next night a lot less interesting.
Florida College Classic in Estero, Fla.
This one is Miami's to lose, as they face a decent Notre Dame club at 4:05 p.m. before watching Cornell beat the hell out of Lake Superior State at 7:30. A Miami/Cornell showdown in the final on Monday is all but guaranteed.
Catamount Cup in Burlington, Vt.
Here's a tournament where the two best teams are guaranteed play each other, although this isn't really a tournament a tournament. You just play who's scheduled and then the team with the best goal differential gets a trophy. It's stupid. Anyway, in the only good game of the weekend, which happens Monday, Vermont and Providence face off. The day before, Providence will kill UMass, and Vermont will kill Air Force, and we'll learn nothing. UMass and Air Force play each other in what will undoubtedly be the most meaningless game of the weekend by far.
Monday and Tuesday
Three Rivers Classic in Pittsburgh
Robert Morris's annual tournament will feature some decent but not great teams. Colgate and Western Michigan play at 4:30 at Consol Energy Center, while the host Colonials will take on Penn State in the nightcap at 7:35. The title game is the next day.
Then next week: A bunch more tournaments!
A somewhat arbitrary ranking of teams which are pretty good in my opinion only (and just for right now but maybe for a little longer too?)
Boston University (idle)
North Dakota (idle)
Minnesota State (idle)
Minnesota (idle)
UMass Lowell (idle)
Harvard (idle)
Miami (idle)
Denver (idle)
Minnesota Duluth (idle)
Vermont (idle)
Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.
