Remaining Semifinal Outcomes

With only one series still outstanding before Lake Placid begins, only two possibilities remain for how the semis look next weekend.

BOHICA

We got two up close and personal examples of Rule 83.5 this past weekend in Troy. One was an exercise in how to apply it. The other was an exercise in how to royally screw things up in ways only the average ECAC referee can.

This is known around these parts as the "Second Union Rule" or the "National Union Rule," as it was adopted following the Union-Michigan State game in the 2012 national tournament where a goal for the Spartans was waved off because Union's Josh Jooris, apparently intentionally according to the NCAA, lifted the net off its moorings just before the puck went in (the "First Union Rule" or the "ECAC Union Rule" provides for all 12 ECAC teams making the post-season tournament).

The rule was redefined as such in the summer of 2012:

83.5 Goal Cage Dislodged - In the event that the goal post is displaced, either deliberately or accidentally, by a defending player, prior to the puck crossing the goal line between the normal position of the goalposts, the Referee may award a goal. 

In order to award a goal in this situation, the goal post must have been displaced by the actions of a defending player, the puck must have been shot (or the player must be in position to shoot) at the goal prior to the goal post being displaced, and it must be determined that the puck would have entered the net between the normal position of the goal posts. 

When the goal post has been displaced deliberately by the defending team when their goalkeeper has been removed for an extra attacker thereby preventing an impending goal by the attacking team, the Referee shall award a goal to the attacking team. 

The goal frame is considered to be displaced if either or both goal pegs are no longer in their respective holes in the ice, or the net has come completely off one or both pegs, prior to or as the puck enters the goal. This rule also applies to other types of net anchoring systems.

So there are a few elements to examine here.

First, there's a defined difference between "may award a goal" and "shall award a goal." The referee is given leeway to award a goal but is not required to when this happens with the goaltender in the net. If it's an empty net, he's required.

This is pretty standard, it allows the referees to use judgment when it pertains to the other elements that we're about to discuss.

In order for the goal to be awarded, three things have to be true. First, the goal has to have been dislodged by the actions of a defending player. This would include a defending player pushing an attacking player into the net - the reverse would be cause for disallowing a goal. Second, the puck must have been already shot, or the shooting player must already be in position to shoot, when the net is dislodged. Third, the puck must be determined to have crossed the line where it would have counted had the net been in the proper position.

Let's examine this first in the Princeton game, where a Princeton goal was disallowed.

With RPI leading 1-0, Princeton's Ryan Siiro took a shot toward the RPI cage from the top of the right faceoff circle that was saved by Jason Kasdorf, the rebound falling just to his right. Princeton's Ben Foster worked it free and came around behind the net to the left side.

Foster beat out Jimmy DeVito to grab the rebound, but Craig Bokenfohr and Phil Hampton skated into the area to try and help out - Bokenfohr into the mix with Foster and DeVito, Hampton into the crease. Princeton freshman Eric Robinson arrived late to the party and ultimately checked Hampton into the cage, knocking it loose.

At this point, Foster had the puck to the left of the cage. He passed it to Siiro, who moved into the slot, and Siiro one-timed it into the cage, which was off both of its moorings at that point.

This goal was rightfully disallowed because the circumstances met only one of the three criteria for it to be upheld. Siiro's shot did go where the net would have been, but it was the actions of an attacking player - Robinson checking Hampton - that dislodged the net, and the shot was not imminent when the net was dislodged - Foster had the puck behind the cage and passed it in front only after the net came loose.

Referee CJ Hanafin got this one right from start to finish. He did the right thing by awarding a goal on the ice, then reviewing the play. Under Rule 83.5, this is not a goal, so he disallowed it. For anyone who might still be on the fence, Princeton head coach Ron Fogarty agreed after the game after reviewing video that the goal should not have been awarded. (We like Hanafin a lot because he's an Engineer. Some of us here were crestfallen when we heard he'd become an ECAC referee, but he seems to be raising the bar. He's done well so far and he's been fair.)

Compare this with the disallowed RPI goal the next night against Quinnipiac.

On the power play and with RPI down 2-1, Mike Prapavessis digs the puck out of the corner to the left of the net. He brings it up and around through the faceoff circle and the slot, waiting for his opportunity to catch QU goaltender Michael Gartieg off balance. He gets it when defenseman Connor Clifton, also trying to defend against Prapavessis, falls to a knee and into Gartieg. Prapavessis takes his shot and rings it off the post, the rebound coming straight back out.

Meanwhile, once Clifton and Gartieg collide, QU forward Matthew Peca, standing at the top of the crease, makes a bee-line for the net, sliding into the right-side post to dislodge the net shortly after Prapavessis' shot rebounded off the post. Drew Melanson, now standing over Clifton, does not move with the puck coming directly back to him, and simply puts the puck into the open but dislodged cage.

The goal was awarded on the ice, and it met all three requirements. First, the cage was dislodged by the actions of Peca, who skated straight into the cage unaided. Second, while the shot by Melanson did not come before the cage was dislodged, the rebound from Prapavessis' shot (which happened and hit the post before the dislodging) was coming straight to him already and he did not have to move to take the shot, which occurred a split-second after the net was dislodged. Third, the puck clearly enters the net in a way that it would have been in had the goal been in the proper place.

And despite all of this, the tying goal was waved off. In a search for justification, there are some very, very thin arguments that can be made. All four were posited by our researchers in an attempt to find something that would rationalize the goal being waved off.

1. Melanson is near Clifton just before the latter takes out his own netminder, but he doesn't appear to do anything that would cause Clifton to go down. He does push through Clifton, who is impeding his progress forward, in the bottom of the slot with his stick on the ice. If he'd shoved Clifton into Gartieg, that could be goaltender interference (which was never suggested anyway), but it doesn't seem to be there.

2. While Peca is moving to the net, Melanson's stick is in his vicinity, but it's tough to make even a cursory argument that Melanson did anything to put Peca into the net. It's possible, even likely that Peca was only trying to get himself in a position to defend Prapavessis' initial shot, but he's honestly lucky that he wasn't called for delay of game.

3. One could try to make the argument that Melanson wasn't yet preparing to take his shot at the moment the puck was dislodged, but the shot, based on the trajectory and speed of the rebound and the fact that Clifton and Gartieg were taken out of the play, was clearly imminent at the time the net was dislodged by any reasonable definition of the word.

4. The last question is whether the whistle had blown, or whether there was "intent to blow." That's rendered fairly irrelevant by the fact that the referee behind the net never came close to blowing the play dead (he had his arms at his sides the whole time), and in fact signaled a goal on the ice.

Ultimately, this is exactly the type of situation that the Second Union Rule was intended to fix, and the referees blew it. Compounding the error, it was called a goal on the ice, and then waved off without clear evidence to support a reversal.

By the way, this was not the first time last weekend that Quinnipiac got away with one on a bad call by the referees that directly impacted the scoreline. The previous night in Schenectady, the Bobcats notched the game winner on a play in which the goal-scorer was offsides.

It's not possible to tell with 100% surety from this camera angle because of people standing on the Union bench, but unless the 5'7" Travis St. Denis (bottom of the screen) has abnormally sized legs, he's totally offside right before he takes a pass he ends up putting in the net for the winning goal.

No coach is going to get overly upset over calls that are blown this badly, because most teams still have other opportunities to rectify the problem themselves. Bad calls are part of the game and referees are human, but you'd think they'd at least get the call right with the opportunity to review the play. It's true that the Engineers had other chances before and after this call to get a goal and they didn't. This goal being disallowed wasn't the reason they lost on Saturday. Who knows if QU then goes down and scores off the ensuing faceoff or something. But there's no team that wouldn't prefer to be in a 2-2 situation than down 2-1, and the missed call changes things for the worse for the team being dealt a raw deal. Union in particular had less than a minute to make up for the bad call that put them behind.

So now the league has a team in first place, half of whose wins were assisted by the men in stripes. Are we happy?

Our Ballot - Men's Preseason ECAC

We've got a vote in the ECAC media poll. Every year we release our ballot so people can know what our mindset is on things. This year was far more belabored than most - lots of times, there's a pretty clear-cut #1, a pretty clear-cut #2, and then a murky middle. True for 2014-15, but the murky middle has rarely been this murky.

1. Colgate - When it comes to laying out who the top team in the league is, the driving force has got to be deciding which team has the fewest question marks coming into the season. That has to be the Raiders. They've got an outstanding young netminder in Charlie Finn, a talented core of juniors on offense, excellent leadership, and a veteran coaching staff. This is a team primed for great things this season not just in the ECAC, but as a dark horse contender to make the rest of the college hockey world continue to pay attention to the league.

2. Quinnipiac - We're starting to get to the point where Rand Pecknold and company are just reloading every year instead of rebuilding, and once again, the Bobcats continue to find ways to finish their season on a higher level than most thought possible at the beginning of years. The young talent that came in last year following the Q's trip to the Frozen Four supplemented the returning veterans nicely, and they've got another good group of youngsters joining the fray. Michael Gartieg is legit, so as long as the blueliners do an acceptable job in front of him, this is a team that still has very few flaws and could only get better in the coming years.

3. Union - The first team to sweep the ECAC regular season, ECAC tournament, and national championship since RPI in 1985, the Dutchmen still have plenty in the tank. While some would demand that Union has top be at the top until proven otherwise because of their accolades last season, we'd prefer to look at what they've got instead of what they had. That said, Union's still full of outstanding talent and will be pretty good on both sides of the puck still, so they aren't sliding very far.

4. Cornell - In some ways, this is just a "you can't ever pick Cornell too low" selection, but there's a good reason for that meme in the first place. The Big Red do need to get more out of their offense than they've produced in the last couple of seasons, but no matter who the personnel are in Ithaca, you can rest assured that the defense, 14 times out of 15, is going to get the job done - and they do have the talent on their roster to get that much needed offensive bump.

5. RPI - Is this optimistic? It might be. It could also be pessimistic from our perspective. Getting Jason Kasdorf back in the net is likely to be huge for the Engineers, and his presence during the 2012-13 season had a "rising tide raises all ships" effect on other parts of RPI's game. The Engineers should have a very solid defense, and if that rising tide comes back this year to help out the questionable but capable offense. That said, this is also a team capable of sliding quickly to the very bottom if they don't establish a good rhythm.

6. Dartmouth - The Big Green should be at least better than their miserable finish in last year's ECAC table, especially given the glimpse of excellence they displayed from February on to becoming the only road team to win a league playoff series. They lose practically nobody from a team that began hitting its stride late, but the real question is whether Dartmouth was showing massive improvement or simply was getting on a roll at the right time. The answer's probably somewhere in the middle, which helps lead them to the middle of the league on this ballot.

7. Yale - This feels far too low, and yet I can't find a better place to put the Bulldogs. Bearing in mind that the separation between three or four spots in the final standings is often razor-thin, I'm putting Yale 7th in part because their season last year was almost as frustratingly difficult as the Engineers' campaign. Many of their very best players are now on the underclass side of things after graduating some of the most important elements of their national championship run, and it's hard to put a lot of stock in those guys carrying the team to bigger and better things without a known rock between the pipes.

8. Clarkson - The Knights are another team that has the potential to do a lot of damage, and they're very comparable in a lot of ways to the Engineers - a good, solid defensive core, but a definite need to find scoring somewhere. They're here in part because I'm not as big on Clarkson's goaltending duo as I am with RPI's, and the Engineers have more potential answers to the offensive question than the Golden Knights have. But much like RPI, this is a team that has the ability to finish a lot higher in the standings if they can get themselves into a groove and stay there, especially if they can spread the scoring out among a number of players.

9. Harvard - Hard to place a team that has this much talent this far down the chart, but the startling lack of consistency across the board with the Crimson for the last couple of seasons makes it difficult to trust Harvard. Based on the recent track record alone, this could well be a team that should be even lower than this, and this ranking is more of a belief in the individual abilities of players like Jimmy Vesey, Alexander Kerfoot, and Kyle Criscuolo, but until they get themselves situated like a team out on the ice, their climb up the rankings from their recent dismal showings isn't going far.

10. Brown - Taking a "show me first" attitude with Brown. It's hard to find a single scoring line in the league that compares with Lorito-Naclerio-Lappin, but outside of that trio, the Bears haven't proven that they have the chops to run with the rest of the league. I maintain that this team is just one or two players away from being among the very best in the entire ECAC, and those players may well be coming in the near future, but for now Brown still looks too one-dimensional to play a major role in the way things will shake out this season.

11. St. Lawrence - This seems to have all the makings of a "start over" season for the Saints. A lot of good young players but growing pains definitely appear to be in the offing. It's very difficult for any team to lose the core of its scoring prowess, but the Saints had pretty much everything that was good about last year's team leave, and everything that was bad about last year's team return. They've got a new goaltender and there's almost no way their offense can be as strong as it was with the Carey brothers.

12. Princeton - Buh. There's really not much of anything to like here. The sole source of optimism seems to be the addition of Ron Fogarty behind the bench, but much as with Brown, the one bright light, by itself, isn't enough to warrant anything higher than the bottom third of the league, and in the Tigers' case, the absolute cellar. Some teams do a lot of things well, and some teams even have one or two bright spots. There really isn't that with Princeton - what little they had going for them last season (basically, Andrew Calof) is gone, and it's not a sure thing that what they have is ready for prime time.

We were asked to select an all-ECAC team as well, and these were my picks:

G - Jason Kasdorf, RPI: Go ahead. Call it a homer pick. Rant and rave about how last year's top goaltender is back. I don't care. Jason Kasdorf, in his freshman year, played better and lifted his team more than any returning netminder in the league from last season. He doesn't lose that status because he got hurt last season - he only loses it if someone rises to a level above him.

D - Gavin Bayreuther, SLU: If I could take any one player from around the league and put him on the Engineers, it would be Bayreuther. His season last year was quite an eye-opener, coming practically from out of nowhere, playing well enough right out of the gate to almost earn a spot on the US World Junior team. Now, in only his sophomore season, he's already a player opposing teams have to account for and plan around on both sides of the ice.

D - Spiro Goulakos, COL: There are few players in the league who can match the defensive ability on the ice that Goulakos has with the leadership he also brings to the table. As the captain for a second season on this year's best team in the league (on paper, anyway), he's an important asset for the Raiders defensively, giving the team's very talented offense the ability to perform with the knowledge that he's back there on patrol. That he does all this after beating lymphoma is even more impressive.

F - Matthew Peca, QU: The league's top returning scorer has to be a part of this list practically by default, but in Peca's case he's been one of the driving elements of the Bobcats offense since he arrived in Hamden, and is one of the last remaining stars from Quinnipiac's Frozen Four team two seasons ago. With the departure of the Carey brothers, he's officially the league's most dangerous attacker.

F - Daniel Ciampini, UC: Here's a guy who has frequently gotten lost in the mix in terms of accolades at Union these last couple of years, but he's always been more than just a cog in the machine. Playing a vital role in the Dutchmen's offensive prowess basically since he arrived in Schenectady, he's now the man offensively and he's a big reason why Union will still be one of the league's best teams.

F - Matt Lorito, BRN: Possibly the best overall forward in the league, and he gets overlooked by a lot of people because the team around him is relatively weak, making his numbers less gaudy than they could be because the opposition can get away with devoting a significant chunk of its defensive strategy to keeping him out of the net.

Even though there wasn't a second team, here's a second team, because these are all guys who warrant first-team looks as well (and some of them were on the actual first-team).

G - Colin Stevens, UC
D - Joakim Ryan, COR
D - Gus Young, YU
F - Sam Anas, QU
F - Eric Neiley, DC
F - Tylor Spink, COL

ECAC Power Rankings - November 2013

As has been mentioned about a million times now, we typically do power rankings at the end of November, December, and January as benchmarks for where teams in the ECAC are during points of the season where it can be fairly accurately determined for all 12 teams (October being out due to a lack of Ivy participation, February out because the standings are all that matters). So here's November's entry. Bottom line? The league's pretty deep.

1. Quinnipiac (13-2-2, 6-1-1 ECAC): Not much to complain about in Hamden for sure. We said before the season started that the Bobcats' loss of a whole host of seniors from last year wasn't likely to be a big problem, and that's pretty much been the case. Quinnipiac has scored more than two goals for every goal they've allowed this season, which more than gets the job done. That fresh, new blue line look? Let's just say it's working. Sophomore Michael Gartieg is 2nd in the nation with a 1.64 GAA, but only 32nd in save percentage at .915. When the top defense in the country is rolling a goaltender ranked that far down in save percentage, you know the defensemen are more than doing their job.

2. Yale (6-2-2, 3-1-2): The questions about Yale's ability to keep the puck out of the net may not have been 100% solved, but it does look like they believe they have an answer in Alex Lyon. The freshman has been between the pipes for each of the Bulldogs' last four games, which have seen Yale go 3-1 while never giving up three goals in a game. Prior to that defensive stand, and during most of it as well, the puck hasn't had much of a problem hitting the back of the net offensively, which is something that'll always give a team a fighting chance even if the defense isn't fully stable.

3. Cornell (7-4-1, 4-3-1): Almost put the Big Red second by virtue of their 2-1 home victory over the Bulldogs, but regardless, this team has bounced back nicely from their early ECAC hiccups. The Big Red had won four straight contests before falling to Boston University on Thanksgiving weekend, during which time they showed the ability to score goals while displaying some flexibility in net as freshman Mitch Gillam got his first start against Niagara, picking up the victory (and, incidentally, scoring a goal). Their October road sweep at Nebraska-Omaha is looking much better now as well, given the hot streak UNO has embarked upon since.

4. Union (8-3-2, 5-1-0): After a shaky start, the Dutchmen have re-established themselves at just about the right time to put themselves in position to take another run at the top spot in the ECAC that eluded them during the regular season last year. A 7-1 record since the start of November will do that, especially since so many of those games were ECAC contests. The goaltending still isn't where the Dutchmen have been used to over the last three or four years, but the defense in front of that goaltending has been superb and the offense is getting the job done, with a huge assist from Shayne Gostisbehere back at the point, who has proven to be a danger to score every time he's touching the puck.

5. Clarkson (10-3-1, 4-2-0): If there's one knock on Clarkson's torrid start to the season, it's the quality of opponent that they've been taking down - KRACH ranks their schedule thus far as the easiest among the teams in the top half of the nation in that ranking nationally. Indeed, the Knights' only true quality win thus far was a 3-2 home victory over Cornell. Two other games against top opponents were losses to New Hampshire and Yale. They'll have the opportunity to prove that their solid defense against weaker opponents is no slouch with some of the games they have coming up - notably, St. Lawrence's dynamite attack and three straight games (yes, that's a thing somehow) against UMass-Lowell.

6. Colgate (7-7-1, 5-3-0): If you saw the Raiders in their loss to RPI, you're probably wondering just how it is that they're in the top half of the league's power ranking. Well, consider the Raiders to be the anti-Knights, because their schedule so far is the 4th most difficult in the entire nation according to KRACH. They've played Ferris State and St. Cloud State twice each, Quinnipiac, and Yale, and yet they still have a .500 record. That doesn't happen by accident. The defense could be better, but Colgate's super sophomores are proving that they do have the ability to carry this team at least somewhat, and the body of work suggests that their stinker against RPI was an exception and not the rule.

7. St. Lawrence (8-6-2, 2-2-2): We warned you not to read into the question marks surrounding Greg Carey's ability without Kyle Flanagan. He's doing just fine, thank you very much, at 1.81 points per game, tops in the country. The Saints may just be one of the most exciting teams in the conference, if only because they've engaged in wild shootouts with almost everyone. As dynamic and strong as the Carey line has been (Greg and his brother Matt, usually paired with junior Chris Martin), the SLU defense has frequently left a lot to be desired. They've limited opponents to less than three goals only five times this season, and the first three were in the first three games (Maine twice, and Ferris State). That contributes to the four losses the team has suffered when notching three of their own.

8. RPI (7-5-2, 2-3-2): Although they boast a strong offense and the nation's leading goal scorer in Ryan Haggerty, the Engineers have played a number of games, especially recently, that were huge let downs. It's hard to say exactly how much of an impact the loss of Jason Kasdorf has played in the Engineers' inability thus far to live up to expectations since Scott Diebold hasn't been terrible, but of late his numbers have dropped dramatically. Many of RPI's wins are against some pretty low-end competition, and some of the losses are against supposedly lesser teams as well (3 of Harvard's 5 points in 8 ECAC games are from the Engineers, for instance). The "three goal" rule has been almost completely hard and fast for the Engineers - 7-1-2 when they score three or more, 0-4-2 when they give up three or more.

9. Harvard (4-6-1, 2-5-1): The Crimson looked like they were pretty game for a decent season after opening up with three excellent showings in their first three games, one against Bentley and two against RPI. Other than a 6-3 victory over New Hampshire, it's been nothing but pain since then, including becoming the first casualty of a Dartmouth team that was struggling something fierce on defense. That one win over an improving Wildcat team gives Harvard the edge over Brown, who plays the Crimson on Friday, but it's a razor-thin difference. Senior netminder Raphael Girard has top 10 numbers nationally in GAA and save percentage, but none of that means anything when Harvard's young, talented forwards just aren't putting the puck in the net enough to produce results. The one goal last Saturday against a Dartmouth team that had managed to keep the opposition under five on only three previous occasions (each time giving up three) is hopefully the bottom if you're a Harvard fan.

10. Brown (3-6-1, 1-4-1): There's little denying that the Lorito-Naclerio-Lappin line has been very good for the Bears early on this season. Unfortunately, defense and special teams have not been able to back up that production, and neither has most of the rest of the offense. The Bears have given up at least three goals in every single game they've played this season, and as time goes by, more and more teams seem to be placing their emphasis on stopping that top line of the Bears and forcing the team to diversify their attack, which hasn't really come to fruition yet. Aside from Brown's upset victory over Yale that got their season underway in New Jersey on October 25, their only two victories are against two other Ivy League teams going through some extreme struggles right now, Princeton and Dartmouth.

11. Princeton (3-10-0, 2-6-0): All is not well if you're an Ivy League team and you're the first one in the conference to 10 losses on the year, although Princeton with their January exam schedule forcing games into November can frequently be a solid candidate for such an honor if it is to be had by an Ivy. Nonetheless, the Tigers have been genuinely bad for just about the entire season so far, led by a defense that ranks 55th out of 59 teams in the country, and an offense that ranks 52nd. They're in the bottom half of the country on the power play and penalty killing. Two of their three victories are against Dartmouth, the only team in the league hurting worse right now. Injuries are a big part of the problem, with star player Andrew Calof out until probably just before New Year's, but there's very little going right anywhere for the Tigers right now.

12. Dartmouth (1-8-0, 1-6-0): Ick. We might have crowed about having predicted Quinnipiac's strong play and Greg Carey's beastly numbers, but we may have screwed up royally with Dartmouth. After nine games, the Big Green have just 22 goals, just 7 more than RPI's Ryan Haggerty has alone. 47th nationally in offense and just two from the bottom in defense, neither side of the puck is functioning right now. That makes it all the more maddening that the Big Green somehow boasts the 2nd best power play in the entire country and has just one win in 9 games to show for it. Pretty much all facets Dartmouth's game have, in the past, shown themselves to be better than they've been so far, but other than on the man advantage (which accounts for 10 of those 22 goals), it's been an awful lot of heartache so far in Hanover.

A Quick ECAC Snapshot

We do power rankings for the ECAC at the end of November, December, and January, but we skip February (because the ECAC standings suffice at that point) and October (because the Ivy League doesn't have enough games played yet to really know much about them), but with each team in the league now with games under their belt, here are some early observations.

Brown: Looking perhaps slightly better than expected, but not by a lot. There was little doubt that the Bears had some offensive ability, especially in the Lorito-Naclerio-Lappin line, and that trio absolutely victimized Yale and Dartmouth in the Liberty Invitational in Newark. They combined for 6 goals and 9 assists on the weekend. The rest of the forwards had just 2 goals - an unassisted tally against Yale and an empty-netter against Dartmouth. The L-N-L line has the early edge as the best single forward line in the league, but they need more help from the other three lines. Early returns on goaltending from last weekend are mixed, as Brown has gone 1-1-1 in their last 3 games despite giving up 3 or more in each of those contests.

Clarkson: Looking much better than expected. The offense certainly has gotten itself out of the funk it ended last year with, and is close to where we thought it would be heading into the season, maybe a little better. What is really eye-opening with the Knights is the defense, which appeared somewhat wanting. We said Greg Lewis needed to be far better than he was last season and he absolutely has been. As a bonus, freshman Steve Perry, who's splitting time with Lewis, has been just as good. Whether they are potentially ready to reach elite level is yet to be seen, their two games thus far against nationally ranked opponents (UNH and Yale) resulted in their only two losses.

Colgate: Defense has been up and down as we thought it would. Outside of a three-game stretch against Ferris State, RIT, and Bowling Green in which the Raiders gave up just 2 goals (2-0-1) and last night's win over Princeton, they've given up 29 goals and scored only 11 of their own in five losses, including a 7-22 deficit in their four-game losing streak stopped last night. The super sophomores on this squad who were the fab freshmen last year are still basically carrying the all of the weight themselves offensively, and that can't hold. 

Cornell: The Big Red are certainly already better than they were for much of last season, but based on their home loss to Quinnipiac they may at least still be a step behind the very elite of the league. The defense still isn't quite as strong as we're used to seeing from a Cornell team, but at the same time it hasn't been awful and the offense has been strong enough to make them dangerous against most of the teams they've played this season. Their weekend in the Capital District next weekend is going to be very telling about exactly what we can expect from this team, as they have a tough task ahead of them on the road with RPI and Union. Other than Quinnipiac, the Big Red's schedule thus far has been only fair.

Dartmouth: We thought the Big Green would be better than most were giving them credit for, but Dartmouth's first four games this season have been absolutely putrid, beyond anything even modest observers thought they'd be doing. They gave up 14 goals to Union and RPI, which gives them 19 in their last three games, overall a national worst 5.50 GAA as a team. Offensively, things aren't horrid, but it would have to be lighting the world on fire the way they've been unable to keep the puck out of their own net. At this point, it's hard to find a team that's off to a worse start in the league.

Harvard: We thought Harvard would be much better than some of the conventional wisdom, especially since the rest of the media seemed to think the Crimson were going to be closer to their performance last year. Early on, it's looking like they're at least certainly better than last, year, especially if their season series win over the Engineers is any method of judging. We've only got games against three teams to judge by, and Harvard did lose to Union last night for their first loss of the season, but not before they took a 2-0 lead on the Dutchmen at one point.

Princeton: A tough season was expected for the Tigers and a tough season seems to be in the cards based on the early returns. Just 8 goals in 4 games has been only enough to pick up a single win, against the only team in the league struggling even more than the Tigers, which is Dartmouth. Princeton will need a strong offense in order to overcome defensive deficiencies, and as we expected they just can't get enough out of Andrew Calof, who has been stifled in his first four games and has yet to score a goal. They have six straight home games coming up to try to get something done, but they have some strong offenses coming in with Yale, Brown, and UMass-Lowell that will make things difficult on a taxed-enough already defense.

Quinnipiac: Heard from lots of people that Quinnipiac "lost too many seniors." Our response was "so what?" Advantage, WaP. After an opening game loss at Alaska-Anchorage (which is a long trip if you didn't know), the Bobcats have rattled off 8 straight wins and are now 8-1-0. That stretch includes a home-and-home sweep of a highly-touted Lowell team that got off to a slow start and three wins over Atlantic Hockey competition, but any concerns about the Q's offense lacking robustness after the losses to graduation or their all new defense being problematic have pretty much faded entirely. In fact, the defense is currently tops in the entire nation with a GAA of 1.56. They're very well positioned to contend for a second consecutive Cleary Cup.

RPI: There are only two teams in the entire country that are in the Top 10 nationally in both offense and defense. One of them is Minnesota, the #1 team in the country. The other? The Engineers. (Quinnipiac is close - their #1 defense is supplemented by the #11 offense). The Harvard games notwithstanding, RPI has shown themselves to be very formidable in practically every aspect of the game, and perhaps most importantly have shown that they do not have to be reliant on the health of their top goaltender, given the excellent play of Scott Diebold in relief of the injured Jason Kasdorf - Diebold's numbers in both GAA and save percentage are in the Top 5 in the nation. So far, not much to dissuade the early optimism.

St. Lawrence: The Saints are about where we thought they'd be. Offense? They've got it, and the Carey brothers are the ones leading the way. SLU has shown an ability to score in bunches, but defensively they are going to have to get their house in order in order to be shooting for a first-round bye the way they were late last season. The team's at 4-2-2, but they're giving up more than three goals a game, that magic number that is going to spell problems if it continues at length. Unlike some other teams struggling defensively, this is a team with the depth, guts, and experience to still have a shot in games where the defense struggles, but they'll have a hard time cracking into the elite level without some more D.

Union: The Dutchmen have been night and day depending on the availability of their top netminder, Colin Stevens. With Stevens in net, Union has been able to get enough defense to be competitive, and in fact, they're 2-0-1 in games he's started (including the opening game against Bowling Green, in which he got hurt early). Without Stevens starting, they're 1-2-1, the one tie coming against UConn. Union's clearly still got the offense to make things easier on the team even when the defense isn't as staunch as they'd like it to be, but it's fairly clear that they do need their starter in net to ease the burden of that offense.

Yale: The defending champs actually resemble Brown in a lot of ways, perhaps the only real difference being that the offense is a lot deeper and more dangerous overall rather than having the danger packed into a single line. That fact has kept the Bulldogs in their games, and has them at 2-1-1 despite the fact that they still have not found an exact heir apparent to Jeff Malcolm in net. As with Union, that strong offense will be enough to keep them in most of their games, but they're not going to want to have to get into a track meet with other teams that have strong offenses with the ability to at least keep Yale's high-flyers in check - see Quinnipiac and RPI especially.

Leaders Among Women

As the women wrap up a successful exhibition campaign with a combined 14-0 output against the Ottawa Jr. Senators and Brock University, let's take a quick look at the top returning players in the ECAC.

The list is more difficult to put together this year since it's an Olympic season, which means there are a handful of players with remaining eligibility who won't be with their teams this year. Four players in particular are gone in the ECAC who would have appeared in at least one category below - Cornell's Brianne Jenner, with Canada, Harvard's Lyndsey Fry and Michelle Picard with the USA (along with their coach, Katey Stone), and Quinnipiac's Erica Uden Johansson with Sweden. Additionally, St. Lawrence defenseman Amanda Boulier will miss the season with a medical redshirt.

RPI's top players are added where they are not already among the top 10 in each category.

Points

Kelly Babstock, Quinnipiac - 35

Jillian Saulnier, Cornell - 29

Jamie Lee Rattray, Clarkson - 25

Nicole Kosta, Quinnipiac - 23

Carly Mercer, Clarkson - 22

Erin Ambrose, Clarkson - 19

Rylee Smith, St. Lawrence - 18

Hayleigh Cudmore, Cornell - 17

Laura Stacey, Dartmouth - 16

Abbey McRae, St. Lawrence - 16

(Alexa Gruschow, RPI - 14)

Goals

Kelly Babstock, Quinnipiac - 17

Carly Mercer, Clarkson - 12

Abbey McRae, St. Lawrence - 11

Jessica Campbell, Cornell - 10

Kalley Armstrong, Harvard - 9

Jamie Lee Rattray, Clarkson - 9

Brittany Styner, Clarkson - 8

Nicole Kosta, Quinnipiac - 8

Nicole Connery, Quinnpiac - 8

Jillian Saulnier, Cornell - 7

(Toni Sanders, RPI - 6)

Assists

Jillian Saulnier, Cornell - 22

Kelly Babstock, Quinnipiac - 18

Erin Ambrose, Clarkson - 16

Jamie Lee Rattray, Clarkson - 16

Nicole Kosta, Quinnipiac - 15

Hayleigh Cudmore, Cornell - 14

Rylee Smith, St. Lawrence - 12

Sarah Edney, Harvard - 12

Laura Stacey, Dartmouth - 11

Carly Mercer, Clarkson - 10

(Alexa Gruschow/Jenn Godin, RPI - 8)

Power Play Points

Erin Ambrose, Clarkson - 11

Jamie Lee Rattray, Clarkson - 11

Tara Tomimoto, Yale - 9

Carly Mercer, Clarkson - 8

Laura Stacey, Dartmouth - 7

Taylor Woods, Cornell - 7

Jamie Haddad, Yale - 7

Nicole Kosta, Quinnipiac - 7

Katie Case, Colgate - 7

Rylee Smith, St. Lawrence - 6

(Alexa Gruschow, RPI - 5)

Power Play Goals

Jamie Haddad, Yale - 5

Taylor Woods, Cornell - 4

Carly Mercer, Clarkson - 4

Jamie Lee Rattray, Clarkson - 4

Ailish Forfar, Dartmouth - 3

Rylee Smith, St. Lawrence - 3

Erin Ambrose, Clarkson - 3

Jillian Saulnier, Cornell - 3

Laura Stacey, Dartmouth - 3

Lindsey Allen, Dartmouth - 3

(Toni Sanders, RPI - 2)

Defenseman Scoring

Erin Ambrose, Clarkson - 19

Hayleigh Cudmore, Cornell - 17

Sarah Edney, Harvard - 15

Kate Martini, Yale - 12

Tara Tomimoto, Yale - 12

Alyssa Gagliardi, Cornell - 11

Jenn Godin, RPI - 11

Megan Wickens, Colgate - 11

Cassandra Poudrier, Cornell - 10

Mel Desrochers, St. Lawrence - 9

Goals Against Average

Lauren Slebodnick, Cornell - 1.04

Erica Howe, Clarkson - 1.23

Emerance Maschmeyer, Harvard - 1.54

Lindsay Holdcroft, Dartmouth - 1.97

Aubree Moore, Brown - 2.18

Carmen MacDonald, St. Lawrence - 2.24

Kelly O'Brien, RPI - 2.35

Ashlynne Rando, Colgate - 2.65

Jaimie Leonoff, Yale - 2.67

Shenae Lundberg, Union - 3.15

Save Percentage

Erica Howe, Clarkson - .957

Lauren Slebodnick, Cornell - .947

Jaimie Leonoff, Yale - .927

Aubree Moore, Brown - .925

Emerance Maschmeyer, Harvard - .920

Carmen MacDonald, St. Lawrence - .920

Lindsay Holdcroft, Dartmouth - .917

Ashlynne Rando, Colgate - .910

Kelly O'Brien, RPI - .907

Kimberly Newell, Princeton - .907

Returning Goals Per Game (difference from last year)

Clarkson - 2.36 (-0.41)

Cornell - 2.23 (-1.59)

Quinnipiac - 2.00 (-1.00)

St. Lawrence - 1.82 (-1.13)

RPI - 1.50 (-0.68)

Princeton - 1.36 (-0.73)

Yale - 1.23 (-0.36)

Dartmouth - 1.14 (-1.50)

Harvard - 1.12 (-2.38)

Colgate - 1.09 (-0.73)

Brown - 0.95 (-0.46)

Union - 0.55 (-0.13)

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We'll round out the stat pack with a look at the national leaders, and how RPI's top returning players stack up against them. The following would-be stat leaders are gone for Olympic duty.

Boston College: Alex Carpenter (USA)

Boston University: Marie-Philip Poulin (Canada)

Minnesota: Amanda Kessel (USA)

Northeastern: Kendall Coyne (USA)

ECAC players are bolded. Players on RPI's schedule this year are in italics.

Points per game

Hannah Brandt, Minnesota - 2.00

Christine Bestland, Mercyhurst - 1.95

Haley Skarupa, Boston College - 1.61

Kelly Babstock, Quinnipiac - 1.53

Jamie Lee Rattray, Clarkson - 1.44

Jillian Saulnier, Cornell - 1.43

Emily Field, Boston College - 1.22

Sarah Lefort, Boston University - 1.16

Jenna Dingeldein, Mercyhurst - 1.16

Nicole Kosta, Quinnipiac - 1.15

(Alexa Gruschow, RPI - 0.75)

Goals per game

Hannah Brandt, Minnesota - 0.80

Kelly Babstock, Quinnipiac - 0.78

Christine Bestland, Mercyhurst - 0.76

Haley Skarupa, Boston College - 0.73

Sarah Lefort, Boston University - 0.65

Jamie Lee Rattray, Clarkson - 0.61

Rebecca Vint, Robert Morris - 0.52

Madison Packer, Wisconsin - 0.51

Emily Janiga, Mercyhurst - 0.51

Meghan Dufault, North Dakota - 0.50

(Alexa Gruschow, RPI - 0.36)

Assists per game

Hannah Brandt, Minnesota - 1.49

Christine Bestland, Mercyhurst - 1.19

Jillian Saulnier, Cornell - 1.10

Erin Ambrose, Clarkson - 0.88

Haley Skarupa, Boston College - 0.88

Jamie Lee Rattray, Clarkson - 0.83

Nicole Kosta, Quinnipiac - 0.82

Emily Field, Boston College - 0.78

Jenna Dingeldein, Mercyhurst - 0.76

Kelly Babstock, Quinnipiac - 0.75

(Alexa Gruschow, RPI - 0.39)

Power play goals

Madison Packer, Wisconsin - 10

Christine Bestland, Mercyhurst - 10

Hannah Brandt, Minnesota - 10

Michelle Karvinen, North Dakota - 9

Milica McMillen, Minnesota - 8

Jamie Lee Rattray, Clarkson - 8

Emily Janiga, Mercyhurst - 8

Molli Mott, St. Cloud State - 7

Jill Holdcroft, Penn State - 6

Karley Sylvester, Wisconsin - 6

(Alexa Gruschow, RPI - 5)

Points per game (Defensemen)

Erin Ambrose, Clarkson - 1.06

Molly Byrne, Mercyhurst - 0.86

Kari Schmitt, Ohio State - 0.76

Milica McMillen, Minnesota - 0.74

Rachel Ramsey, Minnesota - 0.71

Hayleigh Cudmore, Cornell - 0.71

Brigette Lacquette, Minnesota-Duluth - 0.71

Alexis Crossley, New Hampshire - 0.71

Maggie DiMasi, Northeastern - 0.66

Courtney Burke, Wisconsin - 0.66

(Jenn Godin, RPI - 0.43)

Goals Against Average

Emerance Maschmeyer, Harvard - 1.44

Alex Rigsby, Wisconsin - 1.49

Lauren Slebodnick, Cornell - 1.55

Kallie Billadeau, Syracuse - 1.56

Erica Howe, Clarkson - 1.73

Amanda Makela, Mercyhurst - 2.01

Shelby Amsley-Benzie, North Dakota - 2.08

Lindsay Holdcroft, Dartmouth - 2.11

Carmen MacDonald, St. Lawrence - 2.19

Kerrin Sperry, Boston University - 2.20

(Kelly O'Brien, RPI - 2.48)

Save Percentage

Alex Rigsby, Wisconsin - .943

Kallie Billadeau, Syracuse - .940

Emerance Maschmeyer, Harvard - .935

Erica Howe, Clarkson - .931

Nicole Paniccia, Penn State - .928

Lauren Slebodnick, Cornell - .927

Carmen MacDonald, St. Lawrence - .925

Jaimie Leonoff, Yale - .925

Aubree Moore, Brown - .921

Alexius Schutt, Sacred Heart - .920

(Kelly O'Brien, RPI - .905)

Knowledge and Thoroughness

We're closing in on a week out from our first opportunity to see the men's team in action - next Saturday against St. Mary's - so it's time you armed yourself with a little bit of information. Below are the names you should know for the upcoming ECAC campaign - the top 10 returning players within the conference in each offensive and goaltending category. Figures below represent totals accrued from in-league play only.

Points
Greg Carey, St. Lawrence - 30
Kenny Agostino, Yale - 25
Andrew Calof, Princeton - 25
Jeremy Wick, St. Lawrence - 21
Matt Lorito, Brown - 21
Daniel Carr, Union - 19
Tyler Sikura, Dartmouth - 19
Shayne Gostisbehere, Union - 18
Matt Neal, RPI - 17
Justin Baker, St. Lawrence - 17

Goals
Greg Carey, St. Lawrence - 18
Jeremy Wick, St. Lawrence - 11
Kenny Agostino, Yale - 11
Joe Zarbo, Clarkson - 10
Andrew Calof, Princeton - 10
Jordan Samuels-Thomas, Quinnipiac - 10
Jimmy Vesey, Harvard - 9
Matt Lorito, Brown - 9
Daniel Carr, Union - 9
Mike Zalewski, RPI - 8

Assists
Andrew Calof, Princeton - 15
Justin Baker, St. Lawrence - 15
Shayne Gostisbehere, Union - 15
Kenny Agostino, Yale - 14
Joakim Ryan, Cornell - 13
Tyler Sikura, Dartmouth - 13
Jacob Laliberte, RPI - 12
Matt Neal, RPI - 12
Dennis Robertson, Brown - 12
Matt Lorito, Brown - 12
Greg Carey, St. Lawrence - 12

Power Play Points
Greg Carey, St. Lawrence - 16
Tylor Spink, Colgate - 11
Justin Baker, St. Lawrence - 11
Mat Bodie, Union - 9
Matt Neal, RPI - 9
Jeremy Wick, St. Lawrence - 9
Tyson Spink, Colgate - 9
Ryan Haggerty, RPI - 8
Allan McPherson, Clarkson - 8
Daniel Carr, Union - 8
Kenny Agostino, Yale - 8

Power Play Goals
Greg Carey, St. Lawrence - 9
Jeremy Wick, St. Lawrence - 6
Allan McPherson, Clarkson - 4
Kyle Baun, Colgate - 4
Tylor Spink, Colgate - 4
Jordan Samuels-Thomas, Quinnipiac - 4
Daniel Carr, Union - 4
Spiro Goulakos, Colgate - 3
T.J. Moor, Clarkson - 3
Nick Lappin, Brown - 3
(Ryan Haggerty, RPI - 3)

Short-Handed Points
Andrew Ammon, Princeton - 2
Brock Higgs, RPI - 2
Tyler Sikura, Dartmouth - 2
Andrew Calof, Princeton - 2
Kyle Essery, St. Lawrence - 2

Defenseman Scoring
Shayne Gostisbehere, Union - 18
Justin Baker, St. Lawrence - 17
Joakim Ryan, Cornell - 15
Tommy Fallen, Yale - 13
Dennis Robertson, Brown - 13
Mat Bodie, Union - 11
Paul Geiger, Clarkson - 10
Spiro Goulakos, Colgate - 9
Alec Rush, Princeton - 8
Curtis Leonard, RPI - 8

Goals Against Average
Jason Kasdorf, RPI - 1.39
Cab Morris, Dartmouth - 2.15
Andy Iles, Cornell - 2.31
Spencer Finney, Colgate - 2.75
Raphael Girard, Harvard - 2.80
Charles Grant, Dartmouth - 2.84
Greg Lewis, Clarkson - 2.98
Matt Weninger, St. Lawrence - 3.01
Eric Mihalik, Colgate - 3.05

Save Percentage
Jason Kasdorf, RPI - .945
Andy Iles, Cornell - .917
Cab Morris, Dartmouth - .916
Raphael Girard, Harvard - .916
Matt Weninger, St. Lawrence - .910
Charles Grant, Dartmouth - .909
Eric Mihalik, Colgate - .902
Greg Lewis, Clarkson - .901
Spencer Finney, Colgate - .901

Returning Goals Per Game (difference from last year)
Clarkson - 2.45 (-0.19)
RPI - 2.23 (-0.54)
St. Lawrence - 2.18 (-0.60)
Quinnipiac - 1.86 (-1.46)
Yale - 1.86 (-0.87)
Dartmouth - 1.86 (-0.69)
Brown - 1.86 (-0.59)
Union - 1.77 (-1.14)
Princeton - 1.72 (-0.64)
Colgate - 1.63 (-0.73)
Harvard - 1.22 (-0.83)
Cornell - 1.18 (-1.05)

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And, while we're at it, a look at the top returning players around the nation. ECAC players are in bold, RPI's top returners are included for comparison where they're outside the top 10, and players in italics are those from outside of the league that the Engineers are scheduled to get a look at this season.

Points per game
Johnny Gaudreau, Boston College - 1.46
Greg Carey, St. Lawrence - 1.34
Ryan Walters, Nebraska-Omaha - 1.33
Andrew Calof, Princeton - 1.23
Kevin Roy, Northeastern - 1.17
Matt Leitner, Minnesota State - 1.15
Brett Gensler, Bentley - 1.14
Kenny Agostino, Yale - 1.11
Kevin Goumas, New Hampshire - 1.11
Nic Kerdiles, Wisconsin - 1.03
(Matt Neal, RPI - 0.88)

Goals per game
Greg Carey, St. Lawrence - 0.74
Matt Lorito, Brown - 0.61
Johnny Gaudreau, Boston College - 0.60
David Glen, Penn State - 0.59
Kevin Roy, Northeastern - 0.59
Ryan Walters, Nebraska-Omaha - 0.56
Cody Wydo, Robert Morris - 0.55
Brandon Nunn, Holy Cross - 0.55
Michael Mersch, Wisconsin - 0.55
Jonny Brodzinski, St. Cloud State - 0.52
(Ryan Haggerty/Mike Zalewski, RPI - 0.33)

Assists per game
Johnny Gaudreau, Boston College - 0.86
Kevin Goumas, New Hampshire - 0.84
Andrew Calof, Princeton - 0.77
Ryan Walters, Nebraska-Omaha - 0.77
Matt Leitner, Minnesota State - 0.73
Max Gardiner, Penn State - 0.70
Nic Kerdiles, Wisconsin - 0.69
Brett Gensler, Bentley - 0.69
Alexander Krushelnyski, Colorado College - 0.67
Tanner Fritz, Ohio State - 0.65
(Matt Neal, RPI - 0.65)

Power Play Goals
Greg Carey, St. Lawrence - 14
Chris Bodo, Mercyhurst - 10
Kyle Gibbons, Canisius - 9
Michael Colavecchia, RIT - 8
Matt Lorito, Brown - 8
Danny O'Regan, Boston University - 8
Jacob Laliberte, RPI - 7
Cody Ferriero, Northeastern - 7
Alex Grieve, Bentley - 7
David Morley, St. Cloud State - 7

Points per game (Defensemen)
Trevor van Riemsdyk, New Hampshire - 0.85
Greg Noyes, RIT - 0.76
Joey LaLeggia, Denver - 0.74
Shayne Gostisbehere, Union - 0.72
Steve Weinstein, Bentley - 0.71
Nolan Zajac, Denver - 0.70
Michael Matheson, Boston College - 0.69
David Makowski, Denver - 0.69
Mat Bodie, Union - 0.69
Justin Baker, St. Lawrence - 0.68
(Curtis Leonard, RPI - 0.43)

Goals Against Average
Connor Hellebuyck, UMass-Lowell - 1.37
Ryan McKay, Miami - 1.39
Jason Kasdorf, RPI - 1.62
Adam Wilcox, Minnesota - 1.88
Jay Williams, Miami - 1.94
Joel Rumpel, Wisconsin - 1.96
Frank Slubowski, Western Michigan - 2.00
Stephon Williams, Minnesota State - 2.00
Steven Summerhays, Notre Dame - 2.01
Jon Gillies, Providence - 2.08

Save Percentage
Connor Hellebuyck, UMass-Lowell - .952
Ryan McKay, Miami - .946
Jason Kasdorf, RPI - .935
Jon Gillies, Providence - .931
Kevin Murdock, Lake Superior - .930
Joel Rumpel, Wisconsin - .929
Tony Capobianco, Canisius - .929
Jake Hildebrand, Michigan State - .928
C.J. Motte, Ferris State - .927
Sean Maguire, Boston University - .926

Our Ballot

This is the fourth consecutive year that Without a Peer has had a vote in the annual ECAC preseason media poll... and by tradition, I usually share my ballot with the WaP readers in the interest of full openness about our little section of the poll.

I've always tried to be very, very serious with my ballot, because frequently as a fan, you always tend to look at your team in the most positive light possible. The worst place is always trying to figure out where to put your own team, because you A) don't want to be overly hard on them, and B) you don't want to look like you're being a homer. B is more scary than A when you're trying to cast off the partisan nature of running a fan blog and be dead-set honest with your assessment on how the league appears ready to turn out before the season begins.

That's why this year's poll may have been the most difficult one to fill out, as you're about to see. Our yearly "Know Your Enemy" series (which concludes tomorrow) helps me put this together, since it takes a microscope to each team in the league to find out what made them work last year, what will be missing, what returns, and what the prospects are, and that was key again this season in being able to rank the teams from 1-12. We don't mean to insult anyone, obviously, this is just the way we see things. Along the way, you find teams that you can't believe you're ranking so low, but someone has to be there, and when you can't find a way to put them ahead of other teams... there you have it.

So without further ado, the ECAC as I see it with the 2013-14 season about ready to get underway...

1. RPI - I tried to not put the bullseye on the Engineers' back. I spent the better part of a month trying to convince myself that someone else needed to be here, especially with two strong teams coming out of the national championship game, but at the end of the day, there's one truth about RPI that I cannot avoid. Simply, there is no other team in the league that returns established scoring ability (and much of its scoring from last year), established defensive capabilities, and has a solid, known quantity in net. Every other team is missing at least one of those. RPI's offense and defense may not individually be the best in the ECAC but as combined, they provide the best balance. Toss in a clear top goaltender heading into the season and we've got the team to beat.

2. Quinnipiac - The knock on the Bobcats from a number of quarters is that they graduated a heck of a lot of seniors last year. True. But they bring back basically all of the offense from last year and even augment it with solid recruits. Their issue is with defense, though they have a number of potential answers all around. This will be a younger team than last year's squad that romped in the ECAC, but there are enough known quantities with this team that they will continue to be dangerous, if vulnerable early in the season until the blueliners begin to gel as a unit. This is where the Q's non-Ivy status helps, as their first month of non-conference competition will help that happen.

3. Yale - The national champions are basically Quinnipiac with a more established d-corps but no immediately obvious answers in net. Practically since Keith Allain took charge in New Haven, the question has been between the pipes, and as we come into this season there isn't a real solid answer. If any of the goaltenders can get hot, however, the Bulldogs are as dangerous as anyone in the nation, as well evidenced by last year's championship run. The core of last year's scoring is back for more this season, which is going to cause headaches for even the best defensive teams in the ECAC. However, if this team gets into track meets repeatedly, that will not be beneficial for their long-term success.

4. Dartmouth - Another case where offense rules. I don't think the Big Green have as big of a problem in net as some have suggested, in fact, they have two very decent options there that really should not be causing much in the way of problems. Dartmouth gets ranked below Quinnipiac and Yale, however, on the explosiveness of their offense. It's a strong unit, it just isn't quite on the level of the Connecticut schools. They make up for that with more balance to that attack. Sometimes, having many skaters scoring a few goals is just as good as having a few skaters with many goals. That's going to be a very underrated element of Dartmouth's game that will probably see them coming away with two points more often than not.

5. Cornell - This is fairly low for the Big Red, but it represents a nexus of the team's late-year resurgence last season, their struggle to score goals, and their usual positioning as one of the league's top teams. Cornell isn't staying down for long, and while they have some questions to answer offensively, chances are pretty good they'll at least find enough answers to finish in the top half of the league for the 14th time in 15 seasons. The defense that has keyed the program's long-term success returned late last year, this ranking is indicative of a need to determine exactly where the offense is going to be coming from. They have many options, which is cause for optimism in Ithaca.

6. Union - Plenty of ability here to fill the gaps on offense, but those gaps accompany a Quinnipiac-level of concern on defense, with a likely competent but mostly untested goaltender and a defensive unit keyed by two of the best d-men in the conference but lacking in experience outside of them. This is not a mediocre team by any stretch of the imagination, however, and that more than anything speaks to the increasing depth in the ECAC that they are here in sixth. Rick Bennett's third season with the reins will be more difficult than the last two, but don't count him out - he's already proven that he can squeeze more from his teams than what appears to exist on paper.

7. St. Lawrence - It's very, very difficult to put a team with a pre-season Hobey Baker candidate this far down the list, but if anything, it's another testament to how good the league may be overall this season. As you'll see below, we've got two Saints in our selections for Preseason All-ECAC, and yet, here they are. That probably means that SLU will have the capacity to surprise, but they need to be able to spread the offense out a little bit more than they have in recent seasons, and they need a better than average performance from their goaltending in order to be competitive on the level that they were for a good chunk of last season - especially last February.

8. Harvard - Word came down in August that the players who left the team last season due to the cheating scandal would be returning this year, which represents a huge shot in the arm for a team that really needed it. The Crimson have a lot of young talent that were the heart of the team last year, but unfortunately that talent had very little in the way of support. The returning players should provide that support, and while this remains a very young, very raw program, it's one that has a bright future. That future should begin this year with a rise out of the doldrums of the league, and while there's likely still a learning curve ahead for Harvard, their special teams should prove considerably more difficult to deal with as compared to last year's train wreck, and that alone will have the Crimson competitive in games that were laughers last season.

9. Brown - This is an increasingly talented Bears team, but the ability to find solid goaltending has, over the years, been the major bugaboo in Providence and it's something that is going to be hurtful for this program again unless they can get it figured out as early as they did last year. It's a team with a couple of very good impact players who should be among the best in the league, and a team with a fairly decent defensive capability overall. The problem foreseen here is the lack of a known quantity in net combined with a lower level of talent among the supporting cast members as opposed to, say, Union or SLU. Still, no one should overlook this team, which does have the capacity to be a solid home-ice team this season if one of the teams above slips up.

10. Colgate - Still a very, very young team that has some growing pains to suffer through before what should be a couple of outstanding campaigns in the near future. In fact, the Raiders have the young offensive punch to potentially do what RPI did last year on the backs of sophomores and freshmen - they simply need the defense and goaltending to come along as well, which isn't a sure bet. It's a feel-good team with a captain who is winning his fight with Hodgkins lymphoma, but that leadership is going to have to be bold enough to translate into hard fought victories in games where the team came up short last year. This squad ran out of gas late last season, the defense is going to need to be strong for games where the goals aren't coming, which will crop up from time to time on young teams.

11. Clarkson - Offensively this team doesn't lose much but they still have a lot to do in that area in order to be a regular threat, as evidenced by the epically bad goal drought that the team ended last season with. Defensively, it's kind of a mess as well, although the Golden Knights do return a more experienced defensive group. However, as with the offense, experience means nothing if it doesn't bring with it improvement, and that's really needed all around in Potsdam, especially between the pipes. Clarkson at their best recently has been just enough to get by, but at their worst, it has been terrible in recent seasons. Without growth in all facets of the game, and the team's depth, this will be another tough season for the Knights.

12. Princeton - There really doesn't seem like there's lots and lots to love with the Tigers right now. Outside of one stud forward (who will steal this team some games on his own), there are question marks abounding with Princeton, more really than with any other team in the league, because the offense, defense, and goaltending is all only slightly above suspect this year. None of them are truly bad, and in that sense, the Tigers are kind of the inverse of RPI in that Princeton's offense and defense are not by themselves the worst in the league, but as combined they really don't rise to the level that would see any kind of guaranteed success. The good news is that they're not a clear-cut last place program, which means there's some room for them to finish out of the cellar.

The preseason poll also includes the all-ECAC selections, and these are the ones I came up with:

G - Jason Kasdorf, RPI: The last couple of years, we've been hesitant on exactly who the top returning goalie in the league is. That's not the case this year - Kasdorf's outstanding rookie season was far better than the campaigns of any returning goaltender last year. The only other netminder with a case, based on his full collegiate experience, is Cornell's Andy Iles. But Kasdorf was the only returning goalie who regularly carried his team to victories last season and had far better numbers in goals allowed and save percentage than any current netminder.

D - Shayne Gostisbehere, Union: While many thought the hard-nosed blueliner who became a revelation in his freshman year in Schenectady was ready to bail out after just two years, Gostisbehere returns for his junior season as the clear cut top defenseman in the ECAC right now. His rough and tumble presence up against some of the top forwards in the league gives the Dutchmen a serious edge, forcing the opposition to be solid offensively across many scoring lines - that alone can be enough to keep a team in games against tough competition.

D - Justin Baker, St. Lawrence: Probably the most difficult decision on this year's ballot was this spot, which was between Baker and Union's Mat Bodie. While Bodie gives the Dutchmen outstanding leadership from the point, Baker's two-way ability was an important link to success for the Saints last year, giving the team a connection for their wildly successful top line. Baker's importance on defense is just as important, and he returns this season as a key element in a SLU team that will be on the razor's edge between a great year and a tough one.

F - Greg Carey, St. Lawrence: Hard not to take the top returning goal scorer in the nation as one of the top three forwards in the league. Some would say that Carey's mind-blowing offensive numbers last season were a function of the graduated Kyle Flanagan's outstanding play. That would be foolish in the extreme - Carey has a prove track record of success across his three years in Canton even when Flanagan is not playing, which was more often than the Saints would have liked over the years. His ability commands absolute attention whenever he's on the ice, let alone carrying the puck.

F - Andrew Calof, Princeton: Easily one of the top talents in the east, Calof is going to be Princeton's best player this season and it's not even going to be close. On another team, with a stronger supporting cast, he'd already be in the discussion nationally for the Hobey Baker Award - ironic, perhaps, since Princeton was Hobey Baker's home - but that doesn't diminish the fact that he's the only individual forward in the league who's in the same area code as Carey in terms of being dangerous to contend with whenever he's on the ice. He's going to keep Princeton from being pushovers, that's for sure.

F - Kenny Agostino, Yale: Another tough call here between Agostino and Brown's Matt Lorito, especially with the strong collection of offense at Yale potentially helping Agostino excel more than he would if he were in Lorito's position. However, it's hard to argue with a guy who's already reached 100 points for his career after just three seasons being in this position. The Bulldogs are national champions in part because Agostino was able to define himself as being one of the best forwards on a team full of good ones, and his return helps keep Yale among the best teams in the nation, to say nothing of the ECAC.

From the Intriguing Stats Department

Check this out.

Over the last couple of years, we've put out a statistic of "returning offense" for ECAC teams in conference games. It's fairly easy to calculate - take the total number of goals scored by the team in the last completed season, subtract out graduated and otherwise departed players, and bam - returning offense. For the most part, these figures are frequently between a quarter of a goal to a goal and a half per game less than the total goals per game for that season, depending on how heavily the team relied on players who are not returning in the upcoming season.

So, mostly, what you're left with is the output from the soon-to-be seniors, juniors and sophomores. It's something of a baseline figure, since you're looking at usual improvement in returning classes and added output from freshmen (which is hard to pin down before the season starts), and the final goals-per-game figure at the end of the year tells you just what the improvements/freshmen contributed.

Here's how each team improved in 2013 on what they brought back from 2012 - each figure represents the total increase in goals-per-game from the baseline 2012 return.

Colgate: 1.31
Clarkson: 1.23
RPI: 1.13
Brown: 1.00
Quinnipiac: 1.00
St. Lawrence: 0.91
Yale: 0.78
Dartmouth: 0.46
Union: 0.41
Harvard: 0.10
Princeton: 0.09
Cornell: -0.13

Looking at the figures, one thing sticks out more than any at first - holy cow, Cornell managed to lose goals from their baseline last year. That underscores just how rough things were - not only did the freshman class not provide a major boost, returning players had a decrease in output from the previous year.

What about the high numbers? Well, Colgate's top total is attributable in part to a freshman class with a high amount of output (which we're going to touch on in a few days), and being tops in the league for added offense didn't help them finish high in the standings, in part because even adding the most goals from the baseline (1.05, lowest in the league) didn't get them back to were they had been in 2012 (3.27 GPG). Clarkson was in a similar boat, starting out at 1.41, second lowest in the league. Quite simply, these teams had voids that had to be filled by someone.

So this statistic by itself doesn't relate to overall success last year, but it does at least tell us a little about what to expect in coming years offensively. The teams ranked higher on this list got more out of their freshmen and more development from their upperclassmen last season.

The teams that surpassed their 2012 total offensive output in 2013 were RPI, Quinnipiac, Clarkson, and St. Lawrence, while Brown's was exactly equal.

Now, take a quick gander at this year's returning offense (lost goals-per-game is in parentheses):

Clarkson - 2.45 (-0.19)
RPI - 2.23 (-0.54)
St. Lawrence - 2.18 (-0.60)
Quinnipiac - 1.86 (-1.46)
Yale - 1.86 (-0.87)
Dartmouth - 1.86 (-0.69)
Brown - 1.86 (-0.59)
Union - 1.77 (-1.14)
Princeton - 1.72 (-0.64)
Colgate - 1.63 (-0.73)
Harvard - 1.22 (-0.83)
Cornell - 1.18 (-1.05)

As an aside, the effect on Union of Josh Jooris signing with Calgary was to drop them from 4th to 8th on this list, and also moved them into the position of having the second most offense lost behind Quinnipiac, who were previously tops by a country mile. That illustrates the margins a bit.

Bear in mind that teams don't have to score a lot of goals to be successful - but it helps. Cornell, for instance, seems to rely more heavily on their defense year in and year out, so just because they're at the bottom of both of these lists means relatively little other than that they have some work to do considering last year's finish. Yale, on the other hand, as long relied on offense to keep them afloat.

In some ways, being farther down the list simply means that those offenses have more room for returning players to fill in gaps where they were unable to contribute in the past simply because others were doing the team's scoring.

The question that must be asked when viewing this list is simple - what capacity does each team have for expanding on what returns? Food for thought.

2013: The Year of the Nerd

On August 6, 2012, an ECAC Hockey alum - RPI's Kobie Boykins, a forward on the team in the mid-1990's - was part of the team at NASA that landed the groundbreaking rover Curiosity on Mars.

It was another tale of ECAC alums doing what ECAC alums do - those that don't go on to play in the NHL (and even many who do) go on to become movers and shakers in fields from finance to industry, from science to small business.

But that's not to say that the league doesn't have its history of getting things done on the ice. We waxed eloquent over the summer at the addition of Adam Oates to the Hockey Hall of Fame, the announcement coming on the same day he was named head coach of the Washington Capitals.

That legacy, some said, was a relic of a bygone era. The ECAC, it was told, had been lapped by the power conferences, and was an afterthought on the national stage. Routinely written off, even as this tournament got underway. Even as the Frozen Four got underway with half the participants being members of the conference.

Today, the afterthoughts are... everyone else.

Quinnipiac and Yale place the conference in its brightest spotlight since the Hockey East split tomorrow night as they do battle to determine which of them will win the conference's first national championship since 1989, but this season, the ECAC went far, far beyond these two schools from southern Connecticut.

(And we proudly mention that we semi "called" Quinnipiac being good this year, pointing out just how stacked they were at pretty much every facet and how many seniors they had. True to Quinnipiac fashion, they just had to find a way to surpass even those expectations - something they've done in every season they've been in the ECAC. They did that during the regular season alone, and now they've kicked it up to a new level.)

In addition to winning the national championship, the conference also was responsible for the dethroning of last year's national champions, via a 5-1 demolition by the conference champions, Union.

We're never afraid to toot our own horn here at WaP - if the Bulldogs win tomorrow night, RPI will have defeated the eventual national champions twice this season, by a combined score of 10-2 (we've mentioned it a bit on Twitter, where more than a few people yesterday proclaimed that RPI was the best team in the conference at the end of the season). The Engineers finished in 2nd place in the conference, and despite an upset in the first round, were still in the national tournament picture until a wild finish to the conference tournaments bumped them out.

Brown was in that picture too, by their own doing. They gutted out a hard-fought series with the Engineers to give themselves a shot, and put themselves on the cusp with a masterful performance against that same team that you just saw humiliate the WCHA regular-season champs on the biggest stage of all.

Dartmouth had a tremendous first-half of the season in which they looked unstoppable. St. Lawrence had a tremendous second-half of the season in which they too looked unstoppable at times. And we haven't even talked about the league's perennial beasts - it wasn't Cornell's finest season by any stretch of the imagination, but they certainly finished strong.

Guess what? That's more than half the league mentioned just right there.

The last month has made this season property of the ECAC - the league will finish with an incredible 8-2 record in the NCAAs, with the only two losses coming at the hands of a fellow league member. The power conferences, they tried to take down Quinnipiac, Yale, and Union, and they went 0-for-6 for their troubles.

Now they can sit back and watch the newest hot rivalry in the ECAC take center stage, and put on a show. Yale has the tools to do this again next year (they'll have questions in net, but what else is new), while Quinnipiac's senior-heavy roster means they're more than likely going to have to take care of business this weekend.

Given how thoroughly these teams dominated their semifinal matchups last night (Yale was the aggressor for 59 minutes against a fantastic UML team, which underscores how good the River Hawks are that the game made it to overtime), we are in for a treat tomorrow night.

All you Hockey East, WCHA, NCHC, and Big Ten fans can tune in if you like. They're bound to put on a show for you. And if you don't like what you're seeing... then you don't like hockey.

EZAC, eh?

How you like us now?

EZAC!

So there it was, Easter night, and suddenly it dawned on me.

The national championship game could be a rematch of the ECAC consolation game.

Yeah. We're not in Kansas anymore, are we?

A couple of times this season, I've pooh-poohed some of the more excited suggestions about what the ECAC could accomplish on the national level. So far, I've been proven about right - three NCAA bids was about what I expected. So what is it to say that the ECAC now has two teams in the Frozen Four for the first time since 1983, and just a year removed from ending a nine-year drought without even a single team in the ultimate event of the college hockey season?

Some would say it was nothing but luck. Those people will point to the fact that Yale essentially backed into the tournament after failing miserably in Atlantic City (scoring a grand total of zero goals in two games), that Union could well have been out of the NCAAs themselves if they hadn't won the ECAC title (probably true), and that Quinnipiac had a lousy February and (of course) was never a deserving #1.

Ask Minnesota, North Dakota, and Boston College about what kind of year the ECAC had. Those three powerhouse programs can boast a single split regular-season title (the Gophers, with St. Cloud State earning the #1 seed in the conference tournament) between them while two ECAC teams do battle in Pittsburgh for the opportunity to claim the league's first national championship since 1989.

While I was trying to calm down the overly optimistic expectations of four or five bids, I also pointed to the upward trend the league has been experiencing in the last couple of years as a legitimate source of optimism, and this is certainly another sign of growth. In 2011, we saw the league picking up three bids for the first time in several years. In 2012, it was a Frozen Four berth. Now, it's both, plus an extra spot in the Frozen Four.

Now, we don't need to have Quinnipiac and Yale win tomorrow to make this a successful season for the league, and there are plenty of additional steps that need to be taken before we can really pound our chests. And, as I also brought up earlier this season, the ECAC is set to pretty much overtake the "new" WCHA starting next season in terms of stature.

So, what are the chances of an ECAC champion this weekend? I'd go with... fair. It sounds pessimistic to say that with half the teams being from the ECAC, but it's about as far as I'd be willing to go. UMass-Lowell, on their current seven-game win streak, has given up either one goal or none at all in six of those games. That's a defense that's dialed in. St. Cloud State played exceptionally well in the WCHA, and settled for a #4 seed based almost entirely upon non-conference stumbles against UNH, RPI, and Northern Michigan, plus a loss to Wisconsin in the WCHA tournament. They're good.

That's not to say that Yale and Quinnipiac don't have things going for them as well. The Bobcats may be as dialed in on offense as UML is on defense, and a matchup between the Q and the River Hawks could be very exciting - as could the actual Yale-UML matchup provided that the Bulldogs get the offense they had in Grand Rapids rather than the one they had in Atlantic City.

Overall, though? This is a weekend to enjoy if you're a college hockey fan. It's the Frozen Four, of course, and that's cause every year. But this year? It's an even bigger celebration of what makes college hockey special. It's borne out of Union beating Boston College and St. Cloud State beating Notre Dame. Name another sport where that result would be even remotely possible.

When the casual college sports fan looks at the Frozen Four and says "who the hell are these guys?", you can take pride when you say - these are four damn good college hockey teams, and they proved it.

ECAC Quarterfinal Capsules

Last time around, we put out capsules a couple of hours before the games got started. That's what happens when you aren't as focused on what's going on, sadly.

We're a little more focused this time. At the very least, let's get started with Gary's handy chart for interpreting what we might see in the semifinals next week.

This is the final season for the league tournament's conclusion in Atlantic City. Each of the series outlined below will provide one team for that, erm, historic occasion. Every home team is at least in the hunt for an NCAA bid - in fact, as of now, all four are in our projected bracket for the week. Dartmouth and St. Lawrence are kind of hanging around but probably need to win the tournament to play Easter weekend, while Cornell and Brown certainly need the autobid.

#9 Cornell at #1 Quinnipiac
TD Bank Sports Center (Hamden, CT)
Last playoff meeting: 2011 ECAC Quarterfinals (at Cornell) - Big Red won 2 games to 1
Nov. 10: Quinnipiac 4, Cornell 1 (Hamden)
Feb. 8: Quinnipiac 4, Cornell 1 (Ithaca)
(Quinnipiac wins season series, 4-0)


Quinnipiac since February 1: 6-2-2
Quinnipiac leading scorer: Jeremy Langlois, senior. 12 goals, 16 assists.
Quinnipiac starting goaltender: Eric Hartzell, senior. 1.49 GAA, .936 save percentage.

Cornell since February 1: 6-5-1
Cornell leading scorer: Greg Miller, senior. 14 goals, 18 assists.
Cornell starting goaltender: Andy Iles, junior. 2.28 GAA, .916 save percentage.

Chances are pretty good if finishing first in the ECAC gave you the option of choosing which opponent you wanted to face in the quarterfinals, Cornell probably wouldn't have been Quinnipiac's choice. The Big Red were supposed to be in their usual place among the top teams in the league (not to mention, the nation), but that all fell apart through a lousy January and a rough start to February.

Problem is, the Big Red have looked much more like their usual selves in the last four weekends, which almost certainly gives the top-seed and the nation's #1 team (for five straight weeks) a little bit of pause, especially given that the Bobcats were not as dominant in that same stretch of time as they had been earlier in the season. Then again, they had very little to play for aside from the PairWise Rankings for most of February, as they locked up the top seed very early.

But "not as dominant," in this case, folds out to a 3-2-1 record in their last six games, and the Bobcats more than handled Cornell this season, even in November before the Big Red's dip began. There aren't a whole lot of flaws in Quinnipiac's game, and it's worth pointing out that Quinnipiac has still been the top team in the polls, PairWise, and KRACH throughout that period. Cornell may have taken it to a fading Princeton team last weekend, but they're going to need to bring it, big time, if they're going to make it back to Atlantic City. The Bobcats are assured a spot in the NCAA tournament (and almost certainly as a #1 seed) no matter what, but to lose this series would be a major disappointment for the Q.

#7 Brown at #2 RPI
Houston Field House (Troy, NY)
Last playoff meeting: 2010 ECAC First Round (at RPI) - Bears won 2 games to 1
Dec. 8: RPI 2, Brown 2 (Providence)
Feb. 15: RPI 5, Brown 1 (Troy)
(RPI wins season series, 3-1)


RPI since February 1: 9-1-0
RPI leading scorer: Nick Bailen, senior. 12 goals, 19 assists.
RPI starting goaltender: Jason Kasdorf, freshman. 1.51 GAA, .940 save percentage.

Brown since February 1: 6-3-2
Brown leading scorer: Matt Lorito, sophomore. 17 goals, 14 assists.
Brown starting goaltender: Anthony Borelli, senior. 1.74 GAA, .945 save percentage.

Brown's defense wasn't worked too hard last weekend, easily taking care of a Clarkson team that was essentially punchless in the final two weeks of its season. Unless RPI comes out of their week off rusty and out-of-sync, they're practically assured of facing a much bigger challenge this weekend.

We're going to break down this series far more in the coming days, but it's probably fair to say that the difference in offensive output is going to be a big deal in this series, and it's likely to leave the Bears with very little room for error. One of the main differences in the two games these teams played this season was in the home-ice advantage - RPI found the Bears much easier to deal with when they had the last line change. That should help the Engineers' already tough defense by ensuring that they get the matchups they're looking for when it comes to the more dangerous elements of the Brown attack.

#6 St. Lawrence at #3 Yale
Ingalls Rink (New Haven, CT)
Last playoff meeting: 2011 ECAC Quarterfinals (at Yale) - Bulldogs won 2 games to 1
Nov. 10: Yale 4, St. Lawrence 2 (New Haven)
Jan. 11: Yale 5, St. Lawrence 3 (Canton)
(Yale wins season series, 4-0)


Yale since February 1: 4-5-0
Yale leading scorer: Kenny Agostino, junior. 14 goals, 19 assists.
Yale starting goaltender: Jeff Malcolm, senior. 2.45 GAA, .916 save percentage.

St. Lawrence since February 1: 7-4-1
St. Lawrence leading scorer: Greg Carey, junior. 28 goals, 23 assists.
St. Lawrence starting goaltender: Matt Weninger, junior. 2.72 GAA, .916 save percentage.

This may be one of the most intriguing matchups of the quarterfinals. Two teams that could have been higher seeds if they hadn't suffered a key injury at the wrong time are almost certainly ready for a high-flying series that's likely to be quite unpredictable.

Drop the two Capital District losses at the end of the regular season out of St. Lawrence's record since February, and the Saints are clearly one of the hottest teams in the league when Kyle Flanagan is in the lineup. Checking out the scorelines from the week before and the week after that dreadful weekend, it's like night and day.

Yale basically has the same phenomenon surrounding netminder Malcolm. For years, Yale's problem has been finding a solid goaltender to back their wealth of firepower, typically all they really need is a halfway competent netminder to be successful, and they've got in Malcolm at least that. He was hurt against Princeton on February 1. The Bulldogs won that game, but then lost five in a row without him. He returned, and the Bulldogs won three straight to end the season.

Now, Yale was also playing some tough defenses during that five-game losing streak - Quinnipiac twice, Brown, RPI, and Union - but Malcolm probably would have given the Bulldogs more of a shot in those games.

Regardless, the offense for both of these teams has been more central to success than the defense, and that's why this could be a series that's difficult to get a feel for. SLU's top line of Flanagan, Carey, and Jeremy Wick is easily one of the best in the country, and can be deadly on the power play. Yale, meanwhile, has a number of lines that can cause problems. This is not an easy series to predict - the Bulldogs probably have the edge on the simple fact that they're at home, and had the Saints' number during the regular season.

#5 Dartmouth at #4 Union
Achilles Center (Schenectady, NY)
Last playoff meeting: Never
Nov. 10: Dartmouth 3, Union 2 (Hanover)
Feb. 1: Dartmouth 2, Union 2 (Schenectady)
(Dartmouth wins season series, 3-1)


Union since February 1: 4-4-1
Union leading scorer: Wayne Simpson, senior. 15 goals, 16 assists.
Union starting goaltender: Troy Grosenick, junior. 2.22 GAA, .920 save percentage.

Dartmouth since February 1: 4-5-3
Dartmouth leading scorer: Tyler Sikura, sophomore. 11 goals, 20 assists.
Dartmouth starting goaltender: Charles Grant, freshman. 2.62 GAA, .914 save percentage.

You're not reading that wrong - Union has been in the ECAC since 1991 and this is the first time these two teams have ever faced each other in the playoffs in any capacity.

It's a battle between two teams that basically limped to the finish line in the regular season, with the Dutchmen just managing to snag the home-ice bye thanks to an even weaker finish by the North Country teams. Union has had their problems on the road, last winning away from the Capital District on January 11 at Princeton, and before that November 9 at Harvard, but they're unbeaten in eight straight games in the Capital District (including the game in Albany against RPI).

Dartmouth, meanwhile, is 3-7-3 on the road this year, and last weekend won two consecutive games for only the second time since December. Their young but talented offense simply has not been as strong in the last two months as they were early in the season, when they looked sure to be making their first NCAA appearance since 1980.

Both teams have had turnover in net - Dartmouth appeared to have settled on Grant heading into the playoffs, only to see Cab Morris start (and lose) Game 1 of the first round against Harvard. Grant won Game 2 and Game 3, so we might expect to see him again. Meanwhile, Grosenick's health has been a major factor all season for the Dutchmen, who have had to occasionally lean on sophomore Colin Stevens more than they have wanted to. The week off was just what the doctor ordered for Union on that front.

Union has the experience and the home ice advantage, but Dartmouth showed off their resilience last weekend by coming back from a Game 1 loss to win a series against a somewhat resurgent Harvard team. They have the chops to get the job done, but they're going to need some good puck luck and some better overall play to get there.