Well, since we've got the time, let's see how the rest of the league's October is going. This is the one month that sometimes, you miss out on what other teams are doing since there are no league games until the Ivies pick up in November.
Clarkson (0-3-0)
It's not really as bad as it looks. Well, it's pretty bad but it's not terrible. When you go out to Colorado College and score eight goals, that's admirable, even if it comes in a pair of one goal losses. Losing at home to Holy Cross, scoring once on 37 shots, that's a different story. The Knights will be looking for their first win (or two) of the season with a pair of home games this coming weekend against Niagara. Freshman Pat Megannety has a pair of goals and an assist, all of which came out in Colorado. In net, Cody Rosen got his third career start in game one against CC, but was pulled in the 3rd period after giving up 5 goals on 30 shots. Freshman Greg Lewis has played all of the time since but has only been fairly better overall. Clarkson definitely will be looking for a more confident defense going forward.
Colgate (2-3-0)
Remember when we said the Raiders were likely to have trouble scoring? Colgate made that prediction look silly after one game, when they annihilated Niagara 10-2, picking up goals from seven different players in the process for their first double-digit output since 1997-98. Then, however, they only scored two goals in the next three games. Granted, the first two of that set was against #3 Miami, but splitting with Bowling Green at home last weekend probably wasn't what the Raiders had in mind. Kyle Baun looks like an early freshman breakout for Colgate with 3 goals and 2 assists, and classmates Tylor Spink and Darcy Murphy also have a pair of goals each. This weekend, they face a challenging RIT team that went to Michigan and picked up a win, then they make their annual trip to Cape Cod where they'll face Quinnipiac in a non-conference game. The Bobcats should provide a better indication of exactly where Colgate is right now.
Quinnipiac (3-1-1)
If not for one head-scratcher home performance against Robert Morris, the Bobcats would be solidly rolling. This is certainly an experience laden team and the Q appears to be leaning on that experience heavily - the freshman class has put together a combined game tally of 8 appearances - 5 of which are defenseman Alex Barron and one of which was a 28:27 appearance by goaltender Michael Garteig, who played the second half of a baffling 4-0 loss to Robert Morris on the back side of a two-game set in Hamden (he allowed just one goal on eight shots). In fact, the only non-junior/senior to score points thus far is Matthew Peca (2 goals and 1 assist), who was an ECAC All-Rookie selection last year. The Q started their season off by going up to Maine and returning with a 2-1 victory, last weekend they tied and then beat Ohio State at home. This weekend, their only game is that non-conference on Cape Cod against Colgate.
St. Lawrence (3-1-0)
There aren't many teams that go to Orono, Maine, and skate away with a +9 goal differential in two games no matter how bad the Black Bears might be - but that's what the Saints achieved last weekend as very rude guests in the Pine Tree State (since we've been talking a lot of Maine - they're 1-4-0 thus far, their only win coming in the Icebreaker third place game against Army). There was some debate coming into the season as to whether Kyle Flanagan or Greg Carey was the best player on this team, two weeks later the resounding answer is, who cares? The duo has been ridiculously effective early on, and they're 1-2 in scoring nationally with Flanagan at 5 goals and 6 assists and Carey at 3 goals and 7 assists after just four games. Perhaps the biggest thing, though has been Matt Weninger, who has been equally lights out in net for the most part. Expect the Saints to keep the good times flowing after a bye week this weekend as they host Alabama-Huntsville during the first week of November. There hasn't been a lot of depth past Flanagan and Carey thus far, but that may not matter much if they can keep things up.
Union (2-1-0)
Leave it to Union to ruin banner night - they got a rude return from the Frozen Four in the first game of the season when they lost at home to Merrimack, 4-1. The "what the hell?" motif continued when they went down 2-0 six minutes in at Bowling Green the following week before righting the ship to pick up a pair of wins. Troy Grosenick's numbers in net are, thus far, off a bit from his incredible season last year, but they're still decent - and once they got scoring against the Falcons, Union put up 9 goals, so that aspect is intact as expected. The Dutchmen, interestingly, are providing American International this weekend with their first non-conference home game since January 2008 (which was, in turn, their first since 2005). Pretty quick turnaround to go from the Frozen Four in April to the building that's dead last in attendance in Division I (averaging 171 guests per game in 2011) for the last nine consecutive years. AIC draws so poorly that they got outdrawn by 62 Division III schools as well. Fortunately, Union is used to playing in front of small crowds (small arena that doesn't sell out zing), so they probably won't miss a beat - expect a beatdown, followed by another likely win at UConn before the home-and-home with the Engineers rolls around.
The Ivies get underway this weekend too, here's what they've done thus far in exhibitions:
Cornell 6, US Under-18 Team 2
Cornell 2, Brock 2
Dartmouth 2, McGill 1
Dartmouth 4, Norwich 3
Harvard 5, McGill 1
Guelph 3, Princeton 2 (OT)
Guelph 6, Princeton 5
The Ivy Shootout takes place in Providence this weekend, with Dartmouth facing Yale and Princeton at Brown on Friday, losers and winners to face each other the next night. Harvard hosts local minnow Bentley on Saturday, and with bigger fish to fry, Cornell hosts Colorado College for a pair on Friday and Saturday.
Showing posts with label ivy league. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ivy league. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Monday, June 25, 2012
ECAC: Between a Rock and a Hard Place
The final piece of the puzzle in the upcoming conference scramble appears to be falling into place with reports last week of Hockey East and UConn inching closer together. Reports are that the Huskies are likely to join Hockey East in 2014-15, one season after what we referred to last offseason as "the tsunami" strikes college hockey's shores, irreparably changing the landscape as we know it.
With Hockey East now apparently destined for the 12 teams most everyone expected they'd finish with, there's only one question remaining - the long-term fate of Alabama-Huntsville. Given a reprieve by the school in December when the school reversed its much-maligned decision to scuttle the program, the Chargers will enter their third season without a conference this October and will still require a place to call home in order to secure their long-term existence.
With UConn set to depart Atlantic Hockey, that leaves the ECAC as the only conference to be completely untouched by "the tsunami." 12 teams when the process started, same 12 teams when it concludes.
Some, especially the powers that be in Albany, would call that a pretty good outcome. Stability is a good thing, as the schools which scrambled to find a home as the CHA and CCHA each disintegrated will tell you.
But how stable is the ECAC, really, and given the current state of the college hockey world, how much benefit is there for teams in the stable ECAC? We've long said that the league no longer qualifies as a "major conference" (at least since the very late 1990s) and that is even more likely to be true once the landscape changes in favor of the new big three: Hockey East, the NCHC, and the Big Ten. With an additional new "mid-major" likely to develop from the new WCHA and basically all of the big power schools concentrated in the Big Three, it's not out of the realm of possibility for the ECAC's decline to accelerate.
What could change things? There are two potential events on the horizon that could very well help tip the apple cart - neither are sure to happen, but neither would be a shock to the system, either.
1) The Ivy League. As we've said before, the Ivy six represent a veritable Sword of Damocles hanging over the integrity of the conference, and the sword has hung for decades, especially the last three following the Hockey East split. The Ivy League competes as its own entity in... pretty much every sport known to man. Men's and women's hockey is a very notable exception.
What would the Ivies gain from a split? They would stand to gain quite a lot, as Harvard's Brendan Roche (WHRB play-by-play announcer and all-around good guy) pointed out in a post last year while discussing the possibility of the ECAC losing RPI or Quinnipiac to Hockey East. First and foremost could well be scheduling: the Ivy League is limited to 29 regular-season games a year, and with 22 of those games earmarked for ECAC contests, that leaves them with only 7 non-conference games to play around with - just five for Harvard, which plays two of its NC games in the Beanpot every year. A six-team league could feature 4 games a season with league teams (all better draws than the non-Ivies currently are), and open two more non-conference opportunities.
Most of Roche's other points are very well taken. It makes sense for them from a marketing standpoint. With the Big Ten coming into being next year, it would give them the ability to showcase an all-sports brand, something that could come in handy when competing with the Big Ten, the NCHC, and Hockey East for talent. They'd also gain their own autobid to the NCAA tournament, though this is a bit of a wash with 9 of the last 11 ECAC autobids going to Ivy teams (Clarkson in 2007 and Union in 2012 the exceptions).
There's nothing the six non-Ivies can do about this, not anymore. None of them would fit into the west-centric NCHC (not that the league would want them if they tried) or WCHA, Hockey East is closed, and the only way out is to a lower league in Atlantic Hockey. The only reasonable option if an Ivy exit happens would be to reconstitute with programs from Atlantic Hockey that are seeking to move up in the world. We're talking about RIT, Niagara, Robert Morris, Holy Cross, and the like.
Of course, the non-Ivies could proactively split, but it's the same scenario. Compare the Ivies to the teams mentioned. With no disrespect intended to those teams (which are honestly trying to boost their competition level), but it's a step down for the ECAC non-Ivies as much as it's a step up for those teams. The only silver lining in all of this seems to be the autobid, but this would in all eventuality be a conference with only marginally better chances of attracting at-large bids than Atlantic Hockey currently does. The ECAC, at the very least, typically draws at least one at-large bid every year, giving some incentive for the non-Ivies to hold onto the marriage as long as the Ivies are still OK with it.
2) Notre Dame and the Big Ten. This is something that has been discussed, literally, for almost a century, since the first overtures between the parties were made in 1926. While the first possibility revolves entirely around hockey, this one revolves almost entirely upon football, with ripples that could now be felt in the hockey world, given the recent changes to the landscape.
Notre Dame's independence in football is storied - it gives their historic program the opportunity to set their entire schedule, and allows them to negotiate their own national television contract (with NBC) with an exclusivity that helps keep their brand front and center. But Notre Dame football isn't what it was for decade after decade of the 20th century. They haven't won a national championship since 1988 and haven't played for one since 1991. No Heisman Trophy winners since 1987. In the 14 seasons of the BCS, they've played in a BCS bowl only three times, losing all three. They haven't finished the season in the Top 25 of the national rankings since 2006 and only four times since 2000.
What's more, Big Ten football is beginning to eclipse Notre Dame in drawing power and revenues, especially with its Big Ten network. Big Ten schools are now pulling in more TV revenue individually than Notre Dame and their exclusive contract, and as the Irish continue to struggle to be nationally relevant on the gridiron, that inequity may only increase as the years progress.
What does this have to do with hockey, you ask? Well, Notre Dame has long seemed a perfect fit for the Big Ten, and if the economics of it all push the Irish to move football (and everything else) to the Big Ten, it'll take hockey right along with it.
That would create a dilemma for Hockey East. Now back to 11 teams and missing a star attraction, what course of action do BU and BC take? Both reportedly spurned NCHC bids previously, thought in large part to be because of Notre Dame's potential addition to Hockey East. Does that suddenly become an option for those teams? Either way, you're then looking at a 9 or 11 team Hockey East, with openings once again.
These scenarios illustrate the tricky spot the ECAC finds itself in, both as an integral unit and as two different halves. For the non-Ivy League teams especially, there could be a glass ceiling forming just as Minnesota-Duluth, Ferris State, and Union were proving that the Division II and III schools still had room to succeed at the highest levels.
With Hockey East now apparently destined for the 12 teams most everyone expected they'd finish with, there's only one question remaining - the long-term fate of Alabama-Huntsville. Given a reprieve by the school in December when the school reversed its much-maligned decision to scuttle the program, the Chargers will enter their third season without a conference this October and will still require a place to call home in order to secure their long-term existence.
With UConn set to depart Atlantic Hockey, that leaves the ECAC as the only conference to be completely untouched by "the tsunami." 12 teams when the process started, same 12 teams when it concludes.
Some, especially the powers that be in Albany, would call that a pretty good outcome. Stability is a good thing, as the schools which scrambled to find a home as the CHA and CCHA each disintegrated will tell you.
But how stable is the ECAC, really, and given the current state of the college hockey world, how much benefit is there for teams in the stable ECAC? We've long said that the league no longer qualifies as a "major conference" (at least since the very late 1990s) and that is even more likely to be true once the landscape changes in favor of the new big three: Hockey East, the NCHC, and the Big Ten. With an additional new "mid-major" likely to develop from the new WCHA and basically all of the big power schools concentrated in the Big Three, it's not out of the realm of possibility for the ECAC's decline to accelerate.
What could change things? There are two potential events on the horizon that could very well help tip the apple cart - neither are sure to happen, but neither would be a shock to the system, either.
1) The Ivy League. As we've said before, the Ivy six represent a veritable Sword of Damocles hanging over the integrity of the conference, and the sword has hung for decades, especially the last three following the Hockey East split. The Ivy League competes as its own entity in... pretty much every sport known to man. Men's and women's hockey is a very notable exception.
What would the Ivies gain from a split? They would stand to gain quite a lot, as Harvard's Brendan Roche (WHRB play-by-play announcer and all-around good guy) pointed out in a post last year while discussing the possibility of the ECAC losing RPI or Quinnipiac to Hockey East. First and foremost could well be scheduling: the Ivy League is limited to 29 regular-season games a year, and with 22 of those games earmarked for ECAC contests, that leaves them with only 7 non-conference games to play around with - just five for Harvard, which plays two of its NC games in the Beanpot every year. A six-team league could feature 4 games a season with league teams (all better draws than the non-Ivies currently are), and open two more non-conference opportunities.
Most of Roche's other points are very well taken. It makes sense for them from a marketing standpoint. With the Big Ten coming into being next year, it would give them the ability to showcase an all-sports brand, something that could come in handy when competing with the Big Ten, the NCHC, and Hockey East for talent. They'd also gain their own autobid to the NCAA tournament, though this is a bit of a wash with 9 of the last 11 ECAC autobids going to Ivy teams (Clarkson in 2007 and Union in 2012 the exceptions).
There's nothing the six non-Ivies can do about this, not anymore. None of them would fit into the west-centric NCHC (not that the league would want them if they tried) or WCHA, Hockey East is closed, and the only way out is to a lower league in Atlantic Hockey. The only reasonable option if an Ivy exit happens would be to reconstitute with programs from Atlantic Hockey that are seeking to move up in the world. We're talking about RIT, Niagara, Robert Morris, Holy Cross, and the like.
Of course, the non-Ivies could proactively split, but it's the same scenario. Compare the Ivies to the teams mentioned. With no disrespect intended to those teams (which are honestly trying to boost their competition level), but it's a step down for the ECAC non-Ivies as much as it's a step up for those teams. The only silver lining in all of this seems to be the autobid, but this would in all eventuality be a conference with only marginally better chances of attracting at-large bids than Atlantic Hockey currently does. The ECAC, at the very least, typically draws at least one at-large bid every year, giving some incentive for the non-Ivies to hold onto the marriage as long as the Ivies are still OK with it.
2) Notre Dame and the Big Ten. This is something that has been discussed, literally, for almost a century, since the first overtures between the parties were made in 1926. While the first possibility revolves entirely around hockey, this one revolves almost entirely upon football, with ripples that could now be felt in the hockey world, given the recent changes to the landscape.
Notre Dame's independence in football is storied - it gives their historic program the opportunity to set their entire schedule, and allows them to negotiate their own national television contract (with NBC) with an exclusivity that helps keep their brand front and center. But Notre Dame football isn't what it was for decade after decade of the 20th century. They haven't won a national championship since 1988 and haven't played for one since 1991. No Heisman Trophy winners since 1987. In the 14 seasons of the BCS, they've played in a BCS bowl only three times, losing all three. They haven't finished the season in the Top 25 of the national rankings since 2006 and only four times since 2000.
What's more, Big Ten football is beginning to eclipse Notre Dame in drawing power and revenues, especially with its Big Ten network. Big Ten schools are now pulling in more TV revenue individually than Notre Dame and their exclusive contract, and as the Irish continue to struggle to be nationally relevant on the gridiron, that inequity may only increase as the years progress.
What does this have to do with hockey, you ask? Well, Notre Dame has long seemed a perfect fit for the Big Ten, and if the economics of it all push the Irish to move football (and everything else) to the Big Ten, it'll take hockey right along with it.
That would create a dilemma for Hockey East. Now back to 11 teams and missing a star attraction, what course of action do BU and BC take? Both reportedly spurned NCHC bids previously, thought in large part to be because of Notre Dame's potential addition to Hockey East. Does that suddenly become an option for those teams? Either way, you're then looking at a 9 or 11 team Hockey East, with openings once again.
These scenarios illustrate the tricky spot the ECAC finds itself in, both as an integral unit and as two different halves. For the non-Ivy League teams especially, there could be a glass ceiling forming just as Minnesota-Duluth, Ferris State, and Union were proving that the Division II and III schools still had room to succeed at the highest levels.
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