This Week in … columns; weekly columns on a league, region or gender-division
After three rounds of playoffs, the Atlantic Hockey America tournament is down to the final two teams: Holy Cross and Bentley. They will play a single game on Saturday in Worcester, Mass., for the title and the right to represent the league in the NCAA tournament. Previewing the finals No. 3 Bentley at No. 1 … Read more
Raise your hand if you predicted at the start of the 2024-25 season that Ohio State would be playing for the Big Ten tournament championship this weekend. If your hand’s up, you’re either a diehard Buckeye fan or someone whose familiarity with honesty is questionable. Picked to finish last in the Big Ten preseason coaches’ … Read more
One could look at the Hockey East semifinals and assume there’s little at stake. Only Northeastern, the No. 9 seed, is fighting for its survival beyond this weekend — the Huskies need to win the Lamoriello Trophy for a bid to the NCAA tournament. The other three schools — Connecticut, Boston University and Maine — … Read more
It’s tough to predict how much further Arizona State’s first season as a conference member can go. The Sun Devils are 15th in the PairWise Rankings and will need to keep helping themselves as the NCHC playoffs progress. But regardless of which side of the NCAA tournament bubble the Sun Devils land on, they already … Read more
The unique nature of this season’s CCHA Mason Cup playoffs are not lost on Luke Strand. The Minnesota State boss finds himself in a somewhat strange position for a college hockey head coach: Being out of an at-large position in the Pairwise rankings but still knowing with 100% certainty that his team is still going … Read more
The ECAC Hockey championship weekend returned to Lake Placid in 2014 after spending three years at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, N.J. The ancestral home of the post-breakup league was loaded with history when the banners returned to the rafters atop Herb Brooks Arena, but the years since the conference’s return equaled the memories of … Read more
After a wild quarterfinal round that saw seven of 11 games decided by a single goal, including four in overtime, the final four is set in Atlantic Hockey America: Holy Cross, Sacred Heart, Bentley and Army West Point. Three of the four reaming teams have never won an Atlantic Hockey title. Recapping the quarterfinals: – … Read more
“The kids did what I asked them to do.” That is what Notre Dame coach Jeff Jackson said after the Fighting Irish bested Minnesota in Big Ten quarterfinal action last weekend. After holding off the Golden Gophers for a 3-2 win Friday, the Irish lost 4-2 Saturday to force a deciding Sunday game There was … Read more
Hockey East is the only one of college hockey’s six conferences to stage an entirely single-elimination tournament. That’s just fine with Massachusetts coach Greg Carvel. “Love it,” Carvel said. “I think the three-game series are stupid.” A best-two-of-three quarterfinal round was a mainstay of the Hockey East tournament until 2021, the first year post-pandemic when … Read more
The NCHC playoffs officially begin this Friday, but Denver coach David Carle and his Pioneers must feel like they’ve already been there for weeks. Despite being 26-9-1 tied with Boston College and Western Michigan for the most wins in the country, defending national champion Denver had plenty to do in order to secure a favorable … Read more
Once you get to the semifinal round of college hockey’s conference tournament season, it’s a pretty decent guess that most of the teams left are playing their best hockey of the season. After all, teams that win best-two-of-three series generally don’t luck into winning those playoff series. It takes hard work to beat a team … Read more
Last week’s first round came and went with few of the ripples associated with a hockey postseason. All four home teams from ECAC Hockey’s single-elimination series advanced to create the first chalk-based quarterfinal since 2022, but beyond the higher-seeded victories sat games devoid of the normal drama associated with winner-take-all scenarios. The lone exception came … Read more
The top seeds advanced in the first round of the Atlantic Hockey America tournament, but not without some drama. Two of the three games needed overtime, and the other was a one-goal game until midway through the final period. The weekend’s highlight was a classic battle between Air Force and Robert Morris at Cadet Ice … Read more
Congratulations to Michigan State and Minnesota on their shared regular-season title. Each finished the season with 50 points, marking the first time in Big Ten hockey history that two teams have topped the standings together when all was said and done. The end was quite dramatic, too, with Minnesota securing its portion of the title … Read more
By any account, Taylor Makar had a solid three-year stint as a forward for Massachusetts. In three seasons with Minutemen, Makar played in 85 games, including all 36 in 2023-24, putting up nine points in four goals and five assists with one game-winning goal. The previous year, Makar led the Minutemen with 10 goals. But … Read more
Winning its first-ever regular-season conference title in program history last Friday wasn’t just satisfying for Western Michigan on a surface level. The Broncos were already well aware of what the Penrose Cup looked like ahead of WMU’s 6-4 win Friday against North Dakota, which saw Western lock up the NCHC regular season title with three … Read more
Minnesota State’s first goal is complete. The Mavericks clinched the CCHA’s regular-season title two weeks ago with a sweep of Lake Superior State in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich. They celebrated with the MacNaughton Cup in the visitors’ locker room at Taffy Abel Arena, then brought the cup back with them to Mankato, Minn., where they … Read more
For all the parity, all the times that teams leapfrogged one another and stumbled into each other over the course of a six-month season, the 2024-25 ECAC Hockey season ended without a single team tied with one another. A clean Cleary Cup championship race produced minimal drama on the season’s last day, and Quinnipiac added … Read more
When the dust settled on the 2024-25 Atlantic Hockey America regular season, no tiebreakers were necessary to determine the playoff seedings: 1. Holy Cross 2. Sacred Heart 3. Bentley 4. Niagara 5. Army West Point 6. Canisius 7. Air Force 8. American International 9. Rochester Institute of Technology 10. Robert Morris 11. Mercyhurst That means … Read more
Hockey coaches and players famously embrace both the world of belief and the world of self-determination. They’re a superstitious lot, some more so than others. They can look you straight in the eye and begin a sentence with gratitude for puck luck and finish it with a triumphant declaration of TCB. Never is that dichotomy … Read more