Which team is most likely to come back from 3-1 down in these series?

~ Pat O'Rourke ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a strange first round. The series are lopsided yet the hockey hasn’t been as a bad as the results might suggest. Though at the same time playoff hockey is a lot like pizza – even when it’s bad it’s good. 

Of the eight series, two have already been settled – the Rangers swept the Capitals while the Panthers sent the Lightning packing in five games. Of the six series yet to be decided, five currently stand at 3-1, with only the Golden Knights-Stars series tied 2-2.

We went into Monday with the prospect of the whole round being settled by Wednesday, which was saved by the Stars beating the Golden Knights to tie the series and assure us of opening round action through at least Friday. 

All the 3-1 series means the heightened possibility of 3-1 comebacks, something the First Round of the Stanley Cup playoffs are no stranger to. 

Which ones are most likely to see such a rally? Lets rank ‘em.

Predators-Canucks. The Canucks have as flimsy a 3-1 lead as you’ll find. They’re up 3-1 having outscored the Preds just 11-10 overall while being outshot, 100-72. This series is a late Game 4 comeback from being knotted at 2-2.

Verdict: If any series is having a 3-1 comeback, it’s this one.

Kings-Oilers. Stuart Skinner stole Game 4. The Kings put 33 shots on net to the Oilers’ 13 in Sunday’s 1-0 Edmonton win to make it 3-1 in favor of the Oilers. Where we go from here probably looms largely on which Skinner we see – the one that allowed nine goals in the first two games of this series or the one that stopped 60 of 61 shots the last two times out. 

Verdict: Sometimes we get a 3-1 rally we never saw coming. Could it be here? I would never bet against a side that has Anze Kopitar and Drew Doughty.

Avalanche-Jets. The second this series got established as a track meet was the second you knew the Jets were in hot water. The Avs look like the team that won the Stanley Cup two years ago. Cale Makar has been a man possessed in this series and Nathan MacKinnon has been his usual dominant self. Then you look at their depth – 22 goals from 10 different scorers in the first four games of this series, with Valeri Nichushkin and Artturi Lehkonen pacing it with six and four goals, respectively. 

Verdict: Forget this round, if Colorado keeps playing this way they’re going to win their second Cup in three years.

Islanders-Hurricanes. The Hurricanes haven’t played their best hockey but the Islanders haven’t taken advantage of it. The Canes rally from three goals down to win, 5-3, in Game 2 felt like a death blow to the Isles.

Verdict: Don’t see if happening.

Maple Leafs-Bruins. The Leafs look completely discombobulated. They haven’t been able to figure out this Bruins team that continues to be a thorn in their side, nor have they been able to solve goaltender Jeremy Swayman, who has stopped pucks at a .956 rate in three games in this series. I won’t put their chances at zero – all you need is that top group to turn it on and they can rip off three straight easily. But there’s nothing that makes you think that’s going to happen. 

Verdict: If the Maple Leafs come back in this series, it’ll be more shocking than the Bruins loss to the Panthers last season.

Checking in on the playoffs midway through the First Round

~ Pat O'Rourke ~ Leave a comment

We’re pretty much at the halfway point of the first round. Everyone has played two or three games. Teams are beginning to get a sense of who the opponent is. We’re starting to get a grasp of what these series are. 

And with all that, a game of what we (I) expected going in as well what maybe wasn’t expected. Lets dig in.

Expected: Star power. Connor McDavid has six points through two games, putting up five assists in the playoff opener after putting up 100 assists in the regular season. Zach Hyman has followed up his 54-goal campaign with four goals through a pair of playoff games. Brad Marchand, who tied Cam Neely for the Bruins all-time lead in playoff goals (55), is tied with McDavid for the league lead with six points, albeit through three games. Cale Makar has five points. Matthew Tkachuk has three goals. 

Not expected: Lopsided series. There’s a chance three of the four East series are sweeps. Vegas is up 2-0 on Dallas and looks like the same buzzsaw that won the Cup last year. That looks like one in danger of being over quick. The Avalanche are 1-1 with the Jets headed back to Colorado, the series played in a style that benefits the Avs. The last two seasons have yielded a combined eight Game 7s in the opening round; three last season and five in 2022. This year looks like the year where water reaches its level on that side of things. 

Expected: Great goaltending. If for no other reason because it’s the playoffs and if accuracy mattered to the founding fathers of this fever dream we call playoff hockey, they would’ve just called it goalie. We’ve seen more than a handful of how-did-he-make-that type saves, highlighted by the Sergei Bobrovsky stop in Game 2 that looked like something out of a video game.

Not expected: Jake Oettinger outplayed by Vegas once again. Oettinger finished out the regular season looking like the backbone of a team primed to make a Cup run. But he’s been largely subpar through two games of these playoffs, allowing six goals and stopping pucks at an .850 rate, outplayed by Vegas counterpart Logan Thompson. And maybe something more alarming if you’re a Stars fan – Oettinger has an .874 save percentage and 3.57 GAA over his last 15 playoff games dating to the start of last year’s Second Round. That won’t cut it this time of year.

Expected: Maple Leafs/Bruins has been most dramatic. Two division rivals, two teams that have faced each other three prior times in the playoffs in the previous 11 years. Tyler Bertuzzi, Max Domi and Ryan Reaves on one side. Brad Marchand and Pat Maroon on the other side. Two of the game’s elite players going head to head in David Pastrnak and Auston Matthews. Through three games, it’s lived up to it and then some. And now you’ve even got the two coaches going back and forth. Unless the game has completely passed me by, we’ll likely come out of this series expecting a penalty-filled, fight where a hockey game breaks out type of affair between these clubs next season.

Not Expected: Golden Knights running away from the Stars. Though, hand up, I should’ve given if the last seven years have taught us anything it’s that everything comes up Vegas. After a regular season that was largely uninspiring, the Golden Knights suddenly look like the juggernaut that ran through the league en route to a Cup last spring. Jonathan Marchessault looks like the guy that won the Conn Smythe, Jack Eichel looks like the guy that made as strong a case to win the Conn Smythe as you could without winning it, the defense has stiffened up and Thompson has held it down in the crease. 

Expected: William Nylander steals headlines. Because he’s one of the game’s most dynamic figures, on and off the ice. They don’t call him Willy Styles for no reason.

Not expected: William Nylander steals headlines.. by not playing. Nylander played all 82 games and put up a career-high 98 points only to miss the first three (and likely more) games of the playoffs with a reported migraine issue. The Leafs just simply can’t have anything go right for them ever.

Expected: Islanders/Hurricanes among lowest scoring. Two teams that love a good 2-1 game. Game 2 was a fun one, a 5-3 Hurricanes comeback win. The other two were 3-2 and 3-1, the latter of which included an empty netter. Kind of what we expected. 

Not expected: Avalanche/Jets among highest-scoring. The two clubs have combined for 20 goals through two games – tied with Kings/Oilers for the most. Not something you really expected in a series that while, yes, involved the high-tempo Avalanche, also featured a Jets club that had the league’s best goalie and second-best defense.

Expected: Rangers sliding past the Caps. The Capitals/Rangers series is two games old and it doesn’t look like it’ll be more than four of five games. 

Not expected: Panthers on verge of sweeping the Lightning. This had the look of a series destined to go seven games. But the Panthers have really just had a little bit more than the Bolts in every category and it’s proven to be the difference. The Cats are 14-1 in their last 15 Eastern Conference playoff games and have followed the same blueprint – a methodical, heavy game backed by strong goaltending. 

Expected: Canada bringing the heat. The spectacle that is the white out in Winnipeg is something you can’t turn away from no matter how hard you try. The crowd virtually draped in white, along with the ice (which is also white) then the navy Jets jerseys serving as a nice complement is an unreal scene. And it’s like that everywhere in Canada. The scenes inside the arena are must-see, all while about 10-fold people gather outside the arena. It’s like football in the south or soccer in Europe. 

Not expected: Potentially only one Canadian team advancing out of the First Round (if that). In the continued search for the first Canadian Stanley Cup since 1993, it looked like a pretty good possibility at least three of the four Canadian participants in these playoffs would reach the final eight – with the Oilers heavily favored to beat the Kings, the Canucks expected to take care of the Predators along with either the Jets or Maple Leafs potentially getting out. Well so far, the Maple Leafs are down 2-1 to the Bruins, the Jets and Canucks are tied 1-1 with the Avalanche and Predators, respectably, and looking vulnerable. Meanwhile, the Oilers, like the Jets and Canucks, lost home ice to the Kings on Wednesday in their 5-4 overtime defeat.

Leafs look like they’re in trouble, but there’s still lots of hockey left to play

~ Pat O'Rourke ~ Leave a comment

It sure looked like same result, different year in Boston on Saturday night.

The Bruins absolutely throttled the Maple Leafs. Sure, the Leafs had their stretches, mainly at the beginning of all three periods – the Leafs open periods as well as anyone in the league – but it was ultimately all for naught as the B’s ran away for a 5-1 final. 

And with that comes the realization in Toronto that this feels like the same old Leafs, coming up short against that team. This series marks the fourth between the two clubs since 2013, with the Leafs dropping the previous three in agonizing fashion. Their last playoff series win against the Bruins came back in 1959, four Stanley Cups ago for a club that hasn’t won one in 57 years. 

If you’re a Leafs fan, that’s at the forefront of your mind. But you might also be saying if only they could’ve just got one early in the first. Or early in the second. Or both. Maybe we’re taking about this whole thing differently. But that’s what the Bruins are in the Toronto psyche – a series of ‘what ifs.’ If ifs and buts were cherries and nuts you guys wouldn’t have to hear ‘1967’ at every turn, right? Then there’s the fact you had to go it without William Nylander, as well as Bobby McMann for good measure. A small silver lining until you start to think ‘but what if Nylander is out long-term?’ 

Well, if you’re a Leafs fan looking for hope, let’s take a trip down memory lane. To last season’s playoff opener, to be exact. At their home barn, Scotiabank Arena, not the house of horrors that is the TD Garden, taking on the Tampa Bay Lightning with its full complement of Matthews, Marner, Nylander, Tavares, Rielly, and even Ryan O’Reilly and Luke Schenn to sweeten the pot. The result – a 7-3 blowout at the hands of the Lightning that wasn’t even that close. Run out of their own rink by a Bolts team that hadn’t lost a playoff series to an Eastern Conference team since being swept in the First Round by the Blue Jackets following a near-record setting 2018-19 regular season, and looked determined never to again.

Same old Leafs, right? 

Well, the Maple Leafs went on to take four of the next five games to eliminate the Bolts and win their first playoff series since 2004. They returned the favor in Game 2 with a 7-2 win then went on to win three overtime games to take the series, closing it out in Game 6 in Tampa with a John Tavares winner.

Now, the circumstances this time around are different. If Nylander is more than a day-to-day thing, this team is in serious trouble. Losing a player like Nylander moves everyone up in the lineup. Third-line players become second-line players. Fourth-line players become third-line players, and so on. We saw on Saturday night the issues that could pose. All this coming against the Bruins, no less, Toronto’s nemesis, who they haven’t beat in 65 years. And unable to solve Jeremy Swayman in the process, a guy they’ve been trying to solve for some time now.

It feels ominous, and it probably should. But it was same old Leafs last year, too, and it turned out to not be same old Leafs, at least for one round. 

All a long-winded way of saying there’s still lots of hockey to play.

If the playoffs top the regular season, we’re in for a good one

~ Pat O'Rourke ~ Leave a comment

Well if the playoffs match the heat the regular season brought, we’re in for a good one. 

To summarize: the highlights of this 1,312-game journey over the last six months included: 

  • 100-assist seasons by Nikita Kucherov and Connor McDavid (a feat previously accomplished by Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux and Bobby Orr, google them if you don’t know who they are)
  • An Art Ross Trophy race for the ages between Kucherov and Nathan MacKinnon that McDavid slightly snuck his way into.
  • A Hart Trophy race between Kucherov, MacKinnon, McDavid and Auston Matthews that at this hour remains too close to call (but it should be Kucherov).
  • Matthews’ bid to be the first player to score 70 goals in a season in over 30 years, a bid that came up one goal short.
  • Nine players overall with 100 points and four with 50 goals.
  • A race for the second wild card in the East that had everybody on the edge of their seats for the final couple weeks of the season.

You don’t need play-in games and in-season tournaments when your league is pumping out stuff like that.

Can we top that in the postseason? Time will tell. But given that it’s the Stanley Cup Playoffs we’re talking about the odds might not be as long as you might think.

Some thoughts on the playoff field as we get started, and how it could top the regular season:

All four First Round series in the East can go either way: I know what you’re saying – how could you possibly think that Capitals team could get out of the First Round? Well look at the way they got into the playoffs. If they win, it wouldn’t be the first or last time a team like that found their way out of a round after fighting and clawing their way in right up to Game 82. Add in the way Charlie Lindgren is playing in net, add in the opponent that is the historical postseason face-planter New York Rangers, it’s not inconceivable. Then you’ve got a Bruins playing the Maple Leafs, who based off the way the B’s played their final two games of the season (they didn’t), the Leafs appeared to be their desired opponent. That never ends well and for all the Leafs playoff futility over the years, they’ve made a habit of making series interesting, which always makes it more of a coin flip than it might appear to be. The Hurricanes went nearly half the season without getting a save then somehow finished with 52 wins while the Islanders have played well since Patrick Roy took over as head coach in January and are really starting to see results. Panthers-Lightning is a toss up.

It’s wide open as a whole: I mean honestly, is there one you look at here and say ‘how is anybody going to beat that team?’ 

Golden Knights will not repeat: I was beating this drum all year but I simply can’t anymore. It feels like a typical year-after-the-Cup type year, where a team gets out to a blazing start (Vegas was 11-0-1 through 12 games) then has a lot of ‘meh’ the rest of the way. They’re more likely to go one-and-done than they are to win a Cup for the second straight year.

Avalanche go one-and-done again: You couldn’t find a worse matchup for this Avalanche team than the Jets. It feels like all of Colorado’s weaknesses are Winnipeg’s strengths.

All eyes on Winnipeg to end the Canadian Cup drought: It’s been 31 years since a Canada-based team won a Stanley Cup and it’s been quite some time since you’ve looked at a team among that group of seven clubs and seen one that can truly win it (Edmonton always manages to prove themselves to be who I thought they were). Defensively stout, built from the net-out with tons of size. If them and Dallas meet in the Second Round that could be the Cup.

Don’t sleep on the Lightning: If you told me the winner of the Florida-Tampa First Round series was the team that came out of the East, I’d buy it.

We get a 15-goal performance, and a 35-goal performance: Sticking to theme of what’s been a ‘party like it’s the 80s’ season in terms of individual scoring. There’s been 10 instances of players putting up 35 points in a postseason but only one since 1992-93, when Evgeni Malkin put up 36 en route to delivering the Penguins the Cup in 2009. There’s been 21 instances of players scoring 15 goals in a postseason but just two since Joe Sakic scored 18 back in 1996, in Sidney Crosby (15, 2009) and Alex Ovechkin (15, 2018). I’ll say someone hits both those numbers these playoffs. And yes, playoff hockey doesn’t necessarily cede itself to players filling the net, but here’s this – scoring was actually down almost 200 goals from last season and didn’t get in the way of having individual numbers as fruitful as they’d been in 30 years. 

It all ends with Stanley Cup returning to Dallas: Last year was the Golden Knights’ turn and this year feels like the Stars’ turn. This group has been at it for six years now, being knocked out by the Cup winner three of the last five seasons and reaching the Cup Final in 2020 (losing to the Lightning). Perhaps biggest of all for the Stars is the fact Jake Oettinger has found his game, with a .941 save percentage and 1.54 GAA over his final 11 games of the regular season. 

This will be the greatest Frozen Four ever

~ Pat O'Rourke ~ Leave a comment

We’ve never seen a Frozen Four like this. From the programs involved to the star power to what could be at stake. It’s going to be one for the ages.

The four programs: BC, BU, Denver, Michigan, four of college hockey’s signature programs. It’s the equivalent of the final four in basketball being North Carolina, Duke, Kansas and Kentucky. Or football being Notre Dame, Alabama, Michigan and USC. There’s 28 national titles between the four teams. Michigan and Denver are tied for the all-time lead in natties.

And if college hockey truly has overtaken the CHL as the flagship breeding ground of NHL talent, that premise will very much be on display in St. Paul this weekend. BU’s Macklin Celebrini and BC’s Cutter Gauthier would’ve broken camp with a majority of NHL teams had they been on NHL rosters six months ago. Celebrini will be the first overall pick in the upcoming draft and Denver defenseman Zeev Buium will likely join him among the top 10 picks. BC has three more first-rounders in Ryan Leonard, Gabe Perreault and Will Smith. BU has another in Tom Willander, a key piece of a defense corps led by Lane Hutson, who has 97 points in 76 collegiate games. Michigan has its usual stable of prospects in Gavin Brindley, Seamus Casey, Dylan Duke, Rutger McGroarty and Frank Nazar. Denver is led by Jack Devine, a 2022 seventh-round pick by the Panthers who exploded for 27 goals and 56 points this season. 

It could all end on Saturday night with an all-Boston final. There could also be a matchup between Denver and Michigan, two programs tied atop the all-time list with nine national titles apiece. Whatever exists in between isn’t a bad matchup. 

Good times will be had. Here’s a rundown on the four teams: 

Boston College

Why they’ll win: To put it simply, if the Eagles win the national championship, they’ll be in the conversation for the greatest team in the history of college hockey. The Eagles have won 33 games this season – one more will set a program record – and have won 14 in a row, their last loss coming in the Beanpot semifinal against BU on the first Monday of February. It’s not dissimilar to the most recent BC national champion, in 2012, a club that featured the likes of Chris Kreider, Johnny Gaudreau, Kevin Hayes and Brian Dumoulin. That team won 19 straight on the way to a natty, losing for the final time on January 21st. 

There’s been lots of good collections of talent in college hockey in recent years – teams stacked with high first-round picks, projected top picks, and so on. This is the first such group that’s really put it together and been the juggernaut they appeared to be on paper.

Why they won’t win: There’s not much to choose from in terms of flaws for this team, but if there’s on area in particular this team is lacking in it’s experience. They’re the youngest team in the country (though it should be noted everyone in this Frozen Four is young), and they have a coach in his first national tournament – which really gives you pause when when you factor in the fact all three coaches have reached the Frozen Four prior, with one (David Carle, Denver) winning two years ago.

Player to watch: Cutter Gauthier. If Gauthier signed his pro contract after last season, where he put up 16 goals and 37 points in 32 games as a freshman, he likely would’ve been playing in the NHL this past October – if he wasn’t it wouldn’t be for a lack of ability. Returning to the Heights this season, he’s put up 37 goals in 39 games, pacing a BC team that has been the nation’s best for much of the season. There hasn’t been a 40-goal scorer in college hockey in 30 years – Gauthier has a chance to do it. Gauthier is probably known best for his player rights being dealt to Anaheim from Philadelphia in a highly-publicized January trade. The Ducks will be more than happy to have him.

Player you might not know about: Eamon Powell. At one time I would’ve put BC’s goalie, Jacob Fowler, in this spot, but he’s becoming the player that everyone talks about how nobody talks about him. So we’ll talk Powell, the senior defenseman and Lightning prospect. Here’s the one thing that comes to mind for Powell – when BC was at the height of its power under Jerry York, winning four national titles in a 12-year span from 2001-12, there was always an upperclassman or two that would step up in a big way. Powell has done just that this season, taking charge of the BC blue line with 38 points in 38 games – up from the career mark of 22 he set last season. His 13-game personal point streak that stretched from late January to mid-March was the longest in the country for a defenseman this season.

Boston University

Why they’ll win: BU has tons of size. They’re the third-biggest team in the country in terms of both height and weight – none of the other three teams crack the top-20 in terms of height and only Denver (8th-heaviest team nationally) comes close in the weight category. This is a team built very well for postseason hockey and the size is chief among the reasons why that is.

Why they won’t win: Too much Celebrini? Terriers star freshman Macklin Celebrini is tied for second in the nation with 64 points. After Celebrini, the next-highest scoring forward on BU has 36 points (a three-way tie between Ryan Greene, Quinn Hutson and Jeremy Wilmer), a 28-point gap. At the same time, BU is tied for third in the country in scoring so the fact there’s only two players with more than 36 points (Celebrini, Lane Hutson) probably speaks to their scoring depth and the fact they get a lot from a lot of different areas. At the same time, they lean pretty heavily on the 17-year-old projected top pick in the upcoming draft – while the Terriers have won both games he missed this season, they’re 1-3-1 in the five games in which Celebrini failed to record a point this year.

Player to watch: Macklin Celebrini. If you’re a fan of the Ducks, Blackhawks, Sharks, Blue Jackets or another team whose only source of hope at this point rests on a bunch of ping pong balls, this is the prize. Celebrini has lived up to, if not exceeded, all expectations this season, with 32 goals and 64 points in 37 games as 17-year-old. All this after having his offseason disrupted by shoulder surgery. If the Blackhawks win the draft lottery again, you can all but guarantee another revisitation of the draft lottery rules – getting Celebrini a year after landing Connor Bedard would be getting Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews all over again.

Player you might not know about: Shane Lachance. The imposing 6-foot-5 freshman is a third-generation Terrier, the most notable of that lineage being his grandfather, Jack Parker, who spent 40 years as the head coach at BU, winning 897 games and three national titles after a good career at BU as a player. His father, Scott, played one season at BU, helping the Terriers to the 1991 title game (they lost 8-7 – yes that’s right, 8-7 – to Northern Michigan) on a team that featured Scott McEachern, Tony Amonte and Keith Tkachuk, before being drafted fourth overall in the 1991 draft and going on to play 819 NHL games. 

As for Shane, he has 13 goals and 27 points in his freshman season – his 13 goals tied for eighth among freshmen in Hockey East. He’s an absolute menace around the net. 

Denver

Why they’ll win: Of all the success between these four teams, this is the one program that has recent success, having won twice in the past decade – meanwhile BC, BU and Michigan nurse title droughts of 12, 15 and 26 years, respectively. The Pios have nine holdovers from that team, including five of their top eight scorers this season in Jack Devine, Massimo Rizzo, McKade Webster, Shai Buium and Carter King. Also in that group is defenseman Sean Behrens, who has 79 points in three seasons as a defenseman.

Why they won’t win: Denver has a team save percentage of .898. No team with a sub-.900 save percentage has won a natty since 2003, when Minnesota did it with a .897 save percentage. That’s not going to cut it when you’re trying to win a championship. Now, Matt Davis has been very good in net for Denver this postseason. If he keeps it up, there’s a good chance Denver will capture its second title in three seasons. But if the goaltending doesn’t hold up, they’ll be leaving with no hardware.

Player to watch: Zeev Buium. The Denver ace blueliner just has the look of a No. 1 defenseman. And he’ll be a top-10 pick in the NHL Draft a few months from now on the premise he’ll emerge as one. His 49 points are tied with Lane Hutson for the most in the country among defensemen.

Player you might not know about: Boston Buckberger. Best name in this Frozen Four. He flies under the radar a bit on a blue line that includes Zeev Buium, Shai Buium and Sean Behrens but has 27 points in his freshman season. He had a coming out party of sorts in the tournament opener against UMass, scoring the game’s first goal in the second period before assisting on the winner by Tristan Broz in double overtime.

Michigan 

Why they’ll win: Have to love the way this team is playing coming in. Yes, they’re running into a buzzsaw in BC but the Wolverines have momentum on their side. They’ve won six of seven going back to the first weekend of March, the only loss over that stretch coming in overtime of the Big Ten championship game.

Why they won’t win: The Wolverines have given up exactly three goals per game this season, the most of the four teams in it. Do you really expect them to shut down BC?

Player to watch: Gavin Brindley. You almost forget this kid wasn’t a first-round pick, that’s how good he’s been since being taken 34th overall (which would probably make him a first-round pick in 2033, given the way things are trending on the NHL expansion front, but I digress) last summer by the Blue Jackets. Brindley followed up a strong freshman season, in which he put up 38 points in 41 games, with 25 goals and 53 points in 39 games coming into St. Paul. He was also one of Team USA’s best players en route to a World Juniors title in January and has been one of the country’s best players since returning from Sweden, with 35 points over 21 games dating to mid-January. Fans have another player to be excited about in Columbus, where Brindley’s freshman year liney Adam Fantilli is currently playing. Brindley rode shotgun with Fantilli last season on the way to Fantilli winning the Hobey Baker Award before being drafted 3rd overall by the Jackets. 

Player you might not know about: Marshall Warren. We’ve got a revenge game on our hands on Thursday when Michigan plays BC in the semifinal. Warren, a grad transfer, played four seasons for the Eagles, playing 130 games and serving as team captain last season before moving onto Michigan for this season. He’s put up four goals and 18 points in 40 games for the Wolverines while wearing the ‘A’ this season.

8 things that make this year’s NCAA Tournament must-watch

~ Pat O'Rourke ~ Leave a comment

The day is here. The NCAA hockey tournament will officially get underway on Thursday afternoon in Springfield, Mass. when the puck drops on Denver-UMass. Great day if you’re a hockey fan. Even better day if you’ve hit your basketball quota for the year, waiting for the NHL playoffs to start or believe nothing in baseball matters before Memorial Day.

Here’s what we have going for us in this tournament: 

BC as dominant a team we’ve seen in some time. Last season’s top seed, Minnesota, was powered by a juggernaut forward line of Logan Cooley, Matthew Knies and Jimmy Snuggerud. This year’s BC team has just that – a forward line of 2023 first-round picks Ryan Leonard, Gabe Perreault and Will Smith all while having another line centered around 2022 fifth overall pick, Cutter Gauthier, who has 35 goals in 37 games. There’s virtually no holes on this roster. And while Providence, where the Eagles will look to punch their first ticket to the Frozen Four in eight years, hasn’t been nice to them historically (they’ve lost three national title games in Providence while not advancing out of any of the three regionals they’ve played there, going one-and-done twice), none of those BC teams were nearly as dominant as this one. The Eagles are favored to win their first title since 2012 for good reason.

And the possibility of a BC-BU final. It feels like the whole season has been a crash course to BC and BU playing each other in St. Paul with the natty on the line. The Comm Ave rivals have been the nation’s top two teams virtually all year, laid waste to a very strong Hockey East and are led by some of the country’s best players. It’s far from a lock, especially when you consider these are two of the five youngest teams in the country, but it feels like destiny. 

Star power. The amount of players that will be making big impacts in the NHL real soon in this tournament is incredible. Just start with BC, which has four players alone who were first-round picks, and BU which is headlined by the projected top overall pick in the 2024 draft in Macklin Celebrini, another first-rounder in defenseman Tom Willander and another blue liner in Lane Hutson that would be first-rounder were they to do a reselect the 2022 draft. Michigan has its usual complement of top prospects in Rutger McGroarty, Seamus Casey, Frank Nazar III and Gavin Brindley while Minnesota’s Snuggerud, a 2022 Blues first-rounder, has 21 goals in 37 games. Michigan State is headlined by defenseman Artyom Levshunov, who could be a top-three pick in the draft while Denver blue liner Zeev Buium could go in the top 10. Then there’s Jackson Blake at North Dakota, a 2021 fourth-rounder who has had his stock fly up in his sophomore season. 

Maryland Heights regional for all the bragging rights in the Midwest. Perhaps the best case for on-campus regionals is to imagine what this region would be like were it held at Munn Ice Arena, Michigan State’s home barn, for a regional that features the Spartans along with Western Michigan, North Dakota and Michigan. You couldn’t top that atmosphere. Regardless, this region has been labeled the ‘region of doom’ and rightfully so. The team that finds its way to St. Paul from this group won’t do it the easy way.

Quinnipiac goes for repeat. And if they do, the Bobcats would do something that hasn’t been done in more than half-century – a Northeast school successfully defending a national championship. The last Northeast school to pull the trick was BU, when the Terriers won their second straight title back in 1972. The Bobcats will take to regionals in Providence, where they won back in 2013 to advance to their first-ever Frozen Four, where they lost to Yale in the title game. They’ll likely have to go through top-seeded BC, which they took to overtime on the first night of the season, falling 2-1 in overtime.

Will age be a factor? The four youngest teams in the tournament are one-seeds, with the top overall seed BC checking in as the country’s youngest team at 20 years, nine months. Michigan advanced to the Frozen Four as the nation’s youngest team last season but lost in the semifinals – the last time the youngest team in the country reached the national title game was in 2015, when BU did so and lost to Providence. BC was the last program to win the natty as the youngest team in the country, however, when they won in 2010. Quinnipiac had age on its side last season when it won the national title tied for 31st-oldest team in the country, beating the second-youngest team, Minnesota, in the final. But the year before that Denver won as the country’s second-youngest team. So who knows.

The most intriguing regional from an age standpoint comes in Sioux Falls, where BU – tied for the fourth-youngest team in the country – plays the nation’s oldest team in RIT. Another young group, Minnesota, plays the third-oldest team in the tournament, Omaha, in the other game.

Can Omaha keep its run going? Speaking of Omaha. The Mavericks are rolling into the tournament on a 12-3-2 run that saw them make the Frozen Faceoff final, where they lost to Denver (no shame in that). The Mavericks are led by brothers Tanner and Griffin Ludtke, who lead the team with 28 and 27 points, respectively. Tanner, a third-round pick by the Coyotes, has been a near-point per game player since the turn of the year, with 20 points in his last 23 games.

Maine is back. It once would’ve been inconceivable to think Maine would go 12 years without making the tournament. The Black Bears were a model program in the 1990s and early 2000s, making the tournament 17 out of 26 years from 1987 to 2012, making 11 Frozen Fours and winning a pair of national championships. The Black Bears, which face Cornell in the opening round on Thursday, are a veteran group led by a pair of freshmen brothers (not twins) in Bradly and Josh Nadeau, who have 46 and 45 points, respectively. The two linemates have a Sedin-like connection on the ice – with a near identical scoring line (19-27-46 for Bradly, 18-27-45 for Josh). Bradly is a 2023 first-round pick, taken 30th overall by the Hurricanes, to give Maine its first first-round pick in over two decades.  

It’s past time to fix the NCAA Regional format

~ Pat O'Rourke ~ Leave a comment

BU and Denver were two of the three best teams in college hockey this season, as determined by the ratings system to seed the NCAA Tournament, if the eye test didn’t do the job for you already.

BU checks in at No. 2 overall behind archrival BC with not much separating those two clubs, even after the Eagles’ 6-2 pasting of the Terriers in the Hockey East title game. Denver solidified its top-seed (3rd overall) after winning the conference tournament in a wildly-competitive NCHC.

The prize for all that? Traveling across the country for the first two rounds of the tournament.

The reason behind BU and Denver having to go out on long trips boils down to two things: regional hosts being entitled to play in their respective region and the NCAA’s insistence on avoiding any and all intra-conference matchups in the first round. 

Two of the four regional hosts, UMass and Omaha, found their way into the tournament after spending the final weeks of the regular season on the bubble. That put UMass in the Northeast Regional in Springfield, Mass. and Omaha in the West Regional in Sioux Falls, S.D. UMass and Omaha are conference rivals with BU and Denver, respectively. As a result, BU was sent out to Sioux Falls instead of Springfield, a 90-minute drive from campus. And Denver heads to Springfield, which is much further from Denver than Sioux Falls is – even if Sioux Falls isn’t necessarily in their backyard.

It all begs the question, is it right, and does it make sense? 

And if you think this setup is something that is ‘right’ or ‘makes sense,’ then we have different definitions of both words.

For Denver, it’s the second straight year they’ve earned a No. 1 seed only to have to trudge all the way to New England. Last year, as a 30-win team and the defending national champion, the Pioneers were placed in the East Regional in Manchester, N.H. They were bounced by Cornell in the opening round, 2-0. 

And there’s plenty of other instances of teams like Denver realizing a similar fate since the NCAA Tournament took this current 16-team, four-regional format in 2003, finding themselves forced to travel a long way, whether it be due to scenarios like what Denver and BU face or something else.

Like in 2008, when UNH went out to Colorado Springs as a top seed only to fall, 7-3, to Notre Dame in the opening round. Two years later, Denver found itself in a regional in Albany as a No. 1 seed, falling to RIT in the first round. In 2011, BC traveled to St. Louis only to lose, 8-4, to Colorado College while Miami went to Manchester, N.H. and played UNH, which the fourth-seeded Wildcats came out on top, 3-1. The Red Hawks suffered a similar fate in 2015, placed in the East Regional in Providence as a top seed only to face Providence College, falling 7-5 as the Friars kicked off a run to their first national title.

In 2019, Providence kicked off another Frozen Four run after managing to find itself in a regional in its home city, this time knocking off top-seeded Minnesota State, 6-3, in the opening round (not that it makes any difference, but it should be noted Brown was the host school in both the 2015 and 2019 Providence regionals, not PC). In 2022, Minnesota State found itself traveling to Albany and Western Michigan traveling to Worcester, both as top seeds. While the Mavericks managed to leave Albany with its second straight Frozen Four bid via one-goal wins over Harvard and Notre Dame, the Broncos weren’t so lucky – they lost to Minnesota in the Regional Final after escaping Northeastern in the First Round in overtime.

If you’ve managed to stick around through all that, it’s a long way of saying the best teams in the country aren’t properly rewarded for their performance under the current system. Unless you think traveling to Massachusetts or New Hampshire to play a school from less than an hour away, or Providence too play a school that’s literally minutes away, gives a team that won, give or take, 30 games the advantage they deserve.

The simple, and popular, solution is holding early round matchups at campus sites. One could be adopting the format of the NCAA men’s lacrosse tournament, which has a similar 16-team field, in which higher seed hosts first-round games before moving to neutral sites from there. Or just have both rounds prior to the Frozen Four at campus sites. Having the No. 1 seed host the entire regional is an option as well. The latter two would be better options with the current system of first and second-round games being two days apart.

No matter what solution is, it needs to be something that does right by the best teams in the country, because the system as it currently stands does not.

And there’s no greater instance of that than taking one look at this year’s bracket.

Predicting what could be a chaotic conference tournament weekend

~ Pat O'Rourke ~ Leave a comment

If you’re a college hockey fan, these next few weeks are going to be a good time. All the blue bloods of the sport are back involved and there’s more than enough star power to go around.

The brackets get released on Sunday. BU, BC, North Dakota and Denver hold down the one-seeds entering the weekend. Western Michigan and Colorado College – both idle after being eliminated in the NCHC quarterfinals last weekend – are currently the last two teams in with potential bid-stealers lurking behind in Cornell and St. Cloud State. 

The committee will have its hands full regardless of what happens. There’s a prospect of five NCHC teams, four Hockey East and four Big Ten teams making it, which makes the task of avoiding intra-conference matchups in the first round of the NCAA Tournament as tall as ever. The inclusion of regional hosts UMass (Springfield) and Omaha (Sioux Falls), meaning both clubs have to play in those respective regionals, throws a wrench in it all. 

If you’ve had a hard week at work, just imagine being on that committee. 

It’ll be a fun weekend. What will ultimately happen is anyone’s guess. Here’s my attempt to do so: 

Hockey East: BU over BC. This is as exciting a Hockey East final four as we’ve had in some time. Both BU and BC are at the Garden, the first time since 2019 in which that has happened, while Maine, which holds the most Hockey East titles of any school without a Commonwealth Ave address, makes its return. UMass accounts for two of the last three conference titles. And I’ll say this – don’t be surprised if UMass upsets BC. The last meeting between these two teams came in February, a 6-4 BC win in Chestnut Hill that came via three unanswered goals in the third period – a five-on-three goal followed by a power play goal followed by an empty net goal at the end. UMass will take the Garden ice Friday with that game fresh in mind.

But I’m just going to put one on the fairway here and put BU and BC in the final Saturday night. These have been the best two teams in the country all year and have made light work of Hockey East despite how strong the conference has been this season. BU captures the Lamoriello Trophy – the Terriers are the better team from top-to-bottom and were the better team for much of the three matchups between these two clubs this season, despite the Eagles holding the 2-1 advantage. 

NCHC: North Dakota over St. Cloud State. North Dakota, Denver, Omaha and St. Cloud State descend upon the Xcel Energy Center this weekend and don’t be surprised if at least one of these four clubs are back there next month for the Frozen Four. North Dakota remains my favorite to be the ones raising the national championship trophy in the Minnesota Wild’s house and I’ll take them to win a ridiculously-competitive NCHC, which has six of its eight teams ranked in the top 17 of the USCHO.com poll. They take down defending champ St. Cloud State in a rematch of the 2021 Frozen Faceoff title game, a 5-3 NoDak win. The Huskies, the current second team out in the pairwise, moves past Denver on Friday as they try to claim a spot.

Big Ten: Michigan State over Michigan. All you have to ask yourself this time of year is which team is more likely to keep the puck out of its own net. To me the easy answer here is the Spartans. Both teams have actually allowed the same number of goals per game (3.0), but Michigan State has tightened up in that area down the stretch, allowing two goals or fewer in six of its last eight games going back to early February. I trust Trey Augustine to make the saves moreso than Jake Barczewski. 

ECAC: Quinnipiac over Dartmouth. You know when you go on and on about something hasn’t happened and it always seems like said thing ends up happening? Well I feel like I’ve been droning on and on about Quinnipiac’s inability to go up to Lake Placid and take the ECAC title despite their recent success. Well, I think the Bobcats do it this year. 

Last year, Colgate shockingly won this tournament in a final four field that included tournament-bound teams in Quinnipiac, Cornell and Harvard. There may be another Colgate lurking this year in Dartmouth. The Big Green head into Lake Placid winners of six straight, their last loss coming on February 3rd at Quinnipiac. They’re all but assured of a 10-loss season (barring a run to the unlikeliest of national titles), their fewest in a season since 1978-79. Dartmouth is backstopped by 6-foot-8 goalie Cooper Black, who has a .911 save percentage and 2.52 GAA in 29 games this season.

CCHA: Bemidji State over Michigan Tech. This might be the best game of the weekend. Two teams playing some of the best hockey in the country right now, with Bemidji riding a nine-game winning streak and Michigan Tech winners of six of seven. The Beavers have 14 double-digit point scorers that includes a pair of 20-point defensemen in Kyle Looft (28) and Eric Pohlkamp (24). Michigan Tech is led by freshman Isaac Gordon, who is tied for eighth in the country among freshmen with 36 points. Star netminder Blake Pietila, who has a 2.10 GAA and .922 save percentage in 140 career games, has found his form in the second half.

Atlantic Hockey: RIT over AIC. The Tigers are a potential tournament dark horse, ranking top-10 in the country in both goals per game and goals allowed per game and a resume that includes win over Notre Dame and UNH. Their No. 21 ranking in the pairwise is right behind Northeastern and Arizona State and ahead of Notre Dame and Penn State. RIT has six players with 30-plus points – two of which are defensemen in Gianfranco Cassaro and Aiden Hansen-Bukata. Denver, with a blueline led by brothers Shai and Zeev Buium – a second-round pick and projected 2024 top-10 pick, respectively – is the only other team with multiple 30-point defensemen. At the other end of the rink, Tommy Scarfone has a 2.19 GAA and .928 save percentage. RIT is also riding a six-game win streak.  

Alex Ovechkin resurgence pacing Capitals resurgence

~ Pat O'Rourke ~ Leave a comment

The Washington Capitals suddenly look like a playoff team. And Alex Ovechkin suddenly looks like Alex Ovechkin again.

The Caps jumped into playoff position with their 5-2 win over the Flames on Monday night. Two of those goals came off the stick of Ovechkin to put him at 21 goals on the season. Washington is 10-4-1 in its last 15 games and is surging into an unlikely playoff bid, at least for now. Meanwhile the ‘has he lost it?’ discourse that surrounded Ovechkin in the season’s early months has vanished.

With his two-goal performance on Monday, Ovechkin hit 20 goals for the 19th consecutive season, joining Gordie Howe and Brendan Shanahan as the only players in NHL history to do that. He’s the only one of the three to do so in each of the first 19 seasons of his career. He has 13 goals in his last 21 games. The race to pass Wayne Gretzky, if it was ever off, is back on, with Ovechkin sitting 51 goals back of the Great One for the NHL career goals record. 

What this follows was a puzzling start to the season by the Great Eight, even if he had just celebrated his 38th birthday. Nearly two decades of burying the same goals from the same spots and goalies never catching up with it even as they got bigger, stronger and more athletic will make you think it’ll never end. 

In the first 43 games of the season, Ovechkin scored just eight goals, the first time he’d failed to outscore his own number to that point of the season. His previous low had been 15, which came in the 2010-11 season. And yes, just 5.4 percent of the shots he’d fired on goal had made its way into the net, an alarmingly low percentage for any shooter, let alone Ovechkin. If shooting percentage had a Mendoza Line, 5.4 percent would be well below it. But at the same time, he’d put just 147 shots on net to that point, also a career-low by a solid margin. Prior to this season he never had fewer than 162, which came in 2011-12. He scored 29 goals on 187 shots through 43 games last season.

Ovechkin has followed up that horrendous 43-game start – the first half of the season and change – with a 21-game stretch in which he’s scored 13 goals, which equates to 51 goals over an 82-game stretch, the type of number you picture when you think of Ovechkin. Only Kirill Kaprizov, Zach Hyman and Auston Matthews have more goals over that stretch.

The Capitals missed the playoffs last season. If they miss again, it would be the first time they’d have missed in consecutive years since 2006-07, Ovechkin’s second year in the league. If the season ended today, they’d be in as the second wild card and set to play the top-seeded Bruins thanks to a 15-game stretch that’s seen them win 10 games. 

Dylan Strome, Connor McMichael and Hendrix Lapierre, three 20-somethings that gained entry to the NHL as first-round draft picks, have given the Caps the identity in the middle of the ice Nicklas Backstrom and Evgeny Kuznetsov gave at the height of their powers. John Carlson and Tom Wilson, who had their 2022-23 campaigns derailed by injuries, are looking more like the players that helped bring the Stanley Cup to Washington six years ago. Charlie Lindgren has been a steadying force in net.

But it all begins with No. 8 looking like No. 8 again.  

It’s Conference Time

~ Pat O'Rourke ~ Leave a comment

We’re just over a week out from Selection Sunday. Which means we’re in full-on conference tournament mode in college hockey. 

This is where the true madness happens. You’re always good for a team or two going on runs to claim an unlikely national tournament bid. Usually one of those bids comes at the expense of an at-large. The pairwise that we used as a guide as to who was in and who was out gets torn apart. 

You can’t predict college hockey.

All six conference tourneys are being played this weekend. Here’s the biggest storyline in each one: 

It’s BC and BU’s world, we’re just living in it. BC and BU haven’t reached the Frozen Four in the same year since 1990. Everybody expects that drought to end this year.

For how loaded Hockey East was this season, the Eagles and Terriers still made easy work of the conference – both clubs had just three regulation losses in conference play (BU also had an overtime loss). Every other Hockey East team had at least nine losses in conference play. It’s BC, BU followed by everyone else.

You never know in the single-elimination format, and BU needs to beat a Northeastern team that has had its number since Jay Pandolfo took over just to get to next weekend’s semifinals, but the clear expectation is for the Lamoriello Trophy to land somewhere on Commonwealth Ave.

NCHC is North Dakota’s to lose. North Dakota might be the one team I’d be shocked didn’t make it to St. Paul for Frozen Four weekend. Even moreso than BC or BU. They’re a veteran team, they have size and they’re solid defensively. Much like BC and BU in Hockey East, NoDak is in a strong conference but they’re just a head above everybody else. I don’t put too much stock into last weekend’s Omaha sweep – the Mavericks had everything to play for and North Dakota had virtually nothing.  

The ECAC could wreak havoc on the national tournament picture. If Quinnipiac wins the ECAC Tournament, it’s very likely the ECAC is a one-bid league – the highest-ranked ECAC team behind Quinnipiac (No. 8) is Cornell at No. 18, with UMass, UNH and St. Cloud State standing between them and Providence, the current last team in. 

But here’s the thing – Quinnipiac hasn’t won the conference tournament since 2016. And not because they haven’t been good enough. Last year they were bounced in the semifinal by Colgate in overtime, as a team that spent the entire season as one of the top two or three teams in the country and eventually won the national title. This year, they’re still a top-10 team but not nearly the juggernaut they were last season. So it’s no sure thing. If it’s someone besides the Bobcats, it would shake up the tournament picture big time. Just like it did each of the past two seasons, when the ECAC champ took a bid from an at-large.

You really can’t predict the Big Ten. No idea what direction this tournament will go in. Minnesota has managed to fly under the radar, with just three losses since early January. Michigan’s best players have been among the country’s best players in the second half, with Rutger McGroarty, Gavin Brindley and Seamus Casey on a tear since returning from World Juniors. Michigan State has been the conference’s best team wire to wire. Ohio State, which shocked Wisconsin last weekend, has all the look of a Cinderella. You’re on your own handicapping this one.

CCHA comes down to Michigan Tech and Bemidji State. Bemidji State is the country’s hottest team, unbeaten in 10 straight, their last loss coming on February 3rd. Michigan Tech is heating up in their own right, winning five of six to wrap up the regular season, scoring five-plus goals four times. Blake Pietila has been great in net, allowing just two goals in five games prior to his clunker on Saturday, when he allowed five goals in 15 shots in Michigan Tech’s 6-5 win over Bowling Green. Don’t be surprised if the Huskies come in and render the Beavers’ second half run meaningless.

Atlantic Hockey should be RIT’s to lose, but watch out for Holy Cross. RIT is one of the better teams in the country. Led up front by Cody Laskosky and Carter Wilkie up front, Gianfranco Cassaro on the back end and Tommy Scarfone in net, the Tigers’ balance is one of the country’s best. But like Bemidji State in CCHA, they need to win the conference tournament for the season to go on. Holy Cross could crash RIT’s party. The Crusaders have lost just once in 10 games going back to mid-January and have reached 20 wins for the first time since 2012-13. Liam McLinskey paced the conference with 44 points, the highest output by an Atlantic Hockey player since 2018-19, when Blake Christensen (AIC) and Joseph Duszak (Mercyhurst) put up 47 points apiece. Third-year head coach Bill Riga is building something in Worcester.