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.  

Looking back at the trade deadline

~ Pat O'Rourke ~ Leave a comment

We’ve reached the last big checkpoint of the NHL regular season – the trade deadline.

At this point, you have what you have and you have a pretty good idea of who you are. And with that begins the mad-dash to the end of the regular season, which comes a little over a month from now. If you’re one of the teams up top, you’re getting your club set for the playoffs. If you’re in tier beneath, you’re already playing playoff hockey, either holding onto a spot or chasing one. Either way, every game is a four-point swing if you’re in that group.

But how different are we all looking after the mini-silly season that annually takes place in the few week run-up to the deadline? Let’s talk about it.

Vegas Golden Knights: “We’re doing this again, aren’t we” – The big pickup of last year’s trade haul for Vegas was Ivan Barbashev, a good player whose game exploded upon getting traded, being one of the key pieces on Vegas’ run to its first Cup. It would be little surprise if defenseman Noah Hanifin, one of the prizes of this year’s deadline, was that player. A really good player who has been quietly awesome in Calgary for some time now, he fits right in with that Vegas defense. And he doesn’t have to be the guy there. Anthony Mantha, a good player who has spent much of his near-decade in the NHL on subpar teams in Detroit and Washington, is another player of that mold. Injured forward Tomas Hertl, picked up from the Sharks, is a two-time 30-goal scorer stashed on LTIR.

Carolina Hurricanes: “Lets try this rental thing” – Jake Guentzel’s 98 goals since the start of the 2021-22 season is tied with new teammate Sebastian Aho for 22nd in the league. His finishing ability should fit right into a Canes group always among the best in the league at driving possession. But the biggest heist could be the acquisition of Evgeny Kuznetsov, acquired for the Capitals, in which Washington is retaining 50 percent of his salary. If he holds up his end of the bargain – he’s currently slotted on a line with Guentzel and Martin Necas – it could be the piece that puts Carolina over the top. 

Colorado Avalanche: “Lets take another swing at this No. 2 center thing” – Casey Mittelstadt is a one-time high pick (8th overall, 2017) who is really coming into his own as an NHL player. Acquiring him from the Sabres in a one-for-one hockey deal that sent defeseman Bowen Byram is a good play for Colorado as they chase the replacement for Nazem Kadri in the No. 2 center role that has held them back for two seasons now. Can’t wait to see what he does in that lineup. They also added a solid defenseman in Sean Walker along with two bottom-six pieces in Yakov Trenin and Brandon Duhaime. All in all not too different from what they did in 2022 ahead of their first Stanley Cup in 21 years.

Dallas Stars: Not much but it could go a long way – The Stars only real move was picking up defenseman Chris Tanev over a week prior to the deadline. But the right-shot defensive defenseman was also the one player they needed more than anything. There wasn’t much of anything that needed touching up on a team that’s among the favorites to come out of the West.

Florida Panthers: Going for it – Didn’t seem like there was much for the Panthers to do but they went out and did it anyway, starting with the pickup on Vladimir Tarasenko from the Senators and 1,000-gamer Kyle Okposo from the Sabres. They’re the front-runners in a wide-open East.

Winnipeg Jets, Nashville Predators: We’re contenders now – The Jets were buyers at the deadline, just like we all thought at the start of the season. Winnipeg started early with the acquisition of Sean Monahan from the Canadiens in early February then picked up Tyler Toffoli and Colin Miller from the Devils (in separate deals). Toffoli, who had 26 goals in 61 games with New Jersey this season, was one of the bigger wins of the deadline as a late-to-market piece. He brings 88 games of playoff experience, playing a part in Cup runs with Los Angeles (2014) and Montreal (2021). The Predators have been one of the NHL’s hottest teams for the past month and Barry Trotz rewarded the room by bringing in Anthony Beauvillier and Jason Zucker. A nice shot in the arm as they continue to push to secure a playoff berth, currently nine points up on ninth place as the first wild card in the West. 

Boston Bruins: Sometimes its the deals that don’t go through – The strength of the Bruins is the two-headed monster in net with Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman. Which is why it might be for the best Ullmark reportedly nixed a deal that would’ve sent him to the Kings. What the B’s have with the two won’t last forever, but now isn’t a time to be figuring out your goaltending. Adding Pat Maroon fills a hole left by Milan Lucic when he went down with an injury earlier in the season before off-ice issues ultimately spelled the end of his second stint in Boston. Andrew Peeke brings a much-needed body to a banged-up back end. 

Vancouver Canucks: Let’s trade the guy we just traded for – The Canucks made the first splash of trade season at the end of January with the addition of Elias Lindholm from the Flames. Then they reportedly tried flipping him in a deal that would’ve brought Guentzel to Vancouver. Needless to say it didn’t happen. The fact it got out can’t make anybody happy. At the same time, the Canucks have ripped off four in a row since their six-losses-in-seven-games stretch, including a 5-0 walloping of the Jets last time out. 

Tampa Bay Lightning: We’re not done yet – Matt Dumba and Anthony Duclair are big-time additions. Type of guys you’re adding when you’re looking to win. No reason that roster can’t.

Toronto Maple Leafs: “Lets just do the same thing we always do” – Do the Leafs not do this every year? Just bring in solid veteran depth guys? Not that they really need to do anything else but the additions of Connor Dewar, Joel Edmundson and Ilya Lyubushkin just feels like the same thing they did last year. And the year before that. And the year before that.

Edmonton Oilers: More secondary pieces – The Oilers went out and got another secondary piece for Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl with the addition of Adam Henrique, who had 18 goals for the Ducks this season. He’s only been to the playoffs twice in his career, but one of those was in 2012 with the Devils, when he put in five goals and 13 points in 24 games as New Jersey reached the Cup Final.

New York Rangers: A bit quieter – The first two trade deadlines for Chris Drury were among the league’s loudest, highlighted by last year’s pickups of Tarasenko and Patrick Kane. They decided to skip the fireworks this year, adding Jack Roslovic, Chad Ruhwedel and Alex Wennberg.

The Real March Madness

~ Pat O'Rourke ~ Leave a comment

It’s officially March which means it’s officially tournament season. The first conference tourney kicks off on Saturday with the Atlantic Hockey tournament.

Meanwhile, pairwise season has been underway for some time. The pairwise, of course, being the system ultimately used to determine the NCAA tournament field based on a variety of factors, most notably being strength of schedule. There’s 16 spots for the taking, though six are reserved for the conference tournament winners. Which means you’re almost always apt for at least a team or two outside that top 16 to make their way into the tourney.

This year, we’re all but assured of having two programs gate-crashing that group as the top-rated teams in both Atlantic Hockey (RIT, No. 22) and the CCHA (Minnesota State, No. 30) are outside the top 16 entering this weekend. So the expected cutline has been set at 14 since the pairwise became a topic of conversation, meaning Colorado College is the last team in entering the penultimate weekend of NCHC play. Michigan is the first team out as it heads to Minneapolis to wrap up its regular season with two games against Minnesota.

But that cutline could easily change between now and selection Sunday on March 24. And there’s no better example than last year as to how quickly that cut line could move. 

At the start of March last season, the cut line stood at 15 – RIT was the top-ranked out of Atlantic Hockey at No. 22 – meaning there was even more buffer for clubs on the bubble than this year. This was all before Colgate (No. 37 in the pairwise) went to Lake Placid and went on an improbable run to the ECAC title and Merrimack (No. 18 in the pairwise) jumped up after its run to the Hockey East title game, losing to BU in overtime. Minnesota State, which began March as the last team in at No. 15, punched its ticket by winning the CCHA tournament. It ultimately cost a 22-win Alaska team – which doesn’t compete in a conference – a spot in the tournament after finishing 15th in the pairwise. Merrimack, at No. 14, claimed the final at-large bid. 

There’s no reason we can’t see a repeat of last year’s conference tournament madness this time around. It would surprise nobody if there was another Merrimack-like run in a very deep Hockey East. Colorado College (No. 14) and Omaha (No. 18) could make similar runs in an always-competitive NCHC. The ECAC might be a one-bid conference if Quinnipiac, the only ECAC school currently in the top-14 at No. 7, wins the conference tournament. But that’s the thing – the Bobcats haven’t won the conference tournament since 2016 despite being the top team in the regular season each of the last three years (and won their fourth straight this year). The Big Ten is always a wild card.

We could just end up with the boring (and probably likely) scenario of Hockey East coming from BU, BC, Maine or Providence, Big Ten coming from Michigan State, Wisconsin, Minnesota or Michigan and NCHC coming from North Dakota, Denver or Western Michigan. And maybe this is the year Quinnipiac breaks through in the ECAC. In that case, the top-14 plus Atlantic Hockey and CCHA tournament would hold firm.

At the same time, the month of March has never been known to be that simple. The term ‘March Madness’ came about for a reason – you can’t predict this time of year. 

And this is the real March Madness.

More nails for breakfast, please

~ Pat O'Rourke ~ Leave a comment

Fighting in hockey has increasingly become a lost art. Even when there’s fights these days, they really don’t even feel like fights. And that’s when the refs aren’t jumping in to break guys up when they’re fully engaged with each other.

So when you get what we had this weekend – you know, some actual fighting – you have to savor it up. Because it seems to be fewer and further between.

Like Matthew Rempe, who plays like he’s getting paid by the fighting major – he’s up to three in five games. His bout with Flyers winger Nicolas Deslauriers on Saturday was as good a fight as we’ve seen in the NHL in recent memory.

Rempe also chipped in with a go-ahead goal in the third-period that proved to be the game-winner, giving the Rangers their 10th straight win. His line for the night – goal, fight, four hits and three shots on net in 5:16. A throwback to simpler times.

Rempe added to his fight log on Sunday against the Blue Jackets, when he squared off with Mathieu Olivier.

Then there was the Battle of Alberta later on Saturday, a fixture that rarely lacks drama. And we got another thriller – with Blake Coleman representing the Flames and Mattias Janmark representing the Oilers. 

It even bled into college hockey, where highlighted of the weekend was a late-night donnybrook on Friday between Arizona State and Alaska was capped off with Tucker Ness and Dawson Bruneski jumping out of the penalty box and fighting at center ice. The game was called with 11 seconds to play but not before the two clubs racked up a combined 247 penalty minutes – again, makes you think of simpler times.

Both players have since been suspended by their teams for the remainder of the season (both teams only four games left, with no postseason aspirations) – which is understandable. You can’t have guys running out of the penalty box and starting fights. But let’s not act like it wasn’t entertaining in the moment.

Here’s the video of the line brawl just prior. Only thing that was missing was Mike Milbury and a shoe.

Even UConn’s Matthew Wood, the 15th overall pick in last year’s draft, got involved over the weekend. He found himself tangled up with BU’s Dylan Peterson on a chippy night between the Huskies and Terriers on Friday.

Fighting has become less of a part of the game in recent years. The less and less you see it, the more you appreciate it when it comes around. 

Will there be a day when fighting will not be a part of hockey? Most likely. But there shouldn’t be. Fighting will always have a place in the sport.

More NHL thoughts: 

*The Flyers had two national games this weekend and they delivered. After the Saturday game with the Rangers on ABC highlighted by the Rempe-Deslauriers fight that sparked great Rangers-Flyers memories from over the years, Philly found itself on TNT on Sunday afternoon in a 7-6 barnburner with the Penguins (which the Penguins won). One of those games that’s fun for everyone but the coaches.

*Two more assists for Connor McDavid in Monday’s win over the Kings, to put him at 20 helpers over eight games tracing to February 13th. He leads the NHL in scoring over that span – holding a five-point advantage over Mitch Marner – despite not scoring a single goal. Very Gretzky-esque. 

*Meanwhile Marner, with 15 points over that span, hasn’t necessarily lit the lamp either. He has just one goal to 14 assists in that time.

*Someone who continues to light the lamp is Auston Matthews. Up to 52 goals in 56 games following a five-game goal scoring streak that ended on Saturday night against the Avalanche. That’s a pace for 75 goals.

*Should Matthews hit 70 goals, he’ll be just the second player to hit that mark outside a window that spanned from 1981-93, where guys would roll out of bed and score 40 goals. He would join Phil Esposito, who scored 76 goals in 1970-71, in that club.

*I’m not sure what planet this is goaltender interference on, but it’s not the planet in which I spent most of my time.

*All that said, three straight overtime losses for the Bruins on their Western Canada/PNW swing. They blew third-period leads in their final two games, to the Canucks and Kraken. Seven losses in nine games for the B’s – though just two of them have been in regulation. 

*Bruins third-period struggles are alarming and it’s been a season-long thing. They’ve allowed 62 third-period goals this season – only three teams in playoff position have allowed more, with two of those teams being the Lightning and Predators, who hold the two eighth seeds (the Stars are the other). They allowed just 59 goals in the third all of last season. The Bruins are on pace for 85 this year, which would be the most since 2006-07, when they gave up 108 third-period goals on the way to a last-place finish.

*Great moment in Chicago with Patrick Kane making his return along with the retiring on Chris Chelios’ number on Sunday night. 

*And it ended the only way it could, with Kane scoring the winner in overtime.

*Great night for Chelios too. They’ve come a long way in Chicago from when Chelios was booed when being honored by his hometown team, where he played 1990-99, after he retired.

*How about those Red Wings? Detroit is up to 15-4-2 since the start of the new year, currently riding a five-game winning streak. You always see teams have their ‘they’re starting to look like a playoff team’ moment. It looks like the Red Wings are in one of those moments.

*Nikita Kucherov won the race to 100 points on Sunday. Where would the Lightning be without him? He has to be the lead dog in the loaded Hart Trophy race.

*It’s amazing people take the Oilers seriously as a Stanley Cup contender. You can’t watch them play and seriously think they’re going to win four playoff rounds. Since ripping off 16 wins in a row and looking like world-beaters, Edmonton is 5-5-1 and have been outscored 44-41 over that span. Monday’s 4-2 win over the Kings was the first time the Oilers have allowed fewer than three goals over that stretch.

Hockey East has never been more fun

~ Pat O'Rourke ~ Leave a comment

And that’s saying something.

Another weekend of college hockey. Imagine missing football.

*Nothing more riding on this weekend than the games that will take place in Amherst and Durham as UMass and UNH take part in a home-and-home. From a conference standpoint, the two clubs are tied for the fifth spot in the Hockey East standings – that spot, of course, being the final first-round bye in the conference tournament. As for the national picture, the two clubs are 15th and 17th in the pairwise, respectively. So they’re two of the first three teams out at this moment, with the current anticipated cut line standing at 14. Probably an elimination series in that respect. 

*The Hockey East picture is just ridiculous right now. Nine points separate the third seed from the ninth seed entering the weekend. That battle for the fifth spot will be a compelling one, if for no other reason you don’t want to be the team finishes sixth, where the prize will likely be a first-round meeting with a Merrimack team that reached the Hockey East title game last season – falling to BU in overtime – or a UMass Lowell squad that has never been an easy out in the decade-plus under Norm Bazin.

*Which is what I think makes this weekend so critical for Maine, when the Black Bears welcome Northeastern to Orono coming off a sweep at the hands of UNH. All of a sudden, Maine has lost five of nine and have slid to seventh in the pairwise. Granted, if you were to tell any Maine fan they’d be 18-8-2, third in Hockey East and seventh in the pairwise in late February, they’d take it all day, but they need to take at least four points from this weekend and get it back on the tracks.

*I don’t know who the lucky team will end up being but whatever NHL team lands Collin Graf will be very happy. Graf, who had a hat trick on Saturday night in Quinnipiac’s win over RPI, is up to 19 goals and 42 points through 26 games this season. His national-high 101 points (40-61) since the start of last season is 11 more than Denver’s Massimo Rizzo in second place. And he has just six penalty minutes over that span. Yes, that’s right, six. 

*Can’t talk about Quinnipiac without mentioning Travis Treloar, who may have scored the goal of the season last weekend. The senior transfer from Ohio State has come on strong in the second half of the season for the Bobcats, with five goals and 11 points over his current eight-game point streak. Should play a big factor in Quinnipiac’s bid to repeat as national champs. 

*Liberty Kids update: All three of BC’s freshmen phenoms have recorded a point 13 straight games – with Will Smith and Gabe Perreault riding 15-game streaks and Ryan Leonard reaching the scoresheet in 13 in a row. Leonard also has scored in four straight, with seven total goals over that span.

*A point by Smith or Perreault on Friday against Vermont would match the 17-game streak assembled by former Eagle Logan Hutsko in 2019-20. Still have a little ways to go to match the 31-game streak Johnny Gaudreau put together in his Hobey-winnning season of 2013-14.

*Perreault is also closing in on being the first player to hit 50 points this season and as good as he was in the first half of the season, he’s been even better since returning from World Juniors, where he helped Team USA win gold. Of the 14 goals he’s scored this season, nine have come come in the 11 games since coming back from Sweden.

*Speaking of post-World Juniors bumps, Michigan sophomore Gavin Brindley – one of the standouts from the tournament – has the most points in the country not named Leonard, Perreault or Smith with 21 points in 11 games. Fellow Michigan man – and Team USA gold medal winner – Rutger McGroarty is right behind him with 20 points in 12 games.

*Minnesota ranks fifth in the country in goals allowed/game this month with 1.7 goals allowed per game – and that includes a game in which the Gophers gave up six to Notre Dame. At the same time, they’re scoring just 2.2 goals per game – though they’re 4-1-1 on the month, so it hasn’t gotten too much in the way. Still not something they want to make a habit of. 

*Cornell goes on the road to play Clarkson and St. Lawrence and bring their 14-game unbeaten streak with them. The Big Red haven’t lost since December 2nd, a 4-2 loss against Colgate. They’re allowing a national-low 1.8 goals per game. 

*And with that, Cornell still sits right on the bubble, currently the last team in at 14th in the pairwise.

*If you were unsure as to whether or not Colorado College was a player, you shouldn’t have any doubts after last weekend. Beating North Dakota, 7-1, one night then coming back and winning 6-2 the night after is quite the statement. I don’t care where you played them. 

*Western Michigan begins a crucial four-game road trip – two at St. Cloud State and two at North Dakota. A critical, make-or-break stretch for the Broncos, who rank 10th in the pairwise entering the weekend.

*Western Michigan one of five teams that rank in the top 10 in both goals for and goals allowed per game. Three of the other four are teams you’d expect – BC, BU and Quinnipiac. The other? RIT, which clinched the Atlantic Hockey regular season title with Bentley’s 5-1 win over Holy Cross on Thursday.

*Have to talk about Bentley, which has been one of the biggest surprises in the country this season. Picked to finished last in Atlantic Hockey, the Falcons sit fourth in the standings after taking down a scorching-hot Holy Cross team on Thursday – meaning they have a shot at a first-round bye in the conference tournament. Great first year for Andy Jones, who took over for longtime head coach Ryan Soderquist last summer.

Let’s not score all of our goals at once

~ Pat O'Rourke ~ Leave a comment

There was a 10-7 game in the NHL on Monday. Wanna get nuts? Let’s get nuts.

*Yes, that’s correct, the Wild beat the Canucks, 10-7 on Monday, with the Minnesota defense holding firm late and denying Vancouver the shot at a game-tying field goal. The third period alone was 7-2 in favor of the Wild, which would be a high-scoring game. This was a period. The Canucks led 5-2 at one point. Just a ridiculous game.

*There were three hat tricks in the game, with Joel Eriksson Ek, Kirill Kaprizov and J.T. Miller burying three goals apiece. Eriksson Ek and Kaprizov had six points overall. Matt Boldy and Mats Zuccarello had four points. 

*The 17 goals were the most in a game this season – the previous high was 13, shared by Sabres-Blue Jackets on December 19th, Flyers-Red Wings on December 22nd and Canadiens-Bruins on January 20th. There was one 17-goal game last season, when the Kraken beat the Kings, 9-8, on November 29th, 2022.

*Shoutout to Casey DeSmith, who stood in there and took one for the team, finishing his night with eight goals allowed on 25 shots (the last two goals were empty-netters). 

*It’s refreshing to finally start seeing some out-of-hand games after a stretch where the league was becoming a quagmire of 3-2 games. We’ve had five eight-plus goal performances over the last seven days, with the Wild win over the Canucks joining a trio of 9-2 games (Stars over Predators, Panthers over Lightning, Maple Leafs over Ducks) as well as an 8-4 Oilers win over the Red Wings. Don’t need it every night, but it’s nice to get a little crazy once in a while.

*Sean Monahan continues to be one of the great stories of the 2023-24 NHL season, putting up a hat trick of his own in the Jets’ 6-3 loss to the Flames on Monday. Monahan, who was acquired by Winnipeg from Montreal earlier this month, is up to 17 goals and 39 points in 55 games on the season. Not bad for a guy that was believed to have had his best days far behind him prior to the season.

*Auston Matthews has scored in five of his last six games – with two hat tricks mixed in there – and a goal on Wednesday when he visits his native Arizona would put him at 50 goals in 55 games. It might not be the 50 goals in 44 games Cam Neely put up on one knee but it’s certainly the most dominant performance we’ve seen in recent memory. 

*Matthews is also up to six hat tricks on the season – that’s the most in a season since Mario Lemieux in 1995-96.

*Outdoor games this weekend were amazing, as they always seem to be. Anyone who is claiming to be fatigued by these outdoor games are most likely people looking for something to be fatigued by.

*I will say I’m disappointed that the Ohio Stadium game is a Stadium Series game as opposed to a Winter Classic. I just imagine the scenario of a Winter Classic in Columbus that coincides with Ohio State playing in a major bowl or a playoff game. That environment would only add to the spectacle of the day.

*1,000 career games for Brad Marchand. And as he moves along in the latter half of his career, everyone seems to be lining up to declare him a slam-dunk Hall of Famer, as should be the case. It’s not dissimilar to his longtime running mate Patrice Bergeron, where the world finally woke up to his greatness as he went deeper into his 30s.

*Marchand stands at 913 career points 1,003 NHL games into his career and showing no signs of slowing down, still averaging just under a point per game at 35 years old (51 points in 56 games this season). Unless his game falls off a cliff, he’s getting 1,000 points easily. And 500 goals isn’t out of the question either, with Marchand standing at 397 goals and having scored at least 20 goals in every full NHL season since becoming a regular in 2010-11.

*The Bruins got a big two points to finish off an underwhelming homestand with they-don’t-ask-how-they-just-ask-how-many shootout win over the Stars before heading out to Western Canada. And they’re suddenly grasping tightly onto the top spot in the Atlantic, holding a one-point lead over the red-hot Panthers, with Florida having a game in-hand on the B’s.

*And the Panthers have won nine of 10, their most recent win an exclamation point, 9-2 win over the Lightning. The craziest part of that rout? Sam Reinhart, of 39 goals, didn’t find the net once. However, Matthew Tkachuk had two goals and four points – he has 15 goals and 40 points in his last 21 games dating to December 29th, leading all NHL players in scoring over that span.

*The Oilers have allowed 26 goals in seven games since returning from the All-Star break. They haven’t allowed fewer than three goals in a game over that span. Talk about outscoring your problems. 

*Last year I thought it was wild that Connor McDavid was closing in on 100 points in mid-February. This year I’m surprised it’s someone besides McDavid. In fact, it’s actually two guys – Nikita Kucherov and Nathan MacKinnon – on a crash course for 100 points. It could be reached this week. Kucherov currently leads the race to 100, 94-91.

*Connor Bedard has six points in three games since returning from a broken jaw, which becomes even more impressive when you consider he’s had two goals taken off the board by reviews his last two times out.

*The Hurricanes, who beat the Blackhawks on Monday night, have won eight of 10 and look like they’re rounding into form. They’ve looked like the Canes we’ve come accustomed to seeing (in the regular season, at least) in recent seasons. They trail the Rangers by four points in the Metropolitan Division race. I’d be surprised if they didn’t win that division. 

*The Kings are beginning to get some results too – they did have the ugly 7-0 loss to the Sabres that had us scratching our heads with this team once again – the only loss in LA’s last six games. Their last two games were come-from-behind wins against the Bruins and Penguins and have a good opportunity to gain momentum with the Blue Jackets, Predators and Ducks at home over the next week.

*800 assists for Patrick Kane, becoming the third American to hit that mark in the NHL in the Red Wings’ win over the Kraken on Monday. He’s 13 away from matching Mike Modano in that category. Phil Housley leads all Yanks with 894 helpers.