Hockey East enters another weekend with some home-and-home conference games as well as UNH and Merrimack hitting the road for non-conference action. Here are 12 thoughts on the 12 teams throughout the league …

Boston College (hosts Maine twice) — Jeremy who? Seriously though, Boston College continues to roll after beating a good Denver team, 4-3, last Friday and then absolutely dismantling UMass on Tuesday night, 7-0. Much has been made of Thatcher Demko and his .964 save percent this season, and with good reason. He might be the best goaltender in the country. Even without Bracco BC’s top two scorers are both freshmen. Miles Wood leads the team with nine points and Colin White is right behind him, tied with Ryan Fitzgerald for second on the team with eight points. Wood blazed his own trail to BC, and it’s one that I hope many more players follow. He didn’t move thousands of miles away for junior hockey at 15 and he didn’t overindulge in countless showcase tournaments. Up until last season he stuck with his friends at Noble & Greenough School, earned a spot on the World Junior team, and is now one of the top players on a very good BC squad.

Boston University (home-and-home with Northeastern) — Matt Grzelcyk is back in town, with David Quinn telling reporters on Thursday that the BU captain will return to the lineup tonight at Matthews Arena. BU has had its share of ups and downs to start the year, with losses at Merrimack and Connecticut but also a win over Denver, for example, last Saturday. Grzelcyk should help an already impressive defensive unit. BU’s biggest program thus far has been goaltending. Sean Maguire (.839) and Connor LaCouvee (.891) have combined for a woeful .865 save percentage. However last weekend LaCouvee began to potentially take hold of the starting job, stopping all 12 shots he faced in relief of Maguire on Friday at Merrimack, and while he did allow four goals on Saturday night, he faced 38 shots and posted a .920 save percentage on the weekend.

Connecticut (home-and-home with UMass) — After a promising start, the Huskies were run out of Barclays Center on Sunday by Notre Dame, 8-2. They’ll look to get back on track against a UMass team that is hemorrhaging goals at the moment, having allowed a total of 13 in its last two games. UMass, for all of its defensive deficiencies, can score goals and the Huskies will need Rob Nichols to look more like the Rob Nichols of last season. Entering the Notre Dame game on Sunday he has a .927 save percentage on the year, but that’s down to .899 after a dreadful afternoon against the Irish.

Maine (at Boston College twice) — Maine enters this series 0-4-3, and just about everyone would be shocked if they don’t head back to Orono 0-6-3 on the year. The Black Bears have scored just 10 goals in seven games, and four of those game in a loss to UMass last weekend … so that’s six goals in the other six games. CHN managing editor Adam Wodon tweeted last week, and I’d echo this — “When do we stop blaming Tim Whitehead for the downfall of Maine Hockey?” .. Right on … And that’s not to blame Red Gendron, he’s an EXCELLENT coach. Maine’s problems run deeper than who is running the bench. The history and tradition just isn’t there anymore, and the building is decaying. Maine’s problems are as much financial as anything. Perhaps the anomaly isn’t that Maine is struggling, now, it’s that Maine was ever good to begin with. Aside from the Shawn Walsh years, success has been hard to come by. It SHOULD be a hard place to recruit, some four hours away from Boston and without an appearance in the national title game since 1999, there is a large subset of young (15-16 year-old) recruits who think of Maine as a mediocre program, and not one steeped in rich hockey tradition. Red Gendron is an EXCELLENT coach, and his team is struggling. Tim Whitehead was a pretty good coach as well, and his teams struggled in the later years. The problem isn’t the coach, it’s deeper than that.

Massachusetts (home-and-home with Connecticut) — Nic Renyard leads the Minutemen when an .891 save percentage and UMass is allowing 4.35 goals per game, which means that despite scoring an electric 3.85 per game, which is about fourth best in the nation, the Minutemen have a negative goal differential. The only team in Hockey East perhaps getting worse goaltending right now is Northeastern. But unlike Northeastern, UMass is 48th in the country in corsi for percentage, while Northeastern is seventh. UMass’ defensive deficiencies have been exposed the last two games against two high-quality teams, losing to Yale and Boston College by a combined 13-1 after beating up on the likes of Sacred Heart (3-2-1), Colorado College (0-8-0) and Maine (0-4-3) to start the year. On a per game basis, entering that Yale game, UMass’ opponents had a record of just 6-24-5 and the teams the Minutemen beat (excluding the UNH tie) had combined for just a 3-22-4 record.

UMass Lowell (at Vermont twice) — The River Hawks’ offense finally opened up against Minnesota Duluth last Saturday in a 6-3 win. A testament to UML’s defense and goaltending, the River Hawks went 1-1-2 in a four-game stretch where they scored only five goals. As we wrote today, Kevin Boyle has been fantastic for Lowell between the pipes and that shows no sign of slowing down.

Merrimack (at Canisius) — The Warriors breezed past Bentley with a 5-1 win on Wednesday night and now head up to Buffalo against a struggling Canisius team that has been one of the worst possession teams in college hockey. Merrimack is getting some production from a trio of unlikely seniors. Ben Bahe leads the team with nine points (4 goals, 5 assists) and now has 22 points in 45 games since the start of his junior season. In his first two years as a Warrior, he totaled only three goals and six assists in 59 total games. Also, defenseman Matt Cronin has three goals and two assists in seven games this season after appearing in only 18 games throughout his first three years combined, notching just a single assist. Finally there is Justin Hussar, who appeared in only 13 games as a junior last season with two goals. He’s third on the team with seven points in seven games, bettering his scoring totals from his sophomore and junior seasons combined.

New Hampshire (at Michigan State twice) — UNH is coming off a one-game weekend last week, beating Merrimack 4-2 in a game where the Warriors dominated possession (attempts were 75-30) but UNH dominated the net-front area. After getting swept by Clarkson and St. Lawrence three weeks ago, UNH hasn’t lost (2-0-1), beating Merrimack, Union and tying at UMass in a game where the Wildcats led 6-1 with under 25 minutes remaining. Adam Clark, who has won the last two games for UNH after taking over for Danny Tirone, has a .939 save percentage on the season and even though it was Tirone’s job to start the year, it would be tough to take Clark out of the crease right now.

Northeastern (home-and-home with Boston University) — Aside from an opening-night win over Colgate, the Huskies have allowed three or more goals in every single game this season, and that’s almost entirely on the goaltending, which has combined for an .862 save percentage. Derick Roy has an .821 save percentage and did earn a tie at Vermont — a tough place to play — last weekend but allowed three goals on 25 shots. Ironically, that’s been one of his better performances of the season. The problem for Northeastern is that Ryan Ruck, who has looked much better at times (.901) hasn’t lit the world on fire to steal that role either. Also, getting lost in Northeastern’s goaltending struggles is that Kevin Roy has only four assists in seven games, and hasn’t scored a goal. If you include the playoffs last season, Roy hasn’t scored since Feb. 28 of last season at home against Boston University, a span of now nine games.

Notre Dame (hosts Minnesota twice) — The Irish are quietly rolling along, taking points in six of their first seven games (3-2-1). The Irish are led by a strong group of seniors — that class accounts for its top-four scorers — and with Cal Petersen getting better each weekend, the Irish could surge in a league that has a lot of question marks in the middle of the pack.

Providence (off weekend) — The Friars rest this weekend, and will enjoy some time off to smell the roses after a 6-0-1 start before a home-and-home with BU next weekend. Dating back to last season and its run through the NCAA tournament, the Friars are 10-0-1 in their last 11 games and are 31-10-2 in their last 43 games, dating back to Nov. 1, 2014.

Vermont (hosts UMass Lowell twice) — The schedule doesn’t get any easier for Vermont when it hosts Lowell twice this weekend. Although things should start to lighten up after that with games coming up against UConn, UMass and Maine. Still, the Catamounts 2-4-1 start has much more to do with quality of competition than any of their own deficiencies. Granted most of those games have come at home, but North Dakota and Nebraska Omaha are some of the nation’s best. Vermont still needs to find some secondary scoring. Mario Puskarich has seven points in seven games and Jarrid Privitera has surged with five goals, but behind them no one has really filled that gap in goal scoring. Brady Shaw should, at some point, but has only a goal and an assist in six games. However he’s shooting 5.6 percent and is second on the team in shots, so expect him to find the net more soon.

Friday, November 6th, 2015 - 12:41 pm | Blogs, Hockey East, Notes, Thoughts, Ramblings