The national picture looks a lot better this week than it did last week. Despite a mediocre .495 non-conference slate, the conference has four teams in the top 15 of the Pairwise rankings. That is a far cry from last week, when only one team was in the top 15. Last weekend, Yale dominated its arch nemesis, Harvard at Madison Square Garden to move itself up. Harvard remains in the third position.

In one of the most surprising results of the weekend, Brown won the Mayor Cup on goal differential. It lost in overtime on Friday and defeated Providence College on Saturday night, 5-3.  Conference play returned in earnest over the weekend, with eight ECAC tilts. Quinnipiac and Colgate swept the capital region and North Country respectively. Quinnipiac pulled off the feat at home, while the Raiders swept at Appelton and Cheel. The latter is always an impressive feat and it seems as though Colgate is catching fire at this time just like it did last season. Ditto to Quinnipiac, which is one of the hottest teams in the nation since November 1st.

The league standings are still a work in progress, because everyone has played a different amount of games. Quinnipiac has an impressive six point lead, but as I said last week it has played more league games than anyone else. Harvard is six points back, but has three games in hand, while Colgate in third has four games in hand on QU. This weekend the league should start getting closer, as the Bobcats have a non-conference series, while everyone else plays in league.

Time to believe in Quinnipiac

Doing some research this weekend, I found an interesting stat on Quinnipiac. It is the national leader in wins, with 14, since November 1st. In that time frame it also owns the fourth best winning percentage in the country, at .778. The Bobcats started the season 1-2-1, but rebounded with a six game winning streak. It is currently on a three game winning streak which includes wins against St. Cloud State and Union. Since October ended, the Bobcats are 14-3-0 and it has raced out to a six point lead in ECAC league play.

The biggest difference since its October struggles, has been defense. In October, it allowed four goals a game. Since November hit, it sits in fifth place nationally in team defense, allowing a meager 1.75 goals per game. One of the things that Quinnipiac has been doing well is that it has been limiting the shots of opponents on net. Its opposition on average gets just 23 shots on goal, which is the second fewest in the country.

When I saw them earlier in the season, I was concerned about its situational defense. We all knew its defense was going to be one of the best in the conference, but would the younger forwards mesh well into the five man defensive and possession dominant game. While Quinnipiac isn’t as dominant as its teams from last year and the year before, it still gets the job down. It stifles teams as well as Clarkson and it shuts them down. The shut down nature of its defense should not be surprising, it is talented and young. For them it has made all the difference to receive defense and goaltending.

Being up six in league play is kind of a staggering number, but it really isn’t as staggering as it looks. This weekend, the rest of the league plays ECAC games, while Quinnipiac plays a non-conference series against Merrimack. The games are very important and could end up being the difference in the Hockey East/ECAC record this season, as Hockey East leads it 20-19-5. I am beginning to believe in Quinnipiac again, maybe I am too late to do so.

Brown is the Mayor’s Team

I truly believed Brown was on the cusp of being better, but I wasn’t too sure it was going to happen overnight. An improvement of effort, which Brendan Whittet was looking for, was the biggest thing that needed to change. Low and behold Brown left it out on the ice over the weekend, against its biggest rival Providence College.

Entering the weekend at 3-10-0, Bruno was in a rut and just needed to see the puck go into the net and to feel how it is to win. On Friday night, the Bears scored a late second period goal to tie the game, which eventually went to overtime. I sat in the press box of another game, kind of surprised but I shouldn’t have been. Unfortunately while I was watching, Providence scored a late goal in overtime to take the opener. On Saturday, Bruno took control of the game early on the road. It built a 4-0 lead six minutes, 12 seconds into the second period only to see the cushion all but disappear before the period was out. Heading into the third it was 4-3. The Bears of two weeks ago would have wilted and lost the game, but not now, Brown is a different team today, than it was even two weeks ago.

The Mayor’s Cup is a big deal for both Providence schools. Brown entered the weekend series winless in the series since 2012. This was the first time in recent memory the schools played two games to decide it. For Brown to almost win both games was kind of a surprise but then again, as I said last week, Brown is talented and at some point those pieces have got to come together.  In the Mayors Cup series, the Lorito line seemed to come to life and some of the youngsters again had impressive showings. For me, Brown is a team that could put together a similar second half to what Dartmouth did last season. Look out.

Colgate is Becoming the Team We Thought it Would Be

Colgate was the media and coaches darling in the preseason, as it should have been. No team entered the season deeper than did the Raiders. When it went 3-5-1 in a nine game stretch from November 1st to the break, some thought its season was in serious jeopardy. It was dealing with injuries, to Tylor Spink and Mike Borkowski. Now the Raiders are down just Borkowski, who is out for the remainder of the season. Tylor Spink has returned to the lineup. It seems as though the addition of Tylor has made all the difference in the second half.

Since returning from break, Colgate has won four straight games. This included winning the Three Rivers Invitational in Pittsburgh and two wins in the North Country last weekend. The two conference wins brought it into the third position in the league standings, despite playing the fewest games in the conference as well.

Colgate turned it on in the second half last year, but its October this season has put it in much better position going forward. It seems like the Raiders are poised to go on another long run of pain for its opponents in the second half. Its defense is fifth in the nation, allowing just 1.90 goals per game. Colgate is another team that we must watch going forward. It has moved itself up to 13th in the ever important Pairwise rankings.

Monday, January 12th, 2015 - 11:24 pm | Blogs, ECAC, Notes, Thoughts, Ramblings