It was an up and down weekend for league teams. St. Lawrence and Clarkson swept UNH, but struggled against Merrimack. RPI dropped two non-conference games to the Alaska teams and Union went 1-0-1 against Maine. Overall, the conference is 13-7-2 against non- league opponents and more importantly in the comparison with Hockey East the two premier eastern conferences are 4-4-1 against each other. Quinnipiac will play a game against Maine on Tuesday night, a game I am looking forward to catching in Hamden.

Next weekend brings about many great non-conference matchups at league rinks.Clarkson hosts Western Michigan for a pair, SLU has Miami for a weekend series, Quinnipiac gets St. Cloud State and Michigan hits the capital region, with games at RPI and Union. This could be a make or break weekend in terms of pairwise and I look forward to seeing where the ECAC is in comparison to the NCHC and BIG. The NCHC has been dominant the last couple of years and it will prove to be a challenge. I feel more confident going into this weekend than I have in the past. I am convinced the league will pick up a few big wins.

Lawler’s House of Horrors

Delving into research earlier today, I realized just how bad Merrimack’s Lawler rink has been to ECAC teams since the dawn of the millennium. St. Lawrence lost to the Warriors, 3-1, on Saturday and Clarkson got embarrassed in a game Casey Jones said, “it was the first time in a long time we let a game get away from us.” The trip wasn’t all bad for the North Country, as both picked up wins at UNH. The two losses at Merrimack continued an abysmal stretch that has one on for a while.

In the last four seasons, ECAC teams have gone into Lawler Rink eight times. In those eight games the ECAC team is 0-6-2. Quinnipiac has lost twice in North Andover, by an aggregate of 9-4, Clarkson has lost three times for a combined 12-2 scoreline, and St. Lawrence dropped a 3-1 decision on Saturday. Even further, the last time an ECAC team picked up a win at Merrimack was Union on December 17, 2011. A span of four seasons with an average of three games per season is bad odds. But the struggles go back further than that, for league teams. Before the Union win in 2011, RPI was the last team to win at Merrimack who picked up a win (take a guess) all the way back in November of 2003. All told, that means only twice since 2001 has a conference team picked up a win at Merrimack. Overall it is just two wins and is 2-11-4 since the 2001-2002 season or a .266 win percentage. Dartmouth won a game in overtime in early 2000 to bring the total to three since 2000.

All of these stats are fun to look at it, but few teams have success at Lawler Rink. It is a tiny rink, that has turned into a great atmosphere in recent years as the success of the team has risen. Recently, more ECAC teams are heading into Merrrimack for non-conference games. The main cause of this has been Hockey East’s increase in non-conference games a few years back. It is kind of hard to say the success has been minimal because of the lack of sample size, but then again two wins there in 15 years is crazy, if nothing else. These experiences are good for league teams for the future because of the environment. The lack of success is puzzling because ya it is small and compact, but it is much like a few ECAC rinks around, mainly Union, Colgate and SLU. Union is the only other team that plays at Merrimack this season. hopefully the joyous nature of Thanksgiving weekend brings many thanks to ending a trend. If you are a betting man, don’t count on it, the odds are not in your favor.

Union’s steady hand but the undefeated record comes with concerns

I should have made more of a mention of Union’s win against Boston University last week than I did, but it was just a busy week. I felt that RPI’s win against Boston College was much more impressive because there are still a lot of questions with BU. Union however has gotten off to a so, so start to its season at 2-0-2. I must say though, that the two draws are much more concerning to me than how impressed I am with the wins but in the end they are still undefeated through two weeks.

Defensively, the Dutchmen have been fantastic. They have given up a mere 1.20 goals per game and have allowed just 27 shots per game. Alex Sakallaropoulos and Alex Kupsky have filled the void of Colin Stevens quite nicely, with the two of them having solid performances. As I say a lot, teams that have a history of filling voids in goal usual do so and quite frankly most college hockey programs fill the void in goal quickly. Kupsky made his debut against Maine and pitched the shutout against a Maine that has struggled to score since the drop of the puck this year. Sakallaropoulos has been solid as well and he sporting a .941 save percentage in three games.

The only concerns on the season are on the offensive side of the puck. I have been talking a lot more about advanced stats this season, because well possession is important and it is the only way I can judge from afar just what Union has been doing. Union’s corsi for is a so so 53.3%, which should be cause for alarm mainly because of the teams played. Maine was abysmal in possession against North Dakota last weekend and they kept the battle close. North Dakota is a great team, don’t get me wrong and Maine was able to pull a tie in a game that it was dominated in. So a tie and win against Maine, will be very important going forward. In its four games, the Dutchmen have scored just 2.5 goals per game. It shows signs of an offense that lost a big piece, which it did. Take out the five goal outburst against BU and its has scored just four goals in three games. That probably won’t cut it going forward but it should improve.

Bands are integral to the College Hockey Experience

One of the best parts of the college hockey fan experience are the pep bands that dawn our rinks with wonderful noise almost every night. Two weeks ago I got to hear the Maine band in Portland and this weekend I was entertained by the UNH band in Durham. The ECAC of course has good bands as well, highlighted by Clarkson’s and Cornell’s, who do a great job both at home and on the road. Whenever those teams travel within the league, the host school takes them in and allows them to play opposite of their own band. It is always fun to hear the dynamics of the two sending chants at each other

Clarkson’s band traveled out of the league this weekend and had quite the experience, because UNH decided that it wasn’t going to let them play because they didn’t give enough notice or whatever the reason ended up being. UNH has allowed other bands to play at the Whitt before, as league rivals Vermont, Boston College and I assume a few others have in the time I have been around the program and covering it. I am not going to lambaste UNH because I am sure both parties are equally responsible, but taking away a college experience to me seems harsh. They were allowed to play at Merrimack on Friday night and there was plenty of room in a half full Whittemore Center to put another band. Personally, if they didn’t give a notice I would assume there are ways around it and hope the hosts would want to allow it.

I guess at the end of the day, we know there is a sense of commonality in the ECAC and acceptance. Yes having an opposing band kills the experience of home fans, as some have argued to me. I don’t buy that. Having two bands is a treat because it is what makes college hockey and college sports in general, special. Bands are to me just as important as the hockey being played, because it makes the experience for a college student. We should be lauding and applauding all of our bands. We are lucky to have them in our buildings for most games…

Monday, October 19th, 2015 - 11:00 am | Blogs, ECAC, Notes, Thoughts, Ramblings