Most teams will be in conference action this weekend, while Union, Dartmouth and Harvard all have the weekend off. RPI plays a lone non-conference game on the road against Bentley. One has to wonder how long Quinnipiac’s winning streak will go on, as it approaches the absurd at this point. The 11 game winning streak to start the season is the longest such streak to start a year, since Air Force won 12 to begin the 2008-09 season. The Bobcats will host the North Country teams this weekend, after a 6-2 triumph on Tuesday against a struggling Uconn squad. Cornell-Yale looks to be the best game on the docket, but either Quinnipiac games should  also be entertaining.

With RPI playing a lone non-conference game, its lead on Quinnipiac sits at two and the Bobcats will take the lead in the Standings this weekend playing two conference games. The Pairwise also looks good, but I caution one in taking too large of a look, but as a whole the league is in good position. Also check out my Three Things I Think from earlier in the week and a feature on RPI’s Cam Hackett. (more…)

Another weekend in conference action, again there were surprises. Brown left the weekend with three points, and almost four as it had an overtime goal disallowed that probably shouldn’t have been. RPI picked up three points and picked up a win against Yale on Friday, in arguably the biggest upset of the weekend. Quinnipiac continued to roll with wins over Harvard, Dartmouth and UConn. They have looked good and this Quinnipiac team is scary offensively, which I will talk about below. It is still much too early to look at the league standings but RPI is the surprise early leader by two points over QU, which has two games in hand.

The CHN pairwise is up, but I will caution against looking too deeply at it as the sample size is much to small. But the good trend is the number of ECAC teams that are in the top 20 and in the tournament spots today. QU sits at the top with their undefeated record, Cornell, Harvard, St. Lawrence ,Yale and Clarkson join it in the top 15. Rensselaer also sits on the outside looking in at number 23. But again it is much too early, what the league needs to do is continue its dominance in non-conference play that is has shown early in the season. Also be sure to check out my feature on Rensselaer’s Cam Hackett, who is a former Cornell commit and excelling in the absence of Jason Kasdorf

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Another full weekend of conference games will again help us to sort out the contenders from the pretenders. The highlight of the weekend will indeed be Quinnipiac and Harvard in Hamden on Friday night. The two heavyweights will battle in what could ultimately be a title match preview. The other highlight of the weekend, pits the North Country rivals, SLU and Clarkson, against each other. In all honesty, it is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, rivalry in the league.  Those are just two of the premier matchups that dot the schedule this week, without further ado here are some thoughts for the upcoming weekend.

Friday

Harvard at Quinnipiac

We should learn a lot about these two in this game. Harvard has looked good in its minimal action so far and it will take on an unblemished Quinnipiac team that is now 8-0-0 on the season. For Harvard, this will probably be the toughest test for them to date because unlike Yale, QU has a dangerous offense that sends a ton of great chances toward the net. We all know that Harvard has the offense, but whether or not its defense will hold up against a team like QU, is something that we have no idea about yet. It looked good against Yale, but there wasn’t much in the way of dangerous up and down play in that game. This will also be the Crimson’s first big road test, against a good team. For Quinnipiac, it still needs a tough road test to quell the juries. This home game, however, could go a long way in telling us if they belong in the tier as Yale and Harvard.

Prediction: 5-2 Harvard (more…)

The first full weekend of the conference slate always tells us a lot, but it also tells us that we shouldn’t overreact to some of the results. Rensselaer took three out of four points in the North Country, while Union took a pair of points against SLU. The results were the most surprising in the league last weekend, as I really like both St. Lawrence and Clarkson. Both are going to be strong teams in the league this year. The three points, gives RPI seven out of eight possible points in ECAC play. It is an impressive start for a team that I put seventh in preseason but has struggled , save a win against Boston College. But lets not forget that last year, RPI raced out of the gates to lead for a while then dropped off. This year it seems more sustainable because of the lack of injury bug that it found last season.

The three elite teams, in Harvard, Yale and Quinnipiac all had come from behind victories over the weekend to Brown, Dartmouth and Cornell respectively. I was flying cross country that night and left Chicago knowing that Cornell had a 3-0 lead when I took off, while Yale trailed Dartmouth 2-0. QU and Yale both scored four unanswered to take home the wins. It seems as though both Yale and Harvard took a bit to come out of the emotional high that was the game at the Bright-Landry Hockey Center on Friday night. I will talk about that more below, but without further ado here are some thoughts.

I would also like to take this time, seeing it is Veterans day, to thank all my readers that have served in the armed forces. It is much appreciated what you have done and I hope you hear this a bunch today or this week.

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The opening of ECAC league play, came with bangs as both Rensselaer and Harvard picked up sweeps. Harvard was probably not a surprise,  but RPI certainly was. The Engineers have gotten off to a weird start to its season, at 1-4 but its win came against a strong Boston College team that has since gone 5-0-0. The weekend was certainly what the doctor ordered and I will talk about it more in depth below.

The ECAC again had a solid weekend in non-conference action, as it went 5-3-1 on the weekend. St. Lawrence picked up a win and a tie on the road against Penn State, Cornell swept Niagara, Brown lost a long game to Holy Cross and Colgate was swept by Providence. For all intensive purposes, the week was a success mainly because Princeton and Yale swept their respective Hockey East opponents at the Capital City Classic. Yale thrashed a previously unbeaten UMass team and Princeton defeated struggling Maine. The league still holds a .651 win percentage in non-league tilts, but are only 15-11-3 against the league’s other than the Atlantic. (more…)

This week will mark the beginning of the season for the six Ivy League schools. Yale and Princeton will open their seasons at the Capital City Classic, Cornell will play a pair with Niagara, Brown will play host to Holy Cross all the while Dartmouth and Harvard play a set of league games. Union and Rensselaer will open the conference slate on Friday in Schenectady, where Union will be looking to lick their wounds after a winless weekend and RPI will be looking to rebound after a few rough weekends.

St. Lawrence is playing a pair of games at Penn State this weekend, Thursday and Friday nights so mark your calendars for that series. I am actually watching it now, which means I am really late in writing this. Check out this week’s Three Things I Think, from earlier in the week, also check out Chris’ article on Yale and Clarkson was also our CHN team of the Week.  Ivy fans out there should check out the league preview again and the things to watch for I did in the preseason.

There are many great non-league matchups throughout the league, as it will look to improve upon its already great inter-conference record. Without further ado here are some thoughts on this weekend’s matchups. (more…)

The weekend probably couldn’t be drawn up any better, as league teams went 5-1-0 against NCHC competition on the weekend. Quinnipiac continues to impress with its early play, which I will talk about below, St. Lawrence picked up the most impressive win of the weekend and Clarkson had an impressive weekend in a weekend sweep. Colgate, whom I will also talk about below, swept RIT in a weekend series, while Union struggled in a winless weekend against traditional powers.

It is early, but the ECAC leads all conferences in inter-conference record at 21-10-3 (.662). This record should only improve in the coming weeks, as ECAC favorites Harvard and Yale begin play.  The Ivies will join the party this week and ECAC league play will also begin this week,with RPI visiting Union for each team’s ECAC opener. Harvard and Dartmouth will also play  a pair this weekend to open their seasons, beginning with a game at Thompson Arena on Saturday. (more…)

About three seasons ago, to have league teams playing the likes of Miami, St. Cloud State, Michigan and UNH all on the same weekend would have probably been a stretch. This week four of the top programs will visit league rinks. St. Lawrence will host Miami at Appelton, Michigan will travel to Union and RPI, UNH visits Messa rink to play Union and finally two undefeated teams will faceoff in Hamden, as Quinipiac plays host to St. Cloud. The visit from Michigan will mark its first trip to an ECAC rink since, January 3rd 1988.

The highlight of the weekend will be St. Cloud and Quinnipiac. Both teams enter the weekend undefeated, at 4-0. Quinnipiac is in dire need of a team to challenge them in non-conference play, which the Huskies certainly will. While Quinnipiac has played the likes of Holy Cross, Arizona State and Maine, its opponent is coming off a weekend sweep of Minnesota State. Quinnipiac looked the part as a good team on Tuesday against Maine, dominating its opponent on the scoreboard and in shots, but a real challenge is something they have yet to receive.

The Bobcats will need to find a way to beat Charlie Lindgren, who has three shutouts in his three starts. Last weekend against Minnesota State, he sent aside all 54 of the shots that he saw.The two teams split a weekend series last season, with Quinnipiac picking up a 4-1 win against Lindgren in the finale of that series. If anything, Quinnipiac has the confidence that it cant beat the Huskies. Based on how Quinnipiac played against Maine on Tuesday, I feel as though they may again be highly underrated. They have a huge chance to prove me right this weekend. (more…)

Hamden, CT. – Maine was no match for the Bobcats on a rare Tuesday night game. The Black Bears got off to a good start, holding Quinnipiac’s high powered corsi machine but it was a shortlived, as a power-play midway through the first period changed the game. Quinnipiac generated five shots on goal, and many other chances on the power-play. Its momentum grew even more, when Chase Priskie retrieved a puck in the neutral zone and went in all alone to score on Maine’s Matt Morris. The Bobcats took the one goal lead to the dressing room, but its possession took over as it sent puck after puck at the Maine net in the latter stages of the period. All told QU sent 33 shots, 17 right in front of Morris and 19 of them found its way on the net.

The onslaught continued in the second, but Quinnipiac was able to use its chances to generate scoring. Tommy Schutt slapped a shot off the post at 5:08 of the period, Devon Toews retrieved a puck off a Maine defender and shot it five-hole and KJ Tiefenworth received his own rebound to put the Bobcats up by a lofty four goals after two periods. It was much of the same in the third period, as both teams had chances but neither found the back of the net. QU improved to 4-0-0 on the season with the 4-0 win, while Maine is still winless at 0-2-3. Garteig picked his 13th career shutout for Quinnipiac and his second in a row. (more…)

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. (more…)