College Hockey Update:  Last weekend  featured a key matchup of Quinnipiac hosting Union college — Quinnipiac prevailed, and moved up to #5 in the rankings (having tied Harvard earlier, then beaten RPI the next night), and Union dropped a couple of pegs to #6 (having beaten Princeton the next night).  Boston College also hosted and beat Providence; BC edged up to #4 (having tied Brown the next night), and Providence edged down to #7 (having lost to Northeastern — Northeastern is suddenly hot).

Minnesota held on to the #1 ranking with a win over Penn State, and beat them again Monday night after the poll came out, while Ferris State and St. Cloud State traded places in the poll, as Ferris State swept Michigan Tech to rise to #2, and St. Cloud split with Denver, and dropped to #3.  Yale moved up a couple of spots in the poll to #8 on a thrashing of Harvard in Madison Square Garden, while Wisconsin zoomed up five spots to enter the top ten at #9 after  sweeping Michigan (Michigan’s spiral continues), and UMass-Lowell dropped a spot to #10 after losing to Northeastern.  Northeastern beat the previously ranked #6 and #9 teams in one week, and now finds itself at #11.

This weekend we have an interesting matchup as #8 Yale travels to play #14 Clarkson.  The game probably started about ten minutes ago.  Yale finds itself snuggly in the top ten and rising, while the mid-season darling, Clarkson, finds itself descending through the ranks as rapidly as Michigan.  This is probably a key game for both teams.

And what’s an Eli?  Ok, you may well know this one, and perhaps many readers will.  An Eli is the colloquial name used for a Yale team or a Yale undergrad.  The actual team nickname is the Bulldogs.  Eli comes from Mr. Yale, who, contrary to the perception of many, isn’t the founder of Yale; Yale was founded in 1701 as the “Collegiate School” by a group of 17th century clergymen.  It was in 1718, after Elihu Yale made a large financial gift to the school, that it was renamed “Yale College” to honor his gift.  Must have been some gift eh?  Some things never change — Yale sits on a $21 billion endowment today.  Yale has 5,400 undergraduate students and a total enrollment of 12,000.  It sits on 260 acres in downtown New Haven; Yale has another 600 acres across town (golf course, Yale Bowl, Athletics) and outside of town.  Three US presidents went to college at Yale — William Taft, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush (two more went to Yale Law School), and 51 Nobel Laureates have been associated with Yale.  Most buildings at Yale are Gothic, though certainly not all of them.  The Beinecke Rare Book Library is the largest building in the world dedicated exclusively to the preservation and restoration of rare books and manuscripts; its walls are made of translucent, veined marble panels that light up and illuminate the library on sunny days and are just beautiful to see — they keep direct sunlight off of the rare books and works.  The Peabody Museum of Natural History contains the Great Hall of Dinosaurs, including a Brontosaurus skeleton, which is so immense that it’s sort of hard to believe.

And Yale has athletics too; Yale has he oldest college hockey program in the US, having played its first game on February 1, 1896.   Yale has one NCAA championship — Men’s DI Ice Hockey, won just last year.  And now their team is #8 in the country.  They play at the Ingalls Arena, designed by the same architect who did the St. Louis Arch.  The arena seats 3,500, and from the outside has the appearance of a whale with it’s tail in the air.  The team is coached by Yale alum Keith Allain, ’80, and great things started happening at Yale soon after he arrived.  He had a long career as an assistant coach with US National and US Junior National teams, as well as with NHL teams, prior to Yale.  His record in his first seven seasons is 138-84-19, and in this span Yale has two ECAC regular season titles, two ECAC tournament titles, four NCAA tournament appearances, and one NCAA championship.  Last year the team was 28-7-1, and entered the tournament as the 15th seed.  Yale has a younger team, with three seniors, seven juniors, eight sophomores, and eight freshmen.  Seventeen of the players came from elite junior league teams, and nine came directly from high schools.  In addition to playing Clarkson this weekend, Yale will play St. Lawrence.  Wouldn’t be surprised to see Yale win at a least a game or two in this year’s NCAA tournament.

This provides the top ten teams, rankings, records, and last weekend’s results:

[table id=78 /]

That’s all for now.  Stay tuned, and go Terriers!

— Tom