College Hockey Update:  Last weekend another ten teams met in eight top-twenty matchup games with some big-impact results, including Notre Dame’s win at Boston College, which knocked BC down to #2, and vaulted Notre Dame up a few notches to the #11 spot.  Elsewhere, Union beat Yale, and Union hung on to the #3 ranking (Union went on to beat Brown the next night), and dropping Yale down a peg to the #16 ranking (Yale beat RPI the next night).  St. Cloud State split with North Dakota in a big, big matchup, which leaves the two tied for first in the NCHC race; the weekend moved both teams up in the poll, with St. Cloud edging up to #4, and North Dakota edging up to #9.  UMass-Lowell split with Vermont, edging Mass-Lowell down to #8, and lifting Vermont into the top 15 at #15, and Providence swept Maine, lifting Providence a couple of spots to #10 and dropping Maine a couple to #20,.

Meanwhile, Minnesota swept Penn State edging Minnesota up to #1 on BC’s loss, Quinnipiac’s win over St. Lawrence, and tie with Clarkson, lifted Quinnipiac up a couple of spots to #6, Ferris State was swept at the hands of Alaska-Fairbanks, dropping Ferris State a few slots to #7, and Michigan earned a tie and win against Ohio State, edging Michigan up to #12.  Cornell lost to Dartmouth and then beat Harvard, dropping Cornell a couple of spots to #13, while Northeastern suffered a colossal collapse, getting swept by Boston University (a team that had only won one game since Thanksgiving), dropping Northeastern down five spots to #14.  Mankato swept Lake Superior State, lifting Mankato a couple of spots to #17, while Colgate did itself no favors, losing to Harvard, and beating Dartmouth, so Colgate dropped down a couple of spots to #18, and Minnesota-Duluth entered the top twenty at #19 on its sweep of Miami of Ohio.  And Wisconsin edged up to #5 on its idle weekend and the two losses by Ferris State.

A word on this blogsite: I received a couple of replies to the notification email I sent out last week, with comments on my posting.  The beauty of this blogsite is that you can comment on my posts, right on the site.  You can root for your team, criticize teams you don’t want to see win, criticize what I write, or just blab, all in front of a bunch of readers who get it — who get your enthusiasm and your “fandom,” and who care about the subject.  I have two email lists I send to because of the length of the email address list (my ISP limits to 50 addresses as an spam prevention measure), so your replies to the email you receive can only be seen by half of the subscribers.  So let’s fire up the comments on the posts!  It’s the end of the season, it’s time for you all to speak up!

And now it’s off to conference playoff time, the last weekend of regular season play for the NCHC and the WCHA, and the Big Ten Six has only two weekends of regular season play remaining.  The big question, the really big question, is this:  Which four teams will make it to the Frozen Four in Philadelphia?  And the next big question would be which teams will make it to the NCAAs?  The poll is not the basis by which teams are picked for the NCAA Tournament, but instead they use a system that ranks teams based on wins/losses against other teams that have won many games.  There is an approximation of this NCAA system called “pairwise rankings,” which has been extremely accurate at predicting the NCAA field for many years now.  In these rankings right now, the top fifteen teams match the top fifteen teams in the poll, and while not in the exact order, in an extremely close order.  The only difference is at #16, where the poll has Yale, and the pairwise rankings have Colgate.  When you consider that each conference tournament champion will automatically go to the NCAAs, and that Atlantic Hockey does not have a team in the top twenty, it makes being #16 rather precarious, as you can guarantee the team in that spot will be bumped to make room for the Atlantic Hockey Tournament Champion.  So, for right now, take your pick — the poll, or the pairwise rankings.  Who do you want to bump?  Yale, or Colgate?  Right now it looks like the top eleven teams are just about a lock on the NCAAs and teams ranked twelve to eighteen, or maybe nineteen are in the running.  It will all depend on how they end their seasons.

This weekend there are no top twenty matchups in the conference tournaments (as top ranked teams have byes), or in the ending regular season schedule.  One game that seems to stand out is the Saturday night first round game at Notre Dame.  How is #11 Notre Dame in a first-round, play-in game?  Well, regardless of the fact that they are 20-12-2, they are only 9-9-2 in Hockey East play (11-3-0 elsewhere), and they didn’t make the top five in the conference.  So they will host a play-in game against Boston University.  I noted a couple of weekends ago that they’d be hosting BU, and said to count on them wining, and starting a climb up in the top fifteen, and that has all happened.  Look for the same results this weekend, as Notre Dame seems to have momentum on its side, having just beaten BC at BC.  And look for BU’s season to come to an end, compiling the least number of wins in a season since 1963.

So what do you know about Colgate?  Founded in 1819, classes were first taught there in 1820.  Like many religiously-based colleges of the era, it merged here and there, and changed names, until 1890, when it became Colgate, recognizing an original trustee in 1819, William Colgate (founder of Colgate-Palmolive), and recognizing many hefty donations from that family through the years.  At that time, James Colgate, son of William Colgate, established a $1,00,000 endowment fund.  Colgate sits on 575 acres in Hamilton Village (population 4,000), which is the primary population center of the town of Hamilton, NY (population 6,700).  Hamilton was established in 1795, and named after Alexander Hamilton.  It is about 40 miles, and about a 50 minute drive to Syracuse from there.  In addition to the 575 acre campus, Colgate has another 1,100 acres of undeveloped forestland.  Colgate has 2,927 undergraduates, and twelve graduate students, with extremely high SAT scores and GPAs, and they can choose from fifty-three academic concentrations leading to a bachelor’s degree.  Now, here’s a couple of Colgate goodies for you.  Why does today’s headline ask if Colgate will end at lucky #13?  Why not #12, or #14?  Thirteen is considered Colgate’s lucky number.  It is said, there, that Colgate was founded by thirteen men, with thirteen dollars, on thirteen prayers, with thirteen articles.  Their address is 13 Oak Drive, and their zip code is 13346, which starts with thirteen, and ends with three digits that add up to thirteen.  Konisioni, the senior honor society, is comprised of thirteen men and thirteen women.  Alumni wear Colgate apparel on every Friday the 13th, and those days are known as Colgate Day.  And I think they’d be very lucky to end up #13 this year!  Also, in 1934, the Colgate swim team took a trip to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for Spring Break training at the Casino pool.  This trip was the genesis of a massive, seasonal industry known as “Spring Break.”  Oh, does it get cold there?  Average low in January is thirteen degrees (go figure that one!), and in February is fifteen.

On the sports front, an astounding 25% of the students are on a varsity team, and the teams there, known as the “Raiders,” wear maroon and white.  In the seventies, the Oakland Raiders were not known as a running team, but when they did run, they put the ball into the trusty hands of two former Colgate Raiders, Marv Hubbard (Oakland 1969-75), and Mark VanEghen (Oakland 1974-81).  The hockey team plays its games at the Starr Rink, which was completed in 1959.  It looks like a quonset hut, and has seating on the two sidelines and in one end zone, with a capacity of 2,600.  The team is coached by Don Vaughn (St. Lawrence, 1984), who is in his twenty-first season.  His lifetime record to date is 345-343-80, and in his first twenty seasons his teams won the ECAC regular season championship in 2005-06, and made NCAA tournament appearances in 2000 and 2005.  In his first twenty seasons his teams have had nine winning seasons, two at .500, and nine losing seasons; one season he coached a 25-game winner, when his 2004-05 team went 25-11-3 and made an NCAA appearance.  This season the team leans a bit younger in experience, with eight seniors, two juniors, six sophomores, and eight freshmen (all eight freshmen are from the province of Ontario).  Five of the players are listed with high schools as their “last team,” and nineteen show elite junior league teams.  But how is that possible, considering the observation in the next paragraph?

This is sort of an aside in the Colgate overview, and please forgive me — it’s not a comment on Colgate, but rather on college hockey.  Here’s the observation:  Colgate’s roster has players at these ages:  one at 26; one at 25; three at 24 (one is a sophomore); eight at 23 (three are sophomores); five at 22 (three are freshmen); and one at 17.  Since I posted a photo today of a Mankato player, I thought it only fair to compare the two rosters, and they are pretty much the same — Mankato has players at these ages:  four at 24 (one is a junior); four at 23 (one is a sophomore); ten at 22 (one is a freshman); six at 21; two at 20; and one at 19.  I suppose that if we checked all the rosters in NCAA DI Hockey, that we’d find similar age ranges.  This is a product of colleges taking players who have played in elite junior leagues, and having additional hockey experience.  I don’t think it’s bad, or good, or anything; it’s just a lot different than what most all of us readers watched on the ice when we were in college or grad school.  Seems a little odd to me that this is what it’s come to, and that it would be so hard for a guy coming right out of high school to get on the roster, but most certainly, that’s the reality today.  Again, not a comment on Colgate, but really on college hockey as it has evolved.

Ok, back to Colgate — Colgate’s first varsity hockey team was for a couple of seasons from 1915-17.  Then again from 1920-22, then again from 1927 to 1951.  It was back to stay in 1957, and they joined the ECAC in 1961.  In their history they have three conference regular season championships, one conference tournament championship, four NCAA appearances, one Frozen Four appearance, and one appearance in the Championship Game, which they lost in 1990 to Wisconsin.  They have had one thirty-game winning team, and that was the 1989-90 team, which went 31-6-1.  Right now this team is 17-12-5, they are ranked #17, and they have a shot at making the NCAA Tournament.  This weekend they are idle, having earned a bye in the ECAC Tournament.

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

[table id=85 /]

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

— Tom