Catching Up...

I've been busy the last week and haven't been able to update until today, so here's a rundown of major happenings over the past couple weekends:

Hockey East
1. Merrimack hurt themselves badly after getting swept by Maine and splitting with Providence. This knocked Merrimack down to 8th in the Pairwise and 9th in the RPI. Maine, meanwhile, now looks to have a shot at a NCAA berth, although they'll need to do well in the Hockey East tournament tournament to get a bid, as they are currently tied for 18th in the Pairwise. Interestingly, Maine and Merrimack will face off in the first round of the Hockey East Tournament this weekend.

2. Boston University went 2-1-1 against two of the weaker Hockey East teams in Vermont and Northeastern, knocking them back to a tie for 16th in the Pairwise. They'll face Northeastern this week in the Hockey East Tournament. BU will need a strong performance in the HE tournament, or several teams to falter in order to get a bid to the NCAA Tournament, particularly as their TUC record isn't very strong at 5-7-5.

3. Boston College swept New Hampshire to claim the Hockey East regular season title. Boston College is looking like a very probable 1-seed and could even claim the #1 overall seed by winning out and some missteps by Yale and North Dakota. Meanwhile, New Hampshire needs to sweep their weekend against Vermont to ensure a spot in the tournament, having fallen to 12th in the Pairwise.

ECAC
1. Rensselaer's season probably ended after being swept by an abysmal Colgate team in the first round of the ECAC tournament. As a result, they fell to a tie for 16th in the Pairwise and will need help from a bunch of teams in order to luck their way into the tournament.

2. Dartmouth's regular season ended with a poor 1-3-0 record against mediocre to bad ECAC teams, which leaves them at 13th place in the Pairwise (primarily because the other teams fighting for an NCAA bid also had crappy ends to their regular season). As such, Dartmouth needs to win their series against Harvard to keep their hopes of an NCAA bid alive.

3. Quinnipiac had a strong past couple weeks, scoring ties against Union and Rensselaer and sweeping Brown. This means that they will, in all probability, finish above the TUC cliff even if Cornell sweeps them this weekend, which will irritate every potential tournament team not in the ECAC and infuriate Nebraska-Omaha, who they swept early in the season.

4. Cornell ended their season poorly with losses to Brown and Yale, which has driven them to the cusp of the TUC cliff. If Cornell sweeps their series against Quinnipiac, they'll probably finish above the cliff. Should they be swept, they'll end their season below the cliff. But should the series go three games, then they could finish on either side depending on how Championship week plays out. Suffice to say that the Quinnipiac-Cornell series will be the most interesting this week that features no teams fighting for NCAA position (a big qualifier, to be sure, but whatever).

CCHA
1. Michigan swept Northern Michigan while Notre Dame split with Western Michigan, giving Michigan the CCHA regular season title. Meanwhile, Western has moved into a tie for 14th in the Pairwise, meaning that if the season ended today, they would rank among the last teams to make it into the NCAA field. Western Michigan has a huge series with Ferris State this weekend as Ferris State will not fall below the TUC cliff even if they are swept and Western will be in strong position for a bid with a sweep and throw away a chance at a bid should they get swept.

2. Lake Superior swept Ohio State, ending Ohio State's season and knocking them below the TUC cliff. This is great news for Miami, Notre Dame, and Western Michigan, all of whom had their TUC records pulled down by Ohio State. Ironically, the only team particularly upset about this is Michigan, who posted a 3-1 record against Ohio State and was very much hoping would stay above the cliff. Lake Superior, meanwhile could potentially rise above the cliff if they win their series against Notre Dame and win a game in the CCHA Championship rounds (either their semi or the consolation game...or both, obviously).

3. Northern Michigan had a miserable end to their season, getting swept by Michigan to end the regular season and losing their opening round series with Bowling Green. This is unfortunate for Michigan (not a good week for them), Miami, Notre Dame, Western Michigan, and Denverall of whom had good records against Northern.

4. Alaska split with Alaska-Anchorage to end the regular season and followed that up with a sweep of Michigan State with back to back overtime victories. This didn't affect the tournament picture much (all it did was secure Alaska as a TUC and kept MSU from becoming a TUC), but it does mark the end of Rick Comley's storied career.

Atlantic Hockey
The underdog in every first round tournament game managed to win and advance to the best-of-three quarterfinal. Eventually, Atlantic Hockey may decide to be sensible and get rid of their geographical seeding system that results in weird things like having the bottom 4 teams paired up with each other and the middle 4 teams paired up with each other. As a result, we see things like American International and Sacred Heart, two of the worst teams in college hockey, advance to the quarterfinals with wins over teams that are nearly as bad in Army and Bentley, while decent teams like Robert Morris get stuck playing another decent team in Mercyhurst.

...

I'm pretty sure the people who came up with the Pairwise rankings are the same people who devised this tournament structure.

I'll cover the WCHA in a later post, as pretty much every team in the conference impacted the national picture in one way or another over the past couple weeks.