Where do the Engineers stand after a gauntlet of Hockey East games?
A recap of the Boston College/Providence games and a look around the rest of the men's college hockey world.
Brendan: This week’s USCHO Division 1 Men’s Poll is out - Maine has finally jumped into the top-20, Providence have established themselves in the top-10 for a second week in a row, and BC just secured the top spot. Needless to say, RPI has faced some pretty darn good teams.
It hasn’t been all that pretty, but RPI showed some signs of improvement against Boston College and Providence last weekend. Now this certainly wasn’t the biggest milestone after how the team had played the previous weekend against Maine, but it’s a not insignificant.
It obviously would have been nice to steal a win or two from this slate of games, but way more important was how this start sets the team up for the rest of the season.
Let’s dive into it:
Boston College
Stephen talked about this in his preview, but Boston College plays a very different type of game than Maine does. They don’t hem you in your own zone and pepper you with shots. They just have a lot of high-end players who take seemingly small opportunities and consistently convert them into high-danger chances.
Like giving Cutter Gauthier just a little bit too much time at the top of the slot 30 seconds into the game.
RPI did hang in for a good chunk of this game. Through most of the first two periods, RPI was generating offense and limiting the opportunities for BC’s best players. But after the Eagles scored two quick goals to bring their lead back up to 4-1 in the middle of the second period, the game felt just too far out of reach.
And that was always the most likely scenario. The reality is that BC is tiers above where RPI is right now. And that’s fine! The hope is just that getting exposed by some of the best players at the college level prepares the team for the ECAC. We’ll find out shortly enough.
Providence
Chris: The Engineers had a very real chance to get out of Providence with a win last Saturday, as they found themselves up two on a team fresh off a huge victory the night before. Unfortunately, RPI’s early season Power Play woes popped up again, which Providence captain Chase Yoder capitalized on with 2 shorthanded goals. At all levels of hockey, getting outscored 2-0 on the man advantage is not a recipe for success, especially against a top-10 team.
Another factor not working in RPI’s favor was the 5-minute major called on Sutter Muzzatti, which I thought was at best a questionable call. They responded with an excellent Penalty Kill, but with Muzzatti, Beaton, and Lee all out of the lineup, RPI struggled to generate significant pressure.
Carson Cherepak was excellent this night, significantly better than the underlying numbers suggest. He made a number of stops that kept the team ahead early on and tracked the puck well while Providence generated sustained pressure. The goaltending competition will be something to monitor going forward. I believe Watson is still clearly the #1, but Cherepak has shown improvement early on.
Ultimately, RPI was significantly better this weekend than they were at Maine, in the possession department against BC and in the score department against Providence. Some health in the lineup would go a long way, and it will be interesting to see what the lines look like entering league play. The defense is generally set, with the exception of a Davies injury, but the forwards have been less predictable. Here is my best guess at the combos we will see next weekend, assuming full health:
Lineup Projection
Brushett-Muzzatti-Heidemann
Hotson-Tinling-Lee
Evans-Beaton-Gagnon
Brackett-McNeil-Budy
Sertti-Regula
Strom-Smolinski
Matta-Agnew
Ardanaz
Watson-Cherepak-Miller
Around the ECAC and the Rest of College Hockey
Stephen: Brown played against Yale on Friday night, where they lost in OT. They turned around to play Stonehill on Sunday, which was an easy 7-2 win. Not too much to take away here as those were both expected.
Clarkson was off to a 2-3 start with a split at Notre Dame, losses to Merrimack and Penn State, and a win over UVM. That’s a pretty tough schedule, so that is about what I would have expected for Clarkson. This past weekend though, the schedule lightened up with a home series against Lake State and Michigan Tech. Lake State was 1-3 going into it with a split against Alaska-Anchorage and 2 loses against Michigan State. They weren’t rated highly in the preseason, so that was a game Clarkson needed to win. They were up late in the 3rd period and then blew it when Lake State pulled their goalie. Lake State won in OT. Michigan Tech is an interesting team because they were a top 10 team in the preseason, but they were out to a 0-3-2 start going into the weekend. Clarkson was able to beat them 3-1 though. Overall, I’d have thought Clarkson would be better than 3-4 to start the year, but had they kept the lead against Lake State, they’d be at expectations.
Colgate is 2-3-1 against a fairly tough schedule with 2 games against Lowell, Sacred Heart, and UConn. Their sweep against Sacred Heart was very good, but I thought they’d be able to pull out a win in one of the Hockey East games. Colgate was off this weekend.
Cornell opened its season by hosting Minnesota-Duluth for 2 games. Despite expecting the Ivy League late start to really hurt here (you’ve got a young team getting its first game action going up against a 3-0-2 team ranked #11 in the country), Cornell showed no signs of needing to ramp up. They got an excellent sweep with 4-1 and 3-0 wins. Great way for them to start out with a bang.
Dartmouth played Harvard on Friday night at home before traveling to UNH on Saturday. They were able to get a tie against Harvard before playing UNH really close in a loss. Not a bad start for Dartmouth, although I still don’t think Harvard is going to be as good as usual.
Princeton doesn’t start their season until this week on the road against Harvard and Dartmouth.
Quinnipiac has started 4-3 against BC, AIC (2x), UNH (2x), and Maine. I expected them to go 5-2 in this stretch, but it’s worth noting that all 3 losses were in OT. Any of those OT results could easily be flipped. They’re still a great team although with the way Cornell played, they may no longer be the ECAC favorites.
St. Lawrence is now 1-4-1 with their lone win coming against RIT, and their losses to Penn State, Merrimack, UVM, and Lake State. At this point, I’m thinking they’re not as good as people thought they’d be coming into the year. SLU was picked to finish 5th, and they even got some top 4 hype. I thought they’d be 2-2 in those first 4 games, but you can excuse 1-3 when it’s against good teams. I don’t think you can excuse this weekend though. SLU was up 2-1 on Michigan Tech before letting them tie it up with 8 seconds left. Then, they lost 5-2 to Lake State. I think you’ve got to move them down a bit in the predicted standings to 6th or 7th.
Union is doing very well to start the season. They’re only 2-3, but I thought it was impressive that they were able to sneak out a win against UConn. They also looked pretty good against Army. Union had last weekend off like RPI before the 2 of them play this week (why didn’t they just play last week like usual??).
BC lost to Denver 4-3 after beating RPI. Then, last week, they swept a top 10 Michigan State team in dominant fashion. BC is very good, and they are now ranked #1 in the country.
UNH has surprised the college hockey world with their play so far. They’ve beaten BU, Quinnipiac and Northeastern to start 4-1, and they look to be much better than the preseason projections.
Northeastern is 2-2 with wins over Stonehill and Bentley, both projected to be among the worst teams in the country. They lost 4-1 to both UNH and Merrimack, which is definitely not how they envisioned their Hockey East schedule starting.
Providence is now ranked 7th after their 5-1-1 start. They won and tied against UVM last weekend.
Canisius is 0-4 to start the year after being swept by Michigan State and Miami.
Minnesota State is a tough team to get a read on so far. They had a very impressive sweep over St. Cloud. But then, they were swept by UMass at home, and they lost and tied to a very good North Dakota team.
Just being a dork here but I try Finn Brown on the D-core over Ardanaz... Also I would have Payant in line up every night looks like a very promising player. Lets Go Red!