I ask you, has anything actually changed? But I digress. After watching Yale play two games, I don’t think that Yale was even the best team in their conference. I had the opportunity to watch Union play three or four times this season, I believe that Union was best team in the ECAC. The Dutchmen gave UMD more of a fight that Yale did. Before someone jumps down my throat I saw the O’Neill hit on Jake Hendrickson that was a penalty and worthy of a major penalty and the refs made the right call in that situation.
Let’s think about this, Duluth (the fourth place team in the WCHA) rolled through Yale like a hot knife through butter. Almost true to form; and right on script, the ECAC teams were all gone by the end of the NCAA regionals. That right, the ECAC went 1-3 in their four NCAA games played. So I ask you college hockey fans, has anything really changed? NCAA titles are won and lost in March and April, there is no trophy for being number one in the pairwise during regular season nor is a there a trophy for having the most wins in January and February.
I had a debate recently with a person that had said top to bottom that the ECAC was most balanced league in all of college hockey. I immediately took issue with what this man had said; I told his argument was highly flawed and flat out wrong. Of course the man was perplexed that I would even question his logic.
Going forward I think my argument has been proven to be right with the results of this post season. All you have to do is look at what the WCHA has done this post season and what has transpired, the 10th place team in the WCHA took out the third place team and the fourth place team in the WCHA playoffs.
I honestly think after watching the tourney to this point that the WCHA has proved to be the toughest league top to bottom; think about this, how often does the 6th place team in any league take out the defending NCAA champion in the NCAA tourney? That doesn’t happen very often. Think about this, when the regular season ended the C.C. Tigers finished in 6th place in the WCHA standings and had to go to a third game against the Wisconsin Badgers to make the WCHA Final Five. The Tigers were also a bubble team and were one of the last teams in.
The Eagles were no cupcake and the Tiger took them down and hung an 8 spot on their team. Their goaltender had gone an impressive 8-0-0 in the NCAA tourney. That’s no small accomplishment in my opinion; the Eagles were the team that had won NCAA titles in two out the last three NCAA’s. The next night the Tigers played tough against Michigan. UMD took two of the anointed best teams that the ECAC had to offer and chewed them up and spit them out.
