Hockey East Tournament thread

[ClOuD 9]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Maine's sweep of UConn this weekend means all the playoff spots are set (even if NU beats UNH Saturday and ties Maine at 20 points Maine would win the head to head).

And the births are:
#1 University of New Hampshire Wildcats vs. #4 Northeastern University Huskies
#2 Providence College Friars vs #3 University of Maine Black Bears

I think UNH would have been better of drawing Maine, UNH's 9-2 win over Northeastern means nothing, especially when Northeastern is playing on their own ice. Should be interesting to see how the two match up on Saturday.

Discuss.

[UCONNBEAST]

I have not seen many games this year but I saw a game against both Northeastern and Maine in the last couple of weeks. I am not sure if the league is broken down at 2 levels or 3. UNH seems to clearly be the class of the league. It is possible Providence is the second level or the best of the next level that trickles down to UConn. Either way I would not worry about Northeastern. UConn took 3 of 4 points. I saw the tie and UConn should have won. Northeastern is slow and has no offense. UConn carried quite a bit of the play, the Northeastern goalie is good and UConn doesn't have the players this year to make the good shots. They have really missed Snow and Connolly down the stretch. If they had them they would have finished 3rd. I actually think even though Maine swept UConn from the second game Maine is very limited it what it does. The 6-9 combination is excellent. However even though 15 scored 2 goals she is nothing but a gun looking to get her goals. Again if UConn's defense was more experienced they could have shut her down. UConn outplayed Maine that 2nd game. Pretty badly actually. Last week some Maine guy was moaning about playing short well UConn played 14 games without Connolly and 16 without Snow most of them league games. It looked tome like the Maine team has a large roster, I understand they were missing one key defenseman this weekend. So I guess it will come down to New Hampshire and Providence again and this year it looks like New Hampshire has Providence's number.

[unh_hockey]

NU's only strong point is gunn, other than that, the team really has no edge over UNH what so ever. The two games up in orono, umaine outplayed UNH and would have taken the split if it werent for the saving graces of sadie wright ward in the waning moments of the last period. That siad, I would rather see UNH pair up against NU instead of Umaine.

I am just interested if UNH can defeat PC on neutral ice. Last year, it was a 1 goal game.

I am hoping Umaine can upset PC, but without some of their top players in the lineup, I think PC will take this one. Lets just hope the Umaine staff and crew have some plans to pull it off like they did in november.

[ClOuD 9]

I just wouldn't under estimate NU playing at home in the playoffs. The fans aren't even the issue, the pride that goes with it is. Weren't they the lowest seed a number of years ago when the ECAC's were held there and they managed to knock of Brown and take the title?

[cavbim]

Originally posted by ClOuD 9
I just wouldn't under estimate NU playing at home in the playoffs. The fans aren't even the issue, the pride that goes with it is. Weren't they the lowest seed a number of years ago when the ECAC's were held there and they managed to knock of Brown and take the title?

1996-97. Team had a frosh goalie named Shannon Meyers and featured freshmen forward Hilary Witt and Stephanie Acres. They got past Dartmouth in the quarters, edged Brown 2-1 in semis (Brown team with the sr class of King-Solari-Kellar-Emma and a Frosh combo of Mounsey/Brewer. Then edged UNH 3-2. UNH had won their semi's 30 minutes into OT in the 2nd game of the semi's.

[Underachiever]

Wasn't it about three years ago that NU was ranked #4 in the country and PC beat them in the Championship game 1-0 and knocked them out of the final four?

[cavbim]

Originally posted by Underachiever
Wasn't it about three years ago that NU was ranked #4 in the country and PC beat them in the Championship game 1-0 and knocked them out of the final four?

That would have been the one year (01-02) of the ECAC East division. Niagara was the 1 seed and PC upset them first round 3-2 in double OT when Danielle Culgin scored (Niagara went to the Frozen Four that year), then upset 2nd seed NU who were faltering down the stretch 1-0 in the finals (a Jackie Tamsin goal and Amy Quinlan shutout)

Providence also won the 95 championship as a 4 seed. They beat Princeton the 3 seed 3-2 in OT. Princeton scored to tie in the dying seconds then I believe Blahoski got the game winner. Brown was the #1 seed but they had been upset by #8 SLU. PC topped #2 seed UNH 2-1 10 minutes into OT. Allison Wheeler got a clean break in to score the goal. Melissa Mills had earlier tied it.

[ClOuD 9]

For anyone in the know, does the first seed get to pick between the early/late game like on the mens side? According to HockeyEastOnline.com and the NU website, UNH has the late game. As you may remember, Providence, the first seed last year, also had the late game. Generally the thinking on the other side is take the early game and get more rest, though I don't imagine with afternoon games it's that big a deal, but if you took the early game you'd probably be able to watch more of the 2nd game.

[cavbim]

Originally posted by ClOuD 9
For anyone in the know, does the first seed get to pick between the early/late game like on the mens side? According to HockeyEastOnline.com and the NU website, UNH has the late game. As you may remember, Providence, the first seed last year, also had the late game. Generally the thinking on the other side is take the early game and get more rest, though I don't imagine with afternoon games it's that big a deal, but if you took the early game you'd probably be able to watch more of the 2nd game.

The league chose. PC was not happy from what I heard last year about getting the late game. The reason I heard was the league thought more UNH/Maine people would go cross town during the day and see the women first then go to the fleet. Maybe they are going to be consistent. Having to set the schedule up this early ahead there is almost 100% chance Maine will be there and PC has a chance to be there so again maybe they are playing the odds ahead of time. ALso look at the attendance for each game last year and it didn't matter. PC/UConn drew as well as Maine/UNH.

[ClOuD 9]

Originally posted by cavbim
Having to set the schedule up this early ahead there is almost 100% chance Maine will be there and PC has a chance to be there so again maybe they are playing the odds ahead of time. ALso look at the attendance for each game last year and it didn't matter. PC/UConn drew as well as Maine/UNH.
PC men just got knocked out, and regardless of if the UNH men made it or not the 'Cats are still the top draw in the league (by a VERY large margin) and they'd still draw a good crowd (to their credit, the Maine fans travel well too). Last year the first game drew 435, the second 358, a good amount of people stayed from the UNH game which is why it was so close, not because of sUeConn's huge following. :rolleyes:

[cavbim]

In a 4500 seat arena putting an extra 50 fans in the stand is insignificant.

Actually I think on the men sides when teams come into Schneider to visit UNH is 4th best at bringing fans. I'll grant there are advantages the other teams have. Maine often comes for a pair, BC has a strong alumni base in RI, and BU has a base plus there really are a lot of fans who became BU fans from the old ECAC telecast on CH 7 in Boston which always seemed to have BU on each week

[ClOuD 9]

And 5th is Providence, who gets outdrawn at their own arena by the big four.

Womens attendance:

In conference - 10 games each
UNH - Total: 5570, Average: 557
PC - Total: 1583, Average: 158

UNH - 1st in Women's HE attendance (closest runner up: NU, nearly 2,000 behind UNH)
PC - 5th in Women's HE attendance, just 685 people ahead of BC who only won one game all season.

[Avalanche33]

Has anyone heard, if the Semi's will be available on the net?

[UCONNBEAST]

I'll give a try. I think UNH will beat Northeastern rather easily. I see they just got by them at the same rink the other day. That was a close game. I bet New Hampshire did not try to show too much. Northeastern has slowly sunk down and are lucky to be in the playoffs. I think UNH wins big 7-0.

I also think Maine will beat Providence. Maine played well enough down the stretch to catch Northeastern. I see they also beat Providence once this year. I think Providence is weak in goal. They did not seem to truly have a number 1 goalie. The women who played the most only played 13 games which is less then the other teams top goalie. She also seems to have struggled this year. I think they used the women who played their last game twice against UConn in the 4 games. Providence also had some trouble scoring at times and someone said that the Maine goalie might be as good as the Northeastern goalie. I'll go with a 3-2 upset.

I think New Hampshire will win the finals easily too. They have been to the finals. I think they play good defense the 1 time I saw them and they looked like a much better team in that game then the game I saw Maine play. I think Maine will have trouble playing two days in a row. UNH 6-1.

[cavbim]

Originally posted by UCONNBEAST
I think Providence is weak in goal. They did not seem to truly have a number 1 goalie. The women who played the most only played 13 games which is less then the other teams top goalie. She also seems to have struggled this year. I think they used the women who played their last game twice against UConn in the 4 games.

I think you are overstating your case here. It would be fair to say that comparing Jana's freshman year to her sophomore year she struggled a bit more. However most of her struggles have been out of conference games. That point aside she is as much the team's number 1 as Smart is Maine's. I seriously doubt Deraney is considering using either of his other goalies.

If you look closely there are reasons for the splitting of the games. First if memory serves Jana played 3 of the UConn games so you might have the goalies confused to begin with. Jana definitely had the games at UConn. Again if memory serves correctly the goalie who got the first UConn game was Amy Thomas and not Amy Quinlan. The rational I believe was that the previous week PC had broken their losing streak with a shutout from Thomas. The team played well in front of her so he came back with her at home, then reverted back to Bugden in Storrs. As I said I believe Jana played both games in the 2nd UConn set because she was going to Europe the following week with Team Canada U22 (as backup). That also explains the start by Thomas and Quinlan against Maine. Later PC's schedule had them playing Brown and home and home with Boston College in 6 days. Jana got the Brown game, the other 2 split the BC series. Saturday was senior day, Quinlan is a senior.

There might have been other factors at work as to why Bugden's workload was less. Part of it was Quinlan worked hard to earn some of that time. The other part was I think Deraney has to evaluate whether Thomas is his backup next year or does he have to bring in a goalie now. I think he'd rather have an extra skater then a 3rd goalie.

[ClOuD 9]

UNH 4 - NU 2
PC 4 - Maine 3

UNH 4 - PC 1

The PC - Maine game could really go either way, and I still feel alot of people are under-rating NU.

[Underachiever]

Who is PC bringing in to replace their two(2) graduating Seniors, Roth & Halcisak???

[goalie8pucks]

I heard over the weekend at the Mass. state tournament that Shipe is still being recruited by Brown.

[goalie8pucks]

Cthockeyobserver.........Believe me I was surprised to hear that Shipe was still up in the air with PC/Brown, but I really have never heard of a girl taking a year off to go up to Canada to play juniors.......did she sign something with PC and if not, what if another goalie comes along and there is a mutual interest between her and PC......is Shipe still going to be "waiting"? I know Shipe is not one to "sit on the bench" so it will be interesting. Has this kind of thing happened in the girls side where a goalie or player waits out a year like they do in guys?

[171]

UNHcat07

While I can appreciate you supporting UNH, I am appalled at your post. I think you have crossed the line here. There is no reason for this type of post.