UNION Hockey National Champion's Off Season-U Believe it?

[Dutchman]

Re: UNION Hockey National Champion's Off Season-U Believe it?

Walker definitely seemed to make a good impression at camp:

http://siouxcityjournal.com/ap/lee/c...6a475d349.html

"Snively, Kurker and Walker were the most productive line at the camp,” said Varady
"Kurker and Walker are a pair of 6-foot-3, 210-pounders"
"The 17-year-old Walker scored 76 points (29, 47) last season for the North American Prospects Hockey League’s New Jersey Jr. Titans"

God, he looks great !!!! What am I missing?

[Wholin1]

Re: UNION Hockey National Champion's Off Season-U Believe it?

"Snively, Kurker and Walker were the most productive line at the camp,” said Varady
"Kurker and Walker are a pair of 6-foot-3, 210-pounders"
"The 17-year-old Walker scored 76 points (29, 47) last season for the North American Prospects Hockey League’s New Jersey Jr. Titans"

God, he looks great !!!! What am I missing?

Heisenberg has Walker listed as 5'10" 170#. In any event, I've been hearing very good things about him.

[ADK11]

Re: UNION Hockey National Champion's Off Season-U Believe it?

"Snively, Kurker and Walker were the most productive line at the camp,” said Varady
"Kurker and Walker are a pair of 6-foot-3, 210-pounders"
"The 17-year-old Walker scored 76 points (29, 47) last season for the North American Prospects Hockey League’s New Jersey Jr. Titans"

God, he looks great !!!! What am I missing?

..and doesn't hurt that SC coach Jay Varady is a U alum too! Like Wholin, everything I've heard about Walker is he's a high skill kid.

[Dutchman]

Re: UNION Hockey National Champion's Off Season-U Believe it?

Top 4 ECAC Tournament Teams by point totals - These are the point spreads of the top teams (1-4) that got a ECAC Team into a first round bye
================
2007/2008 25-33
2008/2009 26-32
2009/2010 26-32
2010/2011 24-36
2011/2012 23-32
2012/2013 26-37
2013/2014 26-37

We would need 13 wins or some combination of wins and ties to get to 26. Possible. The one thing we have is playoff experience .... if we can get make it to lake Placid.

[Dutchman]

Re: UNION Hockey National Champion's Off Season-U Believe it?

So how competitive is the ECAC?
Here are the point spreads between #1 and #12, between #2 and #11 and between #3 and #10 (the middle eight teams)

2007/2008 20/14/11
2008/2009 22/16/11
2009/2010 21/15/11
2010/2011 25/22/11
2011/2012 18/14/8
2012/2013 23/12/6
2013/2014 29/13/12

The last column shows how few points separted the middle 8 ECAC teams. This is an extremely competitive league and has been for a while. In 2012/2013 six points separated the middle eight teams. You can't get much more competitive than that. Next year will be no different, especially if no one pulls away.

[Dutchman]

Re: UNION Hockey National Champion's Off Season-U Believe it?

OK, who in the ECAC has got the toughest schedule next year?

At this point it looks like the schedules are pretty stable. I have taken the ECAC out of conference schedule for each team and recorded the number of NC games against opponents that finished in the top 20 (April 14, USCHO). Next to each team is the number of NC games, the number of NC-NL (non-conference non-league games), the number of games against last year's top 20 and the number against HE teams. Only non-conference games are considered since the league schedule is identical for all teams.

Based on this formula, which is a little dubious at best, the team with the hardest schedule, is RPI, followed by Q and St. Lawrence, then Union and Colgate.

RPI 12NC, 11NC-NL, 7 top 20, 4HE
Q 12NC, 12NC-NL, 6 top 20, 9HE
ST. LAWRENCE 12NC, 10NC-NL, 6 top 20, 4HE - two non league games against Clarkson
UNION 12NC, 11NC-NL, 5 top 20, 6HE - one non-league game against RPI
COLGATE 12NC, 12NC-NL, 5 top 20, 4HE
DARTMOUTH 7NC, 7NC-NL, 4 top 20, 4HE
BROWN 7NC, 7NC-NL, 4 top 20, 4HE
CORNELL 7NC, 7NC-NL, 3 top 20, 1HE
HARVARD 7NC, 6NC-NL, 3 top 20, 5HE - One non-league game against Yale in NYC
YALE 6NC, 4NC-NL, 2 top 20, 3HE - One non-league against Harvard and another against Princeton
PRINCETON 7NC, 6NC-NL, 2 top 20, 1HE
CLARKSON 12 NC, 10 NC-NL, 2 top 20, 4HE

There are 49 matchups with HE. Last year HE sent 5 teams to the NCAA's. All things being equal, a win against a non-conference opponent helps the whole league.

[Kepler]

Re: UNION Hockey National Champion's Off Season-U Believe it?

So how competitive is the ECAC?

Here's another measure of competitiveness -- the standard deviation of RS points. We've become gradually more competitive over the nearly 3 decades of data.

[Dutchman]

Re: UNION Hockey National Champion's Off Season-U Believe it?

Copied from another thread, originally posted by Goon

1.) Five Must-See Non-Conference ECAC series.
http://thehockeywriters.com/ecac-hoc...erence-series/

2.) Five Must-See Non-Conference NCHC Series.
http://thehockeywriters.com/nchc-hoc...erence-series/

The ECAC once regarded as the EZAC by other conference fans, is now the home to the last two NCAA Champions. The ECAC is quickly becoming the country’s power conference for division I college hockey.

It would be great if Q, Cornell and us could come out of the blocks smoking ... in October. The better ECAC schools against the better from other leagues, Denver, St. Cloud and UML

[sshablak]

Re: UNION Hockey National Champion's Off Season-U Believe it?

They forgot Colgate vs St Cloud State, some writers pick Gate as the ECAC pre season favorites. This is huge for PWR implications. I believe the week before Union vs St Cloud.

[Dutchman]

Re: UNION Hockey National Champion's Off Season-U Believe it?

They forgot Colgate vs St Cloud State, some writers pick Gate as the ECAC pre season favorites. This is huge for PWR implications. I believe the week before Union vs St Cloud.

sshablak, thanks for the heads up. You are correct, Colgate has St. Cloud on October 10,11 in their barn and they are going to be very very tough and this is a game to watch. We have them on the 24th and 25th in Schenectady, New York. They have an olympic rink, which, if memory serves me correctly, you did very well with last year. The big ice suited you well. Last year one of the papers in St. Cloud called us "Dutchmen College" in "Union, New York". Don't think that will happen again.

I don't know for certain how good St. Cloud is this year but they only lost 4 seniors from last year ..... this year they have 11 seniors on the roster. Dowd, their high scoring (#3) Captain is gone, Brosinski (#1) and Kosilla (#2), are back and only juniors. You are really going to have your hands filled. One weakness, they don't necessarily play well at home. They were only 7-6 in St. Cloud last year but 13-3 on the road. Don't know if that will repeat itself this year.

By the way, their schedule includes:
2 Colgate
2 Union
2 Q
4 North Dakota
2 Minnesota
4 Denver
4 Western Michigan

That is 20 games against teams that ended up in the top 20 last year including 8 in the top 5. Whatever else, their strength of schedule will be off the charts next year. They are definitely going to make a run. Best of the ECAC vs Best of the NCHC.

BTW, the St. Cloud fans have been known to throw bottles on the ice if they don't like a refs call. Their cheerleaders skate well.

[Goaliefan]

Re: UNION Hockey National Champion's Off Season-U Believe it?

Does anyone know if there'll be an icebreaker this year? I thought it was a great way to meet the new guys coming on the team.

[Wholin1]

Re: UNION Hockey National Champion's Off Season-U Believe it?

Does anyone know if there'll be an icebreaker this year? I thought it was a great way to meet the new guys coming on the team.

Unfortunately there will not.

[Goaliefan]

Re: UNION Hockey National Champion's Off Season-U Believe it?

Unfortunately there will not.

Bummer!

[Wholin1]

Re: UNION Hockey National Champion's Off Season-U Believe it?

Bummer!

Agreed, but I think it was doomed by the early exhibition game.

[Dutchman]

Re: UNION Hockey National Champion's Off Season-U Believe it?

Looks like the "Dutchwomen" picked up a winner from Princeton
http://www.towntopics.com/wordpress/...oaching-staff/