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NCAA Hockey 101: Big 10 turmoil for Michigan, Penn State
This past weekend was a pretty important one in the Big 10. Minnesota was taking on Michigan, and Penn State and Michigan State were facing off.
The Wolverines and Nittany Lions sat Nos. 1 and 2 in the conference, but if things went just right for their opponents, that wouldn't necessarily be the case much longer.
And things went just right for their opponents.
In both cases, the conference leaders traveled to their opponents and found themselves roundly battered in two straight games. Michigan State swept 3-0 and 3-2, while Minnesota went 6-2 and 2-0. And now the top of the conference standings look like this: Minnesota and Michigan tied with 24 points, and Penn State and Michigan State tied with 22.
This changes everything.
There are now four weekends left in the Big Ten schedule, and given the fact that there are just six teams in the conference, there really isn't a lot of wiggle room any more. Minnesota travels to Penn State, hosts Michigan State, travels to Ohio State, and hosts Penn State.
Penn State plays those two Minnesota series, sandwiched around a visit to Ohio State and a home weekend against Michigan. That's going to make it very difficult for them to get results.
Michigan plays that series, plus visits Ohio State, hosts Wisconsin, and hosts Michigan State.
State visits Wisconsin, then visits Minnesota, before hosting Wisco and Michigan to close out the regular season. That's probably the easiest schedule anyone has left just because there are four Wisconsin games in there.
The thing with the Big Ten is that the standings at this point do give you a pretty good idea of which teams are best: for me Minnesota and Michigan are clearly the best and most talented, which goes a long way toward those clubs having two of the best goals-for percentages in the country (both north of 57 percent).
Penn State and Michigan State, while both good to some extent, are a little behind. The latter doesn't have the bounty talent throughout the lineup but has received excellent goaltending more or less all season from Jake Hildebrand (.924 on the year, with only a handful of actual bad games mixed in), while the former has just-okay goaltending (.914, though starter Matthew Skoff is only .907, which isn't good enough) but is otherwise an elite possession factory (56.9 percent shots-for, third in the nation).
Meanwhile, the two weaker entrants to the conference — the Buckeyes and Badgers — have just 11 wins this season between them, and the latter only earned its first league win of the season this past weekend against the former. That Michigan State has four games remaining with Wisconsin probably means it can count on four more wins. Minnesota and Penn State playing each other in two of the next four weekends is almost certainly going to decide who wins the conference.
With all that having been said, the Gophers probably have the shooting ability to make up for any issues they might have in possession in a three-weeks-apart home and home with Penn State. I honestly don't know what to make of the Wolverines because their goaltending is bad (.902) but the rest of that team is so, so good that it almost doesn't matter. You shouldn't be able to concede 77 goals in 26 games and still have a goal differential of plus-26. The talent on that roster is just that good more or less throughout, and if Steve Racine or Zach Nagelvoort can actually start stopping pucks at the national average, then things might get pretty easy down the stretch.
And what's interesting and complicates things, too, is how much basically everyone in the conference has struggled at various points this year. Michigan is only six games above .500, and two games below it out-of-conference because it started the year in awful fashion. Minnesota has only lost two games in Big Ten play, and started the year white-hot (7-1) but inexplicably went 3-8-2 in a 13-game stretch at midseason as just about everything went wrong (they're 5-0-1 since). Michigan State is only .500 but they're hanging around in the Big Ten thanks to a soft schedule and some fortuitous wins. Penn State has generally tended to handle its league business pretty well, but when things go wrong they end up ugly.
Honestly, the only way things would be truly shocking at the end of the season is if Michigan State won the league, but again we're talking about a team with four games left against Wisconsin, and two left against its archrival Wolverines, against whom it has already won two of three.
I don't think many would have predicted such a tight race at the beginning of the year, but when giants falter for short periods and last year's lightweights over-perform, just about anything can happen in a 20-game conference schedule.
Also, the tightening Hockey East race
This is also true of Hockey East, where things haven't really gone to plan for anyone but Boston University in the last few months. As of this weekend, the Terriers have 28 points from 18 conference games with a magic number of just “1.5” (a BU win or BC loss will do it) to clinch the regular-season title. But beyond that, who knows?
Just five points separates the second-place Eagles (24 points from 19 games) from seventh-place Vermont (19 from 18). Lowell (22), Providence (21), and both Northeastern and Notre Dame (20 each) are sandwiched in there as well. And what's troubling is that almost all these teams play each other or punch up almost exclusively.
BC's remaining league games are home against Lowell and at Notre Dame. The Irish visit BU this coming weekend before hosting BC (tough out, that). Lowell has that one-off against the Eagles then hosts Vermont. Vermont will take on Merrimack — which is 11th of 12 but dangerous to just about anyone — at home before traveling to Lowell. Northeastern visits Maine before closing the season with BU home and away. Only Providence is all but assured eight points from its final four games, with a home-and-home against dead-last and awful UMass, before hosting a Maine team for two that's won just five games on the road all season.
Even BU has Notre Dame and Northeastern, both of which are running up the standings pretty hard the three weeks or so (NU outscored UConn 15-1 this past weekend). At least three of those games are at home.
Lowell and BC, without the benefit of everyone else's game in hand, need results badly, and it's likely that neither looking forward to Friday's game as a result. A win in either event would almost certainly sew up a first-round bye, avoiding a potentially problematic best-of-three series in the first round. However, if you get UMass, Merrimack, or Maine for two at home you're probably looking at a pair of easy Ws to pad out your win total for the year and improve your chances of making the NCAA tournament; Lowell is currently on the outside looking in, so maybe not-making it helps the cause if they lose to BC (which won't hurt their Pairwise standing too much).
Given the series that are coming this weekend, there's a very legitimate chance that things will actually tighten up in Hockey East, rather than give the better teams more breathing room. I don't know which teams would consider that good news.
This was a nice goal
Finally, let's just say that Drake Caggiula isn't exactly lighting things up for North Dakota this season. He has 29 points, which is tied for the team lead, and 13 goals, which is second. However, I'd be willing to bet that no one for North Dakota — which, by the way, is currently in a three-way tie for first in the NCHC (yes, it's another crazy conference; Minnesota Duluth is only four points back of the leaders) — is going to score a nicer goal than this one.
A somewhat arbitrary ranking of teams which are pretty good in my opinion only (and just for right now but maybe for a little longer too?)
North Dakota (took three points from Denver)
BU (split with UNH)
Miami (swept Colorado College)
Minnesota State (took one point from Alaska)
Minnesota Duluth (split with St. Cloud)
Boston College (split with Vermont)
Denver (got one point from North Dakota)
Minnesota (swept Michigan)
Michigan (swept by Minnesota)
Northeastern (swept UConn)
Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist and also covers the NCAA for College Hockey News. His email is hereand his Twitter is here.
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