NCAA Hockey 101: Can the Big Ten be a good conference this year?

On paper the Big Ten ought to be a conference that cleans up every single season.

Minnesota. Michigan. Wisconsin. Historical powerhouses. Ohio State. Michigan State. Penn State. Big-name schools that should have the ability to compete financially with just about anyone in the country.

In its first season, Big Ten teams collectively went .600 against all out-of-conference competition, winning 50 of 90 games. It was clearly a step below Hockey East and the NCHC, but it sent two of its six teams to the NCAA tournament, with Minnesota and Wisconsin both earning No. 1 seeds at their respective regionals. The Gophers even made it to the national championship game.

Then last year, disaster. Just .466 out of conference, with losing records against every other league but Atlantic Hockey and the ECAC. In theory, these are groups of teams the Big Ten should be grinding into a fine powder, but not only did they not do that, they also got outscored dramatically more or less across the board. Not only did the conference as a whole not-go .600, but no team did either. The only one that came particularly close was Penn State, the newest team in Division 1 at the time, and it went a not-great 8-5-3 (.594).

In the end, the Big Ten sent just one team to the NCAA tournament: Minnesota. And in their opening game, the Gophers were flat-out humiliated 4-1 by Minnesota-Duluth in a game that wasn't nearly as close as the score would have you believe.

The question many observers had this summer, then, was whether the conference could get its collective act together and actually cobble something respectable for itself in 2015-16. And so far, no good.

As it stands right now, the Big Ten is once again below .500 (just two games below, but below nonetheless), and that's something that quickly becomes a major concern as far as building up enough of a positive strength of schedule to squeeze more than one team into the tournament. Look, for example, at what the NCHC did last season; it beat the hell out of all comers in its non-conference schedule to the point that an eight-team conference put six clubs in the NCAA tournament, only maybe three of which were actually good enough to put a scare into a decent Hockey East club. There's a lot to be said for scheduling WCHA opponents for this very reason, and the NCHC knows the value, because it has once again compiled a 10-1-2 OOC record against clubs from that league so far this year (and against Hockey East and the ECAC it's only 6-15-4, which is likewise telling).

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But what's interesting about the Big Ten as a whole this year is that, unlike last season when there was a somewhat uniform mediocrity even among its very best teams, this year the only team that's more than a game below .500 to this point — and there hasn't been a single in-conference game for any of these six teams — is Wisconsin. And the Buckeyes are 1-7, so removing them from the equation actually puts the Big Ten at 19-14-1, which is a .574 win percentage.

You can, of course, say this sort of thing for any conference. If you don't include Maine (0-6-3) in Hockey East's numbers, the league improves to 32-16-3. Without Colorado College (0-7) dragging down the NCHC, it's 26-11-6. Doesn't work that way.

But even still, the only Big Ten team that looks as though it's well and truly positioning itself for success this season with its out-of-conference play are the Wolverines, who were idle this weekend but currently sit 4-1-1 (though only plus-4 in the goal differential department, which is a little worrying). Penn State is 4-2-2, but hasn't beaten anyone of particular note. Michigan State is also 4-3-1 and just pulled off a fairly impressive sweep of UNH (12-4 on aggregate), so maybe things are looking up there.

Minnesota, though, is 3-4 even after splitting with Notre Dame this past weekend (and sweeping woebegone Northeastern the weekend prior) and that could be a major point of concern for both the Gophers and the conference as a whole. It has two more non-conference weekend series coming up in the next two weeks, against in-state rivals Minnesota State and St. Cloud, and wins aren't guaranteed in either case.

As for Wisconsin, well, it's 3-4-3, but two of those wins were against Arizona State (the other, weirdly, against North Dakota). More to the point, they're three-quarters of the way toward last season's win total already, which is both good — because they're not absolutely dire like they were last season — and bad — because it kinda feels like we're celebrating a Wisconsin team with three wins in its account in early November instead of, say, mid-October. This is a club that shouldn't be this bad, and yet it is. Some things need serious shaking up in Madison.

The amazing thing is that the Big Ten is ostensibly doing better than last year, and still only marginally outscoring its opponents (138 goals for, 133 against). The ability to collect a lot more goals than your opponents on a consistent basis is very predictive of future success, and the best goal differential in the league is Penn State at plus-9. Only the Spartans and Wolverines are even positive beyond that (plus-6 and plus-4, respectively).

Basically this conference still isn't setting itself up for a whole lot of success when it comes to getting into the tournament on at-large bids. And it really should be. A good weekend or two before conference play begins in earnest probably goes a long way toward building a league-wide résumé, but given the results to date (and upcoming opponents) it's certainly not a given that things suddenly turn around and go well.

And it's still very, very weird to say that. This is a conference that, in theory, should be good every season. Instead it is barely mediocre for the second season in a row. At what point does that become concerning for all the teams involved, and for the group?

Thatcher Demko off to insane start

A few weeks ago we checked in on Boston College because they'd just recorded three straight shutouts, and had that broken up when it allowed three in a win against a very good Denver club.

Well, it's only fair to check in again, because the Eagles are once again sitting on three straight shutouts. And sure, those shutouts were against UMass, and then Maine twice. Which isn't a whole lot more impressive than shutting out Wisconsin, then Colorado College twice. But any way you slice it, if you have six shutouts in seven games against actual college hockey talent, you're doing something incredibly impressive.

With that run of success, BC goalie Thatcher Demko, a Canucks draft pick, has allowed just three goals over 420 minutes. It's a .983 save percentage in that stretch, and .974 overall. Only one other goalie in college hockey history recorded six shutouts in seven games (Blaine Lacher for Lake State in 1994, which is bananas given the rate at which goals were scored back then), and Demko is now halfway to the NCAA record for shutouts in a season (12, obviously) with a minimum of 27 games to play, but likely closer to 35. Odds that he gets there, with games coming up against RIT, Ohio State, UConn, Vermont, Merrimack, and so on, seem pretty good.

This is stupid

The idea of Minnesota and North Dakota playing in Las Vegas being a thing we will 100 percent have to act like is a cool or good or interesting thing a couple years from now? Yeah, I'm already over it.

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?)

1. Providence College (idle)

2. Boston College (beat UMass, swept Maine)

3. Quinnipiac (won at Colgate and Cornell)

4. UMass Lowell (swept at Vermont)

5. North Dakota (split with Wisconsin)

6. Denver (swept a home-and-home with Colorado College)

7. Nebraska-Omaha (swept Minnesota-Duluth)

8. Michigan (idle)

9. Boston University (swept a home-and-home with Northeastern)

10. Merrimack (won at Bentley, swept at Canisius)

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist and also covers the NCAA for College Hockey News. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

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