NCAA Hockey 101: Harvard makes its case and strength of schedule debate

(Ed. Note: Ryan Lambert is our resident NCAA Hockey nut, and we decided it’s time to unleash his particular brand of whimsy on the college game every week. So NCAA HOCKEY 101 will run every Tuesday on Puck Daddy. Educate yo self.)

In October, the ECAC coaches picked Harvard to finish ninth out of the 12 teams in the conference, ahead of only indisputably poor teams RPI, St. Lawrence and Princeton.

Harvard, likewise, seemed to be an indisputably poor team as well. They were awful last year at a 10-17-4 record that more or less fit their season-long performance perfectly: They just didn't play well enough to win most nights, conceding more than 1,000 shots in 31 games but putting only a little more than 812 on net themselves.

They returned some good players, of course, but they weren't bringing in any sort of world-beating freshmen. It was a solid group but not much more than that. However, it's fair to say, also, that last year's Crimson club were a little unlucky, shooting a point below the national average and even seeing their otherwise good goaltender suffer more than he should have. And make no mistake, this is a theoretically talented team, with eight drafted players on the roster. Teams with that many NHL prospects don't generally finish in the bottom third of the ECAC.

And indeed, the team's first 10 games of the season have been some kind of sight. They've won seven of them, for one thing, and could match last year's win total by mid-December. And they've only lost once, to rival Yale. They are, technically, still being outshot on the season (by two, 303-301), but you'd have to agree that's a negligible amount.

Certainly, they've played a tough enough schedule, the 16th-hardest in the country at this point. And some of the teams they've beaten are damn impressive. In mid-November, they went a little ways up the road to play at Boston College — albeit a bizarrely slip-sliding Boston College — and walked out of the Heights with a 6-3 win.

The Eagles' problems this year are well-documented and thus the loss was seen as more symptomatic of whatever's ailing them as opposed to anything the Crimson did; shots in the game were a mere 28-26 in the visitors' favor, but that belies BC's 0-fer on seven power plays. Later that week came the Yale loss, and everyone basically said, “Yeah, that's in Harvard's wheelhouse.”

But then came wins at Dartmouth and against Bentley, neither being tough opponents, but they came 7-1 on aggregate, so that's not nothing. Goaltender Steve Michalek, unsurprisingly, has a .947 save percentage this season.

Then this past week was Ted Donato and Co.'s masterpiece. Tuesday at BU, and Saturday at UMass Lowell. Tough draw for any club in the country, let alone a Harvard squad that to this point was 5-1-2 but had been only-okay to look at a lot of the numbers and when taking opponents into account.

But they beat BU, 3-2 in overtime. Then they beat Lowell 4-2 with an empty-netter. And now people are basically obligated to pay attention. These were, it must be said, two very different games: BU outshot them 42-24, and they conceded 87(!) shot attempts, but they scraped out a win they probably didn't deserve behind the dominant top line of Jimmy Vesey, Alex Kerfoot, and Kyle Criscuolo, all of whom had two points as that line scored all three goals. They also became the first team all season to hold Jack Eichel off the scoresheet.

Next time out, though, that line didn't play much of a role (Vesey and Criscuolo had power play assists in the first period, and the three combined for just four shots), but the depth players were dominant in shutting down Lowell's attack. Final shots: 24-17 against the No. 1 goalscoring offense in the country.

There is room for Harvard to regress, of course. Like Lowell, it has a huge edge in goals (67.9 percent) but, again, is marginally below 50 percent in terms of shots. That's going to sort itself out and Harvard will start losing some more, but honestly the worst of their schedule is over. Wading into the ECAC mud fight where the quality of opponent isn't likely to be as high, should keep them winning for some time to come.

Harvard looks likely to do some damage, that's for sure, and the three trophies of traditional Hockey East giants mounted on their wall only underscores their legitimacy.

Friars rebounding nicely

For most of the early part of the season, Providence College had the opposite problem of Harvard: They were picked as the top team in Hockey East, and had spent most of the year sitting uncomfortably below .500.

Stud goaltender and Flames prospect Jon Gillies started out the year at .888 in his first five appearances, and he consequently won just one of them. This was well below his standard and one had to assume that he'd turn things around.

He has.

Since the start of November, Gillies has brought his save percentage back up to .940, allowing just six goals in seven games, and in the one contest in which he did not appear, backup Nick Ellis pitched a shutout in his stead. The Friars, in fact, haven't allowed a goal in the last 11 periods they've played, which in my opinion is pretty good.

Gillies' most recent effort, though, might have been the best of his astonishingly strong career (.932 over 81 appearances in two-plus seasons): a 43-save shutout against a BC team that had to have a fire in the belly a day after being pantsed at home by Minnesota.

Providence still has its problems, though. Its goalies can't keep up these zero- and one-goal efforts, because no one can, and the offense remains anemic with just 24 goals in 13 games. Over this eight-game November stretch of goaltending dominance, the run support they've received came in at just 12 goals. Not good enough.

The likes of Mark Jankowski and Ross Mauermann, who should be among the best forwards in the conference, are often nowhere to be found. But if they can start putting the puck in the net — and the only goal in Saturday's game was Mauermann's first of the season — and maybe get a little help from the rest of the roster, this is a team that could (and should) take off.

NCHC remains dominant

It should come as no surprise that the NCHC, the cobbled-together power conference of Western might left over when the Big Ten started up last year, has been very good so far, but that conference has been extremely solid more or less top to bottom.

As a conference, there really isn't much to be desired from the non-league schedule. No one's below .500 (and only two teams are at it). In fact, they've trounced out-of-conference opponents for a combined record of 33-16-2, and outscored them 163-116 (58.4 percent). They're also dominating in shots on goal, so it's not like this is a fluke or anything.

Not surprisingly, that means that NCHC teams also tend to have extremely tough strength of schedule ratings. At present, they occupy Nos. 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 13, and 41 (sorry, Colorado College) in terms of how difficult their opponents have been. That's going to help them make a serious run at putting four teams in the NCAA tournament, which isn't bad for an eight-team conference.

The strength of schedule debate

And while we're on the subject of strength of schedule, something that's gone around a lot in the last few weeks is the fact that a few teams that have reached double-digit win totals already (Merrimack, Vermont, Michigan Tech, etc.) have done so simply because they booked themselves some nice, soft schedules to start the year.

This is undeniably true, but in general it's also a pretty smart tactic. The ultimate goal of any team at their level — i.e. “not elite” — should be to make the NCAA tournament, because the likelihood that they're going to claw out a conference title or claim some other type of glory is altogether low. Making the tournament means they were, in theory, one of the 16-best teams in the country, putting them more or less in the top quarter of the nation. Not a bad place to be, unlike schools like North Dakota, Minnesota, Miami, Lowell, or BC, for whom “making the tournament” is the expectation, not the ultimate goal.

And so the best way for these mid-tier teams, especially those in power conferences, to make the tournament is book themselves some soft schedules and beat up on some cupcakes. Teams can usually play up to 12 out-of-conference games, and as a result if they can go into their league schedules at, say, 9-3 or 8-4, their chances of making the tournament increase dramatically; in general, you need 22 wins to book yourself a to a regional, and between crushing an easy OOC slate, a middling run in the league, and then a respectable showing in the conference playoffs, you should be able to get there.

It may be muttered about as being “cheap,” in much the same way teams that can't compete for top prospects instead busy themselves with finding good 20- and 21-year-old freshmen is considered “cheap,” but what recourse do these clubs have otherwise? Minnesota isn't going to travel to Merrimack, and so should Merrimack fly out to Minneapolis, get killed in two straight games, and be thankful for the opportunity? That's stupid.

Any way you can get yourself into the tournament (and as a bonus, maybe box out a rival) you have to take it. Good for these teams for doing it, even if their doing so means they're not as legit as a 10-win North Dakota team. Not all wins are created equal, until the end of the season, when they kind of can be.

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.     North Dakota (took three points from Omaha)

2.     Minnesota State (swept Lake Superior)

3.     Miami (idle)

4.     Boston University (lost to Harvard, beat Colgate, lost to Dartmouth)

5.     Minnesota (beat BC, lost to Northeastern)

6.     UMass Lowell (lost to Harvard)

7.     Harvard (beat BU and Lowell)

8.     Minnesota Duluth (idle)

9.     Michigan Tech (swept Alabama-Huntsville)

10.  Vermont (swept Maine)

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is hereand his Twitter is here.