NCAA Hockey 101: Western Michigan's bigger and (Ben) Blacker

At first glance, there isn’t much that stands out for Western Michigan. Except the fact that they’re fourth in the Pairwise right now, seven games above .500, and third in the NCHC.

But you watch them play and you say to yourself, “these guys seem pretty good I guess.” Solid team, but certainly not fourth-in-the-country good. The stats bear that out too. Their highest scorer is tied for 80th in the country in points (22). Their goaltending is tied for 30th in the country (.906, below the national average). They only have 77 goals. They have a shots-for percentage of 53.1 percent (pretty good but not eye-popping). They’re only plus-15 in the goals department overall. They have a good power play but mediocre PK.

So how does that get you fourth in the Pairwise and seven games above .500?

What you have to understand is that Western is coached by Andy Murray. He’s a guy who, much like some of the other high-level coaches who have to do more with less, recruiting-wise, knows exactly the kind of player he’s looking for to play his systems exactly. The kind of player Murray is looking for? Big. That’s it. Just a bunch of big kids who can play a bit. And the Broncos are pretty much universally that: they weigh an average nearly 199 pounds, heaviest team in the country. They stand an average of 6-foot-1, very slightly smaller than only two other teams in the nation.

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They’re all just really good at being in the right place at the right time. They’re not overly talented. They have six drafted players on the roster, and while they only have one player north of 20 points, they still also have 10 in double-digits. They’re getting by in most respects because they are just a good but not great team a lot of the time. At 5-on-5, they’ve outscored their opponents 42-33 and aren’t all that lucky to get there.

But here’s one for the Watch The Games crowd: When you actually see Western play, they are more impressive than all that. You see why they got where they are at this point.

And here’s one for the Computer Boys: What the overall stats don’t really tell you is that there’s a context to that low save percentage. See, despite that low number, the Broncos also have draft-eligible freshman Ben Blacker, who’s 11th in the country in save percentage. So that doesn’t necessarily track, except to say that Blacker also had the misfortune of getting mono in mid-October and missing 11 games. He has otherwise been a world-class goaltender over just about any stretch you want to look at.

With a split at Miami this past weekend, he took just his second loss of the season, with the only other one being two weeks earlier hosting a very good Denver team (though to be fair, he coughed up four goals on 16 shots). While he was out for those 11 games, his replacements were, shall we say, subpar. Senior Collin Olson is .870 in five appearances this year. Sophomore Trevor Gorsuch is .894 in 10. The good news is this might be Blacker’s performance level, because he was .926 in 50 appearances in the USHL as an 18-year-old last season.

So if you’re Murray, you have to feel good about where you sit heading into a weekend against Arizona State — two W’s comin’ right up — to bump you to 16-7-3 with two league games each remaining against Omaha and Colorado College (whom they’ve yet to play, but are clearly better than) and North Dakota and Minnesota Duluth (very good teams with which they already split). Both those latter series are at home, which is further encouraging because they’re 8-2-2 in Kalamazoo this year, and the only loss with Blacker between the pipes was against Denver.

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But when talking about opponents and so on, it’s also worth noting that Western benefits from playing against NCHC opponents who significantly buoy their strength of schedule. That, in turn, allows them to skate by against a soft OOC slate — two each against Ferris, Bowling Green, Air Force, Arizona State and GLI dates against Michigan State and Michigan Tech — which helps explain why they’re 6-0-2 out of conference right now. And look, as with Penn State, all you can do is play the teams in front of you and beat them. Which obviously Western has done to a ludicrous extent; their non-conference winning percentage is the best in the country, which isn’t hard to accomplish when you don’t lose.

But does that buoy the team’s goals margin? Of course it does. They’re plus-16 in non-conference games. Which makes them minus-1 in NCHC play. So the fact that they’re a game above .500 in the league kinda checks out. Now again, because Blacker missed a bunch of games, that becomes harder to parse, but even with his stellar goaltending, they’re only plus-5 in the conference games he’s played; and if you discount the pair against the conference’s lone weaker club (CC), they’re at even in goals.

As alluded to earlier, it’s mostly been special teams carrying the club this year. Western has 30 goals on the power play. That’s the sixth-highest total in the country. But it seems to be because they’re shooting almost 17.5 percent as a team. You have to think a good portion of that is luck, because even though they draw a lot of penalties, it’s not like they’re generating a ton of shots on those opportunities. They’ve been credited with 172 shots on 137 power plays. And 1.26 per power play is not an overwhelming number.

By way of comparison, the other twp NCHC teams in the top Pairwise spots generate 1.55 (Duluth) and 1.52 (Denver) per power play. That’s closer to where you want to be.

So with all this having been said, if Western Michigan wants to compete meaningfully compete for something in this conference, there’s a pretty clear two-horse race it needs to join. Minnesota-Duluth and Denver are Nos. 1 and 2 in the Pairwise right now and clearly a cut above Western, insofar as they are well-coached teams with a lot more game-changing talent than just in the crease. A good goalie can take you far, but if you want to be a legit contender in a conference this tough, you either need that goalie to be more like .940 than .930, or get a lot more offensive contribution from the rest of your team to make up the difference.

Yes, Western is a very good team, but they have the misfortune of playing in a conference of giants, and they’re not among the absolute elite in the nation despite their record and Pairwise position. But again, can’t knock a team for winning most of the time.

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. Minnesota-Duluth (beat Minnesota and St. Cloud in the last-ever North Star College Cup)
2. Denver (swept Omaha)
3. Boston University (got swept by Merrimack in a home-and-home, beat UMass Lowell)
4. Penn State (idle)
5. Union (won at Clarkson, lost at St. Lawrence)
6. North Dakota (split at Colorado College)
7. UMass Lowell (lost to Northeastern, lost at BU)
8. Providence (swept a home-and-home with UNH)
9. Minnesota (lost to Duluth, beat Bemidji in the North Star College Cup)
10. Boston College (beat UConn and Notre Dame)

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

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