College Hockey:

This Week in ECAC Hockey: Feb. 19, 2009

Here’s how I’d analyze my preseason predictions at this juncture:

1. Princeton: not a bad pick, though the Tigers haven’t been as consistently dominant as I’d expected.
2. Cornell: if anything, I may have sold the Big Red short in my mind. They just seemed like Princeton’s default runner-up, when they’ve been anything but.
3. Yale: apparently picking the Bulldogs third wasn’t gutsy enough!
4. Clarkson: which came first, the injuries or the dysfunction? It was tough to see this disappointment coming.
5. Harvard: this team is immensely bipolar, and yet I’m only a spot off somehow.
6. Union: two spots too high for the surprisingly goal-happy Dutchmen. Too bad “goal-happy” refers to a love of all goals, not just their own.
7. Quinnipiac: a +15 league goal differential, and all you have to show for it is a .500 record? The Bobcats ought to be singlehandedly wrecking my poll.
8. St. Lawrence: I’ll confess, I didn’t see the second-most-potent offense in the league when I looked at the Saints last fall.
9. Rensselaer: more or less on target, for whatever that’s worth.
10. Colgate: same.
11. Dartmouth: my single biggest blunder. Not that there’s a lesson to be learned here … unless it’s “don’t doubt Bob Gaudet,” or something like that.
12. Brown: sigh.

On to the insights.

What We Know

With two weekends to play in the regular season, we take a look at potential playoff situations.

Yale has earned a first-round bye.
Princeton will finish with home ice at worst.
Cornell and Dartmouth have locked themselves into top-nine finishes.
St. Lawrence can’t finish worse than 10th, but also can’t finish first.
Quinnipiac, Harvard and Union are also locked out of first, but won’t finish last either.
Clarkson can end up anywhere between third and 11th.
Rensselaer is no longer in the running for a bye week.
Colgate will finish no higher than seventh.
Brown cannot finish higher than 10th.

Relevant tiebreakers thus far:
H2H = head-to-head, W = wins

Yale beats Dartmouth (HH), St. Lawrence (W), Harvard (HH), Quinnipiac (W), Union (W) and Clarkson (W).
Princeton beats Quinnipiac (HH), Harvard (W), Clarkson (HH), Rensselaer (W) and Colgate (HH).
Cornell beats Quinnipiac (HH), Clarkson (HH) and Colgate (HH).
Dartmouth beats Union (HH), Rensselaer (HH) and Colgate (W).
St. Lawrence beats Brown (HH), Colgate (HH) and Yale (HH).
Quinnipiac beats Clarkson (HH), Rensselaer (HH) and Brown (W).
Harvard beats Dartmouth (HH), Colgate (HH) and Brown (W).
Union beats Rensselaer (HH) and Brown (W).
Clarkson beats Brown (HH) and St. Lawrence (HH).
Rensselaer beats Brown (HH).
Colgate beats Quinnipiac (HH) and Clarkson (HH).
Brown holds no advantages.

My New Third-Favorite Website

Thanks to the USCHO.com Fan Forum, I was clued into the existence of PlayoffStatus.com. I will say right away that I haven’t heard from the site yet regarding how it arrives at its figures, but for the sake of a really cool reference, I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

Not only does the site compute the odds of a team finishing in any given spot in the standings, but also the chances of each team advancing in the playoffs, or even the games that are most critical to each individual team’s hopes of climbing the standings.

Magic numbers, clinching and elimination situations, all sorts of hypotheticals … I’m not sure how often the site is updated, or to what extent, as the strength-of-schedule page has me skeptical. But regardless, even if it’s not perfect, it’s certainly intriguing. Go ahead, get lost in an hour or two of productivity-sapping theoreticals. I won’t spoil it by telling you how it ends.

‘Gate on the Upswing?

Let’s face it; this isn’t what Colgate had in mind back in October.

The Raiders started the season with three straight wins, and 4-1-0 after five games. Since then, the ‘Gate has been a rusty and unreliable 5-15-5. Hamilton Hockey has more non-conference wins (five) than ECAC victories (four), but with four more games on the table, the Maroon & Gray have the soldering irons out and a couple of industrial-strength locks in hand.

It’s time to build a stronger ‘Gate.

“We could feel pretty good about a win against a very good team at Dartmouth. I thought we played okay at Harvard, so we’re feeling okay about where we are,” said head coach Don Vaughan. “Obviously it’s been disappointing that we haven’t been able to pick up some more points and put ourselves in a little better position to take a run at the bye, or at least assure ourselves of home ice in the first round, but it is what it is. We’ve faced a lot of adversity, and we’re trying to keep things moving forward and keep hope alive.”

The Raiders have already played 12 overtime games, a taxing number on an already burdened squad. Their record stands at 3-4-5 in those extra sessions, and 7-8-5 in all close/one-goal games. With two-thirds of their outcomes in doubt with a minute remaining, Colgate is becoming stronger at playing to the horn and paying attention to the details.

“We have to focus on our game, and continue to take care of the little things because really at the end of the day, that’s what’s hurt us this year. We’ve been in a lot of very close games, and a lot of overtime games, and we haven’t come out on the positive end of enough of those,” said Vaughan. “I think easily, at times, we could’ve felt sorry for ourselves, in some cases maybe thrown in the towel, but we haven’t done that. We’ve continued to battle — and I’ve been pleased with that — and that’s what we have to continue to do here down the stretch.”

Raider Nation may have been surprised to see freshman goalie Bryan Bessette between the pipes recently. After manning the bench door for the first half of the season, Bessette slowly earned some mop-up time in games against Lake Superior State and St. Lawrence in January.

Then, all of a sudden, he’s out there for the drop of the puck against Quinnipiac two Saturdays ago.

“We really tried to shake things up. We were in a position where we really felt we had to try and do something to turn the tables after a tough loss in here against Princeton — again, in a game where I thought we played pretty well,” explained the coach.

“We lost to one of the best teams in the country in overtime, and at that point it was, hey, we’ve gotta try to do something to jolt the team, and get them to focus on something other than maybe another tough loss. Bryan’s worked very hard, hasn’t been given a whole lot of opportunities. He’s well-liked and a positive influence in the locker room and more than anything I was trying to get the guys to rally around him. So we came back with him on Saturday against Quinnipiac and he played great (giving up two goals on 35 shots). He was a little nervous early on, but he got a great overtime win for us, so the feeling in the locker room was that he got a nice win for us in overtime, we should give him another opportunity.”

That opportunity came last Friday, in Colgate’s 3-2 loss at Harvard. Vaughan praised Bessette for his efforts, and certainly didn’t hold the rookie responsible for the loss. However, Colgate’s helmsman played junior Charles Long in Saturday’s follow-up game at Dartmouth.

Going with the team’s only experienced goaltender proved to be the right call, as Long blanked the Big Green on 28 shots … including 14 in the third period of the Raiders’ 1-0 win. As for this weekend