Nicole: Well it’s been five weeks since we last chatted. When I asked you about when to start back in the new year, you wondered if there would be enough to talk about, but I don’t think that’s a problem this week. There were all kinds of interesting results, the first Goalie of the Year watch list is out, plus we’re a week out from the start of women’s Olympic hockey.

Where should we start?

Arlan: Happy New Year. At the time that you contacted me about writing this column a couple of weeks ago, a lot of games were being postponed due to Covid protocol, and with that, we lost a lot of our potential topics. While we aren’t caught up 100 percent, and likely won’t be for a bit, more contests have been played, more goals scored, and more upsets and other results recorded, so I’m confident that we can be selective in what we choose to discuss.

First, you wrote a nice column at the beginning of last month about the return of hockey at Robert Morris, and a couple of weeks later, the university made the official announcement that both the men’s and women’s programs would be back for 2023-24.

I wish them well. However, the optimal business model for any competitive business – and Division-I surely is – does not include putting your program to sleep for a couple of years. The RMU situation is a bit like running an investment portfolio, having successful years with strong growth, then deciding you’d rather be in another field and liquidating your assets. Even if you quickly decide that was your calling after all, it will be harder than ever to sell investors on your vision. People aren’t as ready to place their future in your hands. It will be interesting to see how long it takes the Colonials to return to the national tournament, even with the expanded field.

Turning back to our current season, no College Hockey America team is currently positioned high enough in the PairWise Rankings to advance to the NCAA Tournament without winning the league tourney and securing its autobid, as RMU did last year. That’s been an annual problem for the circuit ever since it gained its automatic bid. Mercyhurst sits highest in the Pairwise at No. 13, and while that would seem to suggest that the Lakers are within range of No. 11 Connecticut, a CHA team would need to rise to at least No. 10 to gain an at-large entry. Mercyhurst is hurt in this ranking both by not gaining any Quality Win Bonus, and by damaging results such as a tie with Union and losses to teams like Syracuse and Long Island. As for the CHA’s three-team season race, Mercyhurst has the best winning percentage, holds a lead over Penn State, and has games in hand, versus last-place RIT, over Syracuse.

The race is all but decided in Hockey East, where Northeastern’s early stumbles at Boston University and Providence in October are a distant memory. It’s hard to predict if all of the originally-scheduled HEA games will be played after the postponements, but even if they are, the Huskies’ lead of more than four games figures to be sufficient. Northeastern sits atop a splintered USCHO Poll this week; what is its ceiling? Can the Huskies climb one rung higher than they did in last season’s final poll?

Nicole: I think the perpetual worry for any team coming out of Hockey East is the much lower strength of schedule they face. I know that Northeastern is a talented team of very good players, but I don’t know how I think they’ll match up against the top squads in the WCHA and ECAC. Their strength of schedule is ranked 20th in the country.

Their raw talent and great goaltending from Aerin Frankel allowed them to hang around the game long enough to get up to speed, but Northeastern was not at all prepared for UMD when they faced off in the national semi-final. I’m not sure if they thought the difference between what they were used to and playing a top ranked team was inconsequential or that they were adequately prepared, but in interviews before the Frozen Four, they were dismissive and confident about it not being an issue. Then, when the puck dropped, they looked shell shocked and Dave Flint said in an interview during the first intermission that his team wasn’t used to playing that fast.

They have the benefit of having learned that lesson and returning most of the roster from last year that now has both the experience of the tournament and the motivation of having lost that last game, which I think is one of those intangible things that can make a big difference.

I thought it was interesting that Northeastern was voted into the top spot – they’re currently third in the Pairwise, with Ohio State and Minnesota ahead of them and Wisconsin 0.0016 behind them in the RPI. This was probably the week Ohio State should have been given the nod. Their losses are to UMD and Wisconsin and their split with the Bulldogs this weekend included a 1-0 loss that came in the final minute of the game. They lead the country in team offense and on the power play.

Arlan: Northeastern shared the first place votes in this week’s poll with Minnesota, Ohio State, and Wisconsin, after a crazy week that saw five ranked teams lose to teams ranked below them or unranked.

I confess that I didn’t see the Clarkson defeat versus Rensselaer coming, much like I wouldn’t have thought that the Golden Knights would come home without a win from Bemidji. Perhaps it is just a stylistic issue, where grinding teams like the Engineers and Beavers match up better versus Clarkson than do the more talented rosters presented by Harvard and Quinnipiac. Clarkson followed that up with a discouraging loss at Cornell by a 4-0 margin that proved once again how little shots on goal can mean in a hockey game.

Speaking of the Crimson and Bobcats, the former was able to topple the latter on Saturday, although that was likely on the mild side of the upset scale, and by season’s end, we may not regard it as any sort of upset. Harvard does sit atop the league standings, a position that I think it enjoys thanks to that head-to-head win. With the conference’s strange system where games are worth three points and ties require half-point awards, I find it to be the least eye-friendly standings in use. The Crimson powerplay is second only to Ohio State in efficiency, and it seems that unit is converting in every game for Katey Stone.

I felt similarly about Colgate’s shutout loss at Yale. It looked to be a fairly even tilt in which the Raiders just couldn’t solve Gianna Meloni and lost a bit of intensity in the closing minutes. Perhaps the result is more definitive than that, and given that the Bulldogs have outscored Colgate, 7-0 in their two meetings, I suppose I should be giving them more credit.

In the WCHA, Ohio State and Minnesota-Duluth split down the middle for the second time this season, and Minnesota continued its newfound mastery of Wisconsin.

Which of these results did you find to be the most surprising? Or perhaps more importantly, which will do the most to shift the balance of power in the country?

Nicole: I really thought Quinnipiac was harshly punished in the polls this week for that loss to Harvard. Generally, I don’t dock anyone too much for a loss in a ranked matchup, but the Bobcats dropped three spots, I think.

Clarkson has been in the bottom half of the polls so I think they’ve been a little off the radar when it comes to dissecting every move or game, but their results this year have swung wildly. Or maybe it’s because they’re still 18-4-3, so folks aren’t looking more closely? I don’t know, but where they’ve stumbled truly makes no sense to me. They are strong and fast and decently deep. I also didn’t expect the Cornell outcomeThen again, tying back to our previous conversation, it was not Pasiechnyk in net for this loss. (She was, however, the goalie of record in the Bemidji State tie and loss).

Those losses probably have the biggest impact, since Clarkson is a bubble team, sitting at #10 in the Pairwise. If it comes down to a conversation about their body of work, those losses loom a little larger.

In terms of balance of power? I have high hopes that Yale’s rise lasts more than a year or two. I really like their hiring of Mark Bolding and this is only his second year of coaching games – he was hired before the 19-20 season and the Ivy League didn’t play last season. He still doesn’t have a full team of his own recruits and the program made immediate gains with him at the helm. Time will tell, but it seems like there’s been a tide change there and we can expect to see Yale mentioned in the same breath as Harvard and Princeton in terms of top-tier Ivy League squads.

It’s a long road, but I think RPI has to be pretty happy with how things are progressing there, as well. The team is 8-16, but the win over Clarkson was their second over a ranked opponent this season. They also have overtime losses to Colgate and Harvard and one-goal losses to Clarkson, Quinnipiac and Cornell. Remember that the Engineers did not win a game in 2019-2020 and then did not play last season, which makes these results all that more impressive.

Amanda Rampado has been very good in net for them, so this isn’t to dismiss her as a part of these accomplishments, but I think it’s important to point out that RPI aren’t snatching occasional wins because of outstanding goaltending like we saw in the past when Lovisa Selander won a number of games for them. These are whole team wins. They are much closer to having a winning record than I’ve seen from them in years. It takes time and experience to pull out those close wins, but I think they’ll get there sooner than we think and will be a tough matchup for their conference mates.

Arlan: We’ve talked about the PairWise above, but the teams that look to be trending upward include Harvard and Yale. It’s predictable that one of the WCHA teams will fall out of the top four spots that are positioned to host quarterfinals – assuming that’s still how the tournament will work this year. There is enough gray area in how the Pre-Championship Manual lays out the tournament bracket that other formats are possible, but I’m trusting that it will follow what we’ve seen in the past, in the men’s hockey tournament, and those for other NCAA sports over the years. Anyway, if Harvard or Yale stays hot, then it figures to rise into that vacuum. Of course, we’ve seen over the years that last week’s team that springs an upset can quickly become the victim the following weekend.

Looking farther down the list, there doesn’t seem to have been much discernable change. Theoretically, a second team from Hockey East may be able to move into the field once one of the five ECAC teams in the top 10 is eliminated in its quarterfinal round, suffering two losses in doing so. That will depend on how big a gap that HEA team needs to make up heading into the postseason. At this point, it is a little like watching a swarm of bees around a hive and trying to figure out who is going to go where next. There is a lot of activity, but not much in the way of predictable movement.

In our final column of 2021, we also talked about how the Patty Kazmaier Award Top 10 Finalists might shake out. In terms of changes to that list, Sophie Jaques looks like a lock to me. She has risen up the Ohio State scoring statistics and has distanced herself from the other defenders in the country. Similarly, I think that Taylor Heise’s case is stronger now than it was, as she’s continued to produce while her team has enjoyed success, an overtime loss to Minnesota State notwithstanding. I’d also have a hard time leaving Gabbie Hughes off the list when she tops the country in points per game.

An interesting case to follow will be that of Alina Mueller. She’s up there with Hughes in points per game, but because she missed games early in the year, she doesn’t have the raw points total that others do. Now she presses the pause button on her NCAA campaign during the Olympics. At least, it is better than being injured, and she can keep herself in the voters’ consciousness if she has an impactful Games for Switzerland.

What are you seeing at the other end of the ice?

Nicole: The big surprise on the Goalie watch list for me was not just the omission of Andrea Brändli , but the inclusion of Amanda Thiele. No offense to Thiele – it’s just that she’s only played seven games. I was so surprised I emailed the Hockey Commissioners Association to make sure it wasn’t a mixup between Ohio State’s two goalies. But the nominations for the watch list come from coaches and league Commissioners and that list is who they chose.

Thiele is taking over the starting role with Brändli is in China with Team Switzerland, so maybe I’ll be eating these words later as she comported herself well this weekend against Minnesota Duluth. But again, it wasn’t so much that she was named, it was the small body of work combined with Brändli ’s omission. Brändli s numbers are down – she’s seeing far fewer shots this season than she did in year’s past, so her save percentage takes more of a hit with every goal allowed.

But speaking of impressive goalies, I was incredibly surprised by UMD’s JoJo Chobak, who had basically no game experience going into this weekend. She’s taking over for Emma Soderberg, who’s in China with Team Sweden. Of the two, Thiele had much more time on the ice and I worried for Chobak and the Bulldogs that she was getting trial by fire against the top-scoring team in the country in Columbus, but she earned a shutout her first time out in the starter role.

Arlan: One thing that the goaltenders on the list highlight is just how differently teams have approached the position. You mentioned UMD relying primarily on Soderberg. Wisconsin has been similarly dependent on Kennedy Blair, with Cami Kronisch and Jane Gervais totalling three games worth of action between them. For the other ranked WCHA teams, Braendli and Thiele are within two games of each other in terms of minutes played, and Minnesota has three goalies who have played substantial minutes, started against ranked opponents, and could wind up getting the nod for a postseason start when everyone is available.

Aerin Frankel continues to be the clear starter for Northeastern, but her backups play almost a quarter of the minutes. Of the five ranked ECAC squads, the primary goalie plays 58 percent of the time for Harvard, Quinnipiac, and Yale, two thirds of the minutes for Colgate, and 86 percent of the games for Clarkson prior to the games played Tuesday night.

Of the ranked teams, none have a greater disparity than Wisconsin, who turns to Blair 88 percent of the time, and Minnesota, where Lauren Bench plays most frequently but gets only 45 percent of the minutes. We’ve seen it frequently from these teams over the years; when they’ve had a dominant goalie, she played the vast majority of the minutes.

What made the just-concluded season series between Wisconsin and Minnesota interesting was that even though it looked that Blair wasn’t on her game at times, she retained her spot in the crease. Her misplay led directly to the Gophers’ game-winning goal in the opener in Madison, and she yielded three goals in the opening 20 minutes on Saturday, but at no time was she in jeopardy of getting the hook. Coach Mark Johnson looks to have decided that he’ll rise or fall with Blair in net this year, injuries and illness allowing.

Has anyone emerged for you out of that goalie pool as the favorite? I know that it’s tough to say at this point of the season, especially when so many teams have been giving considerable minutes to their backups throughout.

Nicole: It sure seems like it’s Aerin Frankel’s award to lose. But as I mentioned above, the strength of opponents matters. The numbers don’t exist in a vacuum and a goalie of Frankel’s caliber should absolutely be putting up the numbers she does in Hockey East. So the question becomes how to compare dominating in that situation to women who are putting up similarly good numbers against tougher competition.

One of the breakout stars of this year has to be Michelle Pasiechnyk, the sophomore from Clarkson. She has played all but three of their games (she was notably not in net for the RPI loss) and has a 1.35 goals against average and .940 save percentage. She played in just ten games last season, but has done well in the starter’s role this year.

I’ve been really impressed with Corinne Schroeder at Quinnipiac. She came up big a number of times during their series at Wisconsin and she’s just been a solid presence that has helped them be more aggressive on offense.

Arlan: I can’t disagree with your choices, but there is a part of me that would like to see someone like Suzette Faucher honored, just because she forced us to talk about Franklin Pierce, something I confess that I seldom do. Hers is another case of playing less than a teammate but having better statistics. Maybe I’d just see the humor in a goaltender from Middleton, Wisc., receive recognition while playing somewhere other than the program that is known for goaltending excellence and used to play a portion of its schedule in her hometown.

Frankel is only a part of this conversation because she wasn’t selected to the United States Olympic roster, although it is hard to argue with the strategy of if it’s not broke, don’t fix it, when it came to picking the American goalies. Maddie Rooney, Alex Cavallini, and Nicole Hensley certainly have the resumes to justify their selection.

Looking at the college connections of the USA roster as a whole, it is somewhat surprising that only one player hails from the ECAC, that being Clarkson’s Savannah Harmon. I guess a roster with 15 players from the WCHA and six from Hockey East doesn’t leave room for much conference diversity. ECAC Hockey shines much brighter when looking at Canada’s roster with 11 selections, assuming that I’m counting correctly, with the WCHA not far behind with nine. With five on each roster, Wisconsin leads the way with 10 players in the combined talent pool. Of course, there are NCAA players sprinkled throughout the European Olympic rosters as well.

Beyond the “Where did you go to school?” part of the Olympics, what can we expect from the tournament itself? There always seems to be one team whose overall performance leads to a higher finish that one might predict based on past results, and another who suffers a corresponding dip. Who joins the North Americans in the medal round? Based on the most recent World Championships, the easy answer would be Finland and Switzerland. The 2018 Olympics suggest that Russia, or more precisely, the Russian Olympic Committee is a better bet than the Swiss. Sadly, it could come down to how well R.O.C.’s doping campaign is going this time around.

I’ll go with the safest choice and say that the Finns get bronze and Canada takes the gold. Speed kills, and I think that Maple Leafs fly a little faster. This being hockey, it could come down to the team with the goalie who is at her peak. I’d take the three goalie pool for the USA over that of Canada, but unless Covid surges, that won’t matter.

What did I get wrong, or would you rather wait and weigh in after the games are underway?

Nicole: The Finns were not as impressive at the World Championships as I’ve seen them be in the past, but that could be Covid related and a lack of playing time together. For me, the team with the most potential and upside is Czechia. The team is young, but still has a number of experienced players, many of whom played in the NCAA. Their goaltending was particularly good in Calgary. I think they can really take some big strides with this tournament.

I just wrote a Team USA preview over at Victory Press and my conclusion is similar to yours – that the US can’t keep up with Canada. A friend on Twitter suggested that Canada sticking with pretty much the same lineup for the past year could turn out to be a negative instead of a positive and I’ll admit that train of thought intrigues me.

One of my biggest criticisms of them in the past was management/coaching’s lack of adaptability. The team was uptight and stodgy because of those directives. While a plan is great, you also have to trust that you have the best team in the world and sometimes everything falls apart. Canada has to trust that players like Marie-Philip Poulin can still carry their team to a win, plan or no plan. I haven’t seen the same lack of change much during this cycle, but the adherence to that roster and line chart does make me wonder if the team will get bogged down in plans and rules.

On the other hand, Team USA has felt like it’s been in a state of chaos for months. There’s been no set line chart. A source told me the team went into Worlds without an actual power play unit or plan. The media push heading into Beijing has put Abby Roque front and center, but she was all but benched at the World Championships, with the lowest minutes per game of anyone on the team. I want to be more positive about this tournament but yikes, I just don’t know how to look at the recent body of work and feel secure in how the Americans will play. Having won the gold, the team has been touted in NBC commercials urging people to watch and they make me cringe a bit, as I worry folks are going to tune in and not see this team at its best and write them off.

I think it’s interesting that you bring up Canada’s speed, since that’s been one of the things the US has prided itself on for quite awhile. But Canada really seemed to be able to neutralize that advantage with a strong forecheck and pressure in transition. I’m not sure if the American defense is set up to handle speed coming at them. USA is used to flying through the neutral zone and controlling that area of the ice. I don’t think that’s going to happen here and how the team adapts to that will be a big factor in who comes out on top.

Despite the massive time difference, the organizers have been nice enough to schedule these games to be at mostly viewable times here – usually between 10 pm and midnight or after 6 am. There’s a great schedule of both men’s and women’s games with adjusted times here on Twitter.