Our devoted pack of amateur voters<\/a> clearly favors Polacek, but do the numbers back that up?<\/p>\nRPI’s superstar actually finished tied with Yale’s Andrew Miller atop the league scoring ladder with 27 points in 22 games apiece, but beat the younger Miller in goals with 11. Miller blew Polacek out of the water with a plus-12 league plus\/minus rating to Polacek’s meager plus-4, and spent less time in the sin bin (20 minutes for Polacek, 12 for Miller).<\/p>\n
What of Brian O’Neill and Daniel Carr? Well, O’Neill finished third in the scoring hunt to the aforementioned duo with 12 goals and 25 points, sported a plus-11 rating and scored more power-play goals (six) than either Polacek (five) or Miller (four). Rookie Carr finished the regular season with 11 league goals, 16 points and six power-play goals as well, but managed only a plus-1 plus\/minus in ECAC action.<\/p>\n
Should we really knock out either Miller or O’Neill just because they’re teammates? Can the second-best player on one team actually be the second-best player in the league? Of course he can. So who should go? I’d say Carr is the obvious first cut, despite his outstanding season: His plus\/minus just doesn’t indicate that he is an elite two-way player on a dominant team.<\/p>\n
So how do we decide between Polacek and the Yalies? Well, we’ll have to flesh it out. Polacek accounted for about 15 percent of RPI’s points this season, both in and out of conference. Miller and O’Neill each made up a little more than a tenth of the Bulldogs’ production — between 11 and 12 percent, to be more specific. Polacek’s goals also comprised a larger percentage of his team’s total than Miller’s or O’Neill’s.<\/p>\n
I will choose this point in the debate to say that I’d love to throw out all second assists and judge players by their true goal-scoring and play-making abilities, but I’m afraid that would just take way too long, so we’ll go with what we’ve got.<\/p>\n
What we’ve got in the end is two players who may very well diminish each other’s achievements simply by playing together, though they combine to strengthen an indisputably intimidating team, and one player who doesn’t look as worthy head-to-head, but has meant significantly more to his team than either of the other two.<\/p>\n
So my vote for player of the year — both here and to ECAC Hockey — goes to Chase Polacek of Rensselaer. The sincerest good luck to him and all other ECACers in the month ahead: May you bring back an award far more precious than anything I could come up with for a weekly column.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Psst … it’s time. Wake up, grab some coffee and find your sweater: It’s the postseason, and everybody is back to square one. Crimson climbing fast Who’s the hottest team in the league entering the playoffs? If you said Union, you’re totally right. On a 10-0-1 run, the Dutchmen are just stupid-good right now. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":122582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
As playoffs dawn, Harvard may be finally finding its stride - College Hockey | USCHO.com<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n