Fan Fanatic Sports Staff
The ice chips have settled and Boston College has come out on top as the top team in college hockey for the second time in three years.
I will be the first to admit that early in the season and as late as the beginning of this tournament that while they were a very good team, the Eagles didn't have the star power to win the whole thing. And the lack of big stars just may be the reason they won it all.
All tournament Barry Melrose kept pointing out the fact that Wisconsin had the most draft picks of any team in the tournament, including three first-round draft picks on defense. The problem for Wisconsin is the Badgers played like a group of high draft picks instead of like a team.
Yes, Boston College was faster than Wisconsin, which is an incredibly fast team itself, but it wasn't speed that made the difference. It was passing. Boston College executed plays in transition to perfection because of impeccable tape-to-tape passing. Players looked to each other as outlets and the team looked to be communicating so well, you might have thought Jerry York had implanted something in their brains that transmitted what one was thinking to all the others.
Wisconsin players, on the other hand, tried far too often to do everything themselves. When they did pass, things happened for them like a very good bid in the slot off a pass from the corner in the first period, but especially once the Badgers were down, the individualism reared its ugly head and right then you had a feeling Wisconsin was done.
With the win, BC established itself as one of the dominant teams in college hockey, having won two trophies in three years and three over the last 10 seasons. The Eagles have appeared in the championship game four of the last five seasons and seven of the past 13 seasons, dating back to 1998.
What is also impressive is the road Boston College took to get there. First of all, the Eagles finished one point out of first place during the regular season and went on to win the tournament of the toughest conference in college hockey, which earned them a No. 1 seed in the tournament.
Don't buy that the Hockey East is the toughest conference? It has to be, especially over recent years as each of the last five championship games have featured a Hockey East team. In fact, since 1990, the NCAA championship game has been without a Hockey East team just four times. Twice both teams in the title game have been from Hockey East - 1995 when Boston University topped Maine and 1999 when Maine beat arch-rival New Hampshire. Only once since 1990 has a Hockey East team not reached the Frozen Four and that was in 1992.
Six of the last seven Hobey Hat Trick finalists have been from Hockey East.
Even after taking the top spot in the Northeast regional, the Eagles had the rougher road to the championship game than Wisconsin. After dispatching an Alaska team that was better than everyone thought it was, The Eagles had to first face the team that finished tops in the ECAC during the regular season, which also happened to be the best scoring team in the country in Yale. After the victory over Yale got them to the Frozen Four, they had to play the CCHA's toughest team and the team ranked No. 1 overall in Miami (OH) and finished off the season with a win over the WCHA's second-ranked team at the end of the regular season. The teams they played in the tournament leading up to the title game finished in USCHO's final rankings at No. 17, No. 8, and No. 1, respectively. Comparitively speaking, Wisconsin played No. 15 Vermont, No. 7 St. Cloud State and No. 20 RIT.
Some parting shots
- ESPN can try to spin it all they want, but the ice at Ford Field looked terrible. I'm not an expert on ice, but I've seen enough hockey to know that when the puck is lying flat and still ends up bouncing over the blades of sticks, the ice isn't competition caliber. It was a nice little gimmick and a way to boost ticket sales, but what if ice conditions had had a serious effect on a game? It just wasn't the right venue for a championship game.
- The CHA should be stripped of its automatic bid. Alabama-Hunstville made it and you can't hate the team for it because it got in because of how the rules are, so good for them. But what was good for them was bad for hockey. The team plays in a four-team conference and won a total of 12 games all season with a .409 winning percentage. Two of those games happened to be at the right time, so they got put in with the best teams in college hockey, which they were not.
- RIT, on the other hand, was good for college hockey, much like Bemidji State was the year before. RIT admittedly plays in a lesser conference, but they had 28 wins, was a top-20 team and beat up on two teams perceived to be incredibly more talented than it was. What makes the RIT story even better is the fact that the school does not give athletic scholarships. Every kid at that school is there to be something besides a hockey player and that is commendable.
- UNH fans who have been spoiled by the team's recent successes have started calling for head coach Dick Umile's job because he has been unable to shake the school's "University of No Hardware" moniker. Those fans have short memories. They forget that before Umile showed up in Durham 20 years ago, UNH was an absolute laughing stock. Since the Umile era began, the Wildcats have been a competitive program in the toughest conference in college hockey with a 462-234-73 record. The Wildcats have finished as regular season champions six times and three times in the last four year, including this season, which most prognosticators had them finishing fourth at best. They have been to the NCAA tournament 16 times, including nine straight years, which is the second-longest active streak. UNH is in a town that most people couldn't point to on a map, has a rink that with 200x100 dimensions a lot of players don't want to play at and a budget that restricts the amount they can offer in scholarships. Most of Umile's scouting comes from the local area and that itself can be tough with programs like BU and BC a short trip down I-95. And yet he always finds a way to make his team competitive. I'm not saying that this is the best UNH hockey can be, but for a team that lost its three top defensemen and the team's all-time leading scorer to graduation, plus a guy named van Reimsdyk to the Flyers, this team did pretty well for itself and Umile is the reason why.
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