No King of the Hill in Balanced ECAC

Just when we thought it was safe to pencil in Cornell and Harvard at the top and lay claim to our own, pint-sized version of a certain hardball rivalry, the “p” word is squatting in ECAC Country again.

Parity—not teams, not coaches, and not players—is back in control of the league.

After two seasons in which the Big Red and Crimson made NCAA tournament appearances, waged overtime ECAC championship games for the ages and infused unbridled puck passion into a dormant, decades-old rivalry, they’re right back where they started: in the middle of everyone else.

Harvard began the year as the nation’s sixth-ranked team and the consensus pick to win the league, but injuries, unmet expectations, and hard luck have doomed the Crimson to no better than a fifth-place finish.

Cornell, which won the ECAC title and reached the Frozen Four last season, has been limited by youth and injuries and is a long shot for a third straight Cleary Cup. It is currently in third place, needing four points and help to take the title.

So who has filled the power vacuum? Well, everyone.

Colgate—the same team that was picked to finish eighth in the preseason—needs only two points to clinch the regular-season title. But depending on what happens behind them, the Raiders could theoretically be swept this weekend and still take the title…with only 28 points.

By comparison, Cornell won last year’s championship with 39. Harvard was second with 35.

Colgate could become the first team since the league assumed its current 12-team format in 1984 to win the league with fewer than 31 points. (Prior to that, standings were determined by winning percentage.)

Even if the Raiders sweep this weekend, they will become one of only five teams to win the ECAC with 32 or fewer points, joining the 1991, 1995 and 2001 Clarkson teams and 1992 Crimson varsity.

In other words, Colgate might be the worst best team in ECAC history. And that is no disrespect to Stan Moore, an excellent hockey coach with boatloads of integrity who is a no-brainer pick for ECAC Coach of the Year.

It’s just that right now, his team is the best of a very balanced, woefully unspectacular field—a title that everyone expected would belong to Harvard or Cornell this season.

But alas, those who foretold an ECAC in which those carmine cousins nosed one another for the title each year—the same way Michigan and Michigan State have engaged in a two-way struggle for CCHA hegemony for most of the last two decades—are now sitting down to a happy helping of crow.

Now could one of them stage a dramatic run through the conference tournament, win the title in overtime, and make the NCAAs? Sure. We know how that works around here.

But do not mistake a year-end reversal of fortune—which is what that would be—for the continuation of the two-horse race we saw last season. That’s over now. A sort of mob rule on ice has taken its place.

Here’s an analogy for you. Think back to those snowy days in elementary school. (If you didn’t have snowy days in elementary school, shame on you.) Remember how the snow plow would make a big snow hill on one end of the parking lot? You and your buddies would play King of the Hill on it. Great game, you know.

Everyone’s goal is to get to the top, and once one kid gets to the top, everyone gangs up to knock the kid to the bottom. It usually ends with Danny on the asphalt with a bloody nose and a nun yelling, “That’s what you get for horseplay! Now, go inside and write the Nicene Creed on the board…in Latin.”

OK, maybe that’s an extreme example. But you get the point. Harvard and Cornell were on top for two years. Now they have Kleenex in their nostrils. But it’s not because of one bully. A bunch of kids got together and pushed them off the hill.

The ECAC has always been this unpredictable. Some years, Clarkson and St. Lawrence rule the roost—that, in fact, happened as recently as three seasons ago. Some years, Rensselaer or Vermont makes a run. And some years, an Ivy team or two is strong.

But the ECAC, with its conglomeration of programs—four scholarship schools, seven non-scholarship schools, and one scholarship school on the way out (Vermont)—is topsy-turvy by nature. A lot of it depends on recruiting—whether or not a school can string together two or three solid recruiting classes in a row, something that’s very difficult to do at an Ivy League school.

Those in the ECAC camp hope that one team shines above the others, with one or two 20-win teams close behind—like Cornell, Harvard and Dartmouth did last year—to get at least two, maybe three, teams into the NCAA tournament.

There is no chance that will happen this year. Colgate is a bubble team that might make the NCAA tournament as an at-large selection if it reaches the ECAC final and loses. Cornell and Dartmouth are lurking on the fringe of the tournament field, but in the end, their lot will probably be like everyone else’s: Win the ECAC tournament and you’re in. Lose and go home.

And who’s the consensus pick to win in Albany? Your guess is as good as anyone else’s. “I don’t see any prohibitive favorite,” admitted Harvard coach Mark Mazzoleni.

Two years ago at this time, Mazzoleni’s team transformed itself from an underachieving also-ran into the ECAC champion. One season ago, the Crimson was in the thick of NCAA contention and eventually squeezed its way into the field— a tremendous accomplishment for both Harvard and the league.

Now Crimson players and coaches are in the same place they were two seasons ago—in the thick of a crowded ECAC, with teams not much better and not much worse than themselves in either direction.

How quickly things change. And how quickly they return to normal.

So Colgate, here’s some advice for you: While you’re on top, savor it. No one seems to stay there very long. Timmy and Bobby and Jimmy and Ronnie are probably on their way up the hill already.

WHERE’S THE O?

One of the contributing factors to the league’s extreme competitive balance is its general lack of goals in comparison to last season.

• Last year, the ECAC had 19 double-digit goal-scorers, led by Yale’s Chris Higgins (18 goals). This year, it has only 10—none of whom play for Harvard—with Colgate’s Jon Smyth leading the league (15).

• Harvard winger Tim Pettit, who led the league with 37 points last season, was one of eight players to break 30. This year, the ECAC might not have any 30-point men; Smyth is tops with 26.

• Yale leads the league in scoring this year, but only averages 3.20 goals per game—not far ahead of Union, which has the lowest average (2.00). Last season, Harvard and Yale led the league with 4.27, and two other teams averaged more than 3.20.

• Last season, Harvard scored four or more goals in 19 of 34 games. But that has happened only seven times through 27 games, and only once in the last 13.

“Goal-scoring has been difficult this year,” said Dartmouth assistant coach Dave Peters. “The goaltending’s been good, and the teams play such good defense.

“We go into every game expecting a 3-2 hockey game, and they usually have been.”

—Staff writer Jon Paul Morosi can be reached at morosi@fas.harvard.edu.