NCAA hockey notebook: Atlantic Hockey race heating up

Last weekend, Sacred Heart soft-swept Niagara in a crucial weekend series. By taking five of six available points, the Pioneers secured their spot atop the Atlantic Hockey standings, as they now have 46 points from 22 games.

But they're not out of the woods yet. Holy Cross also took five of six points this weekend (against Canisius), while Bentley won its only game (against Army). Both have two games in hand on Sacred Heart and could overtake them if things go exactly right.

It's preferable to be in the catbird seat, having maxed out the points from your extra games played, but as long as the other teams have room to catch up, you're going to have to sweat it out.

The key team in all this is Bentley, because the Falcons have four home games over the next two weekends (hosting Robert Morris and Canisius) before hitting the road for the final weekend of the regular season to visit… Holy Cross and Sacred Heart. Not that all these teams are guaranteed to win the rest of their games in regulation or anything, but the odds that the top three in Atlantic Hockey are determined by those two games feel pretty high. One regulation win represents a six-point swing. No one can afford to drop these points, but someone will.

On the other hand, Atlantic Hockey is once again going to be a one-bid league because the highest-ranking team in the Pairwise right now is Sacred Heart at 26th. However many wins they get the rest of the way won’t be enough to help them secure an at-large bid, and any losses will likely cause them to plummet at least one spot each. This means that while winning the regular-season title doesn’t help as much as it does in most other conferences, having home ice throughout the AHA playoffs is really important. Home teams are 36-27 in Atlantic Hockey playoff games over the last four postseasons, and the home team in the conference final has won every championship since 2016.

So while there's still a lot of runway for Bentley and Holy Cross to make up ground, every game they play the rest of the way — including the playoffs, of course — is a must-win. We're about to find out a lot about both teams.

Beanpot blowouts

Anyone would have said that BC and BU were favored to win their first-round Beanpot matchups against Northeastern and Harvard, respectively.

Few would have seen the actual results coming: The two historical Beanpot dominators annihilated the opposition by a combined score of 15-3, and really only let their opponents have hope for like 14 minutes, combined.

BU started slow, and conceded the first goal, but scored the equalizer before the opening period ended and then piled on with five goals in the second. BC scored less than a minute in and led 3-1 through 20 minutes. It was all academic.

Six Terriers and seven Eagles had multi-point games, and both teams got great starts from their goalie. Jacob Fowler had missed BC's Friday-night win over Lowell, but stopped 28 of 30 in his first game back. For BU, Mikhail Yegorov continued to impress in his third straight start, having now allowed just four goals on 72 shots, just one of which was at 5-on-5.

It sets up a high-drama final, with both teams now rolling both offensively and defensively. BC just swept a weekend series against its archrival, but Yegorov (whose first start came in the Saturday loss) changes the math significantly. Should be a good one.

Wide-open awards fields

One of the big topics of conversation in press boxes the last few weeks has been how no one is really standing out from the crowd when it comes to the Hobey Baker, Mike Richter, or even Tim Taylor awards this season.

Last year, Macklin Celebrini made the first and last of those awards relatively easy decisions. He really only had one competitor for the Hobey, and no one could even come close to touching his Taylor candidacy. Kyle McClellan won the Richter in a closer race, but of the three finalists, he was certainly  the most deserving.

This year? Your educated guess is probably as good as anyone's.

Isaac Howard and Jimmy Snuggerud have pulled away from the field in terms of total point production, both now sitting north of 40 and no one else holding more than 37. But these are narrow margins and two candidates from the same conference can often lead to vote-splitting. Especially because Howard may not even be the best candidate on his own team, thanks to the outstanding play of goaltender Trey Augustine (more on him in a second). When there are two forwards who really haven't differentiated themselves from one another, that opens the conversation to defensemen and goalies, except it feels as though the most likely defenseman right now is Sam Rinzel, who's on Snuggerud's team, which kinda brings you back to square one.

So what about another defenseman, like Eric Pohlkamp or Zeev Buium? Both capital-G Great, both also on the same team.

Ryan Leonard would then seem like a great candidate, because he leads the nation in goals, and he's heating up a lot lately, with goals in six straight games, during which he's put up 10-3—13. But that huge gap between goals and assists is a trend; he only has 10 helpers all year, and is therefore way behind Howard and Snuggerud in terms of total points. Would voters overlook that because his goalscoring talent makes him the arguably single biggest offensive weapon in the country? Maybe. But also, he's facing down the same situation as Howard, because his team's goaltender, the aforementioned Jacob Fowler, has a great Hobey case, too.

I don't remember a potential debate like this, where you could put any three of like 10 guys in the Hobey Hat Trick and you'd have to say, "Yeah all those guys deserve it."

Same with the Richter, to a lesser extent. You can write Augustine and Fowler's names in pen for the finalists, but both have relatively easy workloads (in comparison with other goalies who ought to be in the conversation) in terms of what the teams in front of them give up. But they win a lot and Richter voters, of which I am one, do tend to favor goalies with big win totals. For that reason, I think Albin Boija should probably be the third guy in that group — and hell, I'd probably have him No. 1 in large part because his save percentage is higher than Augustine's and his team isn't as good as Fowler's. But then, I haven't really dug all the way into the numbers yet, so I reserve the right to change my opinion. Boija would also be comfortably in my Hobey top 10, but not too high in it right now.

And as for the Taylor, I think the answer is probably James Hagens or Cole Hutson — I'm currently leaning the latter — but neither has put a ton of distance between themselves and Michael Hage, Gavin Morrissey, or any of the goalies, probably led by Ajeet Gundarah but if you wanted to make a JJ Cataldo argument I'd hear it out.

That's a lot of names, I know, but that's the point. Three awards, only one of which even has a clear top three, let alone a winner. Pretty good news for college hockey on the whole, I'd say. There are must-see players everywhere you look.

NCAA tournament spots locking up quick

Across the country, the dwindling schedule and continued dominance from top teams has to have a lot of other clubs feeling nervous.

Ahead of this weekend's games, 11 teams have a better-than-90-percent chance to make the NCAA tournament with an at-large bid. That includes nine that are currently north of 96 percent, for whom it would take abject disaster to bounce them from the field at this point.

Four teams have basically qualified, even if they lose every game the rest of the way: Boston College, Michigan State, Minnesota, and Maine. Western Michigan, Providence, and UConn are close to having the same assurances.

Denver and Boston University aren't far behind, but the wiggle room really starts opening up for Ohio State and UMass Lowell (91 percent each). Both could really secure their qualification this weekend, but realistically they'd need some stuff to break their way in addition to winning their upcoming games, so it's more likely a longer-term project.

The other teams currently on the right side of the cutline are Michigan and Arizona State, at 59 percent and 50 percent, respectively. Quinnipiac (43 percent) and Minnesota State (46 percent) are in that mix as well, but their odds are only that high because they are favored to win their conference autobids. Both teams could win every game the rest of the way except their conference final and still not qualify. And of course, the cutline moves with every team outside the top 14 winning in their conference tournaments.

This feels like a year where if you're not top-12 in the Pairwise going into the final weekend, you're really sweating every result. Realistically, there could be something like eight schools playing for four spots on the Championship Saturdays: all four teams in the Atlantic Hockey and CCHA finals, at least one in the ECAC and in all likelihood both, possibly one NCHC team. Less probable is that anyone in the Big Ten and Hockey East finals is playing for their season, but the way those conferences have gone this year, they're deep enough that it wouldn't be shocking.