PC Hockey Out of Hockey East Tourney; But Await NCAA Tourney Bid

PC Hockey Out of Hockey East Tourney; But Await NCAA Tourney Bid

The Providence College hockey team fell to the UConn Huskies in a Hockey East Tourney quarterfinal match on Friday, March 14th by a score of 3-1.  The tournament’s 4th-seeded Huskies defeated the 5th-seeded Friars on home ice at the Toscano Family Forum before a sellout crowd of 2,700.  When the Friars earlier this season defeated Huskies 6-3 in a UConn “home game,” it was held at the Hartford XL Center.

The Huskies decided that a playoff game against the Friars would be played in a cozy campus arena.  The decision paid off as the noise and closeness of the fans to the action was key.  Friars’ coach Nate Leaman, in postgame comments, mentioned the fans as a factor. “Our seven freshmen were surprised by the intensity of the UConn play.  It was playoff hockey, and their fans were a factor.”

The Friars were first on the scoreboard when they intercepted a UConn pass on a UConn power play in the first period, and Guillaume Richard scored a short-handed goal at 3:44. The Friars were out checked and out-hustled by UConn for most of the game.  It was uncharacteristic play by the Friars.  PC had trouble getting into the offensive zone and staying there. The Friars managed to keep the score at a 1-1 tie entering the third period, but UConn’s leading scorer, Joey Muldowney, gunned home a goal at .20 seconds of the third period to give the Huskies a 2-1 lead.   

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From there, UConn went into a defensive mode, using their forwards to bottle up the Friars in the neutral zone.  PC did have one golden opportunity when Nick Poisson’s shot at point-blank range missed.  The Friars pulled their goalie Philip Svedeback at 18:55 in the third period, but even with an extra attacker, they couldn’t light the lamp.  Muldowney scored an empty netter at 19:13 to make the final score 3-1.

PC’s record fell to 21-10-5 with the loss and UConn improved to 21-10-4.  The Hockey East tournament now moves to the Boston Garden for the semi-finals on Thursday and the Friday final.  On Thursday, UConn will face the Boston University Terriers at 4 PM and at 7:30 PM Maine will play upstart Northeastern who upset top seeded Boston College in the quarterfinals.  All the games will be televised by NESN.

 

NCAA Tournament Selections

The NCAA will select the 16 teams on Sunday, March 23rd, for the post-season road to the Frozen Four. Several college hockey leagues are still playing league tournament hockey and will finish up next weekend. Despite losing in the Hockey East quarterfinals, the Friars are in good shape to be selected for the NCAA tournament, no matter what the outcome of the remaining games of other teams.   There are six college hockey leagues, and the winners of the tournaments will receive automatic bids. That leaves ten other teams to be selected as “at-large” selections.  The NCAA uses a “pairwise” method of ranking teams for the NCAA selection which takes into consideration not only wins and losses, but strength of schedule, wins versus ranked teams, losses against weak teams, etc.

As of March 17th, Providence College has a pairwise ranking of 8th in the country.  That ranking, even with other games still being played by other teams, is likely not to fall significantly by March 23rd.   One of the factors helping PC is the overall strength of the Hockey East league. Hockey East is the strongest league in college play this year.  Its record against teams from other leagues is mind-blowing 75-29-3 for a winning percentage of .715.  Providence, for example, was 9-1 this year against non-conference teams, the only loss coming in the opening game of the year on the road at North Dakota.

Here is the current pairwise ranking as of March 17th.  Hockey East may land six teams of the 16 teams that will play in the NCAA tournament.