Two weeks.  Two hat tricks.  Two honors for Massachusetts hockey players.  Austin Plevy’s opening night hat trick gained him last week’s Hockey East Rookie of the Week.  After his own hat trick this past Friday in UMass’ win over Sacred Heart, sophomore Dennis Kravchenko was named Hockey East Player of the Week.  It’s his first POTW honor after being named Rookie of the Week once last year.  In addition to the three goals Kravchenko also assisted on Dominic Trento’s goal in the game against the Pioneers.  Plevy was named a Top Performer for his two assist effort against Sacred Heart.

Graphic by UMass Athletics

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Still no league games this past weekend, but all teams were active so there’s a lot to recap.  Probably the craziest results on the weekend for Hockey East was what happened to Northeastern.  On Friday they outshot Bentley 51-11, but lost 3-2 as Falcon Andrew Gladiuk scored a hat trick on just three shots.  The next night Northeastern travelled to Bentley and lost 4-1.  Boston College hosted a Wisconsin program which is just reeling and beat them 6-0.  The next night the Badgers travelled up Comm Ave and lost to Boston University 4-1.

After getting swept by UMass to open the season last weekend the Colorado College Tigers came east and got swept by Lowell with the River Hawks grabbing a couple low-scoring one goal wins.  Providence played one game this weekend, a 4-1 win over Holy Cross where they also raised their national championship banner.  After starting out their season with a shutout win at Minnesota, Vermont came home only to get swept by the Omaha Mavericks.  Merrimack had a very good weekend, sweeping the North Country teams of Clarkson and St Lawrence.

UMass’ next opponent, New Hampshire, had the opposite results against those teams, losing 3-2 in overtime to St Lawrence and then 4-3 to Clarkson on Saturday.  UConn hosted the newest hockey program, Arizona State, and beat them 5-1.  Notre Dame played their first games of the season, splitting a weekend series at Penn State.  And the Maine Black Bears travelled to Union were they tied on Friday, their third straight tie to start the season, before losing on Saturday.

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UMass continues to gain votes in the USCHO poll.  They’re up to 39 points now and among the top teams that are also receiving votes.  A win against UNH this weekend could give them a chance to break into the rankings.

USCHO.com Division I Men’s Poll

October 19, 2015

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If the season ended today….it would be kind of silly.  But if that was the case UMass would be in the tournament.  In fact, as #3 in the Pairwise, they’d be a #1 seed.  I would probably wait a week or two before booking flights to the Frozen Four however.  As the season goes along I’ll post the Pairwise rankings here.  Still too early right now though.

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SBN College Hockey had this article looking at the early results and stats around college hockey where they state UMass is probably “one of the worst 3-0-0 teams ever”.  The argument being made is that, while they’re undefeated, their shot differential and shooting percentage is unsustainable.  I do not dispute those statistics and in fact cited them in my recap post yesterday.  I get the numbers, I really do.  But let’s not pretend like they’ve won because of luck.  They’ve earned the wins through some very strong individual offensive performances and solid goaltending.

I love the advanced stats that are available in the game nowadays and may write about them later in the week if I have a chance.  But sometimes it seems like people get so caught up in them that they get frustrated when the standings don’t line up with their CORSI numbers.  This appears to be one of those times.

The Omaha Mavericks are opening a new arena this coming weekend.  Here’s an interesting article about an app that’s tied into the Mavs’ new home.