Not so Lonely at the Top

By now, the ECAC has cemented its reputation as an extremely balanced league. Last year provided a perfect illustration—after playing out a 22-game schedule, third through eighth place in the standings were separated by just one point.

“It’s just such a crapshoot as to who’s in the middle of the ECAC,” said Yale coach Tim Taylor ’63. “You never know who’s going to finish ahead of whom. Last year, obviously, it was about as tight as it could get, and I don’t see it shaking out any more this year.”

While the league’s competitive balance is nothing new, here are some things to keep an eye on this year:

Greener Pastures

Four of the ECAC’s top five teams this season could very easily come from the Ivy League, a stark contrast from the seven-year span from 1995-2001 when just one Ivy team, the 1998 Yale squad, won the regular season title.

Cornell and Harvard were arguably the league’s most talented teams last year, and both return virtually all of their key players this season. They were the clear selections to finish first and second, respectively, in the ECAC preseason polls.

“I think the league is going to get away from that parity,” said Cornell coach Mike Schafer, whose team made a convincing run at the ECAC regular season title last year. “Teams have to separate themselves from the pack in order to be successful. They’re going to emerge and split the pack up.

“But the one thing about the ECAC is that you never know which teams that will be,” Schafer added.

Brown, which lost exactly one player that skated in last season’s ECAC playoffs, is certainly a candidate to break into the ranks of the ECAC elite. In All-American Yann Danis—the goaltender who stopped 66 shots in the playoffs against Harvard last year—the Bears have a rock that will keep them in every game.

Taylor also has the makings of an excellent team in New Haven. Sophomore Chris Higgins—the ECAC’s only first-round NHL draft pick—is the league’s best forward west of Harvard’s Dominic Moore, and he has a bevy of talented skaters to go along with him.

Cornell, Harvard, Brown and Yale all fit the mold of what the ECAC champion should look like this year—a team loaded with juniors and seniors that had extensive playing experience as underclassmen.

“The ECAC is going to be better this year,” Taylor said. “Our league was good last year, but there aren’t a whole lot of teams that got weaker. It’s a good sign for the strength of our league that there were very few teams last year that were driven by their senior classes.”

Enemy Territory

With the NCAA tournament moving from 12 to 16 teams this season, the ECAC has an opportunity to re-establish itself as an elite national conference and squeeze three teams into the Big Dance.

But to do that, ECAC teams are going to have to perform well in non-conference games during the regular season to boost their status as determined by the NCAA selection criteria. That’s something they didn’t do a very good job of last year.

Unfortunately, ECAC teams have gotten off to a slow start. After last weekend, the league’s record stood at a paltry 9-13-6, with most of those wins coming against weak competition. The league’s finest hour thus far was Vermont’s 1-1 tie at Boston University.

Of course, with so much of the ECAC’s strength in the Ivy teams—which cannot begin play until tonight—the league’s standing could improve quickly.

The bottom line is that Harvard’s chances of making the NCAA tournament as an at-large team improve if Yale beats top-ranked New Hampshire on Jan. 2, or even if Union defeats MAAC foes such as Connecticut or Iona.

“It’s all up to the teams in the league,” said Cornell All-American defenseman Doug Murray. “You need to win games outside of the league to get respected. We noticed last year that you get a lot more credit for beating teams outside the league than you do inside the league.”

Tournament Time

Speaking of tournaments, the ECAC made an abrupt and dramatic shift in the location of its conference championship in June.

Instead of holding it at the 1980 Olympic Rink in Lake Placid, N.Y., as it has done since 1993, the ECAC packed its bags and headed down I-87 for the more spacious confines of Albany’s Pepsi Arena.

Hockey purists cringed at the thought of the league leaving Lake Placid, a hockey haven and home of the “Miracle on Ice.”

But others have applauded the move, citing the high profile of Pepsi Arena, which hosted the 2001 Frozen Four and past NCAA basketball tournament games, as a step up in prominence for the ECAC.

“The championship is now going to take place in the center of our league, which will provide easier access for more fans to attend,” said Union coach Kevin Sneddon ’92. “As the number of ticket sales increases, so does the image of our tournament. Financially, the tournament will allow our league to grow for the future and thus enhance our image when compared to other conferences.”

Clarkson coach Mark Morris, though, said the move is hard on his team’s fans, who only had to drive a couple hours to get from the Potsdam, N.Y., campus to Lake Placid.

“Lake Placid was great for our fans,” Morris said. “Our fans grew accustomed to having [the tournament] in their backyard.

“Apparently the potential for the ECAC’s growth favors the Albany situation,” he continued. “We’ll have to wait and see if Albany can put on a first-class event.”

And we’ll have to wait and see who’s playing there, too.