It's very rare that decisions as boneheaded as the Ottawa Senators not trading a just-drafted Alexandre Daigle to the Nordiques for a package that included Joe Sakic and Peter Forsberg are made in college hockey. One was made last week, however, as Merrimack College chose not to offer head coach Ron Anderson a contract for next year.

For those not familiar with college hockey, Merrimack has a pathetic program. The Warriors play in Volpe Complex, a decrepit and freezing facility that most high schools would be embarrassed by. The administration has shown indifferent support to the hockey program, refusing to fund even an assistant coach before last year. Recruiting within Hockey East must be a nightmare for Merrimack, since they have both higher academic standards and lower name recognition that most other teams in the league. Hell, even the location of the school in Boston's remote suburbs, too far from downtown for the action of a city but too built-up to have rural beauty, works against it.

Yet Ron Anderson took over the hockey team fifteen years ago and made it into a powerhouse in NCAA Division II. In 1989, he helmed the team through the rough transition to Division I hockey and the rigors of playing in the powerful Hockey East league. While the Warriors have never been terribly successful at the Division I level, none of the blame can be placed on Anderson. He has done extremely well considering the horrid support given to the program by the very administrators who fired him for not winning more often.

If Anderson were a win-at-all-costs dimwit like Maine's Shawn Walsh, I would have a little less sympathy for his cause. Having met him, though, I can tell you he's a genuinely nice guy. He cares about his players both on and off the ice, as evidenced by the fact that one third of the players named to the Hockey East Academic Honor Roll during his tenure were from Merrimack. In a nine-team conference, that is an impressive feat, especially considering the aforementioned recruiting difficulties.

College hockey coaches rarely get fired unless they really screw up. Ron Anderson didn't screw up, and if Merrimack's administration understood hockey at all they would realize that. In the meantime, I hope he stays in the college game...it would be a shame for the game to lose someone of his character and talent.

MEANWHILE, ON THE ICE...

There's two weeks left in the college hockey regular season, which means teams have at most four games to sneak into the league playoffs, grab a coveted home-ice slot, and/or pick up the automatic NCAA tournament berth that goes to each of the four league champions. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the season is that none of the league titles has been wrapped up at this point. It would take a complete collapse for North Dakota not to win the WCHA, since they need only one point over four games and might still win on tiebreakers, but you never know...

Anyway, here's what's up in the four leagues, going roughly west-to-east:

WCHA
As mentioned earlier, North Dakota has all but wrapped up the title with an impressive nine-game winning streak. Of course, second-place Wisconsin has helped the Sioux by losing five of their last six. Sadly, the Badgers dropped all of those games to teams in the lower half of the WCHA standings, making them perhaps college hockey's coldest team after a great early season. St. Cloud State took advantage of this streak and pulled in to a second-place tie. After that, Colorado College and Minnesota-Duluth round out the home-ice-quintafinal-series-playin' top five. Both Michigan Tech and Minnesota have a mathematical chance to make the top five, but MTU would need to win both remaining games and have Duluth lose their remaining four...not very likely. Minnesota, after one of their worst seasons ever, could still get home ice by winning two-game series with both Colorado College and St. Cloud State and getting some serious help.

It's worth noting that the WCHA is using WCHA-member-wannabe Mankato State to fill out the 10th playoff spot.

CCHA
The championship race is down to two teams in the CCHA -- Michigan State and Michigan. These rivals are separated by one point, with the MSU Spartans having the upper hand at this writing, and nobody else is capable of winning the league. It's tough to choose between the two -- MSU has a great team offense and all-everything goaltender Chad Alban, but Michigan is better defensively, goalie Marty Turco is no slouch and the team has certain intangibles derived from being the preeminent Western team of the 90s. In the end, I'll have to go with remaining schedule strength and predict that the Wolverines will pull it out.

There are still two more CCHA home-ice quarterfinal slots up for grabs, and they are currently occupied by Ohio State and Northern Michigan. The OSU Buckeyes seem to have a strong chance of staying home, as they have a game in hand over the pack and have a fairly easy remaining schedule. NMU could get knocked out by the Miami Redhawks, as the team from Ohio is just one point behind the Wildcats and faces last-place Bowling Green twice in their last three games. Lake Superior State could theoretically make a run for home ice, being just three points behind the third-place teams, but with all of its remaining games against Michigan and Michigan State, it ain't real likely.

Aside from that, there's not much action in the lower reaches of the CCHA. Ferris State and Notre Dame round out the playoff teams, and Western Michigan, Alaska-Fairbanks and Bowling Green all know the exact evening they can leave town for Spring Break.

ECAC
Well, the long-awaited showdown between first-place Yale and second-place Clarkson this past weekend worked out well for the Golden Knights, as they defeated the Eli, 6-3, decreasing the gap to four points. It's hard to bet against Clarkson to cover that gap, but Yale has been dominant in the league this year, and it's hard to believe that Alex Westlund, Jeff Hamilton and the rest of the Yale team will play .500 hockey down the stretch. They are 3-1 against the remaining teams, with the loss coming on the road at Dartmouth. The Eli hasn't lost at home yet this year, and I don't expect them to start.

After the top two, the ECAC is a mess. Seven teams, separated by five points, are vying for the three remaining home-ice seeds. You've got resurgent RPI in third, slumping Colgate in fourth, red-hot Brown and injury-wracked Cornell tied in fifth, inconsistent Harvard in seventh, and talented Princeton and Dartmouth tied for eighth. To add to the confusion, only RPI is guaranteed a playoff spot, let alone home ice, as the battle between St. Lawrence and Vermont for the 10th and final playoff spot could leave someone else out of the show. Only Union has been effectively eliminated from playoff contention at this point.

You may wonder how ties in the standings are broken in college hockey. It varies from league to league, but the ECAC's rules are the most confounding, so most people don't even try to figure out who plays where and when until one or two games are left in the season. These whacked-out rules, combined with the logjam in the standings, should lead to some terrific contests over the next couple of weeks.

Hockey East
Hockey East has four teams still in contention for first place, with Boston University currently sitting atop the standings. The New Hampshire Wildcats are just a point behind the Terriers, but BU's easy remaining schedule (three of four games against the league's bottom two teams) makes them the clear favorite to win the league. Boston College and Northeastern are three and six points back, respectively, and could challenge should BU falter.

After that, fifth-place Lowell has only three games to make up a point on Northeastern for the final quarterfinal home-ice berth. Maine and Providence will be on the road for the quarters, and Merrimack and UMass-Amherst are battling it out for the eighth and final playoff spot. Merrimack currently holds it by a point, but the Minutemen have a game in hand, not to mention sharing their name with one of the greatest hardcore bands ever.

LOOKING INTO THE FUTURE

Let it be known that I'm a prepared sage. Having already seen my beloved Ottawa Senators lose at the FleetCenter a few months back, I decided that I had already done enough advance work on this year's NCAA tournament finals site, and set out last weekend for 1999's host rink...Anaheim's Arrowhead Pond.

Since the Ducks were not playing last weekend, I couldn't make it in to the complex, and had to settle for the Pasadena Ice Skating Center, where I watched the Caltech Beavers succumb to a local club team of undetermined origin, 5-2. The Beavers get points for their snazzy uniforms, but until southern California teams have access to rinks with a regulation neutral zone instead of PISC's 15-foot-long midsection, I don't know if I like college hockey's premier event being held there. It would make for an interesting tourny, though...

02-26-98

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