THE SKINNY

It wasn’t that long ago when a common February question was whether or not ECAC Hockey would get more than one team into the NCAA Tournament field. It only happened once (2004), but the possibility was there. Over the last three years, ECAC Hockey teams have represented the league well in the NCAA Tournament. Clarkson was a No. 1 seed in 2007 and advanced to the second round in 2008. St. Lawrence (2007) and Princeton (2008) joined the Golden Knights in the NCAAs those years and three ECACH clubs were among the nation’s last 16 this past spring.

Not only were Cornell, Princeton and Yale in the tournament, but each had reasonable expectations of winning at least one game in their regionals. Cornell was the only team to do so, but the Tigers were one bad minute away from advancing and Yale was playing a virtual home game in Bridgeport. All three of those teams return strong teams with designs on returning to the NCAAs and making runs at the Frozen Four.

It’s no secret that ECAC Hockey is a goalie’s league and those three teams had three of the best netminders going in Cornell’s Ben Scrivens, Princeton’s Zane Kalemba - a Hobey Baker finalist, and Yale’s Alec Richards. Fellow Ivy League team Harvard gets Kyle Richter back on the roster after a one-year absence. He was the league’s Dryden Award winner as a freshman as the best goalie in the league.

The last several years have seemingly quieted those questions about more than one ECAC Hockey team being in the NCAA Tournament. This spring, a more popular question might be whether or not an ECAC Hockey team is in the Frozen Four.

BREAKTHROUGH TEAM

Union's Jason Walters has 75 points in three seasons and should surpass the 100-career point milestone this year.

Don’t be fooled by last year’s eighth-place finish or sub-.500 league record. Union was a team that nobody wanted to play and earned a reputation for being one of the tougher teams in the league to play against. Close games went their way, as the Dutchmen were 7-4-0 in those 11 contests but just 3-5-0 in eight games when holding their opponents under 20 shots on goal. If you flip that record, Union’s overall record would have been 21-15-3 and they would have been in the conversation for an NCAA Tournament berth. A quarterfinal series loss at Princeton led Tigers’ coach Guy Gadowsky to praise the Dutchmen one week later at the league’s championship weekend. Union returns its top four scorers and touted goaltending recruit Keith Kincaid to tandem with junior netminder Corey Milan, who set a school record with 19 wins in goal one year ago.

PRIMED FOR A FALL

In a defense-minded league, veteran blueliners can make a huge difference. St. Lawrence skated out four senior studs on defense last year in Zach Miskovic, Shawn Fensel, Matt Generous and Jared Ross who combined to play more than 540 games in their college careers. Fellow veterans Jeff Caister and Derek Keller return as seniors this year but the Saints have a lot of job openings on defense this year. Forwards Brock McBride, Kevin DeVergilio and Casey Parenteau were also lost to graduation. Senior forward Mike McKenzie and goalie Alex Petizian are nice pieces to build around, but the Saints have a lot of building to do.

PRESSURE TO PERFORM

Goalie Kyle Richter is back on the roster for the Crimson.

Harvard is a storied program that spent most of the decade among the top teams in ECAC Hockey and made five straight NCAA Tournament appearances from 2002 through 2006. The Crimson were a middle-of-the-pack team in the 2006-07 season but rebounded with a good year in 2008, finishing third in the league and advancing to the league’s championship game (despite a 10-game winless streak in the middle of the year).

Last year was a relative disaster for a Crimson program that has been accustomed to success. They won just nine times in 31 games. None of those came outside of ECACH play or away from Bright Hockey Center. They lost 10-1 on home ice to North Dakota. The team’s leading goal scorer lit the lamp just eight times and Harvard averaged barely better than two goals per game. To cap it all off, Harvard was shutout twice in the first round of the playoffs by last-place Brown, who won just three regular season games.

As mentioned earlier, Kyle Richter is back and a highly-touted recruiting class bolsters a lineup that already included a decent amount of talent. It’s time for results in Cambridge.

TOUGH ACT TO FOLLOW

If a team achieves the greatest season in program history, they’ve done great things. When that claim can be made for a program whose history spans more than 100 years and 2,200 games it means a little more. Yale won the ECAC Hockey regular season and playoff championships and rattled off 24 wins in 34 games along the way. Significant talent returns, including a superb group of forwards led by Sean Backman, Mark Arcobello, Broc Little and Brian O’Neill. Last year’s starting goalie, Alec Richards, is lost to graduation and the Bulldogs will have find a new no. 1 in among returning veterans Billy Blasé and Ryan Rondeau or newcomers Nick Maricic and Jeff Malcolm.

BEST PLAYER

Colgate’s David McIntyre is the most dangerous forward in ECAC Hockey and one of the best overall players in the nation. He was a Hobey Baker finalist as a junior with 21 goals and 22 assists for 43 points. He gained all of this notoriety despite playing on a team that rarely plays on national television, finished in 10th place and had 12 wins in 37 games. Expect Colgate to be better this year, partially because McIntyre is that good and partially because another year of experience for key support players should pay dividends.

IMPACT NEWCOMER

Harvard freshman forward Louis Leblanc was the darling of the 2009 NHL Entry Draft as the Montreal-area native was selected in the first round by his hometown Canadiens in the Habs’ home rink. A highly-touted skater and scorer in the United States Hockey League for the Omaha Lancers. He joins a Crimson team that could use some scoring punch up front after they scored just 68 times in 31 games.

UNSUNG PLAYER

Clarkson tapped a junior, forward Scott Freeman, as its captain in the upcoming season and some people around the program expressed some concern about that - in that they didn’t give Freeman that type of leadership responsibility sooner. He’s the first non-senior captain for the Golden Knights since Nick Dodge and has a positive presence on and off the ice. He’s also pretty good at the game. Freeman was Clarkson’s leading scorer last year as a sophomore with 29 points. The playmaker had 23 assists but might be looked at to score a few more goals following the graduation of Shea Guthrie and Chris D’Alvise.

THREE BURNING QUESTIONS
1. Which Quinnipiac players will step up their scoring?
The team’s top two scorers from last year, seniors Bryan Leitch (12-47-59) and David Marshall (22-24-46) are gone.

2. Can Dartmouth’s young players continue to improve?
Many of the Big Green’s best players are underclassmen. The team’s top four scorers from a year ago were sophomores or freshmen and rookie goalie Jody O’Neill won the starting job in net as a true freshman.

3. Which Yale goalie will step into the starting role?
Senior Alec Richards was spectacular a year ago with a 19-5-1 record, a 2.06 goals-against average and .923 save percentage.

MARK IT DOWN
(Five things you can take to the bank this season in ECAC Hockey)

• Brown will be a much better team this year behind new coach Brendan Whittet. His first priority is to establish a competitive attitude and positive approach. Behind stellar goalie Mike Clemente and a better work ethic, the Bears will be tough to play against.

• The first task the Rensselaer coaching staff took on when Seth Appert was hired four years ago was to improve the team’s overall talent. They’ve done that and add two more highly-touted freshman forwards in Jerry D’Amigo and Brandon Pirri this year. Now it’s time to see some results. Expect RPI to challenge for a first-round home playoff series this year.

• Goalie Ben Scrivens, defenseman Brendon Nash and forwards Colin Greening and Riley Nash get most of the attention for Cornell, but look for a big year from senior forward Blake Gallagher, the kind of campaign that Evan Barlow had last year to supplement Cornell’s offense. Gallagher played through significant injury last year for the Big Red in the postseason. When healthy, he’s tough to handle for opposing defenses.

• The last year of the ECAC Hockey championship weekend in Albany (for now) will feature important and exciting games. The top half of the league is as strong as its been in several years and when those types of quality teams get together with a championship at stake, great hockey is sure to be on display.

• We’re all interested in what happens in college hockey and pay close attention to how things go on Friday and Saturday nights - none of us moreso than the players and coaches, But at the end of the night, it’s not the biggest deal in the world and Quinnipiac’s Jean-Marc Beaudoin will have an even greater perspective on this. He and wife Candace are welcoming a son, Roderick, who was born just prior to the start of the season.