Reilly Smith

REILLY SMITH
Miami
Jr. | F | Mimico, Ontario

His Statistics: Four goals in the RedHawks’ sweep of visiting Western Michigan, including all three goals (one of them short-handed) in Friday’s 3-1 win and the game-winner in Saturday’s 4-0 shutout.

His Impact: Since a disastrous October in which it won two of its eight games, Miami has climbed to within two points of first-place Ohio State in the CCHA standings by going 12-4-2 since Nov. 1. Smith has played a huge role in the RedHawks’ revival, scoring 14 goals and 20 points in those 18 games. His four goals this weekend give him 18 for the season—in all of college hockey, only Colgate’s Austin Smith (24) and Minnesota’s Nick Bjugstad (20) have more.

Smith and the RedHawks have a tough, but favorable, schedule from here on out with seven of their 10 remaining games at home, including a potentially huge home-and-home series with Ohio State to close the regular season. The only road series left on Miami’s slate is an equally important trip to Ann Arbor Feb. 3-4 to face Michigan.

His Runners Up: Shane Madolora, RIT; Mike Mangene, Maine; Bryce Merriam, Rensselaer; Justin Schultz, Wisconsin

While we chose Reilly Smith as the INCH National Player of the Week, it wasn’t an easy decision. The efforts of all the runner-up candidates made this the most difficult choice of the year, so we’ll take this time to salute them in greater detail. The goalies were at the top of their games, as RIT and RPI went to New England states and came home after four-point weekends. RIT’s Shane Madolora (62 saves) and RPI’s Bryce Merriam (81 saves) each had a shutout and allowed one goal in the other game. Matt Mangene of Maine led the Black Bears to a sweep of Boston College by scoring the overtime-winner in Friday’s victory and adding a hat trick in Saturday’s win. Wisconsin defenseman Justin Schultz had another big weekend to boost his Hobey candidacy with five points and a plus-seven rating in two wins against Alaska Anchorage.

Over the last several weeks, people have had the opportunity to login and vote for their favorite players or other deserving candidates in the first phase of the Vote For Hobey. With that, has come some campaigning and balloting updates (and even misinformed articles) from different factions in support of players. We’re all for the enthusiasm, but the bottom line is that it really doesn’t matter at all in determining the top-10 Hobey finalists, let alone the winner. At this stage of voting, 58 coaches receive ballots. Additionally, the fan vote accounts for one percent of the total results – roughly a little more than half of one coach’s vote.

What Happened: Notre Dame coach Jeff Jackson was understandably peeved after the CCHA denied the Fighting Irish’s appeal of its suspension of forward Riley Sheahan, causing the standout junior to miss Saturday’s 2-1 loss to Michigan. The league iced Sheahan for what it termed an “illegal hit” in the second period of Notre Dame’s Jan. 13 loss to Western Michigan.

Thing is, had the officials working that game made the correct call, it’s unlikely Sheahan gets suspended. Referees Keith Sergott and Matthew Miller saw the hit, but wrongly assessed the major penalty and game misconduct to Notre Dame’s Jeff Costello—hence the CCHA’s revisionist justice nearly a week later.

“It was more about the process. It wasn’t so much about the call,” Jackson told the Notre Dame Observer. “I hope they take a hard look at the official that involved and give him the same kind of suspension.”

What We’re Watching: We’re watching college hockey on TV—lots of it. With the proliferation of national and regional sports outlets and DirecTV, it’s the golden age of televised college pucks. But we’ve got a simple request for game analysts: less is more. Just because you’re on television for two to three hours at a time, you don’t have to try to cram everything you know about the game into that time frame. Tell us what we need to know, and move on.

What the …?: Saw some brief reports Monday from the Canadian Press about an AHL suspension to former New Hampshire defenseman Garrett Stafford. He’ll sit out one game for the Hamilton Bulldogs due to his actions in Saturday’s outdoor game against the Toronto Marlies. Stafford’s transgression? He apparently threw a water bottle at the Marlies’ bench.

@BruceCiskie Bruce Ciskie

Not surprised to see UMD lose a couple first-place votes. There are voters who use the Pairwise now that it has enough data to be valid.

• If this is indeed the case, and we have no reason to believe it’s not true, then what value do those voters bring to the polling process? Many fans like to clamor that the PairWise is the only thing that matters for NCAA Tournament selection and the polls are meaningless. That’s true … on one day of the year. The PairWise is designed to measure teams based on the entire season’s body of work and there’s a lot of hockey left to be played. To view it as a ranking system is flat-out wrong. The benefit of voter-driven polls and compiling the INCH Power Rankings is that actual hockey coaches and media who closely follow the games can make their case based on what they’ve seen by watching teams all season long. Besides, do you really want to rely on a comparison system that currently deems CCHA ninth-place team Northern Michigan more worthy of an NCAA Tournament spot than WCHA leader Minnesota or ECAC Hockey leader Cornell?