First-year Sacred Heart head coach C.J. Marottolo has guided the Pioneers to a 3-4-1 overall mark and a 2-1-1 record in league play.

Sacred Heart University hired former Yale assistant coach C.J. Marottolo on Oct. 9, right as the college hockey season was starting. Marottolo replaces Shaun Hannah, who resigned in September for family reasons, and becomes the newest head coach in Atlantic Hockey.

Marottolo, 43, played for Choate Rosemary Hall and four years at Northeastern. He was a player-coach in France for two years before retiring. John Dunham offered Marottolo a graduate assistant coaching job at Trinity College in 1992 and he’s been in the coaching business ever since.

Marottolo was enthralled with the Sacred Heart campus and the employees in the athletic department from the first. “Now that I’ve gotten the job, my instincts are right,” he said. “It’s a great place and I am loving every minute of it.”

The Pioneers have gotten off to a 3-4-1 start, including a 2-2-1 mark in Atlantic Hockey.

Inside College Hockey interviewed Marottolo this week and got his thoughts on the new job and the challenges of taking over a program so close to the start of the season.

INCH: Why did you apply for this job?

Marottolo: There are so few jobs and so many great candidates. There’s a lot of people out there that are assistant coaches who would be wonderful head coaches. It’s so difficult to get these head coaching jobs.

The home run part of the whole equation for me was a head coaching job where I didn’t have to move my family at this late a date. My family is very important to me.

INCH: Were you worried about not being able to get a Division I head coaching job?

Marottolo: You never know what’s in store for you. It was wonderful at Yale. I wasn’t getting discouraged because I loved my job at Yale, I loved the people there and I loved the kids. I grew up watching Yale hockey, I played Yale youth hockey. It was great for me to be able to work at Yale. I spent most of my life at Yale, from a young kid until I left Yale this year. Working at Yale was a dream job, so, no, I was happy at Yale but when a head coaching job came up and I didn’t have to move, you couldn’t ask for anything better.

INCH: You took over a team right as the new season was beginning. How difficult was that?

Marottolo: It’s been a whirlwind. The team had already played an exhibition game and had been practicing. I was on the ice with the team one week prior to us going to RPI and Union. It’s been great. The guys have been working extremely hard on and off the ice. I really like the kids on this team.

INCH: You had a week or so to have all your contract and school paperwork finalized. What did you do in the meantime?

Marottolo: I couldn’t go on the ice with the team until that Monday before we played RPI and Union. I had a week where I was with the team but I couldn’t go on the ice for practice because I had to go through my background check and drug test and for insurance purposes—I hadn’t signed the contract yet. I was running practice from the bench and not going on the ice. It was a unique perspective because I got to sit back and watch. The assistant coaches were kind of doing things on the ice, so I got to evaluate the guys for a week without having to be on the ice with them. I learned a lot. I didn’t pick up their names until the St. Lawrence weekend.

INCH: So how did you address the players?

Marottolo: I was thinking of putting names on the back of helmets so during the game I would know who was who because I didn’t know the numbers. There was a lot of, ‘Hey, 25, get out there.’ The guys got a kick out of it.

INCH: What were the first things you wanted to accomplish with the team?

Marottolo: Shaun Hannah did a great job with that program. Sacred Heart is an emerging school in a lot of ways. The first thing I wanted to do in my first team meeting was telling them about myself and what I demand as a coach. I explained to them I want everybody, first and foremost, on this team to have an incredible work ethic and I want you to love to come to the rink with a smile on your face and eager to go. Everything after that will fall into place. I think we’ve accomplished that.

A lot has to be attributed to the senior group, who have done a tremendous job of setting the tone prior to me getting the job. We talked about a lot of things as a team and our goals, right now, will stay within our locker room.

INCH: What is possible with this team?

Marottolo: I think everything is possible. We’re very excited about how the team is evolving. It’s still a learning curve.

INCH: How do you like being a head coach, where all the responsibility is yours?

Marottolo: It’s great. Part of being the head guy is having good support people. (Assistant coach) Lou Santini, who stayed after the coaching change, has been terrific. He told me this is what we should be doing and what we shouldn’t be doing. He has been a great sounding board for me. Don Cook, the athletic director, has been unbelievable.

INCH: Did you get a lot of well wishes for your new job?

Marottolo: I’ve got hundreds of text messages. I have gotten notes. … The hockey coaching community is terrific, for them to take time out of their day to think about somebody else.

INCH: Who are your hockey influences?

Marottolo: A great influence was (former Yale head coach) Tim Taylor, and not just in hockey. It was about how he treated people and treated players as people, how he treated parents and recruits in the process. I learned a lot about integrity—it’s so important in this business. Keith Allain, I have taken a lot from. He is a wonderful new coach at Yale who has done an outstanding job. A big person in my life who I learned a lot from is my father (Carl). He was a youth hockey coach and I take a lot of things from him. He was one of the founding fathers of the Yale youth hockey program and ran the Yale clinic for a long time.

INCH: What is your favorite NHL team?

Marottolo: My favorite team would the Rangers.

INCH: Aside from the obvious of winning a championship, what do you want to accomplish as a head coach?

Marottolo: I want the young men who choose to come to Sacred Heart to leave Sacred Heart with a wonderful hockey experience. I want them to come into Sacred Heart as boys and have them leave as men, and have them understand about integrity and dignity and know how to treat people. I want them to do the right thing when no one is watching. I want them to understand it’s important for them to be good people. I want them to be good husbands, good friends, and good fathers. That would make me feel like I have done a good job as a coach.

BRIAN O’NEILL
Yale
So. | F | Yardley, Pa.

His Statistics: 2GP, 2-3—5, +3 plus-minus rating

His Impact: Yale’s high-scoring sophomore was involved in a very good weekend for the defending ECAC Hockey champions. After a so-so start to the season, the Bulldogs earned a 4-2 win over unbeaten Cornell and rallied for a 3-3 tie against first-place Colgate. O’Neill factored in prominently with two goals and three assists on the weekend.

He assisted Yale’s first goal as well as the eventual game-winner in the victory over Cornell and sealed the victory with an empty-net goal. In Saturday’s game against Colgate, Yale trailed 2-0 in the second period before O’Neill’s goal got them on the board. He then assisted Sean Backman’s goal later in the period to pull the Bulldogs to within 3-2.

His Runners-Up: Stephane De Costa (Merrimack); Andrew Favot (RIT); Justin Fontaine (Minnesota Duluth); Chris Kushneriuk (Robert Morris); Drew Palmisano (Michigan State)

The INCH Player of the Week is presented by The INCH Shop

The RIT Tigers have bounced back from a slow start to move into first place in Atlantic Hockey. After starting the season with five straight losses, RIT has run off six consecutive wins—the nation’s longest winning streak—and is the only team in Atlantic Hockey with a winning overall record. 

Barely six weeks into the season, a number of high-profile players have been sidelined with various dings and dents—Minnesota’s Jay Barriball and Nick Leddy, Yale’s Thomas Dignard, Rensselaer’s Tyler Helfrich, Northeastern’s Steve Quailer, and Notre Dame’s Ted Ruth among them. Injuries affect every team, but we don’t have to like it. This weekend’s North Dakota-Denver series, for example, should be a doozy … but how much better could it be if we were assured Marc Cheverie, Patrich Wiercioch, and Chay Genoway would be healthy?

“We’re not that good. We’ve got one returning 20-goal scorer, and he’s got one goal, and outside of that … we don’t have a lot of prolific offensive players.” — Michigan coach Red Berenson to the Michigan Daily following his team’s back-to-back losses to Michigan State this past weekend.

If Michigan’s season keeps going in this direction, we may have to officially name this segment of the First Shift in honor of Berenson. The Wolverines have scored a total of four goals in their last four games—all of them losses—and anyone who has watched their last two series against Miami and Michigan State can see that Berenson’s club is severely lacking playmakers and their ability to create scoring chances is virtually non-existent.

This week we won’t point to any unusual voting patterns in the national polls, but to some of the circumstances that we considered when stacking the INCH Power Rankings. Michigan State and Colorado College made huge jumps in both the INCH Power Rankings as well as the national polls after conference sweeps on the weekend. That’s mainly due to the work of MSU and CC, but partially due to a middling bunch of efforts by teams ranked in the 6-15 range. It’s early, sure, but it seems like there’s a definite drop in stature from the top 5-7 teams and the rest of the pack in college hockey.

runwiththedogs: about 4 hats on the ice … pathetic

The people behind the Minnesota Duluth Runnin’ with the Dogs blog tweeted this message shortly after the Bulldogs’ Justin Fontaine scored his third goal in Saturday’s 8-1 rout of Michigan Tech (he would add a fouth goal before all was said and done). The message touches on an INCH pet peeve: If you are wearing a hat to a hockey game and a player scores three goals, it is your duty to toss said hat onto the ice.

Don’t want to chuck your favorite lid? Bring one you don’t care about. And even if it is your best hat, throw it anyway—the good karma you’ll get from the hockey gods will far surpass the out-of-pocket cost of replacing it.

CODY REICHARD
Miami
So. | G | Celina, Ohio

His Statistics: 2-0-0, 1.00 GAA, .959 save pct. in sweep at Michigan

His Impact: Miami made a strong statement in winning two games convincingly against CCHA rival and top-five ranked Michigan at Yost Ice Arena over the weekend. Reichard, the sophomore goalie who shared time with classmate Connor Knapp as a freshman, has emerged as Miami’s no. 1 in net and played very well in allowing just one goal each night against the Wolverines.

Reichard made 27 saves in Friday’s 3-1 win and stopped 20 shots in a 5-1 RedHawks victory Saturday. He and the Miami defense held the Wolverines to just one power-play goal in 14 opportunities on the weekend. Reichard and the RedHawks became the first team to sweep a weekend series at Yost since the early part of the 2001-02 season.

His Runners-Up: Brad Hunt, Bemidji State; Jeff Larson, Connecticut; Chase Polacek, Rensselaer; Carl Sneep, Boston College; Billy Sweatt, Colorado College

The INCH Player of the Week is presented by The INCH Shop

Former Michigan State standout Craig Simpson was the second overall pick in the 1985 NHL Draft and enjoyed a 10-year career with Pittsburgh, Edmonton, and Buffalo. He’s now the lead analyst for Hockey Night in Canda on the Canadian Broadcasting Company and, based on his performance last night, could be the winner of the CBC’s first Battle of the Blades.

Blades, a reality television series pairing ex-NHLers with figure skaters for a competition best described as Dancing With the Stars on ice. On Sunday, Simpson donned a blue crushed velvet suit and thick glasses as he and his partner, 2002 Olympic figure skating pairs gold medalist Jamie Sale, skated to Quincy Jones’ “Soul Bossa Nova”, better known as the theme from Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. Corny for sure, but Simpson’s bringing it.

The Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs entered last weekend’s series at Colorado College as the nation’s second-most penalized team, and after racking up 51 PIMs in Saturday’s 6-2 loss they became the nation’s most penalized team. Among the infractions was a double-minor for roughing and instigating and a game misconduct assessed to Chad Huttel of the Bulldogs, who reportedly left the bench to start an altercation. These penalties came just 34 seconds after UMD closed to within two goals. Minnesota Duluth’s Drew Akins was called for a charging major and Dylan Olsen got a 10-minute misconduct, all with 2:18 remaining when CC scored its sixth goal..

“I’m embarrassed. We played like a bunch of spoiled brats. When you’re getting beat, you just keep working hard for the team. You don’t take it out on the other team and take stupid penalties that are going to hurt your team even further.” — Michigan coach Red Berenson following his team’s 5-1 loss to Miami Saturday.

The Wolverines racked up 51 penalty minutes in the third period, including a five-minute major and game misconduct to defenseman Tristin Llewellyn for checking from behind and misconducts to defenseman Chad Langlais and forward Kevin Lynch.

In eight years of compiling the INCH Power Rankings, the editors of this site can’t recall a team falling from the rankings in such dramatic fashion as Boston University has over the last two weeks. The Terriers were fourth in the Power Rankings of Oct. 25. We dropped them six spots last week, and completely from the Power Rankings this week. Why? Because they’re 2-5-0 and in last place in Hockey East. We don’t expect the Terriers to languish with that type of record over the long haul, but we can’t justifiably give them any recognition as one of the 20 best teams as they currently stand. That obviously wasn’t the case with many of the 50 voters in the USCHO.com Division I Men’s Poll, as BU was ranked 17th and received 235 total points on ballots. 

CoachTimArmy a disjointed game yesterday … after a day off today we’ll get back at it tomorrow … we’ll regroup and sort some areas of our game out.

The Providence coach, who has his team off to a respectable 5-3-0 start including wins at Massachusetts and Notre Dame, tweeted this message folloing the Friars’ 3-0 loss to Vermont Sunday. And while Army’s focus is obviously on hockey, he certainly hasn’t turned a blind eye to the rest of the world. The tweet that appeared just moments after the one above read, “and by the way … 27 and counting … go yanks!”

Gary Wright was very enthused about the prospects for his American International College hockey team headed into the season. Nothing has been diminished there, but now he has to focus efforts on recovery from a freak injury which has sidelined the 26-year veteran coach before the first puck was dropped.

An accident with a garage door at his home left Wright with serious leg injuries. Surgery has repaired the tendons that were ripped off the bones of both quadriceps muscles, and he has been getting around with braces and a walker.

Assistant coach Mike Field has been running the team in Wright’s absence. Field is in his second season at AIC, having served as a graduate assistant coach last season.

Wright, one of the classiest coaches in Atlantic Hockey, was in attendance as the Yellow Jackets recorded their first victory of the season on Friday, a 3-0 home victory over Holy Cross. The next night, AIC earned a 4-4 tie with the Crusaders on the return trip to Worcester.

October awards – Dan Ringwald, a senior defenseman with RIT, was named the Atlantic Hockey player of the month. In seven games, the Oakville, Ont., resident posted three goals and six assists, and has a five-game point streak. He had three assists in a 6-2 win over Connecticut on Oct. 30, and followed that with RIT’s first natural hat trick at the Division I level.

Thomas Tysowsky, a freshman with Holy Cross, was named the goaltender of the month. The Amherst, N.Y., resident posted his first two collegiate victories. His 2.39 goals against ranks second in the league and his .912 save percentage ranks third. He has made five starts.

Adam Pleskach, a freshman from Beausejour, Man., was named the rookie of the month, posting five goals and two assists. Pleskach had a goal in three of four games, scoring twice in a loss to RPI. He had three goals and an assist in the weekend series with RPI and Union.

Getting on the scoresheet – Atlantic Hockey has 21 players averaging at least one point per game through the first month. Senior Dave Jarman of Sacred Heart has nine points through five games to lead the way at 1.8 per game. Junior Andrew Favot of RIT leads the league with 10 points (two goals) through seven games. Sacred Heart senior Nick Johnson leads the league with six goals in five games – last season he only had three tallies in 24 games.

RIT Beats UConn to Win Column – Rochester Institute of Technology snapped a five-game season-opening losing streak by posting a sweep of visiting Connecticut, 6-2 and 7-0.

UConn falls to 0-6-0 overall and 0-3-0 in league play – the Huskies got off to an 0-5-0 start in 2006-07. The Huskies have been outscored 29-8, with 11 opponent tallies on the power play as the Huskies are killing at a .744 rate.

Too bad the points don’t count – Army got off to a 0-4-1 start but rebounded with a solid run through ECAC territory last weekend. The Black Knights forged a 4-4 tie at Colgate on Friday, coming from behind four times. Joey Spracklen made 38 saves. Army posted a pair of third-period goals in a 2-1 win at RPI on Halloween. Jay Clark turned aside 39 shots, including 14 in the third period.

“You could tell early that Jay was on top of his game,” said Army coach Brian Riley. “Obviously, he was our most valuable player. He made some key saves. We made it hard on ourselves by taking penalties. Your goalie has to be your best penalty killer and he was tonight.”

It was Army’s first win over an ECAC Hockey school since beating Colgate 3-2 on Oct. 30, 2004.

Remember when? – Army and Colgate met for the first time in 1917, a 5-2 Colgate victory. The series with RPI goes back even longer, to 1906 when Army used to play on a makeshift frozen pond at West Point.

Back on top – Air Force sits atop Atlantic Hockey with a 3-1 record following an 0-4 non-conference start. A sweep of visiting RIT was followed with a split at Canisius – the Falcons dropped the opener 3-1 and bounced back with a 4-1 win on Sunday.

Nearly half (10) of the Falcons’ 21 goals have come on the power play: Jeff Hajner has three with Jacques Lamoureux and Matt Fairchild notching a pair apiece. Senior Andrew Volkening has a 2.22 goals against and .933 save percentage in league play, far more representative of his play than the 5.91 and .801 he posted in the opening four setbacks.

Time to man up – Mercyhurst has bounced back from an 0-4-0 start with a 2-1-1 effort in league play. The Lakers’ special teams, however, are still lagging behind. Mercyhurst is 3-for-49 (.061) on the power play and just 35-for-48 (.729) on the penalty kill. Last season the Lakers posted a .215 percentage on the power play and .855 on the kill.

Nice newcomers – Bentley’s Dan Koudys has produced three goals and four assists in his first five games with the Falcons. The Air Force tandem of John Kruse and Kyle De Laurell each have six points. AIC rookie Ben Meisner leads the league in goals against (1.51) and save percentage (.955).

DAN RINGWALD
Rochester Institute of Technology
Sr. | D | Oakville, Ontario

His Statistics: 2 GP, 3-3—6, 5 power-play points

His Impact: The RIT Tigers made the jump to Division I hockey just five years ago and have experienced a lot of success in that time. Entering last weekend’s games with an 0-5-0 record was unfamiliar territory for the Tigers, but they broke through with a big offensive weekend in a two-game sweep of Connecticut in an Atlantic Hockey series.

RIT scored 13 goals over the two games with a 6-2 win on Friday and 7-0 win on Saturday. The Tigers were 4-for-7 on the power play in the Friday win and 2-for-9 in Saturday’s win and power-play quarterback Dan Ringwald keyed the offensive surge.

Ringwald had three assists in Friday’s win, all of which came on the power play, and scored a natural hat trick in Saturday’s win. His three straight goals in the first period stretched RIT’s lead to 4-0.

He’s been a consistent point producer over his entire RIT career and entered the season as RIT’s all-time leader in assists and points by a defenseman at the Division I level and is a two-time All-Atlantic Hockey first-team selection. His big weekend helped start turning RIT’s season in a positive direction.

His Runners-Up: Alex Beaudry, Providence; Scott Greenham, Alaska; Alexander Killorn, Harvard; Nathan Longpre, Robert Morris; Tony Lucia, Minnesota

The INCH Player of the Week is presented by The INCH Shop

Could you tell last weekend was Halloween for college hockey, too? A bunch of defensemen across the nation got into the spirit by masquerading as Paul Coffey.

Ringwald had back-to-back, three-point nights, but five other blueliners put forth three-point games. Ringwald’s RIT compadre, Al Mazur, had three goals and an assist against Connecticut Friday, the same night St. Lawrence’s Peter Child recorded a hat trick against Sacred Heart.

On Saturday, a trio of defensemen racked up three assists—Cullen Lundholm of Robert Morris, who had three assists in a win over Quinnipiac; Wisconsin’s Brendan Smith, who did it against New Hampshire; and Minnesota State’s Ben Youds, who accomplished the feat against Denver.

We briefly mentioned that there was some market correction in this week’s INCH Power Rankings in regard to some Hockey East teams. Specifically, these are teams that are at or below .500 through the first month of the season. Defending national champion Boston University is 2-3-0, as is Northeastern—an NCAA Tournament team from a year ago. Vermont, despite some impressive early wins, is also 2-3-0. BC is at .500 with a 2-2-0 mark and New Hampshire is 2-4-1 after being blown out in two games at Wisconsin last weekend. Full credit goes to Massachusetts (4-1-0), UMass Lowell (4-2-0) and upstarts Merrimack (5-3-0) and Providence (5-2-0), but the trend of slow starts for many of the teams is troubling. 

“I think that’s a terrible precedent for a league, and I think the integrity of the league’s at stake when you make that sort of decision … You’re actually encouraging member institutions to cheat, as long as they don’t get caught before the game is declared over.”—Nebraska-Omaha athletic director Trev Alberts to Chad Purcell of the Omaha World-Herald following the Mavericks’ controversial shootout loss to Bowling Green Friday in which the Falcons used an ineligible player.

Alberts, the former All-American linebacker at Nebraska and football commentator, went on to say that he was disappointed by the CCHA’s “lack of leadership.” He never minced words on the air, and it appears that hasn’t changed. That’s great, because in our opinion the happy-happy-joy-joy CCHA could use a little piss and vinegar. 

We’re nitpicking here—isn’t that the point of this feature?—but New Hampshire somehow appeared on the ballots of enough voters to garner seven points in the latest USCHO.com/CBS College Sports just days after getting throttled twice at Wisconsin last weekend. With a 2-4-1 record, can anyone honestly say UNH is one of the 20 best teams in the country or has even played to that level? It begs the question, are voters actually casting ballots based on the previous weekend’s results? In this instance, it seems more like a vote for the program or a vote of familiarity (i.e. UNH has been good in the past, so they’re probably good this year, too) more than anything.

SchlossmanGF Which Halloween costume of Jonny Toews is better? Dumb and Dumber or Wolverine?

Brad Elliot Schlossman of the Grand Forks Herald forwarded the above links Monday. In addition to former Fighting Sioux and current Chicago Blackhawks standout Toews, we get a look at the costumes of ex-collegians Adam Burish (Wisconsin), Duncan Keith (Michigan State), and Patrick Sharp (Vermont). Makes one wonder what these guys did with all the free time they had during the lockout.

MARC CHEVERIE
Denver
Jr. | G | Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia

His Statistics: 2 GP, 2 shutouts, 60 saves.

His Impact: It was a weekend of historic proportions for the Pioneers and for Cheverie, who whitewashed Minnesota on back-to-back nights—the first time that has happened to the Gophers since 1930—with identical 30-save efforts. In doing so, Cheverie extended his personal shutout streak to 203:19, second in the DU hockey annals behind Peter Mannino’s run of 208:42 without allowing a goal.

Cheverie has three shutouts this season—he also blanked Ohio State on Oct. 15—and seven for his career. Minnesota has been the victim of Cheverie’s perfection on three separate occasions. In addition to the shutouts this past weekend, he was also the goalie of record in a 4-0 win over the Gophers at Magness Arena on Nov. 22, 2008.

Heading into the Pioneers’ weekend series with Minnesota State, Cheverie leads the nation in shutouts, is tied for first in wins with four, ranks second with a .966 save percentage, and is fourth with a 1.00 goals against average.

His Runners-Up: Blake Kessel (New Hampshire); John Kruse (Air Force); Jerry Kuhn (Western Michigan); Chris McKelvie (Bemidji State); Brandon Pirri (Rensselaer); Bill Sweatt (Colorado College)

The INCH Player of the Week is presented by The INCH Shop

This past weekend was fairly enjoyable for hockey fans in Colorado. In addition to Denver’s series sweep at Minnesota, Colorado College took two games from visiting Michigan Tech. The Tigers were paced by senior forward Bill Sweatt, who in the two games piled up 1-6—7. Up the road a spell, Air Force got off the schneid with a pair of wins over RIT at Cadet Ice Arena. Rookie forward John Kruse led the Falcons with 1-5—6 and a plus-minus rating of +4. (As an aside, INCH hopes Kruse has designs on being a fighter pilot, and gets tagged with the nickname “Maverick.” We feel the need for speed.)

Although it hasn’t yet been formally announced, all indications are that next summer’s NHL Entry Draft will be held at Staples Center in Los Angeles, home of the Kings. We know that the North American geographic footprint for the NHL is significantly larger than that of college hockey, but it was nice for college hockey fans and media to consider nearby locales such as Montreal, Ottawa, and Columbus in recent years.

“They outworked us at times but I think we deserved at least one this weekend.”—Minnesota captain Tony Lucia, to Roman Augustovitz of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune following Denver’s second shutout of the weekend at Mariucci Arena Saturday.

When Lucia the younger says “one”, is he referring to a win or a goal?

INCH has stood by without comment for two weeks, but in this, the third week of absurdity, we are compelled to shed our cloak of silence. What, we ask, is up with one renegade pollster consistently going off the board with his/her first-place vote in the national polls?

It started two weeks ago when Boston College garnered a lone no. 1 mention in both the USA Hockey Magazine/USA Today and USCHO.com/CBS College Sports rankings. Last week, another Hockey East school, Vermont, earned a sole no. 1 vote in both polls. This week, Yale got the outlier in the polls.

Don’t get us wrong; we’re certainly open to radical thinking when it comes to voting in the national polls. Perhaps the voter in question can only give his/her top spot to institutions located in one of the 13 original colonies. We’ll know that’s the case should Old Dominion gets a first-place vote. But this pattern is odd, to say the least.

Obviously, we don’t know the identity of this person (or people). We don’t even know if it’s the same person responsible for the lone vote each week. We’d love to hear this particular voter’s rationale, however. One thing we can tell you is that it’s not us. INCH casts a vote in the USA Hockey Magazine/USA Today poll every week. The ballot we submit aligns with the top 15 teams in that week’s INCH Power Rankings.

@ThatKevinSmith: Via @nerdbastards “If Gozer the Gozerian asked you to choose the form of your destructor, what would it be?” Gretzky, circa ‘84 Oilers.

The successful writer/director (”Clerks”, “Chasing Amy”, etc.) is a big hockey fan, a bigger New Jersey Devils fan, and an even bigger Gretzky fan. A prolific Tweeter, Smith will soon start production on “Hit Somebody”, a hockey-themed flick based on the Warren Zevon song of the same name.

One-and-23. Ouch.

Atlantic Hockey has stumbled out of the gate this season, winning just one out of 24 non-league contests over the first two weekends. It certainly leaves a sour taste for a league that would like to make more inroads in terms of visibility and top-talent recruitment.

Remember how Air Force jumped out to a 13-0 start last season? That vaulted the Falcons toward a top-10 ranking and raised the consciousness of the league. This year: 0-4-0.

Rochester Institute of Technology got off to a ho-hum start last season and then turned blazing hot in the second half, again making voters consider the Tigers for top-20 consideration. This year: 0-3-0.

Mercyhurst got off to a horrid start but the Lakers found a solution in goal and started filling up the net on the other end, becoming the second-most prolific scoring team in the nation. This year: neck-and-neck with Air Force at 0-4-0.

Throw in an 0-3-0 for Army and 0-2-0 for Bentley, Connecticut and Holy Cross. Only Canisius (1-3) has managed a victory: a 1-0 shutout of Ferris State securing an opening-weekend split.

Air Force, an NCAA quarterfinal squad last season, traveled to Bemidji State and bowed 3-1 and 7-3 to the Beavers, a Final Four squad. Former CHA partner Alabama-Huntsville visited last weekend and posted a pair of 4-2 victories.

Coach Frank Serratore was not happy but saw some progress in the second UAH meeting.

“In my opinion, the better team won tonight,’’ Serratore said of the Saturday contest. “Last night I thought we shot ourselves in the foot but not tonight. They got the lead and then battled back after losing the lead. They did it without scoring a power-play goal. They did it the old-fashioned way. We took some steps in the right direction this weekend. We scrapped and fought hard. We are a struggling team right now and we just have to go back to work and stick together to get through it.’’

RIT has dropped three close contests. Colgate prevailed 3-2 in an Oct. 10 game played before 7,421 fans at Blue Cross Arena in Rochester. The Tigers headed to the North Country next, falling 3-1 at St. Lawrence (the Saints got an empty net goal) and 5-3 at Clarkson.

The high-flying Tigers – who ranked second in the nation in goals per game last season – have managed just six so far, and the power play has been somewhat anemic at 1-for-13.

“We are doing a lot of good things, but not getting rewarded,’’ RIT coach Wayne Wilson said. “We went into two tough arenas and fired nearly 90 shots in two games. We have come a long way in the last few years. Now we just have to finish our chances and stay positive.’’

Mercyhurst coach Rick Gotkin has always liked the travel miles, it seems. The Lakers headed to Alaska for the second season in a row and came away with a 5-3 loss to Alaska Anchorage and 5-1 setback to Alaska. An eight-game season-opening road trip continued with a lost weekend at Western Michigan as the Broncos prevailed 5-1 and 4-3.

The Lakers flip the compass from west to east the next two weekends with trips to Army and Bentley.

Bentley had a strong showing in a pair of 3-2 losses to No. 20 Northeastern and No. 18 Quinnipiac. Canisius fell to 1-3 with a pair of losses at Lake Superior State, 5-4 and 3-0. The shutout loss snapped a school-record string of 45 consecutive games with a goal.

One good thing about those conference games coming up this weekend: Atlantic Hockey is virtually guaranteed of more than doubling that woeful win total from the first two weeks.

Aaron Volkening's grip on the goaltending position at Air Force seems to have weakened in the first two weeks of the season.

The Iron Horse sits – Air Force senior goalie Andrew Volkening played the entire 2008-09 season. A preseason All-America candidate, Volkening has started all four games this season but has been pulled twice in favor of sophomore Stephen Caple.

Volkening has absorbed all four losses thus far. His goals against is a un-Volkening-like 5.91 and his save percentage is a tick over 80 percent. Heading into the season his career numbers were 2.08 and .914.

Caple, from Rice Lake, Wisc., has looked impressive. He has stopped 16 of 17 shots in 57-plus minutes.

Before this season the last time Volkening had been pulled from a game was Dec. 29, 2007, against Boston College in the Dodge Holiday Classic in Minneapolis, when he gave up three goals in the opening 15-plus minutes. Ian Harper finished the contest.

Volkening played all the minutes over the final 22 games of that season and 41 games last season.

It’s March in October – RIT and Air Force are two solid contenders for the Atlantic Hockey title this season, and the clubs will open league play this weekend in Colorado Springs. The teams are 10-10-2 in 22 career meetings, and Air Force holds a slight 8-7-2 edge since the two schools joined Atlantic Hockey in 2005.

“We get right into conference play with a tough opponent in Air Force, so we must be sharp,’’ said RIT coach Wayne Wilson.

Home cooking – Canisius will play nine of its first 12 and 14 of its first 21 games at home this season. The Golden Griffins open a four-game homestand when Holy Cross visits for afternoon games on Saturday and Sunday. A decided scheduling advantage, though, may be muted somewhat because three-time league champ Air Force visits over Halloween weekend and Mercyhurst pops in for a Nov. 7 game.

The headline of this piece doesn’t refer to the prowess any member of the INCH family has as a deejay, though, if asked, we’re more than happy to dust off our Eric B. and Rakim vinyl and take a turn on the wheels of steel. Instead, it refers to the picks for this week’s most intriguing matchups—a pair of single games pitting CCHA and Hockey East powers against one another and two conference series.

Junior goaltender John Muse allowed four goals on 16 shots in Boston College's season-opening loss at Vermont Sunday.

Boston College at Notre Dame (Friday): Notre Dame has won four of the last five games in this series with the lone loss coming to Boston College in the 2008 Frozen Four championship game in Denver. The Fighting Irish were shaky in series splits with Alabama-Huntsville and Providence, but shut out a listless Boston University team at Agganis Arena Tuesday. Listlessness must be spreading like H1N1 in the Hub of Hockey, because the Eagles looked as much in a season-opening loss at Vermont Sunday.

The most intriguing matchup in this contest pits the Irish forwards, who’ve yet to fire on all cylinders, against a young BC defensive corps that struggled against UVM. Notre Dame defenseman Teddy Ruth, who hasn’t played this season because of a lower body injury, will not dress against the Eagles.

Denver at Minnesota (Friday-Saturday): In this very space last week prior to its series at North Dakota, it was mentioned that Minnesota was a great unknown that could win by six goals or lose by the same margin. Two games into the season, I don’t know that we have any greater handle on the Gophers other than the fact that goaltenders Alex Kangas and Kent Patterson were pretty sharp.

The Pioneers won’t have standout center Joe Colborne in the lineup—he broke a finger in a loss to Ohio State last week. Also, DU coach George Gwozdecky tells Mike Chambers of the Denver Post that he plans to rotate goalies Marc Cheverie and Adam Murray for the third straight series.

Michigan at Boston University (Saturday): Offense shouldn’t be a problem for these teams, but it has thus far. The Terriers, a few days removed from being shut out by Notre Dame, have two goals in two games. The Wolverines, meanwhile, have nine goals in three games. Keep an eye on a pair of talented forwards who’ve yet to get untracked-or is it on track? Because untracked would seem to indicate derailment, and that ain’t good. Semantics aside, Michigan’s Louie Caporusso, who scored 24 goals and 49 points last season, has bagels thus far. BU’s Nick Bonino scored 50 points as a rookie; he, too, is scoreless.

RIT at Air Force (Friday-Saturday): Atlantic Hockey’s preseason favorites enter the weekend with a combined 0-7 record (to be fair, the league’s 10 teams are 1-23-0 thus far.) Air Force, which started last season with 13 straight wins, is 0-4, its longest losing streak in more than two years. Senior goalie Andrew Volkening has been abysmal as evidenced by his 5.91 GAA and .805 save percentage. RIT, meanwhile, has three narrow losses to ECAC Hockey opponents. In those three games the Tigers have fired a combined 119 shots on target, but have scored just six goals. That a shooting percentage of a little better than five percent.

Also: An offensive explosion could be in the works in Oxford—Miami and Michigan State have each played four games and scored a combined 34 goals … Is there a trio of forwards in the country better than Minnesota Duluth’s Justin Fontaine, Jack Connolly, and Mike Connolly? They’ll meet a St. Cloud State team that has yet to click offensively … UMass Lowell readies for a rugged stretch to open its Hockey East slate (Northeastern, Boston University, at Boston University, at Vermont, New Hampshire) with a non-conference match against Colgate at Tsongas Arena … Exhibitions for Ivies Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Princeton this weekend.

The NHL’s Central Scouting Service has released its early-season listing of the top North American players eligible for the 2010 NHL Entry Draft from Canadian Junior A leagues and U.S. high school and prep school ranks.

Players are divided into four cagetories: A-rated players are predicted to be selected in the first or second round of the 2008 draft; B-rated players are considered potential mid-round selections; C-rated players are plotted as late-round picks; players CSS scouts haven’t seen enough to form an evaluation fall under the limited viewing category.

Next month, Central Scouting will release its list of draft-eligible collegians to watch as well as ratings of the top 25 prospects from the United States Hockey League and the U.S. National Team Development Program. The Central Scouting Service mid-term rankings appear in January.

The list below contains only those players who have verbally committed to college programs. The full prospect list can be found at NHL.com.