Looking Down the Stretch Run

Instead of going back to the old power rankings format, I decided this week to do a sort of playoff outlook from BU's perspective. QuackQuack has already taken a stab at the NCAA tournament, so I'm going to focus strictly upon Hockey East and the HE playoffs.

With Merrimack's sweep of UNH this past weekend, the top 4 spots in Hockey East have all been thrown into a jumble. The rankings look the same - UNH and BC tied for first, with Merrimack in third and BU in fourth. To give you an idea of how close these 4 teams are, 4th place BU is 5 points behind co-leaders BC and UNH - which is the same point margin that BU has on 5th place Maine. In the coming 3 weekends, anything really can happen.

I'll lead off with BU first, then delve into what can happen depending upon how the rest of Hockey East pans out. BU plays its final 6 Hockey East games against 3 teams (2 a piece) - Providence, Vermont, and Northeastern. This is a pretty favorable end of the season for BU - those 3 teams comprise 3 of the bottom 5 teams in HE (NU - 6, UVM - 8, PC - 9), and BU has already won their first game against each of these teams earlier in the season. Compared to some other schools, this is a cake walk.

I'm going to lowball us here and say that of these 6 games, we probably go 4-1-1. I see two wins against PC, a win and a tie against UVM, and a win and a loss against Northeastern. I think BU could certainly do better than this, in fact I am really, really hoping that they do. But I think this is a fair baseline for ourselves, so let's start here. This would put BU's conference record at 15-6-6, good for 36 points (compared to 28 I believe from last year). If we can end the season with around 35-6-7 points, I think we are in good shape.

Now, on to the rest of the top 4 teams. BC plays Northeastern, UMass - Amherst, and UNH all twice. I think they probably go 4-1-1 here as well - win and a tie with NU (as that will be three games in a row for those two teams, NU has to steal a tie somewhere), two wins against UMass and a split with UNH - good for 41 points. UNH has 2 with UVM, 2 with NU and two with BC. That's probably good for a 3-1-2 record, and besides the split with BC I'm not quite sure how that plays out, I just think it comes to something like that, giving them 40 points. To round out the top 4, Merrimack has two each with both UMass squads as well as two with Maine. Honestly, the way that Merrimack is playing right now, I can't see them losing a game down the stretch. Maybe one loss at Alfond against Maine, but with the way both teams are going right now that's probably a stretch. So I'm going to give them 6-0, which would give them 41 points and a league regular season crown (under my scenario this would tie them with BC, who they own the tiebreaker with). To recap, top 4 spots would look like this:

1. Merrimack - 41
2. BC - 41
3. UNH - 40
4. BU - 36

I won't spend as much time with the rest of the schools, so here's how I think the final 4 playoff spots will shake out -

5. Maine - 29 (3-2-1)
6. N'Eastern - 25 (1-3-2)
7. Vermont - 19 (1-2-3)
8. UAmherst - 16 (0-5-1)

Given this scenario, the first round playoff match-ups would be:
UAmherst (8) at Merrimack (1)
UVM (7) at BC (2)
NEU (6) at UNH (3)
Maine (5) at BU (4)

Certainly interesting 4-5 matchup there. If the home teams were to hold serve, BU would face Merrimack and BC would face UNH in the semifinals at the garden. Those are a looong way off, however, and for now this is all just speculation. I'll hopefully be doing similar (shorter) posts in the weeks to come, as games get played and the playoffs draw closer. Until then, GO BU!