Catching up with the rest of Hockey East

This week has been an eventful one for Hockey East. On Tuesday, UMass' coach Toot Cahoon stepped down with one year remaining on his contract. The decision has a weird timing to it for sure which has lead many to suspect that there were some issues between the AD John McCutcheon and Cahoon. McCutcheon was the former assistant AD at BC and has followed BC's strategy of putting more emphasis and effort into improving basketball and football than hockey. UMass is now searching for its next coach and the rumors are all over the place from Merrimack's Dennehy to former BU assistant David Quinn, who is currently an assistant with the Colorado Avalanche and will be in the discussion to replace Coach Parker when he decides to retire. UMass has only one assistant on the staff as top assistant Blaise MacDonald had left the staff last week to take over the head job at Colby College up in Maine. It will certainly be interesting to watch as the timing is awful for the school, especially to replace 2 top coaches but it is good enough of a job to pry a good coach like Quinn away from the pros or an assistant from another school.


Today Hockey East announced the worst kept secret ever that UCONN will be added to the conference as the 12th team for the 2014-2015 season. The team will play in the XL Center in Hartford until an improved rink can be built on campus. Apparently, their current campus rink sucks worse than Merrimack's did before the renovations up there. It will be nice to have another state school in the league and another place to travel to. The XL center is pretty nice to watch hockey as I have seen a few AHL games there. Feliz Miguel probably loves this move more than anyone else out there being the UCONN diehard that he is.


Lastly, the NHL draft begins tomorrow night in Pittsburgh, which happens to be where the Frozen Four is this year. I would expect to hear a few BU recruits have their names called on Saturday during the 2nd to the 7th rounds. 2012 recruits Matt Lane, Matt Grzelcyk, Sam Kurker, and Danny O'Regan all figured to be drafted at some point along with 2013 recruits Brendan Collier, Robbie Baillargeon, and Kevin Duane. Current Terriers Sahir Gill and Alexx Privitera also have a chance of being drafted over the weekend. We wish all the guys on the team and future Terriers the best of luck in the draft.