Weekend Preview: Silent Killers

The BU Terriers will be heading on their second straight trip to the NCAA Tournament this weekend as they face the Denver Pioneers in a first round matchup before beating the winner of St. Cloud St. and Ferris St to advance to the Frozen Four in Tampa in a few weeks. The Terriers and Pioneers faced off once earlier this year with the Terriers pulling out a 5-4 OT win thanks to Ahti Oksanen's first two goals of the season.

The location will be different as the regional is located in St. Paul, Minnesota but the teams will be the same as will the outcome. There are many Denver fans looking past BU to a matchup with St. Cloud St in the regional final which is an ideal scenario for BU. Getting placed out west is a blessing for BU. There will be fans who will mention BU's record isn't as good in Western regionals historically but you can really throw those records out the window. St. Paul is the only regional where BU avoids other Hockey East teams(which are the best teams) but still will be an underdog in the region for reasons unknown to me. Apparently western fans are delusional and not smart. Who would have guessed? Hopefully once BU trounces Denver, St. Cloud fans look forward to the Frozen Four semi matchup with North Dakota(if they get past lil bro Northeastern). St. Paul is also not a hellhole like Albany and Worcester are. I have only been in the Cincinnati airport so I will refrain comment and that was enough to know that it sucks too.

NCAA Tournament Field Set :Terriers face Denver in Saint Paul

The 16 team NCAA tournament field is now set after this past weekend's conference championship games and obviously the Boston University Terriers made the field for the second straight season. The Terriers will face the Denver Pioneers in the first round of the West Regional in St. Paul, Minnesota. The winner of that game faces the winner of #2 overall seed St. Cloud State and Ferris State who is the king of the garbage that is the WCHA. The Terriers first round game is at 6:30 pm on Saturday night on ESPNU as seen in the bracket below.

Weekend Recap: BU declines opportunity to play for HE Championship

The BU men's hockey team took a bold strategy this weekend by declining a chance to play for the Hockey Tournament Championship and defend their title from last season. At first glance, it may seem like a poor decision and that the team should have performed better against UMass Lowell(2-3 and 0-5 losses)but in all reality it was just another example of Coach David Quinn playing chess while the rest of college hockey plays checkers.

BU is going to make the NCAA tournament regardless of the outcome of the Hockey East Tournament. The NCAA tournament field is decided by a mathematical formula that weighs a number of factors including strength of schedule, quality wins etc. and thanks to BU's regular season where they had 9 wins against the top 14 in the Pairwise, they are a mathematical lock for the tournament. There is no committee that can keep them out despite what the Lowell Sun may or may not believe. The only decisions that come into play is what regional BU will play in. The easiest way to explain this is how others on Twitter have  already done so below.

Weekend Preview :Why are Lowell fans so stupid?

The BU Terriers will face the Lowell Riverhawks in the best college hockey matchup of the weekend. This Hockey East Quarterfinal round between the 4 and 5 seed of the conference is easily the best matchup in the conference this weekend. The only other series that will be even remotely interesting Northeastern at Notre Dame because of their good history in South Bend(3-2-1 vs ND over the past three seasons). Providence and BC should take care of their series rather easily but then again both choked away QF series a year ago so anything is possible there. 

The Terriers face a rested Lowell team who did not play last weekend as BU toyed with and eventually defeated UMass in a Hockey East first round series. Lowell fans and Hockey East fans in general are trying to point to BU's lack of domination as a point of weakness going into this weekend but they are just grasping at straws. Yes, BU could have played better which I'm sure coach David Quinn has driven home this week in practice. They do have to play better than last weekend to beat Lowell but it is also extremely easy to not play a full hockey game against UMass with how bad they are. Every writer, fan, living being in the world knew BU would beat UMass last weekend. Even the drug dealers in Lowell knew BU would beat UMass and they were high for the entire college hockey schedule this season. It is tough to get motivated for a game like that with no students on campus in fairly empty rink. They were still +26 in shots on goal for the weekend but certainly are capable of playing better.

Hockey East Ref Corsi Espisode III

It is the best time of year in Hockey East. The weather is warming up, playoff hockey is starting and I get to write my annual recap of the officiating in the league. As I displayed last year, I am capable of saying nice things about the refs when they deserve it. Now, before I get into the numbers aka ref corsi, I will be the first to acknowledge the flaws in how I track the numbers and rank the refs. The only numbers available are the refs who work the games and the total number of penalties called so that is all that I have to work with. This obviously penalizes refs who get a game with a line brawl or paired with Kevin Shea when he gets BU a ref who happens to have an off night and try to make the game about him. I will be the first to acknowledge that the refs have a tough job and it is impossible to placate all the fans or even all the coaches but overall they do a pretty good job. Last year, I  they called the second least amount of penalty minutes of any conference so they obviously aren't too bad.

This is the second straight year BU was called for more penalty minutes than their opponent. They had 47 more penalty minutes this year(384-337) as opposed to only 23 more penalty minutes than their opponents last year. This is most likely a result of Jordan Greenway being on the roster and getting called for the Gryba "too big" bullshit penalties. Basically the refs feel bad when big guys physically dominate their opponents and call more penalties on them because of it. I'm not saying the refs purposefully are calling more penalties on Greenway than he deserves but they definitely are calling penalties on him due to his size and the fact that other teams hate him for embarrassing them.