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Holiday Tournaments and Look Ahead to 2015

January 1, 2015, 6:31 PM ET [2 Comments]
Bob Herpen
NCAA Hockey Analyst • RSSArchiveCONTACT
Happy New Year to everyone, I’m back to kick off the second half of my Division I coverage. To start off, here’s a recap of the holiday tournaments which took place at various spots across America as Christmas vacation rolled on and the break between semesters hit its midway point.

Pittsburgh

When we last left Robert Morris, the pride and leaders of Atlantic Hockey, the program held the highest per-game scoring average in the country. This past Monday and Tuesday, the Colonials hosted the Three Rivers Classic at CONSOL Energy Center but only came away with a second-place showing.

In Monday’s opener, a 4-2 decision over Penn State, RMU’s leading scorer and the man who ranked third in the nation -- senior Cody Wydo -- was held off the scoreboard. No matter, as Brady Ferguson, John Rey, Daniel Leavins and Zac Lynch lit the lamp to back a 35-save effort from Terry Shafer. That brought the Colonials’ recent streak of success to 5-1-1 since a loss to Air Force in mid-November.

Things looked to be aligned right for the hosts to claim victory for the second time in the tournament’s three years in front of a friendly crowd the next night, but Colgate put a huge crimp in those plans by emerging with a 6-1 victory.

Matt Cope opened the scoring just shy of the 7 1/2 –minute mark for Robert Morris, but it was all Raiderrs from there. Tyson and Tylor Spink combined for two goals and one assist, while Kyle Baun, Jake Kulevich, Joe Wilson and Mike Panowyk added markers against Dalton Izyk, who made 40 stops in defeat. His counterpart, Charlie Finn, turned away 25 pucks to help his squad win.

Penn State then lost to Western Michigan in the consolation contest, 4-1. The Nittany Lions had been blown out by Boston College in last year’s final.

The Steel City has seen three different winners from three different conferences: RMU (2012, Atlantic); BC (2013, Hockey East) and Colgate (ECAC Hockey).

Burlington

For the 18th time in the last 25 years, Gutterson Field House, home to Vermont, played host to a four-team, two-day round robin known as the Catamount Cup.

The star of the Sunday-Monday tourney was Providence goaltender and 2013 USA WJC netminder Jon Gillies, who allowed just one goal over those contests and racked up a total of 51 saves to lead the Friars to the title. He also gained Hockey East Defensive Player of the Week honors for his effort.

On Saturday night, his 22 saves and goals by Brian Pinho, Mark Jankowski, Brandon Tanev and Trevor Mingoia stoked the fires of a 4-1 decision over Hockey East rivals UMass –- the same Minutemen who were dismantled by an 11-1 count in this same building back in November by the host program. Sunday was a masterful defensive performance, a 29-save whitewash for Gillies, who tied for the national lead in shutouts with his fourth of the season. Shane Luke, Nick Saraceno and Noel Acciari beat Mike Santaguida once each in the 3-0 decision.

UMass turned around and beat Air Force in the third-place game by a 5-1 count, ending a five-game losing streak.

The Providence win gave its home conference 10 tourney wins, including three in a row with the Catamounts having won the previous two seasons. The Friars had taken runner-up back in 1997. For Vermont, the loss in the final marked its first home defeat of the season.

Bridgeport

Hockey East continued its holiday dominance at Webster Bank Arena as UMass-Lowell claimed the tourney title against two Connecticut-based schools, one of which is a new conference rival.

The RiverHawks topped Sacred Heart of the ACA in one of Saturday’s semifinals by a 5-1 score, racking up a 46-22 shot advantage in the process. C.J. Smith’s opening goal of the game snapped a 1-1 tie with 30 seconds to play in the second period, before Michael Fallon and senior defensive leader and team captain Zack Kamrass joined Smith on the third-period scoring ledger. Dylan Zink scored late in the first period while Kevin Boyle made 22 saves.

Sunday’s final ended up a 3-1 UML victory over upstart UConn. Zink opened the scoring late in the first once more, and Boyle made that slim margin hold up with 17 saves through the game’s first 40 minutes. Michael Colantone and A.J. White tallied 1:57 apart in the final three minutes of regulation while Boyle was finally measured by Cody Sharib with 13 seconds to play.

The Flying Dutchmen of Union finished in third place by virtue of a 3-1 decision against the Pioneers, one day after dropping a 3-2 tourney-opening result to the Huskies. Ryan Scarfo scored twice and Daniel Ciampini once while Alex Sakellaropoulos came up with a 21-save performance.

Naples

Not much has gone right for Lake Superior State over most of the last 20 years, and this season has been no exception. The Lakers entered the shadow of the new year with a 3-17-0 record, but sometimes it’s true that you have to escape from harsh Winter climates to the sunny South to recharge your batteries.

However, on Florida’s Gulf Coast and through their return trip to the American side of the Soo, LSSU can call itself champion in one respect. Far and away the worst team by record of the four included in the 15th annual Florida College Hockey Classic, the Lakers won in a shootout and regulation to steal the honors this past Sunday and Monday.

In the opener, Lake’s Gordon Defiel and Cornell’s Mitch Gillam played to a scoreless stalemate through 65 minutes as the former came up with 39 saves and the latter 24 stops. In the fourth round of the shootout, however, after John McCarron missed, Chris Ciotti converted and LSSU moved on. The title game passed by more conventional means. Eric Drapluk scored with 4:07 left in regulation and Defiel turned away 28 pucks in the Lakers’ 2-1 win against Notre Dame.

Miami (Ohio), which dropped a 3-2 overtime decision in its opener against the Fighting Irish, secured third place by virtue of a 3-0 win over the Big Red. Kevin Morris, Taylor Richart and Devin Loe tallied to back Jay Williams’ 15-save whitewash.

Lake Superior’s unlikely championship gave the WCHA its first winner in the series since St. Cloud State in 2010 and only the conference’s second title in the tournament. Maine has won it six times, the last coming in 2012.

Detroit

The Grandaddy of All Hockey Tournaments celebrated its 50th excursion at Joe Louis Arena last Sunday and Monday, and no surprise that local flavor emerged with the trophy once more and extended their grip on holiday prominence.

Red Berenson’s Michigan Wolverines won for the 16th time in program history, though it wasn’t an easy path taken in either game.

Zach Hyman registered the winning score just after the three-minute mark of the final period and Steve Racine withstood a 41-shot barrage by former national No. 1 Michigan Tech -- beaten only by Malcolm Gould just after the midway point of the first period -- in a 2-1 decision for the Maize and Blue in the semifinal. In Monday’s final, it was a renewal of the hostilities between the two state schools with the biggest reputations, but the Spartans went back to East Lansing with a second-place finish. This time, Racine only had to face 32 shots on goal, and was buttressed by scores from Andrew Copp and Hyman over the first two stanzas.

After losing three in a row early in the season, the Wolverines have bolted to an 8-2-0 record over their last 10 contests.

Steve Coates’ MTU Huskies ended up finishing third, after dispatching 2012 national runners-up Ferris State by a 4-2 score. Michigan Tech scored the game’s first four goals, courtesy of Gould, C.J. Eick, Joel L’Esperance and Tanner Kero and held on late. A Michigan-based program has won 40 times out of 50. After UM, Michigan State has won 12 times while Michigan Tech clocks in third with 10 titles.

Winter Wonderland in Happy Valley

On today’s broadcast of the 2015 Winter Classic from Nationals Park, national treasure and broadcaster Doc Emrick made several quick, almost clandestine mentions of Penn State as a good place to stage another New Year’s Day outdoor game.

BTW, if you're tuning out Pierre McGuire on any and all broadcasts, here's a quick list of North American programs represented by the Caps and Blackhawks:

Patrick Sharp -- Vermont
Ben Smith -- Boston College
Jonathan Toews -- North Dakota
Duncan Keith -- Michigan State
Trevor van Riemsdyk -- New Hampshire
Jay Beagle -- Alaska-Anchorage
Joel Ward -- University of Prince Edward Island
Jack Hillen -- Colorado College
Matt Niskanen -- Minnesota-Duluth
Brooks Orpik -- Boston College
Nate Schmidt -- Minnesota

While Emrick is the bellwether of play-by-play men in the USA, I don’t think he’s correct there. There are neutral sites –- like having a Minnesota-Chicago outdoor game at Lambeau Field, for instance –- and there are neutral sites like the heavily forested innards of our Commonwealth. There have been rumors for years of the NHL consummating the tense, charged relationship between the Flyers and Penguins with a Winter Classic smack in the middle of Pennsylvania, which only seem to center on a single location.

And while Beaver Stadium, with its capacity of more than 100,000 might seem to provide a perfect spot, State College itself is not a desirable location in my eyes. Last year, when the WC was held in Michigan Stadium, the league at least had the added incentive of Ann Arbor being more than a college town, with a population several thousand more than its iconic venue.

Penn State’s home borough is a shade over 40,000, and while it has proven for years that it can welcome and control a population of friendly fans significantly higher than its arena can hold, I have serious reservations about its ability to properly corral two separate rabid fan bases which may surge to double the population of what normal football Saturdays have in store in what is essentially a location cut off from other population centers.

However, if the timing and the required crop of schools can come to an agreement, Penn State and Pegula Ice Arena will be a perfect setting for a holiday Division I tournament. If only Philadelphia could move at a faster than glacial pace to get one of its D-I universities set up with a hockey program, you’d essentially have a ready-made Keystone Classic with Robert Morris, PSU, a Philly-based school (Penn for the sake of ease since it used to be in the ECAC) and Princeton or another far-afield team looking for a slot to ward off semester-break rust.

It's especially pressing and quite an opportunity given the fact that neither the 2013 nor the 2014 Frozen Fours at either end of PA were sellouts according to the NCAA, and that the Three Rivers Classic final drew only 5,076 fans to an 18,000-plus seat stadium.

In addition, the first two Penn State-Vermont clashes at Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia drew as many yawns as spectators, sporting actual numbers below half a house, despite the supposition that thousands of Nittany Lion alumni/ae in the Delaware Valley could make for an electric atmosphere.

Second Semester Sillies

To put it bluntly, in the time from January through April when a national champion is crowned, I'm in my glory.

With the resumption of the schedule in earnest, kids back in school, the Beanpot, conference tournaments, the NCAA brackets leading to the Frozen Four, there's little that I won't watch or read about. It's the time of year I'll wantonly ignore my work list on Friday nights, settle into a TV which has a satellite box, and keep glued to the major college-carrying networks and soak in the drama.

Boston College has a shot to match rival Boston University's record of six Beanpot titles in February. Before that I'll be at my home rink to catch Penn State and Vermont in the third annual Philly College Hockey Classic -- a meeting which has much more on the line than the previous two now that one is a threat to stay in the rankings and the other a threat for a conference crown.

And after hitting up Princeton, Hartford, North Andover, Pittsburgh, Allentown and Reading in the season's first three months, time to plan wherever else the game is calling me to go.

Let it ride.
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