By Scott McLaughlin/DFP Staff
The Boston University men’s hockey team climbed to No. 3 in both national polls this week following its sweep of the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. The Terriers picked up seven of 50 first-place votes in the USCHO.com poll and topped four of 34 ballots in the USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine poll.
One of the teams BU leapfrogged was archrival Boston College, which fell from second to fourth in both polls after splitting a weekend series against Merrimack College. The Terriers sit a mere point ahead of the Eagles in the USCHO poll and are just four points better in the USA Today poll. BU’s next opponent, the University of Maine, is ranked seventh in both polls after beating the University of Vermont on the road.
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My misunderstanding of the coaches’ poll has turned into skepticism. These are these same folks — who should know the game better than anyone — who ranked BU No. 1 after a successful 2008-09 despite having a vastly different team on the ice due to losing key players to graduation and the NHL. Some fans even knew that this was a terrible overestimation, which was demonstrated in the first half of 2009-10.
This year, our team has been playing some of the less-strong teams in HE and, with the exception of the 5-1 result against UML, we have only been able to eek out 1-goal wins if at all (okay there was the non-league Toronto win). Our home performance against these teams has been very poor. Maine this weekend will be our first real HE challenge, and if we allow Maine the kind of space we gave to UML, you can be sure that Maine will make more of those chances. Perhaps our saving grace so far as been the excellent performances of Millan and Rollie in goal, but if we keep allowing defensive mistakes and dumb penalties, teams like ME, BC, and yes, Merrimack will capitalize on them. Finally, our offense and especially our power play unit has looked pretty awful, with the exception of 4-10 minutes per game here and there. I don’t know exactly what needs to happen, but something does for us to stay competitive.
Unless all the other teams are just doing horribly, we are currently not as impressive as our national ranking suggests.