This is one of my favorite weekends of the hockey calendar with the Hockey East Championships and MIAA finals at the TD Garden in Boston.
The Hockey East semifinals and finals could be especially intriguing with just one league team locked into a spot in the NCAA Tournament. Regular season champion Boston University will be in the national tournament, regardless of this weekend’s results, when the field is announced Sunday.
Merrimack, the second seed, has a chance to get into the NCAA Tournament as an at-large but needs quite a bit of fortuitous results across the country in other league tournaments. UMass Lowell and Providence both need to win two games this weekend and skate off the TD Garden ice with the Lamoriello Trophy if they are to get into the NCAA Tournament.
Here are 10 thoughts I have on recent goings on in Hockey East, pertaining to the league playoffs, awards, the transfer portal, and recent pro signings:
1. The first semifinal on Friday pits Boston University against Providence. The Terriers swept the Friars relatively easily on the final weekend of the regular season. Providence entered the postseason as winners of just three games since the calendar turned to 2023. Nate Leaman’s Providence team can change the narrative of a disappointing season by winning two more games this weekend. Wins over New Hampshire and Northeastern both came in overtime. Being able to play with nothing to lose, Providence can play the spoiler role in Boston. BU has the superior talent in this game, but the player with the best chance at playing a pivotal role in the outcome is Providence freshman goaltender Philip Svedeback. The Bruins draft pick has allowed just nine goals over his last seven wins. He’ll have to play well if the Friars are to pull the upset.
2. Merrimack and UMass Lowell were two of the most prominent teams in Division 2 hockey in the 1970s and 1980s. The Merrimack Valley rivals have both jumped up to the top level of the college game. While Lowell has enjoyed more success, the Warriors are the favorite in this game and have had a better year. Merrimack swept Lowell during the final weekend of February. The road win was a little more up and down while the defense and goaltending played a major role on home ice. The Warriors are on a mission and have a few game-breakers in left wing Alex Jefferies (Lunenburg, Mass.) and goaltender Hugo Ollas. This is the third consecutive year that Lowell has advanced to the Hockey East semifinals. Can Norm Bazin and his River Hawks take the next step and win their first league tournament since 2017 when they won their third title in five years?
3. Hockey East announced its major award winners this week. The league’s 11 head coaches vote on the individual honors. I was appalled that Merrimack’s Scott Borek didn’t win the Bob Kullen Award, given annually to the Hockey East Coach of the Year. What Jay Pandolfo did in his first year as head coach was noteworthy, but he stepped into a pretty good situation. There was an abundance of talent in the dressing room at Agganis Arena. Borek led Merrimack, a historic underdog, to the best finish in the program’s Hockey East history. The Warriors hosted a Hockey East playoff series for just the third time. Merrimack is going to the Hockey East semifinals for just the third time, the last being in 2011. Borek guided a team that faced a tremendous amount of adversity, including the tragic passing of assistant coach Josh Ciocco at the beginning of the season. There isn’t a coach in college hockey that would take Merrimack’s roster over Boston University’s. Borek made more with less and is close to leading the Warriors to just their third trip to the NCAA Division 1 Tournament. Pandolfo and his staff deserve kudos, but make no mistake: Borek deserved the Bob Kullen Award.
4. Four Hockey East players have signed NHL deals since their seasons ended, including Northeastern seniors Aidan McDonough (Milton, Mass.) and Jayden Struble (Cumberland, R.I.), who inked contracts with Vancouver and Montreal, respectively. UConn junior Ryan Tverberg and Boston College junior Nikita Nesterenko both left a year of eligibility on the table by signing with Toronto and Anaheim. Tverberg was one of the fastest players in the league in 2022-23 while Nesterenko exuded skill and played more in the middle of the ice than he had in the past.
5. McDonough was one of my favorite prospects I’ve covered in my time with New England Hockey Journal. I saw him come up through the ranks with Thayer and Cape Cod Whalers. Some questioned his skating, but he eventually made more and more believers as he went to the USHL’s Cedar Rapids RoughRiders before heading to Northeastern. After his Providence team eliminated Northeastern last Saturday, Leaman remarked that McDonough was one of the best players to come through the league during his time. Leaman added how “classy” McDonough was, which certainly is a sentiment I’d echo based on my years watching him play.
6. Northeastern’s roster is certainly going to look a lot different when the Huskies hit the ice next October. McDonough and Struble are gone. Star goaltender Devon Levi is set to sign with the Buffalo Sabres. Senior Riley Hughes (Westwood, Mass.) is already in the transfer portal and his brother, sophomore Jack Hughes (Westwood, Mass.) is set to join him when underclassmen can enter on March 20. There are rumors of another drafted underclassman entering the portal, as well. Outside of McDonough and Levi, some of these departures can be seen as addition by subtraction.
7. The transfer portal has helped some of the region’s teams in 2022-23. Merrimack has six key contributors who came by way of the transfer portal. While credit goes to Borek and his staff, including Dan Jewell and the late Ciocco, here’s hoping that college hockey gets back to a time where the transfer portal doesn’t play as big of a role. It was nice to follow players for four years on one team. I’m an admitted college hockey purist hoping that it gets back to the days when players show loyalty to the program that first showed interest in them. I don’t mind grad transfers, but jumping from program to program doesn’t sit well with me.
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8. UMass seniors Reed Lebster and Cal Kiefiuk have both entered the transfer portal after amassing 57 points over their careers with the Minutemen. Don’t be surprised if one or both end up at Michigan State where former associate head coach Jared DeMichiel now holds the same title for the Big Ten’s Spartans.
9. I’ve been critical of Hockey East when I saw it fit, but the league’s administration deserves a ton of credit for a few things this season. The new streaming deal with ESPN+ has been great for the league. The camera work and quality are top-notch. One negative has been new commentators that have replaced some of the mainstays of the league. I’d like to see Mike Logan at Providence, John Leahy at Merrimack, among others, get more opportunities.
10. The best and most important improvement for Hockey East has come in the form of better officiating. Supervisor of Officials Brian Murphy has done a great job of bringing in some good young referees. Here’s hoping the stripes will continue staying out of the way and let the four teams determine the outcome this weekend.
