Re: Maine 2012 - Take 2. If This Ain't the Bottom...
Without looking it up, I think that would be Merrimack or UMass, but I'm not sure without checking. If I feel bored later I'll check the Hockey East site.
Merrimack has not gone winless at home since at least 1997-1998, the first year for which USCHO keeps full records.
Their worst year in recent history, Dennehy's second as coach in 2006-2007, where they won only three league contests. One of those wins was at home, against UMass-Amherst.
Looking in the media guide for years before that, 1994-95 was pretty lean, with only two league wins at home (Amherst and BC) but there was always at least one or two league wins at home going back to 1989-1990 when the school joined the league. Amherst and Northeastern seem to be the usual victims over the years.
In 2004-2005, their worst year in league play, they won only one game all year-- but it was at home, and also against UMass-Amherst. That stands as the league record for fewest wins in a year, as well as the longest losing (20) and longest winless (25) streaks in league play, and the longest losing and winless streaks at home in league play (13 games).
I think no HEA team has ever gone winless at home in league play. There's no league record to indicate it. However, given that MC owns the record for fewest wins as well as the longest losing and winless streaks in league play, but still managed to have a one-win season with that one win coming at home, it seems unlikely. I'm not sure how a team could manage to lose all of its home league games in a single season without breaking MC's longest winless home streak of 13 games.
(Incidentally, Maine's 92-93 team holds the winning, unbeaten, and road winning and road unbeaten streaks in league play.)
An interesting thing to note about coaching changes in general. While Coach Dennehy at Merrimack has certainly had the best seasons of any Merrimack coach in Hockey East in the past three seasons (.476 now, .581 last season, .692 the season before) he also had three of the worst in his first three seasons (.147, .250 and .132). As a result, his overall win percentage of .390 is only slightly higher than his predecessor, Chris Serino (.356), about whom rumors of student-athlete mutiny swirled before his replacement, much as they do around Coach Whitehead now. Dennehy's average is almost identical to Serino's predecessor, Coach Anderson, whose career mark overall was .506 and in HE league play was .392.
The difference is consistency. Both Serino and Anderson's win percentages never exceeded .500 in any given season, nor dropped below .300. Dennehy had some very rough years at first but has two years above .500 to his credit.
It makes me think that there is some logic to the boom-and-bust type of recruiting cycle that Coach McDonald instituted at Lowell; that schools that cannot predictably and reliably get enough blue chip recruits every season to just reload and continue, like BC, BU and UNH, need to try and stack the deck once every four years with all their strong recruits to concentrate talented players and experience.
I have no idea if Coach Dennehy or Coach Whitehead have explicitly embraced such strategies in their own recruiting. I do wonder, though, if consistent mediocrity irks some fanbases more than having a some truly terrible seasons punctuated every once in awhile with some seasons with much better results.
TL;DR version: Probably too early to be thinking Maine goes winless at home just yet, but if they do, they'll have to break some Merrimack records to do it.
