To speak of intangibles, Merrimack has had a hockey team almost as long as it has existed as a school. It's the school's #1 sport, and they are the smallest college (by enrollment) that plays at the division 1 level, and in a top league, besides. It's also a small, young liberal arts college-- not a state university with a multimillion dollar facility.
I don't know that that the author takes any of those things into consideration, either, but I know I sure do.
The author mentioned Merrimack's potential NCAA berth this season, so I'm assuming he is counting this year.
Even in the past five years, UMass has only one season above .500.
In the past five years, Merrimack has had only one season above .500-- this one.
Umass had two .500 or better seasons in the five years before that, where Merrimack had none. In fact, you've got to go back before Hockey East to find the last season over .500. That was still division 1, though-- just as an Independent. Merrimack had five seasons as an Independent, playing a mixed schedule, and were above .500 all five seasons.
So, Merrimack has been pretty bad for quite a long time, up until the last two seasons, but they were also quite good in the mid-late 80s, aside from the D2 national championship and ECAC championships prior to that.
UMass has been perhaps not quite so terrible for not quite so long, and was respectable more recently (2006-7) but they did go eight consecutive seasons after joining Hockey East below not just .500 but below .400.
The gap between the teams might be different if we looked at league finishes, I'm not sure-- at some point, if you're 9-10 out of a ten-team league it may not matter all that much if you win one game, or three games, or five games-- and both programs have been in that situation more than once in the last decade.
I would have, but I'm a Merrimack grad and a fan of the team since before 1988. Also, by 2009 Merrimack had DaCosta on the roster, and once he announced he was coming back to school I definitely would have picked Merrimack to be that 3rd place team and not Umass.
Although 3rd place might have been considered unlikely for either team prior to the season, the USCHO season preview and the Hockey East coaches' poll all picked Merrimack to finish ahead of Umass this season; MC was 7th in the coaches poll, and UMass 9th. So just based on that, if either one of them was to have a breakout season and finish much higher, I'd have still guessed Merrimack and not Amherst.
This is USCHO. I expected far worse... this is going swimmingly.
