Re: UNH At The Starting Gate....
bill, my take would be that UNH has not lost to any of the 'weaker teams' in the league, and there's only one of the games the lost that they should have at least tied (the 2-1* loss to BU when they got hosed out of a point).
Its a strange year this way, but they have not lost to any team in the bottom 6 of the league (thus far):
Maine - 3-0-0
NU - 0-0-1
UMass - 2-0-1
UVM -2-0-1
PC - 3-0-0
UML - 3-0-0
13-0-3 against these teams.
Now the record against the rest of the league is 3-4-0
MC is a better team than UNH (and is right up there with BC), and I'd put UNH on about the same level as BU. So, in the league, I don't think they lost to any 'weaker' teams.
The thing that concerns me the most is when you look at their entire season/schedule. Looking at the teams that are in the tournament as of today. They don't have a win against any of them since November. The second half of the season, they haven't beaten any team in serious tournament contention (Maine is a big MAYBE, but they need a LOT of things to happen to get in without winning the HEA tournament, and they don't have the goaltending to do that).
They haven't done anything to bolster their footing while a lot of other teams have. If they take 3/4 to end the season (and as long as MC doesn't win out), they will have earned the top spot as well as gotten a few big wins heading into the post season...
They might just be a pretty good team who happened to overachieve the first half of the season, and they've racked up a decent amount of wins against bad teams. They have a chance to prove differently coming up. Last nights game was ugly, and proved that they can't take any team lightly. Fortunately they still picked up a point in the process.