NE representation underwhelming in D1 NCAA Hockey tourney

This is New England. We could give a hoot about March Madness. Our only connection to it is Dave O’Brien calling college hoops. The only team from the region that made any sort of tournament was the Quinnipiac women’s squad–and that’s awesome. But a lot of us don’t follow Quinnipiac because they’re in Connecticut and Connecticut has a lot of New York sports fans. Anyways, I digress…

There are, however, some college puck aficionados in the house (what up folks?). And with college hockey playoffs upon us, let’s take a looksy-dooksy at whom will be competing in these sorts of tournaments.

On the men’s side, there’s 16 teams in the D1 bracket. Why so low? Only 70 D1 programs. Of those, four are from New England. They are: UMass Lowell, Boston University, Providence College and Harvard. So yeah, three teams from Mass. That’s pretty cool.

On paper, BU might be the most loaded team in college hockey history.

That’s all well and good, but they’re not ranked in the top-4. That’s like being a one seed in college hoops. Harvard is though. They’re the No. 3 seed. And their head coach, Ted Donato, lives in Scituate, Mass., so there’s that.

Denver and Minnesota Duluth are the favorites to win it all and play actually starts tonight. Here’s that schedule.

The women’s tourney is over. Clarkson (who?) won it all. There was only eight teams in that one and only one team from New England: Boston College. They made it to the semifinals before taking a 1-0 loss that ended their run. Even so, they’re a really special team and Katie Burt is a lights out goaltender for them (1.54 goals allowed per game).

So, with all those games going on this weekend, you’re probably thinking to yourself: Tom, with all these local teams in it, which game are you going to watch? Easy: Western Michigan-Air Force. You’ll probably be able to listen to it on guerilla radio.