NCAA Hockey 101: Providence answering early questions

With the theme of college hockey this year being “uncertainty,” one could be forgiven for not exactly being high on the reigning national champion Providence College Friars, who entered the year ranked No. 7 in the country.

After all, they needed .930 goaltending to even make the NCAA tournament, and they backed into that too, having lost in the Hockey East tournament’s second round to UNH. And then the goalie that gave them those big numbers (Jon Gillies) went and signed with the Calgary Flames organization this summer; after three seasons of .931, .931, and .930, respectively, he had little left to prove at the college level. In addition, Providence lost 40 goals from last year’s team, which only scored 123 to begin with.

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That seems to narrow the Friars’ margins considerably. Nick Ellis is a good goaltender in the conference and should be fine at the very least this season, but with all due respect, he’s no Jon Gillies because there simply aren’t goalies that are going to give you .931 goaltending for three years of playing nearly every game (Gillies only missed about 730 minutes of hockey over that time, most of that due to injury or playing in World Juniors). Ellis is a career .907 goalie, and while I’d expect that number to come up somewhat sharply this season, even .920 goaltending is only a little better than average in Hockey East. If there are offensive problems, which there were at times last year, things could go pear-shaped in a hurry.

While it’s important not to draw too many conclusions from two games’ worth of data, this first weekend might be an indicator that things should go better than the numbers might have given us reason to believe. Providence went out to Miami, certainly among the tougher places to play in college hockey, and came back with three points for its efforts. They won 7-3 on Friday and drew 2-all on Saturday, which is a solid enough start. They were, in fact, one of the very few top-10 teams in the nation to not lose at least one game this weekend — 2-0 Omaha and 1-0-1 North Dakota being the others — and unlike North Dakota, they actually played a team worth considering.

As a consequence, they now sit No. 2 behind North Dakota (for beating Lake State and only tying Maine? Okay, folks), with 13 first-place votes.

Miami was, after all, the No. 11 team in the nation and went 13-6 at home last season (3-1 out of conference). Meanwhile, Providence was just 8-7-2 on the road last season. So to have gone out to Oxford and scored nine times is quite the statement from a team for which the biggest questions were, “Who’s putting the puck in the net?”

If this weekend is any indication the answer, at long last, seems to be, “Mark Jankowski.” Jankowski is a Flames first-round pick, but one that has been derided by just about everyone for his first three years in college. Usually first-round picks tend to light up the college ranks, but Jankowski only had 70 points in his first 110 career games. He also generated very few shots (only 1.93 per game, a poor total) and while the flashes of skill were always there, the holes in his game and inability to get any meaningful offense going were glaring.

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So it was quite the surprise to see him rack up four points in the opening-night win, and add an assist the next night. Five points is a hell of a start for an embattled player who, finally, doesn’t have the excuse of being a lot younger than his competition (he’s 11 months younger than Johnny Gaudreau). He could always do the little things, but the big things like getting to the middle of the ice often eluded him. But now, thrust into the No. 1 center role between two other good forwards in Brandon Tanev and Trevor Mingoia, he might finally be able to influence things in the attack.

Mingoia was also instrumental in the attack, racking up one extra point and eight shots on goal. If they can provide a solid 1-2 offensive punch from the top line while Tanev provides a little defensive support, that’s likely to go quite a long way toward actually making sure Providence has a decent chance of competing not only within the conference, but nationally as well.

“[After the first 10 minutes on Friday night,] they showed why they’re the national championship team from a year ago,” Miami coach Rico Blasi told reporters after the 7-3 loss. “I just thought they outplayed us in every aspect of the game, and the result is what you see.”

This is a quality team the Friars have. When things are going well, they can pile the goals past you and really make you wish you hadn’t put on your skates that day. The three goals over 4:38 in the first period, including a Mingoia penalty shot, salted that one away pretty early as Blasi suggests.

There are, however, still some kinks to work out. The Friars outscored Miami 9-5, but shots were 52 apiece, meaning the visitors’ shooting success rate was 17.3 percent. That’s not a number that’s likely to hold up, obviously, and only getting off 26 a night — even against a good possession team like Miami — is a number that needs to and probably will improve. They also conceded the first goal both nights, and this is never an advisable thing in hockey; the Friars, like anyone else, tend to be well below .500 when allowing the first goal. Ellis’s save percentage for the weekend (.904) will also have to come up.

But to get on a plane and do this to an opponent of Miami’s quality speaks highly of the Friars in this opening week of the season. Keeping it up won’t be easy, but this is certainly a better start to the year than splitting at Ohio State. The Friars don’t have a lot of schedule losses coming up, either. They’re hosting Holy Cross, then Ohio State for two, before visiting a Colgate club that got manhandled by Northeastern on Saturday, so if nothing else, they should be able to keep up the positive momentum out-of-conference.

Still plenty of questions left for this club to answer, but this was a pretty solid start.

Arizona State gets its first win

So the Sun Devils began their first week of actual Division 1 hockey, and it went better than anyone could have reasonably expected.

Okay sure, the Alaska schools aren’t any good, but ASU shouldn’t be either. And yet here they are, with a 3-2 overtime loss at Anchorage on Friday, and a 2-1 win against Fairbanks the next night. That was the first against an actual Division 1 team in school history, and it may just portend good things to come.

Ryan Belonger, a transfer from Northeastern, had a goal and two assists. He’s one of three Div. 1 transfers the school has on the roster already (the others are Garrett Peterson from Notre Dame and Brock Krygier from Lake State), so it’s not like they don’t have some players who can and have played at this level. But the possession just wasn’t there all weekend, and it fell to the team’s two goaltenders to stop close to 95 percent of the shots they faced on the weekend to even get that far.

Better teams will pummel the Sun Devils, in no uncertain terms, and it’ll probably be a few years before they’re actually competitive in whatever conference they eventually choose (or chooses them).

But almost winning your first two games at this level, and getting two points on the road in your first weekend of Division 1 hockey ever is something to be celebrated.

Omaha’s feat in the Battle of the Mavericks

It wouldn’t — and shouldn’t — normally be news when an NCHC team beats a WCHA team, but the performance from Omaha at Minnesota State this week should draw some attention.

Like Providence, Omaha was a club with a lot of question marks this season, mainly because they don’t have Ryan Massa to PDO themselves to season-long success. And going up to Minnesota State looked like a tall task for them, as it would for anyone. After all, the latter Mavs had only lost three games at home in the last two seasons combined (31-3-2) so with a freshman goalie and a team that was lousy in possession last year, any points at all seemed like they’d be hard to come by.

So of course Omaha swept. Of course. They did it only getting 35 percent possession, too. But scoring five goals at 5-on-5 and only allowing one will get you there most of the time.

Jake Randolph and Justin Parizek led the way offensively with three and two goals, respectively, while Kirk Thompson and Evan Weninger combined to stop 64 of 66 shots (Weninger had a 40-save shutout). At the other end of the ice, Cole Huggins mustered an .884 save percentage. He’s fallen a long way since that great freshman year.

A somewhat arbitrary ranking of teams which are pretty good in my opinion only (and just for right now but maybe for a little longer too?)

1. Providence College (three points at Miami)

2. Nebraska-Omaha (swept at Minnesota State)

3. North Dakota (beat Lake State, tied Maine)

4. UMass Lowell (beat RPI)

5. Denver (split a home-and-home Air Force)

6. Boston College (won at Army, lost at RPI)

7. Quinnipiac (swept a home-and-home with Holy Cross)

8. St. Cloud (swept the Alaskas)

9. Bowling Green (swept a home-and-home with Ohio State)

10. St. Lawrence (beat Niagara and RIT at home)

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist and also covers the NCAA for College Hockey News. His email is here and his Twitter is here.