NCAA Hockey 101: Will freshman win the Hobey Baker?

Now that it’s officially December, I guess we can call off the moratorium on Hobey Baker talk.

Most teams are about one-third of the way through their seasons and, while things can still change dramatically in the remaining four months, people are least starting to talk about Hobey hopefuls.

And while Thatcher Demko has understandably been grabbing headlines for his .953 start between the pipes of Boston College, people started whispering that maybe you want to throw teammate Colin White into the mix as well. It’s a kind of crazy claim, on some level, because a) it’s early to start handing out even the most theoretical of hardware, and b) he’s a freshman forward.

But he’s also fourth in scoring nationally, playing on a dominant team loaded with talent. So there’s some thinking that he can keep it up. He’d have to distance himself from the pack a little bit more — he’s four points behind the national leader — but if he keeps it up, it’s conceivable that his current 1.6 points per game pace has him very much in the conversation when March arrives.

You’ll recall that just last season a freshman forward dominated Hobey talk more or less from box to wire last season, mostly because he scored at an unbelievable pace and was only 17 when his season started. Jack Eichel ended up compiling 71 points in 40 games for BU last season, which is more than most Hobey winners get as seniors, but what has people buzzing about White — who was already drafted in the first round by the Senators and turns 19 at the end of January — is the fact that, through 13 games, his 21 points are both tied for fourth in the nation, and tied for the same number Eichel had in his first baker’s dozen appearances.

In fact, White has one fewer goal and one more assist than Eichel had, so it’s a pretty similar scenario in that regard.

Anyone drawing a comparison between the two is, of course, going to end up looking a little silly simply because Eichel is a generational talent, and while White is very, very good, no one would confuse him for such. Colin Whites don’t come around often, but Eichel’s talent was probably the greatest seen at this level since Paul Kariya was a rookie.

No one’s saying it’s a bad thing that White has 21 points in his first 13 games, including his current 18-point, eight-game streak. He’s a big reason the Eagles have one loss through the end of November (but not the biggest). One wonders how much of a difference age makes, though. He’s just a shade over three months younger than Eichel (Jan. 30, 1997, versus Oct. 28, 1996), but he started college a year later. He’s actually only five days younger than Noah Hanifin, who starred for BC last season.

All this means that Eichel turned 18 while already at BU playing college hockey for close to a month, but White will play the final two-plus months of his season as a 19-year-old. Total months spent in college hockey as an 18-year-old: Five or so for Eichel, and four or so for White.

But every month makes a difference, especially at that age. While they’re both freshmen and spending the majority of their seasons at 18, being more impressed with Eichel as a young-18 than White as an old-18 makes perfect sense.

Moreover, though, there’s the issue of sustainability. The problem with college hockey statistics is that they’re not as complete as they are at the NHL level. We know, more or less, who was on the ice for every shot attempt, faceoff, penalty, and so on (stats people have found there’s an error rate of about 1 percent). Not so for college. We have individual stats on some of those levels — i.e. Eichel personally took 221 shot attempts at 5-on-5 last season — but not team-level stats — i.e. we don’t know how many of Evan Rodrigues’s 200 he was on the ice for. We can guess, obviously, that the percentage would have been pretty good, but there’s no way to know for sure.

To that end, then, you have to say that Eichel’s season-long rate of more than 5.5 shot attempts at full strength per game last season was damned impressive. A lot more so than the 3.77 being attempted by White through 13 games at what is roughly the same age as Eichel at the end of last season.

And look, we also have a pretty good idea of what White’s linemates are doing versus what Eichel’s were. It’s not like he’s deferring more often to Ryan Fitzgerald (4.46 per game) and Matthew Gaudreau (1.77; and yes, that’s Johnny’s brother). They’re taking the shots they can get, and they’re producing them at a strong rate. It’s just that Eichel’s line of Rodrigues and either Ahti Oksanen or Danny O’Regan produced them at a far greater one. Which, again, is what you’d expect given the disparate talent levels.

As a team right now, BC is shooting 11.8 percent at 5-on-5. Assuming White has been on for every shot taken by Fitzgerald and Gaudreau, as well as his own — and he hasn’t, but let’s just ballpark it without thinking about what the defenders behind him put on net — his line’s current full-strength shooting percentage is 17.2 percent (16 on 93). That’s a number that’s going to come down. It just has to.

Not to say that Eichel’s numbers didn’t appear to be unsustainable, but again, this was Eichel we’re talking about. He turned everything into a scoring chance, even when there didn’t appear to be too much there.

White, meanwhile, is a very good three-zone center, especially at this level. He’s already BC’s second-line option, which you don’t see out of too many freshmen regardless of their age. He’s an unbelievable puck handler with a decent shot and so-so skating, but he has a very keen sense of where to be at all times. That’s going to lend itself to a lot of points, but probably not 1.6 per game. Eichel’s skills, meanwhile, were all basically rated as “never seen before” across the board, and that lends itself to the 1.78 he ended up scoring last year.

Even if White drops off in the scoring department, and he will when BC’s schedule gets tougher (it’s been widely criticized as being pretty cupcake so far this season), they’re not going to take away the 21 in 13. And even if he ends up being a little more than a point a game, that’s better than most freshmen do anywhere in the country, including BC. The last Eagles rookie to score a point a game? Some kid called Johnny Gaudreau. And through 13 games, White is already almost halfway to his 44-in-44.

If that’s the worst-case scenario, it’s a pretty favorable bad case.

Why did we have a tournament in Belfast again?

Lowell won the Belfast, Northern Ireland-based “Friendship Four” this weekend with an overtime win over Northeastern and a tie (and eventual shootout win) over Brown. To call the hockey unwatchable would be to do a disservice to all the unwatchable college hockey we can watch played in North America on a weekly basis.

Not only was this game played on the other side of an ocean, but it was also played on the international ice dimensions of 200 by 100. Most of these teams haven’t played a single game on Olympic ice this season, so boy did that make the hockey less-watchable too. Also, Lowell was the only good team in the field, having more wins than the other three competitors combined, and that also didn’t help.

By all accounts everyone who went had a great time, but this really shouldn’t be happening mid-season.

But you have to feel the worst for Colgate in all of this. They lost the semifinal on Friday 5-0 to Brown, and then got belted in the consolation game 7-1 by Northeastern. Both winners entered those games with a single win and anemic offenses. That’s a tough trip.

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. Quinnipiac (swept a home-and-home with UMass)

2. Providence College (beat Yale)

3. Boston College (beat RIT)

4. North Dakota (swept at Michigan State)

5. UMass Lowell (beat Northeastern and tied Brown in Belfast)

6. Nebraska Omaha (swept Ohio State)

7. Denver (idle)

8. St. Cloud (swept at Minnesota)

9. Harvard (won at Notre Dame, beat RPI at Notre Dame)

10. Yale (lost to Providence)

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. 

MORE FROM YAHOO HOCKEY