Men's hockey top 10 tracker: An Atlantic slammin', but little change elsewhere

As hinted at, the losses to Dalhousie and Acadia led to UNB's drop in the CIS poll, from second to third. UNB doesn't often lose by a score like 6-3, as they did to Dal, and I bet it happens even less when they outshoot the other team by a ratio of 2.5:1 in the first period.

The Tigers got either one ninth-place vote or two tenth-place votes after their UNB-UPEI sweep, but I think they gave those votes right back today when they lost to St. F-X. The AUS seems like it will take some serious drinking thinking to figure out this year.

The rest of the top 10 teams saw little change in their ranking. SMU and UPEI swapped spots, Waterloo's 21 points barely displaced Calgary's 20 for 10th place, and everyone else moved at most one spot. The Warriors, who actually moved up more than any other team this week, might not be high in the eyes of the not-affiliated-with-any-smartphone-manufacturer CIS Men’s Ice Hockey Top Ten Committee for long: of the top 10 in RPI, they're the only ones with a negative SRS. Not being that bothered about putting pucks in the net is Waterloo's general M.O., and it worked well enough, except now they're allowing 15% more goals per game.

Here is the new top 10:

1. Alberta (11-2-1) / 169 pts (8) / (1)
Split with Manitoba (2-4 and 3-2, in Winnipeg) one of three splits this past weekend in the conference.

2. McGill (14-0-1) / 155 (10) / (3)
After losing a coin-toss to Brock the week before--though, to be fair, the small-town Montreal kids were probably awed by the bright lights of Thorold--the Redmen let Guelph back into the game and needed overtime to win 3-2 and avoid consecutive losses to the OUA West.

3. UNB (10-4-0) / 139 / (2)
Covered above, and in a previous post. Lost a pair on the road.

4. Western Ontario (12-0-3) / 124 / (4)
Western lost 4-3 in a shootout to RMC and beat Queen's 5-2. Western lost to RMC. Western lost to RMC.

5. Saint Mary’s (8-4-1) / 88 / (7)
9-2 over STU and 2-1 over Moncton.

6. Saskatchewan (8-6-0) / 68 / (6)
Lost 4-2 to Lethbridge, then beat them 9-2 as payback, one presumes.

7. UPEI (8-4-2) / 67 / (5)
Thoroughly average a year ago, the Panthers are now a legit top 10 team (and SRS likes them more than Alberta, but that's partly due to their third-period insurance goals). Lost 3-2 to Acadia and 6-5 in OT to Dal, though, which is why they're seventh instead of fifth in the poll.

8. Manitoba (7-3-4) / 63 / (8)
See Alberta, above. And while I don't expect (or want) the media poll to match RPI exactly, 8th in one and 28th in another is quite the discrepancy. What am I missing here?

9. Lakehead (11-4-1) / 62 / (9)
The subject of Daniel's first piece for us, and a similar piece for his paper, the Thunderwolves tripled up on the hapless home team at Concordia, 18-6 over two games.

10. Waterloo (11-5-0) / 21 / (NR)
4-3 wins over the Kingston schools, the second coming over Queen's in overtime. Keaton Hartigan, according to those always-creative, never-boring OUA scorekeepers, made a save every seven seconds. And further to my point above, last year's Warriors wouldn't have let RMC back into the game when leading 4-1 after two.

**

The week ahead is pretty quiet, with exams causing everyone to wonder why they ever went to university in the first place--I mean, bringing an end to the 2010 part of the season. No top 10 teams play each other. The closest we get is Acadia at Saint Mary's tonight (Wednesday).

The only series out west this week is UBC at Lethbridge, 30th and 32nd out of 34 in RPI, and a combined 9 wins in 24 games, so I'm going to go ahead and grant Mr. Daum an exemption from a Canada West recap on that premier matchup...
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2 comments:

  1. Dal losing to StFX is not that bizarre. It is the new normal out here. Dal goalie, and AUS male Athlete of the Week, Bobby Nadeau stole consecutive wins against SMU, UPEI and UNB and couldn't repeat the trick. That simple. Sorry, I've been sick and didn't get my post up to explain this.

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  2. Sucks that you can't edit comments.

    I should have said that Nadeau stole the SMU and UNB games and played well enough in the UPEI game (which did go to OT).

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