Happy New Year!

Hello all! I’m on vacation and I forgot my laptop, whoops! This week’s leader is House of Seven Gabels!

Standings, 2018-12-31

Un-Compher-table Realities: Penn State started the season with a win over Colgate in their second game, and then had a series of very respectable results until the wheels came off the bus a little with a weekend sweep against them from Mercyhurst. They’re currently in second-last place in the CHA with only two in-conference wins, despite having the best win rate overall of any CHA team at 0.475 (this high win rate, by CHA standards at least, is a bit misleading as Mercyhurst have played a much stronger schedule).

Meanwhile, BU has the first half’s best scorer (in points per game terms) with Jesse Compher and another top-20 scorer in Sammy Davis, while Penn State don’t have any skater in the top 20. So of course Penn State tied the first game 1-1, and basically tied in shots too, and then outshot BU 34-29 in the second game and won 1-0.

Jenna Brenneman was in net for both wins for Penn State and ended up in second place for Player of the Week. BU got the tie behind Corinne Schroeder and the loss behind freshman Katie Stuart, who was in net for the first BU win over BC. A promising start for Penn State, but can they sustain it this time?

The little engine that Lindenwouldn’t: Lindenwood Lindendidn’t against St. Cloud, with the Huskies winning 3-1 and 2-1. Hannah Potrykus, Rachel Herzog, and Kayla Friesen were the St. Cloud skaters who scored more than two fantasy points this weekend. Sophia Wolf got both starts for Lindenwood, St. Cloud split the starts between Emma Polusny and Janine Alder, and Lindenwood outshot St. Cloud both times

Snodgrass scores: Natalie Snodgrass’s two goals on six shots in UConn’s 4-1 win over Dartmouth were enough on their own to raise her shot percentage from 0.03 to 0.048 – she now has five goals on 111 shots over the season. Viki Harkness also scored two fantasy points for Connecticut. Dartmouth are not that good unfortunately so this doesn’t give us a great feeling for whether this is a genuine turnaround for Snodgrass, but, like I said over Christmas, keep an eye on her.

Smile on the face of the Tigers: Princeton and Merrimack played what seems like a thrilling couple of games at Hobey Baker rink.

The first game was scoreless until the final three minutes. Then, Sarah Fillier scored for Princeton with two minutes, 57 seconds to go. Merrimack pulled goalie Samantha Ridgewell and equalized with the extra attacker and a minute ten left on the clock. In overtime, Princeton’s Claire Thompson gave up a penalty shot for covering the puck, but goalie Rachel McQuigge shut down Emily Volpe and the game ended in a 1-1 tie.

In the second, both teams had goalies returning from injury: Lea-Kristine Demers played her third game of the season for Merrimack while veteran junior Steph Neatby played her first for Princeton.

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It went better for Neatby than Demers. Princeton had a 4-1 lead by halfway through the second, at which point Ridgewell went in for Merrimack and kept a clean sheet for twenty minutes. At 5-1 it looked pretty bad for Merrimack, but they got two late goals to keep it interesting and make the final score 5-3.

So Princeton extend their undefeated streak to 14 games, a program record, and I think my basic position that Princeton are not quite elite and Merrimack are not at all bad is confirmed.

Next weekend

Merrimack, OSU, Robert Morris, St. Lawrence and Wisconsin are off next week, and Maine plays three. The big series of course is Northeastern-Clarkson in Belfast. Trades to tigFantasyHockey@gmail.com by 11:59 pm Eastern on January 3rd, please!