Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
It should be noted that Harvard is in the ECAC, while BC where both Leetch and Gaudreau played their college hockey is in Hockey East, which is a much more highly ranked conference. This is not to diminish Fox's tremendous accomplishment this past season, but I do believe that the slightly lower level of NCAA competition makes a bit of a difference.
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It's not like the ECAC is a weakling Conference. 2 of the last 5 national champions came from the ECAC and 2 of the last 5 runners-up came from the ECAC. Hockey East only has 1 champion and 1 runner-up in the last five years.
Sure, there are some weak teams in ECAC, but that's true of all the Conferences. If ECAC is a weaker conference, it's not by a large margin. Also, that can change from year-to-year as different teams go through their cycles from good to bad and back.
Hockey East wasn't particularly strong as a whole in Leetch's season at BC. BC averaged 6.3 goals per game in Conference games and 4.3 in non-Conference games that season. They took advantage of some weak competition.
Another thing to keep in mind is that because of Harvard's location, when they play non-Conference games, it's often against teams from Hockey East, especially the other Boston schools like BU and BC. So, that increases their level of difficulty over the other ECAC teams.
Last season, Harvard played BC once (1 win, Fox with 2 points) and BU twice (1 win, 1 loss, Fox with 2 points).
This upcoming season should be a good challenge for Harvard. Their non-Conference opponents are Minnesota (2 games), BC, BU, UMass-Lowell, and Vermont. They open the Beanpot against BU and could play BC again in the second round of the Beanpot. Most of those teams are consistently strong year after year. Vermont is the only one that is usually weaker, but last season, they did pretty well.