Quick Hits

Nothing too notable out there for a major story, so I am going to be lazy and bullet point some news from around the country:

• Ken Schott has some news on injuries suffered by Union this weekend. Kelly Zajac will play this weekend as the Dutchmen finish up their regular season taking on Qunnipiac and Princeton. But Union will be without the services of Nolan Julseth-White, though he notes that the defenseman whould be back for the conference playoffs.

• The construction of Penn State’s new rink is going along swimmingly. But that buries the lede, which is that Penn State could be ready to play in a conference as early as 2013. Most college hockey purists would prefer that the Nittany Lions join the CCHA, but Penn State prefers the school play in a Big 10 Hockey Conference as soon as possible.

• If the season ended today, Merrimack would be a #1 seed (they’re tied with Denver in the pairwise but have a higher RPI, which is the tiebreaker. Somehow it’s not which team wins the comparison). It’s been a meteoric rise for the Warriors, who finished 6th, T-9th, 10th, 1oth, 10th, 9th (out of 9), T-8th in the past 7 seasons. That is 5 basement finishes in a row. But this year Merrimack not only has the wins, but has non-fluke wins: they are 4th nationally in offense and 2nd in defense.

• Speaking of the pairwise, the new way that a TUC is defined is just ridiculous. Alaska Anchorage is 11-16-3 (granted against an extremely difficult schedule) and yet is listed as a TUC because their RPI is over .500. This could prompt a rant as to why I hate the RPI as well, but I’ll save that for another day.