ECAC Hockey Awards
By Fetch
Yale failed to win the league for a third straight year, and Union captured their first Cleary Cup. Still, both teams were well represented on my all league teams. Though the bottom half of the league isn’t terribly well represented in these awards, they sure made quite a showing last weekend as the 12th and 11th place teams both won playoff series.
Player of the year – Chase Polacek, Rensselaer
It was close for me between Polacek and Yale’s Brian O’Neill, but I gave the edge to Polacek because RPI had a much tougher time scoring goals, and winning games, in conference than the Bulldogs, and Polacek had to do a lot more with a lot less talent around him. He lost Jerry D’Amigo and Brandon Pirri off last year’s RPI team and suffered only a minimal drop in his production. This doesn’t say everything obviously, but RPI was 18-4-3 when Polacek had a point and just 2-8-2 when he didn’t
Coach of the year – Mike Schafer, Cornell
There were a lot of people who could have been named Coach of the Year, but I settled on Schafer because the Big Red lost 1st round pick Riley Nash, 1st team All-American Brendon Nash, one of the best goalies in the country in Ben Scrivens, and conference defenseman of the year Justin Krueger off last year’s team. And Cornell still managed to finish 4th and nab a first round bye in the conference playoffs.
Freshman of the year – Greg Carey, St. Lawrence
It was a horrible year for the Saints, who finished 10th in a rebuilding effort, but Carey was a big bright spot. The Freshman was 3rd in the league with 11 goals in league play, and he led the Saints in scoring.
1st team
F – Chase Polacek, RPI
F – Brian O’Neill, Yale
F – Joe Devin, Cornell
D – Taylor Fedun, Princeton
D – Danny Biega, Harvard
G – James Mello, Dartmouth
2nd team
F – Mike Kramer, Princeton
F – Greg Carey, St. Lawrence
F – Daniel Carr, Union
D – Nick Bailen, RPI
D – Mike Devin, Cornell
G – Keith Kinkaid, Union
3rd team
F – Andrew Miller, Yale
F – Kelly Zajac, Union
F – Chris Cahill, Yale
D – Mat Bodie, Union
D – Brock Matheson, Union
G – Andy Iles, Cornell