I was paying close attention to the first week of the NCAA DI women’s hockey playoffs last week. Of all the games that were played across the five conferences there were only 4 upsets.
In the ECAC, the single upset was Union (#9) beating Brown (#8) for their first ever playoff win. It was a mild upset, given that the two programs were only separated by 5 points and 1 win in the ECAC standings. Otherwise, all the other match-ups went according to higher team in the standings.
For Hockey East, Merrimack (#10) has the biggest upset, beating New Hampshire (#7) in their first round game 3-1. Given the Pairwise and MyHockeyRankings, this was a bit of a surprise. However, in the next round, the only lower ranked team to win was Northeastern (#5) beating Providence (#4). Only 3 points and 1 win separated these two teams and Northeastern was actually ranked higher than Providence in both the Pairwise (#15 vs #20) and MyHockeyRankings (#17 vs #21).
A nice surprise was seeing Post (#6) beat Franklin Pierce (3) in the opening round of the NEWHA playoffs. Post has not had much success in recent years, but with new head coach Pat Bingham, the team advanced to its first-ever semi-finals today vs. Long Island University. Nice to see the program finally get over the hump.
There were no upsets in the advancing teams in the WCHA and AHA conferences, although Minnesota State and Syracuse each won a game in the best-of-3 series.
The lack of major surprises suggests that regular-season performance remains a strong predictor of playoff success. As the playoffs continue, it will be interesting to see if any lower-seeded teams can break through and challenge the favorites.