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Dec 6, 2024 | 
eprinkside.com | Ryan Lambert
NCAA CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. — It’s hardly scientific, but the pre-season ECAC coaches’ poll listed the Dartmouth Big Green as the No. 3 team in the conference. Most years, that would make them a fringe NCAA playoff team, probably on the outside looking in. And that alone would have been a big improvement, given they finished at No. 29 in the national Pairwise rankings last season. Now, they’re on pace to obliterate that heightened expectation.
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Dec 5, 2024 | 
eprinkside.com | Ryan Lambert
NHL It's supposed to be kinda easy to coach a tanking team. You play the most important guys to the future of the organization almost too much, let them rack up points on the power play, and lose a bunch of 4-2 games. But supposed-to-be doesn't always work out, for a litany of reasons.
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Dec 1, 2024 | 
eprinkside.com | Ryan Lambert
NHL Doesn't matter if you're rebuilding or trying to compete for something meaningful. One place you never want to find yourself as an organization is feeling like every game is a referendum. And that's where the New York Rangers are right now. Friday's loss to Philadelphia, their fifth straight game without a win, was a disaster. Proof that their willingness to trade long-tenured leaders didn't work to motivate them. A sign that they're just circling the drain.
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Nov 14, 2024 | 
eprinkside.com | Ryan Lambert
NCAA In the NHL, there is the infamous cut-off date of Nov. 1 that all teams keep an eye on. In the cap era, if you're more than four points out of a playoff spot on that date, the odds that you’ll make the playoffs are extremely low. It’s not as though your season is over, certainly, but a lot has to go right for you and wrong for someone else to make that step into the post-season. In college hockey, a similar kind of cut-off exists: Nov. 11.
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Nov 7, 2024 | 
eprinkside.com | Ryan Lambert
NCAA The landscape of developmental hockey and, by extension, the NHL just changed forever. Earlier today, the NCAA Division 1 Council voted to adopt a proposal that ends the college hockey classification of most CHL players as professionals. Starting on Aug. 1, 2025, CHL players will, in many cases, be allowed to join NCAA Division 1 programs, and play for those schools in the 2025-26 season.
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Nov 6, 2024 | 
eprinkside.com | Ryan Lambert
NHL Barry Trotz said in a radio interview this week that if the Nashville Predators don’t start moving in the right direction soon, they will have to consider a rebuild plan. That’s quite interesting, isn’t it? Just a few months ago, Trotz traded away his 22-year-old “Goalie of the Future” to extend a goaltender seven years older through 2033. He also signed 33- and 34-year-old forwards to five- and four-year deals, respectively, and a 30-year-old defenceman through 2031.
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Nov 4, 2024 | 
eprinkside.com | Ryan Lambert
NHL Last season's Washington Capitals were among the worst playoff teams in recent memory. Not only did they barely scrape into the postseason with just 91 points. Not only did they get swept in ugly fashion out of the first round. Not only did they have poor underlying numbers.
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Nov 1, 2024 | 
eprinkside.com | Ryan Lambert
NHL This may look to you like a standard NHL “power rankings” but let me assure you, friend, that it is anything but. These rankings are based entirely on how I feel about a team’s chances of winning the Cup, meaning you can’t tell me I’m wrong because these are my feelings and feelings can’t be wrong. Please enjoy the Power Feelings. 32. San Jose Sharks (Last time: 32)I honestly thought coming into the season that there might be some room for them to not be the worst team in the league.
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Oct 24, 2024 | 
eprinkside.com | Ryan Lambert |Sean Shapiro
NCAA This article is presented by Everything College Hockey. After just a few weeks of the college season, we're seeing some surprising results. RPI leads the nation in goals per game. Three goalies already have a pair of shutouts. UMass Lowell has a special teams net of 146. The ECAC is above .500 out of conference. But also, y'know, Denver, BC, and BU are still the best teams in the country, the NCHC and Hockey East look great, and a lot of the preseason awards favorites are delivering.
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Oct 16, 2024 | 
eprinkside.com | Ryan Lambert
NCAA This article is presented by Everything College Hockey. Ask any college coach who takes over a struggling programme how long it takes to get things back on track, and they'll tell you it's usually Year 3 when you take your biggest strides. And of the many great programmes of the 1990s and 2000s, few have struggled more in recent years than Colorado College. From 1995 to 2011, the Tigers made the NCAA tournament 12 times in 17 tries and went to the Frozen Four three times.
