Looking Around the CCHA

With the Broncos off for the weekend I thought I'd take a quick look around the CCHA and what this weekend's results tell us about how the league is shaping up for the season.

~ Notre Dame beat the crap out of BGSU. They won 5-1 at home Friday and then went to Ohio and just destroyed the Falcons 9-1. Ouch!!! The Broncos are in for a world of hurt next weekend if the Irish keep playing this way.

~ Miami continued to make their case as best team in the conference as they swept Michigan in Oxford. Miami is in first place with 19 points, but have played more games then anyone else. Looking at the standings in winning percentage order (making the differences in number of games played irrelevant) Miami is still in first place. The Broncos get them at home in just a couple weeks.

~ Michigan and Michigan State are mediocre. What? Yep, you read that right. Michigan is only at the .500 mark in CCHA play while the Spartans are only 2 points ahead of WMU (3 ahead of NMU) and the Broncos have a couple games in hand. That said, it's still early and both of these teams have too much talent and too good of coaching to not get things turned around, and soon. We'll see how good they both are this next weekend in the College Hockey Showcase as they take turns taking on a mediocre Wisconsin team and a terrific Minnesota team.

~ At the start of the season who thought the 4 best teams in the CCHA, so far, would be Miami, Nebraska-Omaha, Notre Dame, and Alaska? Miami and Notre Dame were expected to be here, but Alaska was expected to be horrible and UNO was expected to be a middle-of-the-pack team. The real question is: can they hold on to their place in the standings through the rest of the season?

Western Michigan's upcoming games: 2 @ Notre Dame, 2 vs. Miami, 2 @ Alaska. That would be 6 straight games against 3 of the top 4 teams in the current league standings. After that it's off to the Dodge Holiday Classic for games against Northeastern and either Brown or Minnesota.