Quinnipiac coach Rand Pecknold remembers a time when he had to sell recruits on the potential of ECAC Hockey. The conference, which includes New England schools Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown and Quinnipiac, was long considered a poor man’s version of Hockey East. Prestigious Hockey East programs like Boston College and Boston University historically drew the top New England prospects, as is evidenced by the combined 47 Frozen Four appearances between the two schools. By comparison, Harvard has the most Frozen Four showings among ECAC Hockey schools with 13.
Despite that history, Pecknold (Bedford, N.H.) has found that he no longer has to sell recruits on the potential of ECAC Hockey. That potential has been recognized.
Since the start of the 2012-13 season, Quinnpiac boasts the highest win total among NCAA Division 1 schools and has made two appearances in the NCAA tournament championship game. Quinnipiac’s rise on the national stage has helped legitimize the case that ECAC Hockey is the premier conference in the Northeast. Since the start of the 2012-13 season, ECAC Hockey schools have won more national championships than Hockey East schools (two to one) and matched the number of Frozen Four appearances (five).
"We still have to be proactive when we’re recruiting, but the closing rate is higher," Pecknold said. "It’s not the only reason a kid chooses a school, but most kids want to win. We’ve won as much as anybody in the last five years, and the player development in our entire league is the best of any league in the country."
ECAC Hockey teams were rarely in the national championship discussion in the 20 years prior to the start of the 2012-13 season. ECAC Hockey teams entered that season on a 23-year drought since its last national champion — Harvard, in 1989. ECAC Hockey teams started to emerge as national title contenders in February 2013 when Quinnipiac earned the No. 1 ranking in the country. In-state rival Yale caught fire in the 2013 NCAA tournament, snapping the conference drought between national championships. The Yale-Quinnipiac championship game marked the first time two ECAC Hockey schools battled for a national title since Cornell and Clarkson in 1970.
Union’s national championship in 2014 gave ECAC Hockey back-to-back champions, and the conference has continued to thrive in the years since, with Quinnipiac making another appearance in the national championship game in 2016 and Harvard entering the 2017 NCAA tournament as the No. 1 seed in the East Regional.
The success of ECAC Hockey teams can certainly be attributed — in part — to the changing dynamics of recruiting. High school players are committing to schools earlier, making the evaluation process more an exercise in projection than skill assessment. For that reason, Hockey East schools like BU and BC that typically lure the top talent in New England might have more misses in their recruiting these days. With the rise of the British Columbia Hockey League and various other junior leagues in North America, college coaches also have a larger pool of players to recruit, resulting in the talent pool spreading throughout more Division 1 programs rather than just the perennial Hockey East powerhouses.
"Junior hockey has become such a key to recruiting," Dartmouth coach Bob Gaudet (Saugus, Mass.) said. "With the USHL, EJHL and NAHL, junior hockey has really flourished. It’s not regional recruiting anymore. In the past, I think hockey recruiting was focused geographically. Now, we have kids from all different areas."
Some ECAC Hockey coaches have found ways to take advantage of the new recruiting trends. For instance, Pecknold says his staff has tapped into the BCHL for older, more seasoned players rather than recruit high school freshmen who are looking to commit early.
"Kids are committing when they’re so young — in ninth and 10th grade," Pecknold said. "It throws luck into play. The big schools take those kids, and it’s left a lot of good players overlooked. We can make a decision as a staff to wait and be patient. We’ll be the last one at the dance with scholarship money, and we can find good players."
Quinnipiac is also one of several ECAC Hockey schools that has established a reputation for keeping its best players for three or four years rather than losing them to pro hockey after one or two. Several of Quinnipiac’s top players during the program’s best years — Michael Peca, Connor Jones, Kellen Jones, Michael Garteig and Eric Hartzell — spent four years at Quinnipiac. Harvard is another example of an ECAC Hockey team that tends to keep its best players longer. For example, Jimmy Vesey (North Reading, Mass.) earned the Hobey Baker Award as a senior in 2016. A year earlier, BU’s Jack Eichel (North Chelmsford, Mass.) earned the Hobey Baker before turning pro after his freshman season.
Union’s Mike Vecchione (Saugus, Mass.) and Yale’s Andrew Miller are also examples of ECAC Hockey players who played key roles for national champion teams and stayed at their respective schools for four years.
"There is something to be said for the ECAC Hockey schools keeping their players for four years," Harvard coach Ted Donato (Dedham, Mass.) said. "There’s a balance between finding kids who are interested in graduating and kids who are looking at the allure of the NHL. Where some teams find their niche trying to acquire top guys that are there for a short period of time because they’re highly drafted, other teams go for kids that are much more interested in graduating."
Donato’s son, Ryan (Scituate, Mass.), is one of those kids who seems to prioritize graduating over pursuing NHL dreams. Now a junior at Harvard, Ryan Donato was a second-round pick by the Boston Bruins in the 2014 NHL Entry Draft. He could have opted to go pro following last season when he led Harvard to an ECAC Hockey tournament championship and was named Ivy League Player of the Year. He chose, instead, to return for his junior season.
"The opportunity that ECAC Hockey has provided me is better than what I would get if I turned pro," Ryan Donato said. "It’s just another year or two to develop as a hockey player. At the end of the day, if I ever make that jump, I want to stick and not be a guy who is sent down and back up. I don’t want to go back and forth. ECAC Hockey is the best chance to develop my game and create a job for myself."
While ECAC Hockey fans can make the case that the conference’s top programs have outperformed those of Hockey East, it is difficult to argue that ECAC Hockey is stronger top to bottom. ECAC Hockey teams have posted a winning record against Hockey East schools only once in the past 10 seasons — in 2015, with a record of 28- 27-5.
Brown coach Brendan Whittet (East Providence, R.I.) has been working to lift his program out of the bottom tier in ECAC Hockey since he took over the team in 2009. He attributes the improvement of ECAC Hockey in recent seasons to the consistency of teams like Quinnipiac, Union, Harvard, Yale and Cornell.
"We have elite-level teams here," Whittet said. "If you’re taking over a struggling program and trying to compete with the big boys, it takes time. The interesting thing is it hasn’t been cyclical. In the past, you might see teams rise and fall back down. Now, we have teams that are consistently good. Harvard has been that way recently. Union is traditionally good. Cornell has historically been good. Yale is always pretty good. We really haven’t seen those cycles."
There are various reasons for the sustained success of the top ECAC Hockey programs. Many rival coaches credited Union’s success to coach Rick Bennett (Springfield, Mass.), who led the Dutchmen to a national championship in his third season as head coach in 2014. Many credited Harvard’s success to the impressive annual recruiting hauls by Donato and his staff. Quinnipiac certainly benefited from construction of a state-ofthe- art hockey rink, now called the TD Bank Sports Center, in 2007. The $52 million rink has helped lure recruits looking for big-time college hockey.
"There’s no question that launched us from the fringe," Pecknold said. "We were ranked in that 18 to 20 range every year, and now we’re in the top 10 or top five."
Indeed, Quinnipiac has spent much of the past five years ranked in the top 10 of the PairWise. As coaches like Whittet reflect on that new reality, they do so with the understanding that if they want to compete for a conference title, they must also build a program capable of winning a national title.
"It’s gotten so competitive internally in ECAC Hockey," Whittet said. "It’s a combination of recruiting and coaching. In general, our league has done a really good job of getting high-end players into our schools. The level of play has risen. There’s something to be said for coaches in the league. There’s a lot of experience and really talented assistants who are very knowledgeable. They’re getting the type of players that ultimately succeed and grow."
