Headline from today's Press-Herald says it all:

"UMaine finishes in last place"

not a good thing for confidence building of the fans in southern Maine in
advance of the next game at CCCC.

Deron...
it's even worse when you consider that until recently (2 years ago ?, maybe
three), the poll(s) were not top 15, but were top 10.

Maine indeed will need to be virtually perfect from this point out to have a
shot at an at-large berth or else it's win at the Fleet.

Maine's tendency the last few years, however, has been notching 2 or 3
points out of four in the two-game series in conference play the second half
of the season, even at home.  Were that to be the case this year, the Fleet
will be Maine's only chance for an invite to the Round of 16, and then, very
possibly, also being seeded for a trip West.

No one here should be booking hotel rooms at the midpoint of Worcester and
Amherst for mid-March weekend nights.

PWR comparisons to this point do not go favaorably to Maine, their only
quality win so far being New Hampshire (and arguably Vermont also).
Otherwise, their wins are against second-tier squads.

Finally ... 1-10 yesterday on PP and only 26 shots on ?  The offensive woes
continue.  Even though they gave up 3-4 with a man down (good defense in
being whistled for only that number of penalties, BTW), just ONE MORE goal
when a man up (a 20% rate, not atypical of Maine teams of years past) at
least would have earned them a valuable tie.

I'm envisioning there will be a much less dramatic lead up to my Last Four
trip to The Ohio State University in April....

Dan


Deron Treadwell wrote:

>It stands to reason that for the first time in a long time Maine will
>not be ranked in the Top 15 this week.  (what do you guys think, about
>five or six years?)
>
>But that won't be even close to as scary as our Pairwise Ranking will
>look when that comes out.  There is at least some hope there.  With
>Maine playing mostly Hockey East teams the rest of the way, if they can
>put together a serious win streak they could still play themselves into
>the NCAA Tournament.  However, that is a big IF and it becomes more and
>more likely it will take defending their Hockey East title to get a
>berth in the big dance.
>