My take on Hockey East so far.

We are almost a month and a half into this college hockey season and the Eagles are currently #1 in Hockey East and #5 in the country. So far so good for Coach York's squad, with a couple of bad losses as of late but some big games coming up to make up for those. Right now, Merrimack is number one in the whole country, thats right I said Merrimack. I was one of those people that thought MC would be good but not undefeated at this point after the loss of DaCosta. Shows how good a job Mark Dennehy is doing over in North Andover. Although going undefeated is always tough, Merrimack hasn't had the toughest of schedules. Their best win in my opinion is the one @ Agganis vs BU, but other then that they really don’t have any great wins. The Warriors don't get the Eagles till early January. As it always seems, Hockey East is pretty loaded from top to bottom. UMass, the second to last place team in the league beat BC and Lowell dominated BU, that just goes to show how deep this league is. In my opinion, last year was the first year of the "new big four" with BC, BU, MC, and UNH separating themselves from the other six teams in the league. Right now, Maine is just going the wrong direction and I really don't think they are going to get the ship righted for a couple of years, so they are out of the "big four". 

As for the middle part of the standings, I am really not sure where I would rank those teams. Out of UMass, Lowell, Providence, Maine, and NU the most dangerous is Northeastern. NU has something that not a lot of other teams have, which is a really solid goaltender. NU just blew out PC and UVM to get them back in the hunt to finish in the top half of the standings. I know UMass beat BC but I really don't think they are anything special. Versus BC, BU, MC, and UNH, Maine is a terrible 0-3 and they lost by a combined total of 10-5. Now the team I really have no idea about is Providence. I have yet to see the Friars (because BC hasn't played them) but just by looking at their results makes you wonder how good they are. PC has good wins vs teams like BU, UMass, and a two blowout wins vs UVM. On the other hand, they got killed by NU and lost @ Maine (x2). Lowell had two great efforts vs BC and then went on to kill BU. On the other hand, the Riverhawks also have bad losses vs UConn and @ UNH by a score 5-0. 

This is one of those years where anybody in Hockey East can beat anybody. Thats why each and every day BC must bring its best effort to win.