Haven't listened to the podcast (not really a podcast person), but did they go into a comparison of last year's vs. this year's Qpac team? At least from a high level they seem similar; two fewer losses than last year against a similar looking schedule seems to be the biggest difference in their pairwise (#2 vs. #8 last year). Maybe this year had a higher number of quality wins, but probably also a few worse losses than the teams they lost to last year. Overall they both scored and allowed more goals than last year (somehow they only allowed 14 goals in 22 conference games last year, leading the nation in goals against), which is probably a tradeoff I'd take, though we didn't have any trouble bombing their #1 ranked defense for 7 goals last year.

Definitely hope a lot of it is a result of weak scheduling; ECAC has been a mixed bag in the tournament so far. Colgate and Harvard got bombed, Cornell acquitted itself well, and Qpac has obviously been rolling. Not going to be easy, certainly, though they don't scare me the way some other teams would.

Yeah, Qpac feels like a team that against our kind of firepower, if you can get an early lead the floodgates can really come open. Like last year, where we built a 4-0 lead by the 2nd intermission, and after that strange run where they closed it to 4-3, we ended up winning 7-4.

The one big concern I have is their goalie, who leads the country in GAA by a wide margin and is I think second in save percentage. Their top-10 scoring offense concerns me less--I'd say a lot of that is due to a weak strength of schedule--but the PSU game shows how dangerous a hot goalie can be. We dominated that game start to finish and yet had to scratch our way into OT before finally winning it.

So if we can get a few goals early and get that early lead, I think we'll be in good shape. If we're getting stonewalled by their goalie, though, it'll probably be a nailbiter...