The University of Maine’s Hockey East tournament championship team finished the season ranked seventh in one major national poll and eighth in the other.
First-time national champion Western Michigan topped both polls after beating Boston University 6-2 in Saturday night’s championship game at the Enterprise Center in St. Louis.
Western Michigan wound up 34-7-1 and the National Collegiate Hockey Conference team led the nation in wins.
The Broncos were a unanimous No. 1 in both polls. It was the seventh time in 10 years that an NCHC team captured the national title.
The Black Bears, 5-1 losers to Penn State in the first round of the Allentown Regional of the NCAA tournament, went 24-8-6 this season. That is the program’s best record since the 2003-04 UMaine team went 33-8-3 and lost to Denver 1-0 in the NCAA title game at the TD Garden in Boston.
The Black Bears wound up seventh in the final USA Hockey poll and eighth in the U.S. College Hockey Online poll. They were the top seed for the Allentown Regional and the third overall seed in the 16-team NCAA Tournament.
They went 23-12-2 a year ago, losing to Cornell in the first round of the Springfield Regional. Last year’s team finished 10th in the USCHO poll and 11th in the USA Hockey poll.
In the USCHO poll, Western Michigan was followed in the top 10 by Boston University (24-14-2), Denver (21-12-1), Boston College (27-8-2), Penn State (22-14-4), Michigan State (26-7-4), UConn (23-12-4), UMaine, Minnesota (25-11-4) and UMass (21-14-5).
In the USA Hockey poll, the top six teams were the same with UMaine finishing ahead of Minnesota and UConn and UMass rounding out the top 10.
In the PairWise Rankings, which mimic the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee’s process for choosing the 16-team field, UMaine wound up fourth.
The PairWise Rankings compares all teams by three criteria: record against common opponents; head-to-head competition; and the Ratings Percentage Index, which rates teams on its wins and losses and their strength of schedule.
Boston College ended up atop the PairWise Rankings followed by Michigan State, Western Michigan, Maine, Boston University, a tie between Minnesota, UConn and Denver; Providence College and UMass.
That gave Hockey East six teams in the top 10.
