A crowd of teams at top of ECACHL

When you think about the heart of college hockey in America, the states in the Old Northwest, such as Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, come immediately to mind. Take a quick glance at the NCAA Women's Ice Hockey national rankings and what you see may surprise you: the Eastern College Athletic Conference Hockey League (ECACHL) is dominating the sport.

Founded in 1938, the ECAC was originally formed for schools whose normal conferences did not support every sport. Princeton and the rest of the Ivy League schools were a perfect fit, because the Ivy League — the Tigers' normal conference — does not offer several important sports, including hockey.

In 1983, the ECAC opened to women's sports as well, and since then the conference's women's hockey teams have been some of the strongest in the country. ECAC teams have either won or been runners-up in five of the past six NCAA championships, and this year the conference has more than a few viable candidates to keep the tradition alive.

Right now there are four teams ranked in the country's top 10 and one more that could crack the rankings as early as next weekend. Harvard (11-2 overall, 9-1 ECAC) has probably played the best overall hockey this year and is currently ranked No. 5 in the nation. The Crimson shares the ECAC lead with Dartmouth (9-3, 9-1), which is currently ranked No. 6. Princeton (8-4-2, 8-2-1) is third in the conference and No. 9 in the nation, and St. Lawrence (12-4-2, 7-3-0) is currently fourth in the conference and ranked No. 10 nationally. Colgate (7-9-1, 7-3-0) is tied with the Saints in conference play, and big victories over Dartmouth and St. Lawrence have left it two spots out of a top-10 ranking.

This logjam at the top leaves the Raiders just two games behind the first-place Crimson, but there are a number of other teams that Colgate must pass in order to make a move toward the top. This is not to say, however, that the ECAC is the best in the nation, because it is not. As good as the teams at the top of the rankings are, some of the teams at the bottom are equally bad.

Both Union (4-10, 0-6) and Brown (2-11-1, 0-9-0) are currently winless in the conference, and each have been dealt ugly losses by the ECAC's premier teams. In October, Brown played away games at Harvard and Dartmouth in which it was outscored, 13-2, and Union's schedule is peppered with losses such as 11-0 to Dartmouth, 10-0 to Harvard and 9-2 to Princeton.

The dichotomy between these two levels of teams widens every weekend. There are currently six teams over .500 — Princeton, Dartmouth, Harvard, Colgate, St. Lawrence and Clarkson (10-6-2, 5-4-1) — and none of them has lost to a team below .500. This makes the battle for the conference championships a five-team race, but among those five teams, anything can happen.

The Tigers started hot this year — undefeated in their first eight conference games — but the depth of the conference eventually caught up to them and the Orange and Black dropped consecutive games to Dartmouth and Harvard. Earlier in the season, the Tigers took down both Colgate and St. Lawrence. Since teams play each other twice a season, the next time through the rotation will be crucial for the Tigers to make up ground.

Princeton's season thus far has been more the norm than the exception in a conference whose leader changes almost every week. Much like the Tigers have experienced, the other teams will hit stretches in which they play weaker teams, followed by parts of the schedule in which they play much tougher competition. It will be the better teams' ability to handle these lesser teams that might make the difference between first and second place.

It is a natural rule of sports that upsets eventually occur. The classic NFL adage that "on any given Sunday you can win or you can lose" holds true for much more than football. It is only a matter of time until a team like Brown or Union might play the role of giantkiller and take down one of the ECAC's Jolly Green frontrunners, and such a loss would be devastating to any of these top teams.

So far this season, the Tigers have played well enough to contend for a conference championship, but in looking at the teams set to oppose them, 'well enough' might not be good enough.