The playoff chase has arrived in Division 1 men's college hockey.
Hockey East's regular season concludes this weekend, while the "second season" gets underway in both ECAC Hockey and Atlantic Hockey. In just a few weeks, conference champions will be crowned and the NCAA tournament field will be revealed.
There is still plenty of exciting hockey left between now and then, and plenty of awards to be handed out.
So let's look at each of the New England conferences and forecast players who could take home hardware in March.
Hockey East
Player of the Year: Alex Jefferies, Merrimack (Lunenburg, Mass.)
The Hockey East scoring race is a crowded one with the likes of star Boston University defensemen Lane Hutson, senior teammate Matt Brown (who has a league-best 41 points) and the Northeastern duo of Aidan McDonough (Milton, Mass.) and Justin Hryckowian near the top of the charts. But Jefferies has been the key figure in Merrimack’s rise to the upper echelon this season. The junior is Merrimack’s first overall 40-point scorer since Parisian star Stephane Da Costa in 2010-11, giving him some elite company in the Warriors’ history books.
Defenseman: Lane Hutson, Boston University
It doesn’t take a long look down the scoresheet to find the top Hockey East rookie in Hutson, a touted defenseman who has lived up to the hype coming out of the U.S. National Team Development Program and is third in the entire circuit with 39 points. Hutson has played regularly as a top-four option on a very experienced blue line and scored 10 goals, but he has wowed even more for his playmaking ability as evidenced by his league-best 29 assists.
Goaltender: Devon Levi, Northeastern
Maine’s Victor Ostman has been a rising goaltender within a league that always boasts outstanding goaltending, but Levi has been the class of Hockey East for the second consecutive year while defending the Mike Richter Award as the nation's top stopper. The former Canadian World Junior standout and Olympian has thrived since he first took the crease for the Huskies last season, adding to his resume with a nation-leading .934 save percentage as a junior. He has lost just three times since the turn of the calendar.
Rookie: Cutter Gauthier, Boston College
Hutson is certainly at the top of the list for freshman honors as well, but the No. 5 choice in last summer’s NHL Draft certainly left his mark on the Heights this season. Gauthier has been an explosive player for the Eagles whether on the wing or at center, contributing an equal 16 goals and assists in 28 games. He has fired off his lethal shot 113 times, which puts him fourth in Hockey East. Seven of his tallies have come on the power play.
ECAC Hockey
Player of the Year: Sean Farrell, Harvard (Hopkinton, Mass.)
This looks to be an interesting race. While Collin Graf (Lincoln, Mass.) has already put up a whopping 49 points during his first season at Quinnipiac, Farrell finished the regular season scoring at an even hotter pace for Harvard, a 21-win team that is seeded second in the ECAC. Farrell has 18 goals and 47 points in just 29 games, good for a 1.62 points per game average that is second nationally to Michigan star freshman Adam Fantilli. The Canadiens prospect had more multi-goal games (6) than games in which he was held off the scoresheet (5) this season.
Defenseman: Zach Metsa, Quinnipiac
The fifth-year senior captain has been a workhorse for Quinnipiac, playing in all but one game over the last three-plus seasons dating back to his sophomore year. Metsa has followed up his All-American senior campaign with another strong run as the Bobcats’ leader on the blue line in front of Yaniv Perets, posting his second-highest point total with 27 in 33 games. He has become even more dynamic on special teams, netting three of his six goals on the power play. Metsa’s plus-27 rating is tied for first among defensemen, though sophomore teammate Jacob Quillan reached the plus-31 mark during his breakout season.
Goaltender: Yaniv Perets, Quinnipiac
Perets is the reigning best goaltender in ECAC Hockey, and there’s no reason to believe he won’t win the award again after backstopping a historic regular season in which the Bobcats were the first team to win 20 league games since 1988-89. The sophomore’s numbers — a .927 save percentage and 1.55 goals-against — are a bit behind where he was a year ago, but he has still accumulated six more wins (28), including eight shutouts. He stopped pucks at a .937 clip during league play and allowed more than one goal only once in February.
Rookie: Sam Lipkin, Quinnipiac
Rising to a spot on the top line alongside Graf and Quillan, the Philadelphia native is an example of a player who benefited from his experience representing Team USA in the World Junior Championship and has taken his game to an even more consistent level. Lipkin had a 12-22-34 line in 32 games during his debut season for Rand Pecknold’s club, but those totals have risen at a rapid clip since he returned from the elite tournament. The ECAC Hockey Rookie of the Week for the second straight week, he recorded multiple points in three of the last four games and contributed at least one in 10 of 14.
Atlantic Hockey
Player of the Year: Blake Bennett, American International
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ennett tied for the Atlantic Hockey lead with 20 goals — five more than any player on the league’s four New England teams — and totaled 32 points to pace second-place AIC. There was no senior slump for the top left winger who emerged as the Atlantic Hockey Championship MVP with seven goals last March. The Yellow Jackets didn’t win the league for the first time since 2018, but the New Yorker is on a five-game point streak and has the experience needed to deliver another postseason crown.
Defenseman: Nick Hale, Holy Cross
Hale has been a key factor in the Crusaders’ late-season surge in the Atlantic race, winning six of their last nine games to claim the No. 7 seed for the postseason. The senior from North Carolina, a Salisbury School product, has potted 16 points, including three game-winning goals, and blocked 25 shots in 28 games.
Goaltender: Jarrett Fiske, American International
The Yellow Jackets have used a rare four goaltenders this season, but Fiske is a returning senior who beat out three transfers with prior college experience for the position and leads the team in games played (21) and wins (9). Though Western Michigan transfer and Avon Old Farms product Alex Aslanidis was 8-3-1 in 13 games, it was Fiske who emerged and will enter the postseason without a loss in four starts (2-0-2). He has not allowed more than two goals in any of those games, and finished the regular campaign with a 22-save shutout of Sacred Heart.
Rookie: Marcus Joughin, Sacred Heart
Five of Sacred Heart’s top scorers are seniors or graduate students, but Joughin has emerged by scoring eight goals and 23 points in 32 games. His point total is the highest by a Pioneers freshman since Braeden Tuck had 28 in 2019-20, and it has come while working into a prominent role at the center of a top line that includes senior assistant captains in Neil Shea (Marshfield, Mass.) and Todd Goehring.
