Over The Fence: Frozen Frenzy

This year’s NCAA Men’s Frozen Four does not look like any that has happened before. Instead of just one Cinderella story, all four teams are underdogs, ready to shock the world when they win a national title. Quinnipiac, UMass-Lowell and Saint Cloud State will each play their first ever Frozen Four games, while Yale hasn’t advanced this far in the playoffs since 1952.

A Frozen Four with all relatively unknown teams guarantees an underdog victory, a break from the monotony of previous champions and a chance for the sport to grow in popularity across the nation.

One of the coolest things about any playoff series is seeing how far the dark horse can go. This year, a dark horse has to win because there is simply no other option. Quinnipiac has shocked the world all season and is still on a roll. UMass-Lowell somehow bounced back from a rough start to make it to this point. Saint Cloud State wasn’t supposed to beat Miami University and Yale certainly should not have beaten North Dakota, let alone top-seeded Minnesota.

These perpetual challenges are why this year’s Frozen Four is so interesting. All of these teams have faced great adversity and they all have the momentum to vault themselves to the top of the sport.

These underdogs also provide a different view of college hockey. It is one thing to root for Michigan, Wisconsin, Boston College and other teams that win year in and year out. It’s easy to root for those teams the same way it’s easy to root for the Patriots or Lakers.

But watching the same teams win every year gets boring. Nobody is going to be bored watching this year’s Frozen Four. One of these teams will win its first NCAA Division I Men’s Hockey championship. It will be part of that school’s history forever. Instead of being another year in a list of championships, 2013 will start the list.

The success of all four of these teams could help college hockey expand throughout the United States. “Why can’t we be next?” is a phrase that comes to mind when thinking about other programs’ perspectives.

Individual schools don’t have to be the only ones to dream. ECAC Hockey had Union College in the Frozen Four last year, and this year it has Quinnipiac and Yale. The recent success not only gives other ECAC schools reason to dream, but it also could inspire smaller Atlantic Hockey and WCHA schools.

My high school had about as much spirit as a late-September Marlins game, so the semester I spent at Union gave me a chance to finally embrace a school team. Before I even got to college, I spent the last months of my senior year proudly wearing my Union College hockey sweatshirt and watching the games that took the team to the Frozen Four. Even though I’m not at the school anymore, I still cheered for the Dutchmen throughout this season and enjoy when ECAC teams are successful.

I have already seen friends and former classmates embracing the success of the hockey teams at Quinnipiac and Yale. It was impossible to ignore the weekly national hockey rankings when they would show up all over Facebook and Twitter. Last weekend, my timeline was full of Michigan and Syracuse students cheering during the Men’s Basketball Final Four, and I can only expect the same from those at Quinnipiac and Yale this weekend.

One part of me wants Quinnipiac and Yale to face each other for the championship.  The other part only wants to imagine the flood of posts reminding me of where Union or Boston University could have been.

It’s hard to truly pick one team as a favorite to win it all. It is also hard to imagine any of these teams ending the season without finally taking home a championship.  Rooting against anybody in this Frozen Four means rooting for a heartbreaking end to a persevering season.

When this college hockey season started, there probably wasn’t a person on the planet that could predict this Frozen Four. If given the choice of watching this year’s teams or Michigan, Boston University, Wisconsin and Cornell, most would likely choose the latter.

But this season will have a surprise ending, and surprises are fun. Underdogs and Cinderella stories are fun. Watching history being made is fun, and one of these teams is in the midst of writing its own history.

Everything about this Frozen Four should attract not only hockey fans, but fans of any sport. These teams weren’t supposed to get here, so anything past this point will be the cherry on top of a surreal season, not only for Quinnipiac, UMass-Lowell, Saint Cloud State and Yale, but also for college hockey as a whole.