Conference tournaments had just concluded, votes were cast, Notre Dame-West Haven maintained its No. 1 ranking, and the FCIAC had three teams among the top five in the current GameTimeCT Boys Hockey Top 10 Poll going into the state tournaments.
Those three FCIAC teams – second-ranked New Canaan, No. 3 Ridgefield, and No. 5 Darien – all drew byes into this Saturday’s quarterfinal round of the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference Boys Hockey Division I Tournament.
They are all in the upper bracket and then Greenwich went and set up a quarterfinal doubleheader of four FCIAC teams at Stamford’s Terry Conners Rink with a 4-3 double overtime victory over defending champion Fairfield Prep in Wednesday night’s first round.
In Saturday’s quarterfinals, Darien plays Ridgefield at 5 p.m., and Greenwich plays at New Canaan at 7:30 p.m. at Terry Conners Rink on Saturday.
Notre Dame-West Haven, which improved to 16-4-2 overall this season with its 3-0 victory over Fairfield Prep in the SCC/SWC Division I championship game, received eight of the nine first-place votes in the latest state poll.
New Canaan won a 3-2 overtime thriller over Ridgefield in the championship game of the 2024 FCIAC Boys Hockey Tournament and maintained its No. 2 ranking.
The 21-2-0 Rams were the recipient of the other first-place vote, and they were seven polling points behind ND-West Haven. The top-ranked Green Knights received 89 points and New Canaan got 82.
Max Lowe scored the game-winning goal 6:56 into overtime to give New Canaan that 3-2 victory over Ridgefield in last Saturday’s FCIAC championship at Danbury Ice Arena on March 2.
Rogan Lowe and Tony DelCarmine scored the other goals for the winners. Max Lowe scored a pair of goals the previous game in New Canaan’s 5-0 semifinal victory over Greenwich.
Luke Pereira and Angelo Ciminiello netted Ridgefield’s goals in the FCIAC final. Pereira had previously come up big to help get the Tigers to the conference championship game as he had a hat trick to lead them to a 6-2 victory over Darien in the semifinals.
Ridgefield’s impressive performances in the FCIAC tournament led to the 15-8 Tigers vaulting up two spots from the previous state poll to No. 3 in this poll which was released March 4.
Ridgefield received 65 polling points, and just two points behind was Simsbury (19-2-1), which maintained its No. 4 ranking after becoming the CCC North champion with a 6-4 victory over Northwest Catholic.
Fifth-ranked Darien (13-7-1) and Ridgefield flip-flopped their rankings from the previous GameTimeCT Top 10.
Fairfield Prep (8-14-0) was ranked No. 6 and followed by Northwest Catholic (13-9-0), No. 8 Xavier (7-12-2) and Cheshire (20-1-1). Those four remained in the same exact rankings where they were in the previous poll.
This current poll is the second-to-last GameTimeCT poll of the year as the final poll will be voted on after the championship games in the CIAC tournaments in Division I, Division II, and Division III.
The top eight teams in this poll are all in the 2024 CIAC Boys Hockey Division I Tournament. The top five teams in the state poll are also the same top five teams in the Division I seedings and they all drew first-round byes into the quarterfinals.
Fourth-seeded Darien gets an immediate rematch with fifth-seeded Ridgefield. New Canaan is seeded first and in the upper bracket with Darien and Ridgefield, while second-seeded Notre Dame-West Haven and third-seeded Simsbury are in the lower bracket.
Eleven teams were in this year’s Division I tournament so there were three games in Wednesday’s first round.
Ninth-seeded Greenwich set up that quarterfinal doubleheader of FCIAC teams when Frank Skibo scored the game-winning goal in the second overtime in that 4-3 victory over No. 8 Fairfield Prep at Wonderland of Ice in Bridgeport.
A huge reason why the Cardinals won was because of the stellar play of their goalie Nick Sinisi, who came up with many excellent saves among his 53 total while helping them rally back from a two-goal deficit going into the third period. Fairfield Prep ended up with a 56-36 advantage in shots.
In addition to that victory improving the Cardinals to 6-16 with their fourth victory in their last five games, they also earned themselves a rematch against New Canaan in Saturday’s second game of the doubleheader at 7:30 p.m. Darien will play Ridgefield at 5 o’clock in the opening game.
The higher-seeded teams hosted the games in the first round of the state tourney and the quarterfinal games are at neutral sites.
In Wednesday night’s other two games, seventh-seeded Xavier advanced to the quarterfinals with a 3-1 victory over No. 10 St. Joseph from the FCIAC, and No. 6 Northwest Catholic advanced with a 9-1 victory over No. 11 Notre Dame-Fairfield. Xavier challenges ND-West Haven and Northwest Catholic plays Simsbury on Saturday.
All four FCIAC quarterfinal teams will partake in the rarity of playing against the same team four times in the same season because both of Saturday’s two games are also rematches of the FCIAC tournament semifinal doubleheader at Darien Ice House on Feb. 28.
New Canaan’s Rams won both games in the regular season by the scores of 4-1 on Dec. 11 and 8-1 on Jan. 6, and then registered that 5-0 shutout victory over Greenwich to advance to the FCIAC tournament championship.
Coach Clark Jones’ Rams will take a 14-game winning streak into Saturday’s quarterfinals as their last loss was to Darien, 4-3 in overtime, on Jan 13. Their only other loss was to Notre Dame-West Haven, 5-1 at home, on Dec. 23.
When Ridgefield’s Tigers had that big 6-2 win over Darien in the second game of conference tourney semifinal doubleheader they avenged a pair of losses to the Blue Wave in the regular season – 4-1 on Jan. 24 in Ridgefield and 4-0 on Feb. 17 in Darien.
The Division I semifinals are scheduled for March 13 with the sites and times of the faceoffs still to be determined. The championship game will be played in Hamden at Quinnipiac University’s M&T Arena on March 19 at 7 p.m.
Notre Dame-West Haven usually includes several of the best hockey programs from Massachusetts and Rhode Island on its schedule and it was in six of those games in which the Green Wave had their four losses and two ties.
Coach Vieira’s 16-4-2 Green Knights were 11-0 against their Connecticut opponents this year, including three victories over defending Fairfield Prep, two victories over Darien and that Dec. 23 victory over New Canaan.
Second-seeded Fairfield Prep shut out top-seeded Notre Dame-West Haven, 3-0, in last year’s Division I final after both teams advanced with semifinal victories over FCIAC teams. It was Prep’s second straight shutout victory as the Jesuits shut out 11th-seeded Greenwich, 5-0, in the opening game of the semifinal doubleheader at Quinnipiac and then ND-West Haven advanced with a 5-1 victory over fourth-seeded New Canaan.
The Westhill/Stamford cooperative team is the only FCIAC team in the Division II state tournament which got underway Tuesday.
ourth-seeded Westhill/Stamford defeated 13th-seeded Lyman Hall, 5-3, in the first round to advance to Friday night’s quarterfinals against fifth-seeded Amity at the neutral site of Wonderland of Ice in Bridgeport at 8:15 p.m.
Staples and Wilton were in the Division III tournament and the two FCIAC teams were both eliminated in Monday’s first round.
Staples was seeded 16th and put forth quite the challenge against the top-seeded Bethel/Brookfield/Danbury/Immaculate co-op team before losing in overtime, 3-2. The ninth-seeded Rocky Hill Co-op team defeated eighth-seeded Wilton, 4-1.