Posted: 2/29/08 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Brad Vest Illinois' Nick Fabbrinini streaks up the ice during the conference championship game against Lindenwood Univeristy, Feb. 17th.

It all comes down to this.

Despite all the accolades the Illini have collected this year - a No. 1 ranking, an undefeated record and a conference championship - a remarkable season will quickly turn into a disappointment if the Illinois hockey club leaves empty-handed at this weekends ACHA National Championships.

The American Collegiate Hockey Association's top 16 teams will converge at the ESL Sports Centre in Rochester, N.Y., for the tournament, which runs from March 1-5. Fifteen teams will look to bring the Illini's dream season to an abrupt end.

As the No. 16 seed, Robert Morris (Pa.) (18-10-3) will have the first crack at top seeded Illinois in the tournament's opening round on Saturday. The Colonials earned an automatic bid through their regular season Eastern Collegiate Hockey League (ECHL) title.

Heading into the season the Illini (34-0-0) had three goals in mind: a CSCHL regular season title, a CSCHL tournament championship and an ACHA national title.

They handily accomplished the first two, but head coach Chad Cassel said the third and final goal is "the most difficult and the most important."

"It's a long week, and we're going to have to play well," Cassel said. "Hopefully we'll be healthy and ready to go."

Illinois is approaching the final games of the season with all the confidence of a team measuring its winning streak in years, not games. The Illini's last regular season loss came on Feb. 24, 2007 to a CSCHL All-Star team.

A look at the tournament seeding yields a list of teams the Illini have already beaten this season.

Of the 16 teams who qualified for the tournament, Illinois has come away with victories against No. 2 Lindenwood, No. 3 Penn State, No. 7 Ohio, No. 10 Iowa State, No. 11 Kent State and No. 13 Western Michigan.

The Illini's incredible year is all the more remarkable considering the uncertainty the team faced heading into the season. Ranked No. 2 in the preseason, the Illini were without a starting goaltender after Mike DeGeorge's departure and were forced to convert two forwards to defense to shore up a lack of depth.

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools

The Daily Illini encourages on-topic discussion through article commenting on its articles and blogs. It is our policy not to delete any comments based upon political or ideological point of view. However, we reserve the right to remove comments that are abusive, off-topic or use excessive foul language.

The posting of copyrighted material, including any and all content for which you are not the author, is illegal under Federal intellectual property laws. Such activity will not be tolerated. Comments containing copyrighted material will be removed, and continued violation of copyright law is grounds for being banned completely from commenting on DailyIllini.com.

If you feel any post meets these conditions or merits review, please e-mail our editors at meonline@dailyillini.com.