If Mercyhurst ascends to No. 1 in the USCHO poll for the first time in program history on Monday, the Lakers will be the just the 10th program ever to earn that distinction, since the poll started in the 1998-99 season. The other nine teams and the dates of their first No. 1 ranking are listed below.
What makes the Lakers’ rise unique is that few teams have ever ascended to the No. 1 ranking for the first time in midseason without having previously won a national title or equivalent. The only exception is Harvard in December 1999. (UNH was No. 1 in 1998, Brown and Northeastern had won ECAC titles before there was any “national” title, UMD and Minnesota had previously won national titles, Wisconsin, Dartmouth, and SLU all earned their No. 1 rankings in preseason polls).
11/2/98 – UNH
12/7/99 – Harvard
12/6/99 – Northeastern
2/7/00 – Brown
10/16/01 – Dartmouth
10/29/02 – UMD
1/14/02 – Minnesota
10/3/05 – Wisconsin
10/3/05 – St. Lawrence
p.s. Updates to this blog have not happened as regularly as I would like. The main reason is that my laptop, which suffered serious injuries in transit from an ECACHL quarterfinal game in 2005, finally passed on last month, RIP. My replacement came this past week, and that should be a tremendous help.
