Minnesota State did the CCHA double a year ago, winning both the regular season and tournament title.
The Mavericks were also 20 minutes away from their first NCAA Division I title.
While all three of those are certainly in MSU’s sights this season, there’s another, more unofficial title the Mavericks can win this season: Minnesota state champion.
Granted, this is not in any way an official title. But consider this: For the first time since the breakup of the old WCHA in 2013, the Mavericks are playing all five of their instate rivals in two-game regular-season series.
MSU went 1-1 against Minnesota in a home-and-home series on opening weekend, swept Minnesota Duluth last week in Mankato and now plays their third-straight series against a Minnesota team this weekend in a road series against St. Cloud State. And if a pesky Oct. 28-29 series with Bowling Green wasn’t in the way, it would be four straight games against instate teams – the Mavs take on St. Thomas in the first of two CCHA series in the first weekend in November.
In other words, you might as well just bring the North Star College Cup out of whatever closet the UMD Bulldogs shoved it in when they won the final edition of the tournament in 2017.
“It’s a little unique. Last year we go out to UMass, we’ve got some different opportunities in the nonconference, so for us to be able to string together these three series with University of Minnesota, Duluth and then now St. Cloud, I know I haven’t seen that previously, or I can’t recall it, and I don’t see it happening down the road, so it’s a unique opportunity,” MSU coach Mike Hastings said.
The Minnesota schools have played one another on a rotating basis since realignment, but due to the nature of nonconference scheduling it doesn’t always line up this way for the teams to play every season. The Huskies, for instance, played St. Thomas to start the year and take on Bemidji State in a home-and-home next weekend.
“It’s a great opportunity, not just for our players but for our fans,” Hastings said. “Obviously we share a lot with our sister school in St. Cloud. For myself, there’s guys at every program I have a lot of respect for that I consider my peer group, also being my friends. Having an opportunity to compete against them, some of our guys here from the state of Minnesota, playing against teams that have a lot of guys from our state. So we’re just embracing it.
“It’s been a good journey here for the first two weekends, and it’s a great challenge for us. We’re not having to travel coast to coast, we’re not having to get on a plane, we’re getting on a bus within a couple hours. I think [many people] in the state of hockey wouldn’t mind seeing there being a little bit more of this and having it be a little more of a norm rather than an outlier when it comes to us being able to play within our borders.”
The Mavs and Huskies split their series in Mankato last season, and the year before that they met in the 2021 Frozen Four semifinal in Pittsburgh, with St. Cloud winning 5-4.
The major difference between the two teams in their previous meetings? Dryden McKay. The 2022 Hobey Baker Award winner graduated this spring, and so far Hastings has played two different goalies back-to-back in their two weekend series so far. Sophomore Keenan Rancier played both games against the Minnesota Gophers, giving up five goals with a save percentage of .902. Freshman Alex Tracy was in the net for the series against UMD; he gave up just one goal and made 31 saves on the weekend, picking up CCHA rookie of the week honors in the process. Also on the roster is freshman Andrew Miller.
Hastings isn’t sure yet if any of the three had done enough to earn the title of “Unquestioned starting goaltender;” instead, it seems like the Mavericks are taking it game-by-game.
“We’re going to hopefully let those three guys sort it out through their play,” Hastings said. “If I rewound the last two weeks, I didn’t know I was going to go back-to-back with Rancier, I didn’t know I was going to go back-to-back with Tracy. Those guys, with their play, influenced my decision. So I think I’m going to stay with that right now until somebody really steps forward and takes the ball.”
As MSU’s final nonconference series until January at Artizona State, this will be the last chance the Mavericks have to really earn some quality Pairwise wins until then. The Huskies are 4-0 after sweeps of St. Thomas and Wisconsin.
“If you’re going to go win a hockey game in that building, you’re going to have to go earn it, and that’s the challenge that faces us this week,” Hastings said.
