Each week, USCHO.com will pick the top 10 moments from the past weekend in our Monday 10 feature.
1) Here we go again
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
The No. 1 team in the nation was newly anointed last week as St. Cloud State. In their first weekend since gaining the honor, the Huskies lost. Without question, that means that Monday afternoon will bring a new top-ranked team after several challengers won their way into the serious stages of the conversation.
This time, it was Minnesota Duluth, the former national championship contender that looked like an NCAA tournament berth was far from reality after it pushed towards February with a sub-.500 record. The Bulldogs swept their rivals from Central Minnesota with their first weekend sweep since mid-October and their first six-point series of the NCHC season, but the way they won – scoring four unanswered goals on Friday before scoring two power-play goals and a short-handed strike in the first period of Saturday’s game, ensured the top-ranked Huskies never led at any point this weekend.
Friday night’s four-goal outburst exclusively used the power play and resulted in a Ben Steeves hat trick, while a fourth power-play goal on Saturday by the freshman from New Hampshire matched his output from a two-game swing in early December. It was his second hat trick after he scored three goals against Colorado College as part of a season where 10 of his 16 goals have come via the power play.
2) BU Rhett-y for No. 1
It feels like it’s been forever since Boston University held the top spot in the national polls. Hockey East’s dynamics changed significantly over the past decade, and the Terriers themselves underwent an overhaul in the years after David Quinn left the college ranks for an opportunity with the New York Rangers. The rise of other programs like UMass and Northeastern shuffled BU into the periphery, and even the Beanpot championships that felt inevitable moved to Northeastern and Harvard – an unthinkable thought after BU won its 30th championship in 2015.
Then came this past weekend and an absolute thumping that the No. 4 team in the nation put on its most hated rival with one weekend remaining until the Beanpot. BU took six points from Boston College and overall dominated the Eagles, beating them 6-3 on Friday night after opening up a 6-1 lead in the first two-plus periods. It preceded a 3-1 win on Saturday at Conte Forum that saw a scoreless first period before Wilmer Skoog and Case McCarthy posted an insurmountable 2-0 lead in the first half of the second period.
In each game, Boston College did what was expected by bringing the battle to its ancient enemy, but the six-point weekend rocketed BU into a four-point lead in Hockey East. Though Minnesota and Quinnipiac both swept their respective weekends, there stands a chance that the Terriers are ready to regain the spotlight that’s eluded the tradition and history now hanging in Agganis Arena.
3) Not so fast, my friend. -Minnesota, probably.
The only thing standing in BU’s way, though, is a Gopher-sized beatdown that Michigan State absorbed in its two-game swing at Mariucci Arena. Sure, the BU story would be great for the Massachusetts folks, but Minnesota dropped a snowman on its Big Ten rival with an 8-0 victory before rallying from two separate one-goal deficits in the second period on Saturday to claim a 6-3 win.
Minnesota actually scored five consecutive goals in that second game and used a 16-6 shot advantage in the second period to post three goals before the frame ended. Jimmy Snuggerud finished the Saturday game with two goals, but the goals from Garrett Pinoniemi and Bryce Brodzinski gave the Gophers a one-goal lead at the end of the second that never surrendered.
The Gophers exited the weekend at the top-ranked team in the Pairwise Rankings, and with a 14-3-1 record that features an overtime win, the 20-7-1 team now holds a 16-point lead in the Big Ten. It’s almost elementary to think it would take a collapse to dethrone Minnesota from the top spot in arguably the best conference in the country, and the dominance all but means the team should be No. 1 on Monday.
4) Or maybe it’s Quinnipiac?
BU and Minnesota are the biggest, baddest teams in the yard, but it wasn’t too long ago that Quinnipiac, the prohibitive favorite in ECAC, stood as the No. 1 team in the nation. It’s not the Bobcats fault that the two wins at the Connecticut Ice Tournament felt like they were under the radar when higher profile rivalries stole the spotlight, but the 5-0 win over Sacred Heart preceded a “neutral site” victory over Connecticut in a tournament hosted in Hamden.
Including Yale, which lost to UConn before dropping the consolation game against Sacred Heart, the tournament maintained its status as a Connecticut-based rival to the Boston-based Beanpot to its north, and the one-goal win over the Huskies cemented a wild atmosphere for the No. 2 team in the Pairwise Rankings. The teams simply traded leads and shots against one another before the Bobcats scored twice in the third period to overcome the Huskies, and two power play goals included one from Ethan de Jong, who had two goals in the championship game en route to tournament MVP honors.
Quinnipiac remained undefeated on home ice with the wins – even though they were technically neutral ice games – and the 20-3-3 Bobcats remained the best team in the nation by winning percentage, even though their overall RPI number and the combined strength of ECAC relegated them to the second spot behind the Gophers.
5) The Commonwealth is blue
The University of Massachusetts is more than just a single campus, but the name UMass itself belongs to the flagship campus in Amherst. Located in Western Massachusetts, it’s the only version of the state system that uses the mononym, and the Minutemen justified their lofty standing within the Commonwealth by winning the first national championship outside of the Boston Beanpot schools.
That’s always been ironic in Massachusetts because UMass-Lowell, the “other UMass” in Hockey East, was once regarded as one of Hockey East’s breakout programs after it advanced to the 2013 Frozen Four. The three-time conference champions always operated in the shadow of their larger system brother, but on Friday night, the rivalry’s renewal at Tsongas Arena ended with a 1-0 defensive duel for the ages.
The teams combined for 55 shots while being whistled for minimal penalties, and Dillan Bentley’s goal with just under 12 minutes remaining in the second period stood up against a barrage at both ends of the ice. The win snapped a 10-game winless streak in the Kennedy Cup series between the two schools and earned head coach Norm Bazin his 21st victory over the Minutemen since becoming the head coach of his alma mater.
6) …And so is the Last Frontier
The Alaska Airlines Governor’s Cup had already been decided earlier this year when Alaska defeated Alaska-Anchorage on four separate occasions at the start of the year, but the Nanooks swept the returning series with wins at both the Seawolf Sports Complex and the Carlson Center over the weekend.
Saturday’s game had been Fairbanks’ first home game since last December’s win over UAA, but the comeback victory saw Brady Risk score in the first minute of overtime after Alaska scored twice across 30 seconds with under five minutes remaining in the game. Trailing 3-1, Chase Dubois’s second power play goal brought the Nanooks within one of Anchorage, and Anton Rubtsove scored 30 seconds later during the same five-minute major to tie the game at 3-3.
It was the 12th consecutive Governor’s Cup win for the Nanooks, who improved to 13-9-2 on the season and capped a six-game series between the two teams in the northernmost state in college hockey.
7) ECAC operates according to its chalkboard
ECAC Hockey’s lone travel weekend sent Cornell and Colgate to Dartmouth and Harvard, but any hope of seeing upsets upend the conference standings went by the wayside when the league went through the motions of a largely indistinct weekend. Cornell beat Dartmouth while Colgate stole a point against Havard, and the Crimson ended any threat from their rival Big Red by scoring four unanswered goals in a 6-2 win. Dartmouth, meanwhile, picked up a point from the Raiders before losing, 4-3, on Alex Young’s fourth period winner.
The lone exception to a weekend that wasn’t overly notable came in the North Country, where St. Lawrence took a pair of 4-2 victories from travel partner Clarkson. The preseason favorite to challenge Quinnipiac for the league championship, the Golden Knights instead sit in seventh with Brown breathing down its neck while the Saints jumped ahead of Princeton and into the conversation for the last first round bye spot occupied by Colgate.
8) Enemies on the ice, brothers in arms
The Army-Air Force series in Atlantic Hockey has long been one of the league’s more celebrated events, but the pageantry of the matchup between the two service academies reaches well beyond a final score and into the annals of games defined by big moments and memorable frenzies within the cadets who attend both institutions.
Both teams earned a victory this weekend, but the true meaning of the game occurred after the final whistle when both rosters stood around center ice at Tate Rink for a collective stick salute. The sight is a common once in a matchup steeped in tradition, but the vision is still jarring in the reminder that the players on the ice stand for something greater than just wins and losses. Every year, the graduates from Army West Point and Air Force move into defensive positions as members of the United States military, and it’s the only matchup where every player on the ice is willing to die for everyone watching in the stands.
9) The dreaded triple hat trick
Fourth-ranked Quinnipiac entered its matchup with travel partner Princeton on Sunday as the front-running challenger to second-ranked Yale in both the women’s hockey national polls and the ECAC’s women’s division. A 4-0 win over the Tigers on Saturday made sense given the six-game winning streak that ended only when Yale won a 4-2 game at the M&T Bank Arena.
It didn’t seem like Princeton, a team that was under .500 and coming off five straight losses, posed much of a threat, but that’s where hockey got weird.
Three different Tigers scored hat tricks against the Bobcats, and a 1-1 game turned into one of the biggest routs of the season in an 11-3 win for the home side. Four different players scored in the first period, and Jane Kuehl capped the extravaganza with her third goal with under two minutes remaining in the game. She joined Sarah Fillier and Maggie Connors as players receiving chapeaus on the ice, and it upended the national conversation in women’s hockey after Quinnipiac lost for just the third time in league play this year.
10) Colby beats Bowdoin in 218th meeting
The weekend itself was riddled with rivalries, but perhaps the most intense matchup belonged to the Division III ranks, where Bowdoin and Colby met for the 218th overall time. Colby’s 4-0 victory was the 12th consecutive game without a loss for the Mules, who were last defeated by the Polar Bears in Dec. 2015.
The sellout crowd of 2,400 fans were treated to a two-goal outburst by John McElany and Jake Macdonald in the second period before Griffin Grise and Ryan Doolin scored in the third, and Andy Beran posted 25 saves, including 12 in the first period, as the Mules won for the 10th time this season.
