Each week, USCHO.com will pick the top 10 moments from the past weekend in our Monday 10 feature.
1) Wisconsin sweep badgers BC for No. 1 …
It’s entirely too rare for a No. 1 team to lose its top ranking without some form of loss, but Wisconsin made a compelling case to jump to the front of the line with its weekend sweep over No. 4 Michigan. At 7-1 entering the weekend with five first place votes, the Badgers took six points from Big Blue with a pair of resounding wins that bookended a Friday night comeback with a Saturday night winner in the closing seconds of the third period.
Neither win felt probable, but after building a pair of one-goal leads in the first period of Friday night’s game, three straight Michigan goals gave the Wolverines a 4-2 lead after the halfway point of the second period. Cruz Lucius scored a power-play goal just over a minute later, but it wasn’t until Simon Tassy’s power play goal in the third that the Badgers added full pressure to the game’s last four minutes. Thirty seconds later, a stretch pass broke the offense up ice with Tyson Dyck, who promptly fed a cross-ice pass to Owen Lindmark, who roofed a shot to the dark recesses of Mom’s peanut butter cabinet and past goalie Jake Barczewski for a 5-4 winner.
The next night, a 1-1 game earmarked for overtime never found the three-on-three frame after a greasy scrum in front of Barczewski set the 12,000-plus fans at the Kohl Center into another frenzy with less than seven seconds left in the third period. A power play goal, Wisconsin walked away from the home series by earning six points and arguably staking its claim to the status of best team going in college hockey.
2) … but how can you unvote a No. 1 if it doesn’t lose?
The only problem for Wisconsin – and for Denver, for that matter – is that Boston College didn’t lose. Fresh off its wins over Michigan State, the newly-minted No. 1 team in the nation watched its early 2-0 lead evaporate on Friday when UMass-Lowell scored once in the first and once in the early minutes of the second, but freshman Aram Minnetian’s first career goal clinched a 3-2 win before 6,600 fans at Conte Forum. The next night in Lowell, another 6,000-person crowd at the Tsongas Center watched the Eagles again score first and build a lead in the second before Nick Rheaume added pressure with a third period goal.
Lowell had been on the outside of the top-20 conversation, but the overall strength of Hockey East was long a conversation before the Eagles stepped on the ice for either game. No. 1 teams are often not unseated without a loss, either, but given the wins by Denver, it’s likely at least one western team steals some of the 36 first place votes awarded to BC in last week’s pre-Halloween voting.
3) Mile High wins
Any argument against either BC or Wisconsin has to at least start with Denver’s sweep over Colorado College in which the Pioneers rocked the Tigers with a pair of blowout scores. They actually trailed at home before a 7,000-fan crowd on Friday night after the first period, but a trio of goals in the first half of the second period included Carter King’s short-handed goal before Jack Devine lit the lamp twice in a two-minute span in the third period. A late goal by Jared Wright finished Colorado College off with a 6-1 win, and it became a familiar sight after Wright’s second goal of the weekend topped a 5-1 win on Saturday.
King again scored for Denver in the third period, but two power play goals lifted Denver after Colorado College knotted the score at 1-1 after one.
Like UMass-Lowell, Colorado College had been on the outside of the national rankings, but a one-loss record prior to the weekend enhanced the quality of wins for the No. 2 team in the country. With North Dakota losing one of its games against Boston University, a likely scenario exists for the team to siphon first place votes away from BC after 57 points separated the two for the past week.
4) The North (Dakota) remembers
Speaking of those Fighting Hawks, a trip to Boston wasn’t a full-blown disaster, but a 3-2 loss to the scuffling Terriers caused the team to drop to No. 8 in the early season Pairwise Rankings. The rule of thumb is usually that the Pairwise doesn’t come under serious consideration until the second half of the season, but the overtime win over Saturday helped North Dakota avoid another potential drop to a BU team that desperately needed a marquee win.
It didn’t help that North Dakota’s result on Friday could easily pinpoint its causation to the time it spent in the box. The one-goal game fell on the shoulders of two BU power play goals, including a game-winner in the third period by Luke Tuch, and the five opportunities were double what the Terriers afforded the Fighting Hawks’ special teams.
A short-handed goal at least mitigated the damage, but a 3-1 lead on Saturday that included a power play goal instead struggled to keep up with Lane Hutson’s hat trick and a third-period comeback that tied the game with just over two minutes remaining. Jackson Blake at least picked up the win in overtime, but the razor thin margin gained another measure back for a BU team that took five points from UMass the previous weekend.
5) Sun burnt
The losses wouldn’t have proven disastrous for North Dakota in the long run, but two wins that were nondescript at their face value were instead crises averted for an Arizona State team that faced off with Stonehill over the weekend. On both occasions of the two games at Mullet Arena, a team that gave up seven goals in four of its first seven games instead battled the No. 16 team in the nation, and an early third period goal by Dominick Campione gave the Skyhawks a 4-2 lead in the last frame of Friday’s series opener. Ryan O’Reilly, Brian Chambers, and Matthew Kopperud tied the game to avoid the loss, but it wasn’t until the last minute of overtime that Anthony Dowd grabbed the win against the last-ranked team in the Pairwise Rankings.
Saturday followed a similar storyline after Henri Schreifels and Charles Bonquier scored goals in the early second and third periods to give Stonehill a 2-1 lead. Tyler Gratton eventually tied things before Kopperud scored with nine minutes remaining to give the Sun Devils their sweep.
Independents usually have to craft their way into the tournament anyways, but the November Pairwise Rankings offer a story of what could have happened to Arizona State with a pair of losses. Stonehill is, to this point, ranked 64th out of 64 teams after going 0-7 in its first games, but the Sun Devils, now 19th in the PWR, would have needed to essentially avoid another damaging loss against teams like Alaska-Anchorage or Robert Morris. They also would have needed to win games that they already need to win against Denver and Providence, both of which appear on the schedule before December.
6) Viking raiders
Like Stonehill, another pleasant surprise almost unfolded in the Upper Peninsula after Michigan Tech nearly lost both of its games against Augustana. The Vikings were already riding a wave of momentum after sweeping Bowling Green and upsetting Denver with a shootout win that technically went into the record books as a 5-5 tie, but the win over Colorado College in their second game in the Rocky Mountains pushed them over .500 heading into a weekend against a future CCHA conference opponent.
Augie wound up losing both games to the previously-winless Huskies, but their four-goal first period in Friday’s game shocked much of the Macinnes Arena crowd with an outburst that began in the first 90 seconds. Two Tech goals turned it into a one-goal deficit, but Quinn Rudrud and power play goals by Owen Bohn and Jack Jenson brought the Vikings into a two-goal advantage before Tech scored three times in the second.
It was as wild as it sounds, but an easier third period softened the eventual game-finishing goal by Isaac Gordon that gave him a hat trick during the 6-4 win.
The next night offered more of the same, and after Gordon and Rudrud scored for each team in the first period, Augustana entered the final minute with a one-goal lead before Ryland Mosley scored a tying goal with 20 seconds remaining and a winning goal in the first 90 seconds of overtime.
7) Bentley bounceback, electric boogaloo
As for brand new but resurgent, Bentley continued its quiet journey through the first half of the Atlantic Hockey schedule by rebounding from a 3-0 loss to American International on Thursday to take a second consecutive split with a 3-1 win on Friday.
After splitting with Robert Morris last weekend, earning three points offered a window into just how much the Falcons improved on a game-to-game basis. Having missed a wide open opportunity to score early in Thursday’s game, Bentley found its groove on Friday with more judicious shooting against goalie Nils Wallstrom, and a power play goal from Ethan Leyh tied the game before Nik Armstrong-Kingkade scored the eventual game-winner in the second period. On both occasions, Bentley used its speed and passing to weave through the harder, more rugged AIC team, and a late empty net goal added a little whipped cream to the sundae that started when the Yellow Jackets won their AHA opener one night earlier.
The weekend added Bentley into an already-jammed Atlantic Hockey standings, and while RIT and Sacred Heart continue to set the pace, eight teams are already evening the field behind the top two slots in the season’s early goings. Compared to other leagues that featured a handful of six-point weekends, it’s a sign of things to come for a conference known for its overall parity and second half seasonal chaos.
8) This is Sparta
Michigan State needed a rebound after a weekend sweep by Boston College dropped Sparty to the No. 12 spot in the national polls. They entered the weekend with a one-spot advantage over Ohio State, but the pair of wins over the Buckeyes regained footing in a conference where No. 4 Michigan ate two losses against Wisconsin.
Neither game felt particularly out of reach for Michigan State, and after the Spartans beat Ohio State with a 6-0 demolition on Friday, its wild second period in Columbus instead preceded two goals and an extra empty netter for a 6-4 win on Saturday.
As the Big Ten continues to gather steam among its members, the wins moved Michigan State to 11th in the early season Pairwise Rankings and likely moved it within the Top 10 of the upcoming national poll while simultaneously separating the Spartans from Michigan, which dropped to 15th and Ohio State, which tumbled into 22nd.
9) Holiday music is OK in November. There, I said it
There’s a common argument about when Christmas music is acceptable, but in ECAC, the red and green streamers flowed through a weekend that saw two of its Ivy League members gain a foothold with great weekend efforts.
Cornell’s first trip east produced a 10-2 aggregate in a pair of wins over Yale and Brown, and while the Big Red were only playing their third and fourth games of the season, the victories felt like a statement and a reminder of the separation between the rebuilding teams and the inherent powerhouse. Having already swept Minnesota-Duluth in non-conference games, the one first place vote feels like it might have some good company despite most voters accepting the late start as a reason to drop the team in the rankings. Entering the weekend behind No. 8 Quinnipiac, it feels like the No. 10 team in the nation is likely to gain more foothold among the teams situated out east.
Dartmouth, meanwhile, found an unexpected five-point weekend after Joey Musa and Luke Haymes each scored comeback goals against the eighth-ranked Bobcats. The Big Green sent the game to a shootout as a result, and the memory of last week’s 18-round, 1-0 battle against Harvard remained fresh as Nikita Nikora pushed a winner past goalie Vinny Duplessis in the final round.
The “win” still technically left Dartmouth with a winless record on the season, and the Big Green needed to wait another night before defeating Princeton, 5-4, to earn their first official victory of the season.
Just like that, both Cornell and Dartmouth stood alone at the top of the conference standings with six points.
10) Packin’ ‘em deep
The first month of the season jammed fans into arenas across the country, and this weekend continued a trend of sell-outs and large crowds feverishly following the college hockey universe. The aforementioned crowds at Wisconsin, Ohio State, Boston College, and UMass-Lowell bookended the numbers that nearly pushed 5,000 fans into Agganis Arena at Boston University, and even more unknown buildings are bringing people through turnstiles at a blistering pace.
Outliers like RIT’s Brick City Classic game at Blue Cross Arena are included, but barely a handful of the 62 teams with reported capacities are currently below 50 percent on the season. Twenty-eight teams are reporting numbers higher than 80 percent capacity, and 47 teams are averaging over 1,500 fans per game with 39 of those programs drawing 2,000 fans or more on a per-game basis.
That number is in line with some of the overall attendance figures from last season, but the figures are inching higher than the last years before the COVID-19 pandemic sent sports into the mini-tailspin that included empty arenas and a more virtual engagement.
