It was an interesting weekend in the WCHA, but it was mostly preface for a few huge series next weekend, which I have now dubbed “Are you not entertained?” weekend. Here’s what I thought:

1. Tech closes in on first

Michigan Tech closed the gap between them and first-place Bemidji State to just four points ahead of their huge showdown in Bemidji next weekend, thanks to their five-point weekend against Alabama Huntsville. The Huskies won 5-2 on Friday before rallying three separate times to tie it up 4-4 on Saturday — Tech came back from down 2-0, and again from down 3-2 and finally scored an extra-attacker goal with 12 seconds left to make it 4-4. The Huskies won the shootout to take five of six points.

2. Minnesota State pulls ahead of BG

Before this weekend, Bowling Green was one point ahead of Minnesota State for third place. After this weekend, the Mavericks moved one point ahead of the Falcons for third. MSU took five points from Lake Superior while BGSU split with Ferris State. As a result, the Mavs have sole possession of third — plus two games-in-hand on the Falcons.  MSU still has a long trip to Anchorage remaining, plus a showdown with Bemidji State at the end of the season. They also have a home series with Northern Michigan. BG, meanwhile, has a slightly favorable schedule. The Falcons don’t have to leave Ohio — they have home series with NMU and Huntsville, plus a single nonconference game with Mercyhurst.

3. Cluster in the middle

Ferris State, Lake Superior State, Alaska and Alabama Huntsville occupy the fifth through eighth (read: playoff) spots, and, in true WCHA fashion, there’s no telling where they’ll finish. The fifth and eighth place teams are separated by a mere five points. (What did you expect?)  LSSU and Ferris are both off next weekend, while Alaska visits Huntsville. Either team could move into sole possession of fifth with a sweep (or, the teams could muddle things even further with a split).

There’s a new team atop of the ECAC standings after this weekend’s play as St. Lawrence defeated Rensselaer 2-1 on Friday and a wild 4-3 victory over Union on Saturday.

The second period on Saturday saw the team’s score five of the seven goals in the middle frame. The Saints mid-season addition of Alex Gilmour has been really paying off. He had three goals on the weekend including the tying and game winning goals on Saturday. Since joining the team from Pembroke Lumber Kings of the Central Canada Hockey League he has six goals and two assists in nine games.

St. Lawrence also got a boost Saturday as senior defenseman Gavin Bayreuther returned to the lineup and made an immediate impact as he had the Saints second goal Saturday as they scored three unanswered for the come from behind win.

Union meanwhile is one point ahead of Harvard for second in the standings as they defeated Clarkson on Friday evening 6-2. Mark Dufour led the Dutchmen with two goals in the victory.

Tough weekend for Cornell

With the Big Red climbing the standings since the second weekend of November as they only dropped one conference game since Nov. 18 coming into the weekend, this weekend was a good chance to slide into the top tier of the ECAC standings.

Well that didn’t happen with a 4-1 loss to Harvard, while it’s a disappointing loss, it isn’t a shocking loss as the Crimson have been the crème de la crème of the ECAC for most of the year. Saturday, however is a different story losing to Dartmouth. The game against the Big Green was the winnable game on their schedule this weekend. Give credit to Bob Gaudet and his players on playing an excellent game, but it’s a big two points lost for Cornell.

If they scored two points this weekend they could have been in striking distance for second and third being five and four points out. Now they sit six points out of third.

What they do have in they favor is they still have two games against Union and one against St. Lawrence. Those are must win games if they want to move from the middle pack to the top tier of the conference.

ECAC teams face the two newest DI programs

This weekend saw Arizona State come east to face Quinnipiac while Princeton hosted Penn State in Philadelphia.

The Bobcats split the weekend with the Sun Devils as they opened the weekend series with a 5-2 victory, but couldn’t complete the sweep Saturday as Arizona State won 4-2. After a good start it looked like this weekend could get the Bobcats back on track.

At this point of the year an at large bid is looking unlikely for Quinnipiac. They need use the next month to prepare for the ECAC tournament and get hot just in time for March.

Princeton once again showed they like to come to play against nationally ranked teams as the defeated Penn State 5-4. They are 5-3 on the season against ranked teams. They have two more games against teams currently in the USCHO poll in St. Lawrence on Feb. 10 and Union on Feb. 18. If they get by in the first round of the ECAC tournament they have more than a punchers chance to pull of an upset if the offense is clicking like it has against top competition.

UMD wins final North Star College Cup
Minnesota-Duluth became a trivia answer Saturday when the Bulldogs downed St. Cloud State 2-1 in overtime in the championship game of the fourth and final installment of the North Star College Cup.

UMD largely has freshman goaltender Hunter Miska to thank, as he was named the tournament’s most valuable player after Saturday’s final. One night after he made 37 saves in Duluth’s 3-2 win over Minnesota on Friday, the rookie stopped 29 SCSU shots.

Duluth senior winger Kyle Osterberg picked up Saturday’s tournament-winner six minutes into the extra period. Standout defenseman Neal Pionk and Joey Anderson assisted on Osterberg’s 11th goal of the season.

St. Cloud had started the game well, as Will Borgen scored with 1:43 left in the first period to get the Huskies onto the board first. Duluth equalized 42 seconds into the third period when Alex Iafallo put away a loose puck in front of SCSU goalie Jeff Smith’s net.

UMD and SCSU, rivalry partners within the NCHC who are guaranteed to meet four times per season, have already had five meetings so far in 2016-17. Three of those games, including Saturday’s, came in the past three weeks.

Saturday’s game saw Duluth defeat St. Cloud in overtime for the second time this season.

UMD hosts Omaha next weekend, while St. Cloud heads to North Dakota.

CC picks up first home win
One night after five unanswered North Dakota goals allowed the Fighting Hawks to stave off an upset bid from Colorado College, UND was unable to do the same Saturday.

The Hawks visited Colorado Springs this week to face a CC team that had yet to win its first home game of the season. CC’s’ 0-9 home record dropped further to 0-10 Friday thanks to a 5-2 defeat to UND.

Tigers goals from Kade Kehoe and Alex Berardinelli led to UND head coach Brad Berry pulling goaltender Matej Tomek after the first period in favor of Matt Hrynkiw. The Hawks responded well to the change, with five UND players scoring in the final 40 minutes to turn the game on its head.

Saturday’s 3-0 win for CC must have left defending national champion UND frustrated. Shot attempts were 91-37 in UND’s favor, and Tigers goalie Alex Leclerc stood on his head, making 47 saves.

Strangely, the Tigers never put a puck past Hrynkiw themselves all weekend. Luc Gerdes’ goal 19:30 into the first period was an apparent pass attempt that deflected in off an UND defenseman’s skate. CC later put the result on ice with two empty-netters in the game’s final minute.

UND, loser of three of its last four games and four of its last six, will need to get back on track next weekend in Grand Forks against an inconsistent SCSU team. CC has next weekend off prior to a home-and-home series with arch-rival Denver.

Denver continues mastery of Omaha
Denver shows up four times on Omaha’s schedule in the final six weeks of the regular season. Not that that’s something the Mavericks might want to think about too much right now.

UNO’s losing streak against the Pioneers rose to eight games this weekend at DU’s Magness Arena. Denver rallied with five consecutive goals to win Friday’s series opener 5-3 before hanging a 5-0 loss on the Mavericks Saturday.

DU made big inroads towards its fifth consecutive home win over the Mavericks with a four-goal second period. UNO goalie Kris Oldham made 38 saves Friday but conceded five goals for the second time in his last three outings.

As for Friday, so much of what happened comes back to a second period in which Denver outshot UNO 21-10 and got goals from four different Pioneers shooters.

Denver then put Saturday’s result beyond UNO’s reach early. The Pioneers outshot UNO 21-6 in the first 20 minutes of play and led the Mavericks 3-0 heading into the first intermission.

Denver’s Colin Staub, who ended UNO’s 2015-16 season with a double-overtime winner in Game 2 of a NCHC first-round playoff series at Magness, scored twice more against the Mavericks on Saturday. His power play goal 6:07 into the game opened the scoring before he netted again on the man advantage 13 minutes into the second period, marking DU’s last goal of the night.

UNO has a tough road to hoe over the next few weeks before hosting Denver in the last week of the regular season. The Mavericks visit second-ranked UMD next week before hosting No. 10 Western Michigan on Feb. 10-11. Two weeks after that, UNO heads to 12th-ranked UND.