Each week, USCHO.com will pick the top 10 moments from the past weekend in our Monday 10 feature.
1. Michigan stakes claim to this week’s No. 1 ranking with IceBreaker championship
Michigan won the first of what it hopes will be more championships this season by downing No. 1 Minnesota State, 3-2, on Saturday after a 5-1 victory over No. 5 Minnesota Duluth on Friday. Coach Mel Pearson’s Wolverines, stacked with NHL first-rounders, came from behind in both contests.
Brendan Brisson, selected 29th overall by Vegas in 2020, had a highlight-reel goal and an assist in the win over the Bulldogs and scored with 4:20 left in the contest on Saturday. Each goal was a game winner, giving Brisson three consecutive GWGs.
“A lot of the guys in the locker room call (Brisson) Ovi Jr., just because he has such a good one-timer,” Wolverines defenseman Nick Blankenburg told the Michigan Daily.
Michigan should be the favorite to be voted No. 1 in today’s USCHO Men’s Division I Poll, but probably not unanimously.
2. Minnesota State is nevertheless an outstanding team
Mike Hastings’ Mavericks battled Michigan to the end and handily outshot the Wolverines 29-19 on Saturday, while winning 40 of 68 faceoffs. But once Michigan took the lead, it was difficult for Minnesota State to score the equalizer.
“We learned we can play from behind and win,” Hastings told the Mankato Free Press. “We also learned that if you fall behind a team that defends very well, you can lose that one, too.”
The Mavericks are 4-2 in six games against ranked teams, with the only other loss coming to No. 2 St. Cloud State in a split the previous weekend. Minnesota State starts CCHA play next weekend at Northern Michigan.
3. Minnesota Duluth, Providence also very good teams
The Bulldogs came out of the gate strong on Friday night, taking an early 1-0 lead over Michigan and dominating the pace of the game. But a contact to the head major and a game misconduct to Noah Cates coupled with a surge by Michigan turned the momentum in the opposite direction.
Cates returned on Saturday and scored the game-winning goal at 3:20 of the third as UMD responded to a Providence power-play goal just 30 seconds into the final frame. Providence outshot Minnesota Duluth and won the battle on the faceoff dot, but couldn’t solve Bulldogs goalie Ryan Fanti late in the contest.
4. Bentley upends No. 6 Boston College in not-as-big-an-upset-as-it-used-to-be
We’re long past the era when every Atlantic Hockey non-conference win would instantly be labeled an “upset.” But any unranked team putting a 6-2 smackdown on No. 6 Boston College would undoubtedly have their win categorized that way. (Even though the last time they played, it was a Bentley 4-2 victory at Conte Forum.)
The Falcons never trailed in the game and scored five goals in the third period, leading by 5-1 with under 10 minutes left in regulation. Nicholas Grabko, who got a win against Ohio State in his last start, was stellar in net for Bentley with 38 saves.
5. Bemidji State shows it’s a top contender in split with North Dakota
Bemidji State’s upset of high-flying Wisconsin in last season’s NCAA tournament woke up a few casual fans to how good a team Tom Serratore had put together. Proof about how good the No. 20 Beavers are this season came this weekend in a split with North Dakota.
The Fighting Hawks prevailed on Friday night, 4-3, in a game that was statistically close but required a late, extra-attacker goal for the Beavers to make it a one-goal game. On Saturday, North Dakota needed its own 6-on-5 score with less than a minute remaining to force overtime, but BSU needed only :53 to score to win 4-3.
Does this make Bemidji a top-ten team? Probably not, but the Beavers certainly belong in the national rankings and the national conversation.
6. Minnesota and St. Cloud belong among the early logjam at the top
Voters in this week’s USCHO poll, due out later Monday, no doubt will have difficulty ranking the top five teams, and that was made more muddy by the split weekend between No. 2 St. Cloud and No. 4 Minnesota.
Following a pattern around college hockey over the weekend, visiting teams won both ends of the series. The Huskies won 2-1 on Friday, with David Hrenak stopping nine of 10 Gopher shots in the third.
Minnesota got the split on Saturday winning 4-3 in overtime in a game that ended in controversy as one or more penalties should have been called leading up to the game-winning goal, as the NCHC admitted Sunday night. The non-call led to fans throwing debris the stands and to criticism from St. Cloud coach Brett Larson.
Monday’s USCHO poll should again select four of the top five teams from the state of Minnesota, but overall, it’s not going to be easy for voters top-to-bottom after a few splits and a couple of upsets.
7. Notre Dame prevails in OT in an epic battle at Michigan Tech
It took the No. 16 Fighting Irish all but the last five seconds of overtime to down the No. 17 Huskies, 2-1, in a thriller in Houghton Friday night. MTU had forced the 3-on-3 OT with Ryland Moseley’s extra-attacker goal at 19:06. Cam Burke scored both goals for Notre Dame, including his fourth career game-winner.
Notre Dame remained perfect at 3-0 on the season with a 5-2 win Saturday at Northern Michigan. Jeff Jackson’s Irish host Rochester Institute of Technology for a pair of games Thursday and Friday before hosting Minnesota in Big Ten conference play Halloween weekend.
8. No. 11 Denver is scoring in buckets
The 4-0 Pioneers are lighting the lamp like crazy so far this season, averaging six goals per game. Denver put up four goals at Air Force on Friday and blanked the Falcons 8-0 at Magness on Saturday.
Denver averaged fewer than three goals per game in last season’s COVID-shortened, NCHC-only campaign. A better scoring touch from David Carle’s squad should help Denver turn things around from last season, but the going will get tougher with a road trip to Providence and Boston College next weekend, and a weekend at North Dakota to start NCHC play following that.
9. Some other good wins besides BC for Atlantic Hockey, but the league needs to get over the hump
In addition to Bentley’s upset over BC on Saturday, other Atlantic Hockey action saw Canisius split at Rensselaer, Sacred Heart split at No. 12 Boston University, and RIT defeating St. Lawrence, 2-1, in front of nearly 7,000 at its annual Brick City weekend homecoming game at the AHL Blue Cross Arena in downtown Rochester, N.Y.
Yet these quality wins still fall short for the league. Atlantic Hockey stands at 7-23 out of conference and probably needs to be closer to .400 to earn an at-large NCAA bid in addition to the automatic qualifier. The conference has mostly closed the gap in talent and has the full complement of 18 scholarships for schools allowed to offer them. Somehow, Atlantic Hockey has to make the next step, and – adding another metaphor – get over the hump.
10. Speaking of scholarships …
During an interview on RIT’s radio network Saturday, new athletic director Jackie Nicholson said that RIT and Union have joined together to ask that they be allowed to offer a full complement of 18 athletic scholarships each for men’s and women’s hockey. Both schools moved their programs to Division I well after a 1983 NCAA Division III waiver that allowed existing D-III institutions with D-I programs to have their scholarships grandfathered. (That waiver withstood a challenge in 2004.)
Three D-III athletic conferences are supporting the move according to Nicholson: the Liberty League – of which both RIT and Union are members, along with Clarkson, St. Lawrence, and Rensselaer – as well as the nearby SUNYAC and Empire 8 conferences.
All six D-I hockey conferences have written letters of support to the NCAA on behalf of the two schools.
The vote is scheduled for January 22, 2022 at the NCAA national convention.
