Each week, USCHO.com will pick the top 10 moments from the past weekend in our Monday 10 feature.
1) Down goes No. 2 and No. 3 because of wins…by No. 3 and No. 2
No. 2 Western Michigan and No. 3 Michigan entered the weekend with a legitimate argument towards gaining recognition as the incumbent best team in the country. Each had a significant share of first place votes behind top-ranked Michigan State and were within a marginal range of the Spartans when the weekend began, but each took a hit towards surpassing their in-mitten rivals by splitting their weekend home-and-home series.
What began with a 4-0 win on Michigan’s home ice in Ann Arbor flipped to a 5-2 win for Western Michigan once the teams shifted to Kalamazoo. In each game, a one-goal advantage from the first or second period underwent a transformation in the early part of the third period when an insurance goal added pressure to the road program, but little doubt remained towards the tallies in the final minute.
Votes are still worth tallying, but the organic nature of their matchup prevented either team from leapfrogging Michigan State without a sweep. Back-to-back victories might have been enough – especially if Sparty lost a game on the Upper Peninsula – so it’s unlikely that the split will do much to dislodge the top three teams, especially with the certified chaos unfolding beneath them.
2) Top of the Peninsula
Forgiving the shortened explanation towards the matchup between Western and Michigan, Michigan State likely solidified its case as the No. 1 team in the country by sweeping Northern Michigan with a pair of decisive victories. A very different road trip after last week’s trip for a win over Boston University, Sparty left little doubt in its trip to Marquette by jumping out to a 2-0 lead in each game’s first period.
Northern Michigan’s ability to ring two goals in the second game summarily fell to the side of the road after Daniel Russell’s power-play goal gave Michigan State a 3-2 lead on Saturday night, and Porter Martone’s third goal of the weekend preceded two goals by Tiernan Shoudy as the tie game drifted into a more lopsided 6-2 score. Tommi Mannisto also added three goals on the weekend, while Caiden Gault scored both goals for the Wildcats.
Given the split between the two teams beneath Michigan State, it’s unlikely that anyone has a resume capable of supplanting the Spartans, though the operative question is if Penn State was able to gain first place votes after being pressured in two games against Stonehill.
3) Skyhawk Scare
Stonehill’s ability to hang with any program in the country moved significantly in the right direction after the Skyhawks pushed No. 5 Penn State to its limit in two games at Hockey Valley’s Pegula Ice Arena.
Friday night’s game edged even closer to one of college hockey’s more monumental upsets after second period goals by Joel Lehtinen and Evan Orr flipped Matt DiMarsico’s first-period goal for the Nittany Lions into a 2-1 advantage for the Skyhawks. In what felt like an eternity, the tallies were scored 24 seconds apart from one another and provided a cushion that lasted for nearly 22 minutes until Gavin McKenna and JJ Wiebusch took matters into their own hands by producing the two goals that upended Stonehill’s bid. Each assisted on the other’s goal with Wiebusch’s power play strike coming in the final minute of the third period for a 3-2 win that shocked and empowered much of college hockey’s proletariat class.
One night later, Stonehill again gave Penn State fits by not allowing the Nittany Lions to run away with the game after they scored the first two goals of the second period. A game that was scoreless through one ultimately ended the second period with a 3-2 advantage for the home side after McKenna and Wiebusch again scored goals – this time with help from Charlie Cerrato – and Shea Van Olm’s third period goal ended whatever remaining thread existed.
Receiving a lone first place vote in last week’s poll will potentially tick upwards with the team’s newly ensconced 7-1-0 overall record, and the start of Big Ten play awaits after two straight independents entered Pennsylvania with a roughneck’s attitude.
4) A Spiderman-pointing-finger meme in Boston
No. 7 Denver’s trip to No. 9 Boston College continued a great postseason rivalry from each of the last two national tournaments, and like the 2024 national championship game and the 2025 regional final held just north of Boston in Manchester, N.H., the Pioneers emerged victorious by stunning the Eagles with a new take on their effective brand of hockey. This time, though, a 2-0 and 3-1 result from years past morphed into a nightmare for the Eagles, who were blown out at Conte Forum with a 7-3 loss at the hands of their western-based archnemesis.
The game started innocently enough after the teams split a four-goal first period, and Jake Sondreal’s last-minute goal seemingly stamped the parity between the teams after Andre Gasseau’s goal at the nine-minute mark bookended goals from Eric Pohlkamp and Kristian Epperson. Then the second period started, and Eric Jamieson, Sam Harris and Brendan McMorrow each beat freshman goaltender Louka Cloutier to push Denver to a 5-2 lead that never truly surrendered much ground.
The need for Denver to win non-conference games against Hockey East opponents turned the weekend into a potential goldmine for a Pioneer team spelunking down Comm. Ave. for a Saturday night trip to Northeastern’s life-supported Matthews Arena and all but erased the potential mathematical impact of losing to Lindenwood. The Huskies, though, never received that message, and the swan song of their home building reached its first apex with a 1-0 win for its annals and ages.
Amine Hajibi’s goal in the second period was all Northeastern goaltender Lawton Zacher needed in a performance for the ages, and he finished with 35 saves while his defense blocked 19 additional attempts. Having played Friday as an underdog despite being the higher-ranked team, the heavily-favored Pioneers were then left to fly back to Colorado with a stinging loss to the east’s best conference.
5) Gopher hole
The University of Minnesota officially has a problem.
The Golden Gophers were already saddled with a sub-.500 record after failing to produce more than a couple of wins against Michigan Tech, Boston College and North Dakota, so losing both games to Minnesota Duluth in convincing fashion put them on the chopping block for a top-20 poll that was increasingly patient with their growing pains. Ranked No. 12 ahead of the weekend, the preseason No. 8 team displayed remarkable consistency in avoiding a mega-drop in any of its weekends.
They last fell out of USCHO.com’s polling after a split against St. Lawrence dropped them to 3-5-1 in mid-November, 2018, and they remained out of that year’s poll until the season-ending vote opened the door back to the No. 20 spot. At 2-5-1, it remains to be seen if the losses are more of a compliment to Duluth or if the Gophers have finally lost the trust of their faithful voters.
6) Banner nights
A busy Friday night in Waltham, Mass., hung Bentley’s first-ever banners to the rafters of the Bentley Arena in a ceremony that captured and encapsulated the Cinderella run to last year’s national tournament.
An admittedly great night allowed the latest chapter of Massachusetts’ college hockey history to gain its own foothold against the rest of the rightfully-elitist class of the Boston-based schools, and it stole attention for the near-sellout crowd of 1,800 fans that turned their attention away from the BC-Denver game occurring up the street.
Raising the championship banner was the last stamp on last season’s postseason runs and gave the penultimate conference champion an opportunity to celebrate its success. The last team – Cornell – doesn’t start its season until next weekend’s trip to UMass and won’t play at home until its ECAC contests against Ivy League compatriots Brown and Dartmouth on the weekend of November 14-15.
7) It’s a dog-eat-dog world and I’m wearing milk-bone pants
No. 4 Boston University and No. 11 Connecticut met this weekend in a home-and-home series loaded with impossible predictions.
On one hand, the idea of a top-ranked matchup between Hockey East opponents never really included a .500 overall record on either side, but BU’s losses to Michigan State didn’t totally upend the perception of the Terriers, just as UConn’s individual losses to Colorado College and Ohio State had been altered by split-earning victories.
Sure enough, the two teams did exactly that against one another and remained .500 by splitting games in Boston and Storrs. In both cases, the road team gained the edge, with BU earning style points for posting a 3-1 win with two power play goals after surrendering a snowman to the Huskies in an 8-4 loss on Friday.
Even in that defeat, BU had been able to score in spurts with an early 2-0 lead and a later 2-1 split at the start of the second period, so losing command of the game did little to dislodge expectations from Saturday’s trip to the Nutmeg State. In UConn’s case, the inability to match a 40-shot night with a second offensive outburst ended the threat, even as the Huskies still outshot the Terriers in the second and third periods by a near 2:1 margin.
8) Welcome Home
St. Thomas spent its first five games on the road while construction crews put the finishing touches on the glittering Lee & Penny Anderson Arena, and this weekend finally brought the Tommies back to the Twin Cities after the first Division I years were spent in the Mendota Heights suburb and a 1,000-seat arena.
Christening the two towers flanking the front entrance with purple hews, St. Thomas turned its attention to the visiting Providence Friars and quickly realized that the visitors weren’t afraid of a big game atmosphere. Even with a 2-0 lead in the first game on Friday night, St. Thomas’ shootout victory came at the expense of a two-goal third period by the Friars, to which a similar situation unfolded on Saturday when four straight goals by the Tommies slipped to six unanswered PC strikes in a 7-4 loss.
9) House cleaning of more upsets
As is the now-weekly case of upset-minded programs, a number of results from Friday and Saturday left college hockey fans looking at the updated scoreboards with jaws on the floor. In Ohio, Sacred Heart’s overtime victory scored a non-conference win for Atlantic Hockey America that was nearly matched by Robert Morris’ 2-2 tie (and shootout win) against Notre Dame. Clarkson’s 5-2 win over North Dakota propelled ECAC alongside Colgate’s 3-2 win over Maine, and Quinnipiac rallied from a surprising loss to Merrimack by beating New Hampshire on Saturday.
For Hockey East, a UMass split in Omaha stacked road win points into the conference’s NPI while UMass-Lowell avoided a catastrophic loss by rallying past Mercyhurst with three third period goals, and the NCHC sidestepped two overtime games at Lindenwood when Miami claimed a pair of 5-4 victories.
10) Unbeaten and unblemished
No. 1 Wisconsin’s pair of home shutouts over Minnesota State recorded the second and third consecutive blankings for the undefeated defending national champions in women’s hockey. Including the 4-0 win over Minnesota Duluth, the dueling 5-0 wins over Maine and a separate 5-0 win over Bemidji State, the Badgers now have seven clean sheets in their 10 appearances on the ice.
Getting under a 1.00 GAA is no small feat, and both the Badgers and Penn State are entering the bulk of their respective seasons with numbers below the coveted mark. Even last year’s national champions were around 1.17 goals allowed per game when they clinched the Frozen Four title in April, and no team finished a season with a sub-1.00 GAA since Northeastern ended the 2022-2023 season with a 0.92 goals against average.
Three of the nine different teams to finish under one goal per game came from Wisconsin, but only two teams have ever won a national championship with allowing under the mark: Minnesota in 2013 and Wisconsin in 2007.