Each week, USCHO.com will pick the top 10 moments from the past weekend in our Monday 10 feature.
1. Land of the WJC, Home of the Unbeaten Start
USA Hockey’s entered the 2026 IIHF World Junior Hockey Championships with elevated expectations after successfully defending its 2024 gold medal with a consecutive championship in last year’s iteration, but playing on home soil for the first time since 2018 still somehow introduced the world to the evolution of the American youth hockey development pipeline. Beginning the bid for the first-ever home ice championship by an American roster, Team USA opened 2-0-0-0 with a pair of Group A wins over Germany, 6-3, and Switzerland, 2-1, that included two very different types of games.
Opening the tournament against a German team that avoided relegation with last year’s ninth-place finish offered little resistance compared to the second game against the eighth-place Swiss. Max Plante, Chase Reid and Will Horcoff all scored during the first period of that opener before Will Zellers added two goals in the second period, and a goal from Boston University’s Cole Eiserman set a table for a 6-3 win over a roster largely assembled from a combination of the Deutsche Eishockey Liga’s development pipeline and the Canadian junior hockey circuit.
One night later, a slower start against Switzerland ended when Brodie Ziemer scored his first goal of the tournament, and though the Swiss later tied the game at 1-1, USA claimed its own victory when Zellers scored his third goal of the tournament. Playing opposite two junior hockey goaltenders on the roster, Notre Dame’s Nicholas Kempf grabbed the victory in the second game after USHL product Caleb Heil started the opener against Germany.
At 2-0-0-0 with head-to-head wins over both Switzerland and Germany, the expected trip to the knockout-round quarterfinals took a one-day hiatus before group play wraps up with Slovakia and the high-powered Swedish team.
2. And now here’s something we hope you’ll really like
World Junior Hockey Championship tournaments were once built on the perceived competition between the Canadian junior hockey leagues and their American collegiate counterparts, but the modern era and exploding talent levels in the Lower 48 left the tournament with a decidedly collegiate feel through the first round and group stages. Once the bastion of talent from the CHL, Team Canada’s top two scorers were both college players, and Michigan’s Michael Hage and Penn State’s Gavin McKenna—two household names in the hockey universe—each tallied four points in their first two games to help the maple leaf through a win and a surprising overtime game against Latvia.
Both featured prominently during the 7-5 win over a Czechia roster that brought NCAA talent to the table in the form of UMass forward Vaclav Nestrasil, while the Swedes that await USA on New Year’s Eve defeated Switzerland behind a goal from Michigan State’s Eric Nilson.
3. Star Spengler Banner
This time of year is normally reserved for world juniors and the ensuing fallout surrounding teams without several of their top athletes, but the dramatic and large foothold of the U.S. Collegiate Selects grabbed immediate headlines when a team assembled from collegiate talent surprised and shocked professional-grade talent as part of the Swiss-based Spengler Cup.
The tournament was admittedly a bit of a blind spot for college hockey fans who were unfamiliar with the invitational nature of a tournament universally recognized as one of the world’s oldest hockey competitions, but the Collegiate Selects team landed in Switzerland with a shocking 4-2 win over an HC Davos team holding 31 different National League championships and 16 prior Spengler Cup wins. The team internationally recognized as the lockout landing spot of players like Joe Thornton and Rick Nash once boasted Patrick Kane on one of its Spengler Cup wins, but goals by Quinn Finley and Matt DiMarsico paved a Big Ten road directly through HCD with a 2-0 lead that was never totally surrendered.
Davos successfully rallied from the deficit to tie the game at 2-2 in the second period, but DiMarsico and Finley scored consecutive goals to stake a 4-2 lead that the USCS team never gave back. A later power play goal from Denver’s Eric Pohlkamp added insurance to a five-minute power play.
Even with an earlier loss to Team Canada, the U.S. Collegiate Selects team won Group Cattini on the strength of its goal differential and head-to-head win over HC Davos. Gaining automatic admission into the semifinal round, the team awaits the winner of Team Canada’s game against Czechia’s HC Sparta Praha in the quarterfinals.
4. You know, there’s actual college hockey, too
Back home in America, college hockey’s international success caused the 36th annual Ledyard Bank hockey series to fly under the radar ahead of Arizona State’s first-game win over Dartmouth. Billed as a two-game series between the Big Green and the Sun Devils, the win cost Dartmouth a bit of goodwill in the NCAA Power Index after four different skaters potted goals for the visiting team. One day later, the return bout between the teams landed in favor of the Big Green, but the immediate fallout left its imprint on a national tournament race that’s beginning to percolate for the 2026 calendar year.
Dartmouth, for example, lost its footing among the two best teams in the nation and slipped to No. 4 while Arizona State gained extra ground in the mid-20s. Fellow NCHC teams North Dakota and Minnesota-Duluth then slid into spots surrounding the Big Green, with the Fighting Hawks gaining the No. 3 overall seed in the most updated NPI.
The win over Arizona State prevented Dartmouth from slipping any further, but their first games after the turn of the calendar year are going to send messages towards either team’s postseason prospects. In ECAC, the bid for a third or fourth team in the tournament requires a heavy presence at the top of the national rankings—to which the Big Green are currently the highest-seeded team—while the NCHC can grab an additional bubble spot if Arizona State doesn’t slide much further down the polls. With the Desert Hockey Classic on the horizon, games against teams like Alaska-Anchorage are therefore a must-win situation to avoid canceling out the road win coefficient.
5. Something’s brewing in Milwaukee
Losing players and coaches to the world juniors tournament long represented a piece of the semester break conversation, but allowing a second team of college hockey players to attend the Spengler Cup left a number of programs without several key parts during a crucial or critical time of year. In Milwaukee, this weekend’s Kwik Trip Holiday Classic featured two teams in Boston College and Wisconsin that lost players to one or both tournaments, but the national picture made it appear more crucial for the Eagles to overcome their losses on short notice.
BC was without USA’s James Hagens or Teddy Stiga when it stepped on the ice for its first-round tournament game against Western Michigan. Slovakian defenseman Luka Radivojevic was likewise out of the team’s lineup after being named to his national junior team, and head coach Greg Brown joined American head coach Bob Motzko’s staff after last coaching at the world junior level in 2018.
Adding to the drama, the tournament represented two huge games for a team that’s squarely on the bubble for the second half of the college hockey season. Facing No. 11 Western Michigan in the first game was therefore a major opportunity for BC to step inside of the national tournament field, but the loss to the Broncos sent the team into a consolation game against a Lake Superior State team that took Wisconsin to a third-period limit despite its sub-.500 record.
In short, a Monday afternoon game against Lake Superior State now appears more must-win than usual for a team already without three major pieces and its head coach, but the Eagles admittedly possess overflowing talent levels on a roster that’s well-equipped to handle the challenge.
Feast or famine, it’s one heckuva storyline to keep an eye on.
6. Badgered
Speaking of Lake Superior and that Wisconsin team, the Badgers scored in the third period to defeat the upset-minded Lakers and win their first game of the tournament despite missing Logan Hensler, Luke Osburn and Quinn Finley from their roster. In what was a slower start to the game, Wisconsin gained a 1-0 lead before Adam Barone scored twice in the second period to stake the underdog Lakers to their own 2-1 lead.
The anxiety-inducing meteorite never landed after Ben Deixheimer scored on the power play to even the game ahead of the third period, though, and Finn Brink’s third goal of the season cushioned the Badgers enough for goaltender Daniel Houser to save 20-of-22 shots to become the 13th goalie of the season with 10 victories.
7. A knot nearly tied in the Tiger tail.
The Ivy League very quietly and softly introduced an initiative at the start of the 2025-2026 season that allowed its six ECAC hockey schools to add one more regular-season game to their respective schedules. Having previously skated 29-game schedules allowed the Ivies to schedule more impactful non-conference games for the future, but the late arrival meant that the upcoming season instead brought a set of non-league games between league opponents. In one such instance, Brown traveled to Princeton on Sunday for a single-game series against the very same Tigers that they’ll play in mid-February.
Brown had previously defeated Princeton at Meehan Auditorium as part of its first half of the season, so the Tigers needed this win to avoid dropping a second debilitating loss to a team in the NPI’s mid-50s. At less than five games over .500, the Tigers avoided that result by scoring a power play goal during overtime to defeat Brown at Baker Rink.
The impact from the goal is relatively unclear and won’t be known for some time. Princeton’s ongoing battle against the likes of Augustana, Northeastern, UConn and St. Thomas keeps the Tigers in the hunt for a spot on the national bubble, but avoiding a home non-conference loss against a team in the lower rankings is just as important as the upcoming games against Quinnipiac, Harvard, Dartmouth or Cornell.
8. Easy like Sunday morning.
Michigan State’s win over Ferris State at the Great Lakes Invitational likewise flew under the radar compared to the major victories and overall attention of the four Spartans skating under their national flags at the world juniors. Playing without Canada captain Porter Martone, the Swedish Nilson, and both Ryker Lee and Shane Vansaghi, the defending GLI champion put itself in position to clinch its first consecutive championships since the turn of the century by washing Ferris State out of Michigan Tech’s Van Andel Arena.
The win drew Sparty within six victories of Michigan’s all-time lead while offering an opportunity for the program to draw within three championships of tying the Wolverines for the all-time tournament lead. Combined with the advancement to the championship round, Michigan State will now finish either first or second at the tournament for the29th time in 49 appearances.
9. Conference reboots
Isolated non-conference matchups are still on the schedule for the rest of the year, not to mention the Beanpot and CT Ice tournaments that unquestionably grab some headlines as the end of the year progresses, but the large bulk of games moving forward are preparing for the chaos of conference play.
None of the conference leaders have more than a single three-point differential between themselves and the second-place team, and the vast majority of leagues are one weekend’s worth of work between first place and a less-favorable position. In Atlantic Hockey, for example, four points separates first place from third-place RIT, and second-place Bentley is both one point ahead of the Crusaders and three points up on the Tigers, but it’s going to take fourth-place Air Force multiple games to catch the leaders, who each have two games in hand. That’s significantly different from the CCHA, where a six-point weekend separated first-place Minnesota State from fourth-place Michigan Tech, with both fifth-place Bowling Green and sixth-place St. Thomas looming one point behind the Huskies.
None of the other leagues boast that kind of parity. The NCHC holds a four-point differential from first to third, but fourth-place Western Michigan is four points back of the Bulldogs for third place. In Hockey East, six points separates first and second-place UConn and Boston University from the drop to Maine, Northeastern or UNH, and even Quinnipiac and Union are starting the second half of the year in need of multiple weekend sweeps to catch first-place Dartmouth.
Seeding for postseasons are very much still up in the air, but the race for those top spots could conceivably thin quickly if results break correctly.
10. Women’s hockey home stretch.
It’s strange to think about the postseason in a matter of weeks against months, but the women’s hockey game enters its final home stretch when the calendar turns to the new year. Both Atlantic Hockey America and ECAC end their seasons by Valentine’s Day, and Hockey East, NEWHA and the WCHA join the jump one week later.
From a national standpoint, that means that teams are running out of opportunities to position themselves for a select number of at-large bids to the NCAA Tournament. Eleven teams qualify for the women’s game, which hosts this year’s Frozen Four at Penn State’s Pegula Ice Arena, and the WCHA already occupies the top three spots in the NPI. All three of those teams—Wisconsin, Ohio State and Minnesota—are virtual locks for the national tournament unless something drastic happens.
Assuming first-place teams earn automatic bids, Wisconsin would win the WCHA while Penn State claims Atlantic Hockey America, and Connecticut, Princeton and Saint Anselm would win Hockey East, ECAC and NEWHA, respectively. From an NPI standpoint, that puts Northeastern, Minnesota-Duluth, Quinnipiac, and Minnesota State into the field already including Ohio State and Minnesota. The first teams out are then Clarkson, Cornell and Holy Cross, with St. Cloud State and Mercyhurst sitting in a distant bubble spot. Colgate, Yale, Brown and Boston College have plenty of work and likely have to win their conference tournament.