Each week, USCHO’s writers debate some of the key storylines of the week in college hockey
Paula: Jimmy, the confluence of the end of the regular season and Team USA’s
women’s and men’s gold medals is almost an embarrassment of riches this week. I know we don’t talk about women’s hockey here in TMQ, but the statement made by both of those gold-medal performances about the state of hockey in the U.S. — the dominance on the world stage and the role that college hockey plays in that — is something to be noted.
I know we’ll have things to say about the Olympics, but I do want to start with the weekend of college hockey that was.
A big congratulations to Bentley for following up its first Atlantic Hockey playoff championship last year with its first-ever regular-season title this year. Carrying that momentum from one season to the next says good things about any program.
There are races to be won in every other conference. Quinnipiac needs a win this weekend against either Dartmouth or Harvard, North Dakota can clinch with a single win against Western Michigan, and Providence needs to win one of its three remaining games.
But the CCHA — and especially the Big Ten? Those are photo finishes in the making.
Any predictions, Jimmy, given what remains of the regular season?
Jim: The Olympic hockey tournaments may be game-changing for hockey as we know it in the United States, and I want to get to that, but I’ll answer your question first.
We do have a couple of leagues that will have photo finishes to the line. The CCHA is the league that became even more compressed this weekend, with Augustana earning a tie and then a shutout win over St. Thomas, knocking the Tommies to the NPI bubble, while Minnesota State took five of six points against Bowling Green. Meanwhile, Michigan Tech, which is riding a five-game unbeaten streak, is suddenly right in the mix.
Augustana looks pretty sitting atop the CCHA standings, but the Vikings have played their final regular-season CCHA game and will sit idle this weekend while Michigan Tech and St. Thomas (both two points back) and Minnesota State (four back) all play in hopes of overtaking the top spot.
Here is one thing I will say about the CCHA without predicting which team will win the regular season: I do feel like this league is heading toward only one NCAA bid. While this league has been relevant all season in the NPI, things have slowly slipped as teams have cannibalized one another — something that will continue right through the CCHA tournament. In the end, I’m not sure any of the teams will be inside the top 15 of the NPI, but there certainly won’t be two teams in that position.
The Big Ten is really down to a two-team race between Michigan and Michigan State, though Penn State is lurking after taking five of six from Ohio State. That league has two weekends remaining, though, and Michigan State, with two games in hand on Michigan, seems to be in the best position.
This isn’t a season with a ton of tight league races, but I expect at least some fireworks over the final week or two of the regular season.
Paula: I’m looking forward to those fireworks. As I’ve said many times before, the race for regular-season crowns and conference playoff championships is arguably the most exciting hockey of the season.
The CCHA is an excellent example of that. St. Thomas, Minnesota State, Augustana, and Michigan Tech pretty much define the NPI bubble, sitting in positions 15 through 18. Any one of those teams can win the CCHA conference playoff championship, which creates a lot of drama for a conference that will get only one team in the tourney.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have Michigan and Michigan State as No. 1 seeds in their NCAA brackets regardless of the playoff outcomes — barring something really unexpected, that is. (I mean, is it mathematically possible that either one isn’t a No. 1 seed?) In that conference, then, it’s all on the line for pride — or for that unlikely outcome: someone outside of the current NPI field emerges as a playoff champ.
Speaking of the Big Ten, and as an aside, I want to give a shoutout to Penn State’s Gavin McKenna, who had a goal and seven assists against Ohio State Friday and added another goal and a helper Saturday. The seven-assist game Friday is a new Big Ten record. I’m glad we’ve had the chance to see him play for what will surely be a single season at Penn State.
Okay, Jimmy, I want to get to the way Olympic hockey changed the game as we know it. The NCAA connections to both teams — players, staff, coaches — add to the feeling that this was an arrival moment for college hockey on the world stage, too.
I think you’re chomping at the proverbial bit to address this. How much of a game-changer — a game-changer specific to college hockey — was this?
Jim: There is so much to say here that it’s almost difficult to unpack it all. But I think when Jack Hughes scored the game-winning goal to set off the U.S. celebration in Italy and across the country, there were a few people who immediately ran through my head.
Jim Johannson, the late architect of many great U.S. men’s national teams and a massive supporter of the U.S. National Team Development Program, was the first to come to mind, alongside former Yale coach Tim Taylor, who I remember seeing for years in college rinks, scouring rosters for talent. But honestly, I need to go back further chronologically to when the NTDP was created and to the work of Ron DeGregorio, the former USA Hockey executive director, and Jeff Jackson, its first coach. Those two men didn’t just have vision — they had to battle through the naysayers. I read a story recently where Jeff Jackson said he was “almost broken” when he left USA Hockey for Notre Dame because of the backlash the program faced for “stealing” players from their teams to join the NTDP.
So, for me, Sunday’s gold medal feels like a long-awaited “I told you so” for many in the game of hockey who fought against USA Hockey in the early years of the NTDP.
But there is also the college impact, which we can’t overlook. College hockey’s fingerprints were all over Olympic hockey on the men’s and women’s sides. And it wasn’t just the U.S. teams. Seeing so many former college players dotting the rosters of international competition is a feather in college hockey’s cap — and that’s an understatement.
Personally, I look forward to the next 20 years to watch the impact of these two wins. I was young, but I remember 1980 — and I remember every one of my friends wanting to be Mike Eruzione or Jim Craig when we played ball hockey in the street. How many kids yesterday ran outside after the win and pretended they were Jack Hughes scoring the golden goal, or that they were Connor Hellebuyck making that insane stick save on Devon Toews in the third period?
There are not many moments in life when you know where you were and what you were doing when they happened. There are a lot of Americans who will remember where they were and what they were doing this past Thursday and Sunday.
Paula: Those two moments really did feel like collective, pivotal events. I sometimes think I’m a pretty calm person when it comes to hockey viewing — that having covered it for as long as I have has made me a little immune to celebrating.
Then Megan Keller scored Thursday and I jumped off the sofa and yelled. And because I scared the cats so badly Thursday, when I jumped off the sofa Sunday, I didn’t yell — but I did what every U.S. hockey fan did in that moment and celebrated.
As a transplant to Michigan, I can’t get over the connection there. Keller was born in Farmington Hills and played at Boston College. For the men, all four players have Michigan roots and three are collegians. Connor Hellebuyck is from Commerce Township and played — as you well know — at UMass Lowell. Zach Werenski (Grosse Pointe) and Dylan Larkin (Waterford) played together at Michigan. Jack Hughes wasn’t born in Michigan, but the Hughes family relocated from Toronto to southeast Michigan in 2017 so that Jack and his brothers, Quinn and Luke, could pursue hockey opportunities here. Quinn, of course, scored the OT goal against Sweden that sent the men’s team to the gold medal game, and both Quinn and Luke are Wolverines.
And their mother, Ellen Weinberg-Hughes, has helped shape this moment for women’s hockey in the U.S., having served as a player development consultant for the 2023 national team and for this year’s Olympic team.
All 23 players on the women’s gold medal team have NCAA roots. Given the lack of professional hockey opportunities traditionally available to women, that’s not a surprising stat. Among the coaching staff, only head coach John Wroblewski hasn’t coached at the college level, but he has coached for the National Team Development Program and played hockey at Notre Dame.
A total of 20 men’s players came from the NCAA ranks, a figure that would have been unthinkable perhaps as recently as a decade ago. All four men’s coaches played college hockey, and two — John Hynes and David Quinn — got their coaching starts in the NCAA.
Jimmy, you and I have been around college hockey for a long time, and we remember the days when we were pushing for NCAA development — player and coaching — to get the recognition it deserves. For many years, when we talked about growing the sport, we talked about growing NCAA hockey. Are we at the point now, though, where who drives what may be moot? In the U.S., does hockey in general need what the NCAA can deliver as much as college hockey once needed that hand up from professional hockey?
Jim: I think you nailed it — right now it’s not about who drives what in hockey. Sure, there is the human instinct to always want credit for your accomplishments. But I think winning Olympic gold provides plenty of accolades to share.
And honestly, it is the ability to share some of the spotlight that has created success for USA Hockey. The national governing body for the sport has not worked in a vacuum. It, along with the National Hockey League, has financially supported youth, junior, and college hockey. We have concrete proof in multiple ways, most notably College Hockey Inc., an organization that supports the college game but is funded by USA Hockey and the NHL, among others.
That cooperation, teamwork, and partnership must continue moving forward. We are witnessing the next rebirth of hockey in this country.