Welcome back to USCHO’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback for the 2026-27 season. Each week, we look at the big events and big games around Division I men’s college hockey.
Dan Rubin: Ed! We’re back! It’s hockey season!
I know you’re just as excited as me to talk about our first weekend and the unofficial soft opening of college hockey season, and there are too many things to start talking about. I promise, though, not to brag too much about the upcoming banner night in Waltham — the second consecutive, I might add — when Vermont comes to Atlantic Hockey’s reigning and defending “champeen” at Bentley.
The first weekend is always an interesting thing to finally start seeing results, but virtually everything held to chalk. Was there anything to surprise us this weekend, or are we just going to dip our toes into what we’re looking forward to seeing in the future?
Ed Trefzger: Dan, I am excited about the new season, especially now that I’ve reconciled with the notion that college hockey has changed in so many ways — CHL players, money, transfers, even new rules — and it’s not going back. So I am done grousing about any of that.
A few things stood out to me over the weekend. Quinnipiac’s bulldozing of New Hampshire and doubling up Merrimack caught my attention. Just about every Bobcat got on the score sheet in at least one of those two games. I don’t expect Quinnipiac to maintain that eight-goals-per-game pace, but they’re showing they have some depth.
Then-No. 19 Michigan Tech’s sweep of No. 14 Minnesota in Houghton after a day’s delay to cure some ice problems shines some more light on a team picked by CCHA coaches to win the conference. Colorado College looks like it’s going to be improved after the more experienced Tigers swept a young visiting UMass squad.
But also catching my notice was Hockey East’s 3-5 start. Boston University got two of those wins at Alaska (and coach Jay Pandolfo’s 100th behind the BU bench) while Maine got the only other W in a split at Holy Cross. Should Hockey East be concerned about digging a post-season hole already?
Dan: I’m not mashing the panic button, but I’m also not sitting here and saying that the rest of the season is going to be a cakewalk when Hockey East was essentially a two-bid league last year. Merrimack winning the conference tournament successfully avoided that from cementing into fact, but going into the tournament with two No. 4 seeds was formerly reserved for the so-called non-power leagues of college hockey. In fact, if we’re going deep enough, Hockey East basically ran into this situation in 2023 when it was a two-bid league, and it almost happened again in 2024 when it was a four-bid league — although it’s worth noting that the 2024 iteration had the top two seeds and a No. 5 seed in its bid before UMass clinched the last at-large bid to the dance.
I’m really misremembering the coach who said it, but I’m pretty sure we’ve both been told that you can’t win championships in October — but you certainly can lose them — and even though there are some natural milestones to celebrate, there are some warning flags that the league has to combat.
Back to those milestones, though. We mentioned Jay Pandolfo’s 100th win, but shoutout to Michigan’s Brandon Naurato for reaching 100 wins in Saturday’s win over Bowling Green. On the other end of the spectrum, Maryville played its first official game of its Division I era and defeated St. Lawrence, 3-2, before winning an exhibition game, 3-1.
I’m curious how we’re going to view Maryville over the next couple of years, but I’d think that a win over an established Division I program has to be a great jump start for a team that’ll play 17 games against other teams, including next weekend’s set against Yale and Princeton.
Ed: No better way to start a program than by winning, but I’m sure there will be a few ups and downs, especially since all of Maryville’s D-I games are on the road.
Maryville joins Lindenwood as a second St. Louis-area team; their campuses are about 20 miles apart. However, they can’t schedule each other 16 times just to make travel easier.
Scheduling for D-I men’s hockey independents is difficult. Once the last month of the season arrives, those teams are left with nobody available except each other. It’s time to find conferences for as many as possible. It’s not likely that Alaska and Alaska Anchorage find a home — especially since the current CCHA was formed to leave those teams (and defunct Alabama Huntsville) without a seat when the music stopped. But it seems like one eastern league and one western league have room for two programs each.
The last team to make the NCAA tournament as an independent was Arizona State, but that program was the only independent for much of that time, and had the bonus of being somewhere everyone was happy to travel to in the winter.
Now that I’ve mentioned them, we can’t avoid discussing Arizona State’s current situation. The Sun Devils split on the road at Lindenwood after a week that included an anonymous letter from seven players delivered via attorney and the paid administrative leave for head coach Greg Powers.
Dan: So let me start this one out by reiterating that I personally have zero tolerance for this particular situation. Having a player collapse during a workout and wind up in a hospital, unlikely to recover, is unacceptable and requires everyone to take an inward look at how the road led to that moment. On a personal level, I sincerely empathize for Matthew Mayich, his family, his friends, teammates, and anyone else affected by what’s happened. On a professional level, I hope that there is a genuine analysis of how anyone thought it was a good idea to run this workout, no matter how many times it might have been used by some other team or by anyone else. It’s almost impossible to effectively state it, especially with my more rosy perspectives on sports, so allow me to lean into idealism and emotional well-being over the stereotype of a rugged toughness. In the end, maybe, just maybe, we can somehow grow and enact some genuine change by learning, together, as a hockey society.
I want that said because the question is more specifically about the team’s steps forward. We know that Arizona State is going to name an interim head coach for the foreseeable future, and we’re not sure if that includes anyone from the current staff. Even without the reported letter from the seven players, I’d hope that the university and its athletic department officials are polling and talking with the players to determine their levels of trust in the current coaching staff while assuring them that the climate for who leads this program is lined with integrity, honesty and trust. There has to be about 100 miles between having that at the top and figuring out who can execute a power play.
This isn’t about moving forward because it’s about learning to how to live in a present reality that’s both new and terrible. I hope they can find a way to release the strain together as one, and I hope they can find the right person to help them learn and grow. I’m hopeful that their season can allow them to use the hockey game as a compartmentalization for that growth and education, and I’m expecting the university — if it’s truly putting its best foot forward — to find the right person to help them with that objective. This is a situation that’s calling for the right person to support young men in their journey through life, and the only way to do that is through an honest and open discussion.
Ed: Sadly, nobody can go back and change the present. But Arizona State University needs to start doing the right thing. Now. Everything from now on needs to be as transparent as possible.
One of USCHO’s staff first learned of this situation as well as Matthew Mayich’s name from a source two days after the event. Our editors held off with the thought that for certain the university or the family would come forward with the player’s name once the story had begun to leak out.
That didn’t happen. From a public relations standpoint, ASU completely botched it, and continued to for weeks.
That’s completely irrelevant to me now, as a young man on life support has had everything taken away from him.
The Professional Hockey Players’ Association — which represents AHL and ECHL players — posted recently on social media supporting the right for college athletes to have representation. PHPA executive director Brian Ramsay wrote, “College athletes need an independent structure whose only responsibility is to advocate for them — not the institution, not the conference, not the television contract, and not the business model.”
A few years ago, I wouldn’t have favored what would essentially be a union for college athletes. But the game indeed has changed. Professional careers, and, more importantly, lives are at stake.
If even a Power 4 program can fail to protect a player from that level of injury in what appears to have been an ill-conceived and poorly executed workout, then someone needs to take a stand for the athletes.