Each week, USCHO.com picks the top 10 moments from the past weekend in our Monday 10 feature
1. Michigan wins by the hair on its chinny-chin-chin
Will Horcoff’s rebound goal delivered a wild and time-expiring victory that kept top-ranked
Michigan undefeated and eliminated a threat from No. 5 Western Michigan in one of the craziest
endings to a game between the in-state rivals.
Coming seconds after Cole McKinney’s initial attempt hit a defender, the deflection found Horcoff, who promptly rocketed one past goaltender Quentin Miller as the Yost Ice Arena clock ticked into its final tenths.
The win came on a night when Michigan honored its 1996 national championship team and featured both a point and goal by Jayden Perron, who extended streaks of both 13 games with a point and nine games with a goal, while Drew Shock added two assists to continue scoring points in every game this season for the Wolverines.
Michigan is now 7-0-0 for the second straight year — a first for any two-year span in program
history.
2. Quinnipiac wasn’t so lucky
The No. 8 Bobcats dropped an upset loss to Atlantic Hockey America’s Army West Point when senior Brent Keefer jumped out of the penalty box and completed an odd-man rush that beat goaltender Christian Kirsch on Friday night. He’d been serving a holding penalty since the halfway point of the 3-on-3 period, which was forced because Quinnipiac forward Jack Stockfish scored with roughly 11 minutes remaining in the third period.
The goal was Keefer’s second of the game after he opened the scoring in the first period’s first three minutes, and it completed a comeback that began when Jack Ivey scored to tie Quinnipiac, which previously led, 2-1, after scoring twice within 45 seconds in the latter stages of the first. Ivey was later followed by Adam Marshall as part of a two-goal second for the Black Knights, who led 3-2 before Stockfish’s second goal of the game in the third period.
3. BC earns a well-fought tie after Friday night loss
No. 18 Boston College continued its ongoing saga vs. No. 4 Denver with a weekend series at Magness Arena, and after losing the first game by a 5-2 margin, the Eagles fought back from a two-goal deficit as part of a 2-2 tie on Saturday that included a shootout victory.
Teddy Stiga served as the proverbial hero after the Eagles surrendered two goals in the second period on Saturday night, but a late second period goal by Matias Vanhanen halved the deficit before the Finland-born freshman served Stiga with a goal-front strike that sent the game into overtime. Neither team then found an opportunity in overtime before Dean Letourneau scored a lone shootout goal that gave BC bragging rights on the official tie.
Kristian Epperson and Blake Fiddler scored for the Pios, who scored three times in the third period of Friday night’s game to run away from BC after the Eagles erased a separate 2-0 deficit. Kieran Cebrian finished that game with two goals while Sam Harris, Daxon Rudolph and James Reeder tacked on additional goals for the defending national champions.
4. Gopher Holed
Arguably the biggest rivalry in college hockey history found a dramatic latest chapter when No. 4 North Dakota traveled to the Twin Cities and left with a pair of 5-3 losses against Minnesota on Thursday and Friday night.
The wild weekend certainly didn’t lack storylines, and both Christian Humphreys and Wyatt Cullen etched their names into the lore of the rivalry by earning major stripes across the two games. Having watched their team fall out of the weekly polls despite the return of annual expectations, Humphreys stepped to the line first by breaking a 1-1 deadlock in the early third period of Thursday night’s game. It was part of a three-goal stretch across three minutes and broke the game into a 4-1 advantage for Minnesota before Anthony Menghini and Cole Reschny brought North Dakota within a goal within the final five minutes.
One night later, Cullen scored a hat trick around Humphreys’ third goal of the weekend, and he scored once in the second and twice in the third while a 2-1 deficit turned into a 5-2 advantage. He finished with an assist on Humphreys’ goal after Brodie Ziemer opened the scoring in North Dakota’s advantage.
5. Bentley breakout.
Back east, a third period breakaway in Massachusetts allowed the defending Atlantic Hockey America regular season and postseason champion Bentley to sweep Robert Morris. Having previously burned the Colonials with a 5-0 victory on Friday night, the Falcons scored five unanswered goals on Saturday after Bruce McDonald’s first period goal gave RMU its first lead of the weekend. Saxton Tess then put a shot on goal that Alec Leonard tipped behind goaltender Lucas Massie, tying the game at 1-1, before Jan Gaspard scored in the first minute of the third period to give Bentley a 2-1 lead.
Oskar Bakkevig, Leonard and Marton Nemes ended the scoring with goals over an 11-minute span of the remainder of the third. Bakkevig and Gaspar previously scored on Friday night to round out Bentley’s multiple goal scorers. The Falcons now head into a home-and-home with chief rival Holy Cross in a rematch of last year’s playoff semifinal series and the previous year’s postseason championship game.
6. Divine Providence
Providence’s sweep over UMass-Lowell pushed the No. 7 Friars to their best start in nearly 25 years and continued an unblemished and unbroken start to a 7-0-0 season. Jack Parsons recorded his second shutout of the season with a 3-0 win on Friday night before PC turned around on Saturday and returned home to Schneider Arena for a 5-2 victory over the River Hawks.
Four different skaters tallied goals during that home game, which featured a five-goal first period after Parsons stopped 26 shots in the blanking at Tsongas Arena. John Mustard had a goal and two assists after starting the scoring in the first 100 seconds, and Ryder Cali finished with two goals while Will Elger and Aleksi Kivioja rounded out the scorers for a team assuredly moving north of its current No. 9 spot in the national poll.
Joey McGraw scored on the power play for the River Hawks while Nicholas Wellenreiter added
an early second period goal.
7. Technically perfect, until they weren’t
No. 11 Michigan Tech’s run among the unbeaten and untied teams in Division I was halted on
Saturday night when Ferris State reversed a 3-1 loss from Friday night with a 2-1 victory that
featured all scoring in the first period.
Falling behind the Huskies 1-0 in the first 10 minutes, Nathan Mackie and Akseli Pukkanen scored goals in the last four minutes while goaltender Alan Lendak stopped 30 shots to end Ferris State’s five-game winless streak to begin the season.
The streak technically included a shootout loss to Canisius, but the unquestioned victory in Big Rapids was one night after the Bulldogs led 1-0 before allowing two second period goals and an empty netter in the opening round against the previously-perfect Huskies.
8. Return of the Mack
No. 20 Merrimack operated under the radar when it beat New Hampshire in a shootout and swept Minnesota State at home, but the defending Hockey East champions likely took a giant step towards the national spotlight with a pair of road wins over Notre Dame over the weekend.
Winning 2-1 on Friday night, the Warriors stepped onto the Compton Family Arena ice on Saturday with a renewed purpose and overcame a 2-0 first period deficit by scoring three goals in each of the second and third periods.
Six different players wound up scoring on Saturday, though both Justin Gill, Seamus Powell and Trevor Hoskin all exited the game with multiple points, including Hoskin, who assisted on three separate goals. Each of the second period goal scorers also scored on the power play, which went 3 for 5 with consecutive goals during a single major power play in the final five minutes of the period.
The Irish, meanwhile, missed scoring on their only power play, which doubled as a major in the only penalty called against Merrimack. One night earlier, the overtime victory for the Warriors occurred when Nick Pierre scored with 50 seconds remaining in the extra session, but the game took on a much different tone when nobody outside of Ty Daneault and Notre Dame’s Evan Werner lit the lamp.
9. Fortress Alfond
Petter Wickstrom Stumer and Albin Boija combined for 41 saves across two nights as unranked Maine compelled its case for a return to the national rankings with a pair of 3-0 blankings over ECAC’s Colgate at Alfond Arena. Loic Usereau and Lee Parks each finished with a pair of goals on the weekend after scoring once in each game, and Tanner Klimpke added a power play goal on Friday with Samuel Alfano scoring on Saturday night to defeat the Raiders.
The Black Bears previously split with both Holy Cross and Quinnipiac, so winning twice over a non-conference opponent should bode well ahead of the start to next weekend’s inaugural Hockey East series at Agganis Arena and Boston University.
10. Back in the saddle
Ohio State’s first loss of the season at No. 3 Minnesota didn’t do enough to knock the Buckeyes out of women’s hockey’s No. 1 spot, so the Buckeyes shouldn’t have a problem retaining the top slot in the upcoming week’s poll after a pair of shutout victories over No. 8 Colgate.
Playing a top-10 team for the fourth time over the first five weeks of the regular season, Ohio State performed a defensive master class and limited the Raiders to eight shots on goal on Friday before allowing 15 shots on goal on Saturday. Taylor Kressin took over from there and prevented anything from getting in the back of the net while Jocelyn Amos added three goals on the weekend with one coming 5-on-5, one coming on the power play and one via a short-handed bid. Sydney Sawyer likewise added two goals in the Saturday win, and Kaia Malachino scored once on Friday and once on Saturday.
Now 9-1-0 on the year, Ohio State hosts Bemidji State and Minnesota-Duluth over the next
three weekends before round out November with a trip to St. Cloud State.