Each week, USCHO.com will pick the top 10 moments from the past weekend in our Monday 10 feature.
1. Top-ranked North Dakota splits with Omaha
North Dakota suffered just its second loss of the season Friday night, a 6-3 win by Omaha at Ralph Engelstad Arena. The Fighting Hawks trailed from the 49-second mark of the first period through the rest of the game, as the Mavericks’ Taylor Ward opened the scoring in the first minute of play. North Dakota evened the score at 3:22, but 1:34 later, Chayse Primeau put UNO up for good.
Six different Mavericks scored in the game with freshman goaltender Isaiah Saville making 27 saves in the win, his seventh of the season.
The loss ended North Dakota’s 13-game home-ice win streak, which dated back to the Fighting Hawks’ sweep of the Mavericks the last weekend of the 2018-19 regular season. That game also snapped North Dakota’s 15 current unbeaten streak, dating back to a road 2-1 loss to Minnesota State Oct. 19.
North Dakota salvaged the split with a 4-1 win Saturday.
2. Minnesota State has 20 wins
Minnesota State became the first team this season to hit the 20-win mark with a road sweep of Ferris State, outscoring the Bulldogs 10-1 in two games.
Three Mavericks posted two-goal games on the weekend: senior Marc Michaelis and sophomore Julian Napravnik Friday night and senior Charlie Gerard Saturday. Sophomore Dryden McKay picked up his seventh shutout of the season and 11th of his career Friday night, making 19 saves in the process.
With the sweep, Minnesota State has won five in a row and maintains its five-point lead ahead of Bemidji State in the WCHA standings.
3. Denver makes things interesting in the NCHC
The only team in the NCHC to sweep this past weekend, Denver went from 12 to 18 points, drawing two points closer to second-place Minnesota Duluth and three points closer to league-leading North Dakota.
Denver doesn’t move up in the standings, but with the two wins over St. Cloud State combined with North Dakota’s split and Minnesota Duluth’s four-point weekend against Western Michigan, the Pioneers not only gain ground on the top two teams in the league but begin to put a wedge between the top three teams in the conference and everyone behind them.
4. It doesn’t get more interesting than Hockey East
Six points separate Providence at the top of the Hockey East standings from New Hampshire … and Connecticut, and Maine, with five other teams sandwiched in between. The standings are nuts; Massachusetts, Northeastern and UMass Lowell have 15 points each, followed by Boston College (14) and Boston University (12) before the three teams with 10 apiece. And each of those teams has played anywhere from 10 to 13 games each.
Providence beat Connecticut, the only game for each team this past weekend. Northeastern lost to New Hampshire, the only game for each team. Massachusetts split with BC. Lowell and BU played out of conference and Maine played an exhibition game against the US Under-18 Team.
5. Michigan sweeps Notre Dame
The Wolverines doubled the number of their Big Ten conference wins from two to four in a single weekend by sweeping Notre Dame on the road, 3-0 and 3-1. Sophomore Strauss Mann made 32 saves Friday in his fourth career save, the third this season.
“I really like the way the team is coming together,” said Mel Pearson after the sweep. “But I have to be honest. We have to continue growing and we have to get better.”
Summers ?
Lockwood ?
Granowicz ?Michigan 2, Notre Dame 1 pic.twitter.com/MaLL7RHdjt
— Michigan Hockey (@umichhockey) January 12, 2020
Michigan, which began the Big Ten season 0-5-1 is now 4-2-0 in its last six B1G contests and is 3-1-0 overall to start the second half the season.
6. 11 with six or more
There were 11 games in which the winning team scored six or more goals this past weekend. The highest-scoring team was Sacred Heart, which unloaded on Mercyhurst 9-3 Saturday night.
The Pioneers swept the Lakers to remain two points ahead of Army in first place in the Atlantic Hockey Standings. Sacred Heart is averaging 3.95 goals per game this season, fourth-best in the nation.
This week’s high scorers and how they fared:
• Boston College beat Massachusetts 6-3 Saturday after losing to the Minutemen 3-1 Friday
• Denver beat St. Cloud State 6-3 Friday and completed the sweep with a 5-3 win Saturday.
• Harvard beat Yale 7-0 Saturday, the only game the Crimson played.
• Holy Cross beat Niagara 6-3 Friday and tied the Purple Eagles 2-2 Saturday.
• Miami beat Colorado College 6-1 Friday and lost to the Tigers 4-1 Saturday.
• Minnesota-Duluth beat Western Michigan 6-3 Friday and tied the Broncos 3-3 Saturday.
• Nebaraska-Omaha beat North Dakota 6-3 Friday before losing 4-1 Saturday.
• Northern Michigan beat Alaska Anchorage 6-3 Saturday after beating the Seawolves 4-1 Friday.
• Penn State beat Robert Morris 6-2 Saturday, the only game the Nittany Lions played.
• UMass Lowell beat RIT 6-4 Friday before losing to the Tigers 3-2 Saturday.
Five of those high-scoring winners – Harvard, Penn State, Sacred Heart, Boston College, Northern Michigan – are among the top 10 teams in the country offensively.
7. Harvard takes the Rivalry on Ice
The Crimson won Rivalry on Ice game at Madison Square Garden Friday night by defeating Yale 7-0. Yale had captured the two previous meetings between the teams in the event, in 2014 and 2015.
Sophomore forward Jack Drury recorded his first career hat trick in the game. Freshman goaltender Mitchell Gibson saved 27 shots through the first 55:14 of the game while senior Cameron Gornet stopped four in the final 4:46 of the contest. The shutout win was the second of Gibson’s collegiate career.
8. And that’s a goalie game misconduct
At 18:33 in the third period of the that game, Yale senior goaltender Corbin Kaczperski earned five minutes for contact to the head plus a game misconduct when he mixed it up with Harvard’s Henry Thrun following a save on a breakaway. Thrun made initial contact in the crease, which resulted in extracurricular activity that also led to two minutes for roughing after the whistle for Thrun.
Previous to this game, Kaczperski had one penalty for two minutes, a tripping call in Kaczperski’s last game of the 2018-19 season, a 4-1 ECAC playoff win against Rensselaer Mar. 8.
9. Wisconsin’s Weissbach gets one-game suspension
The Big Ten announced Saturday that Wisconsin junior forward Linus Weissbach earned a one-game suspension for his high hit of Ohio State freshman defenseman CJ Regula at 3:28 of the third period of Friday’s 4-2 OSU win in Madison. The impact drove Regula into the boards head-first, delaying the game by for more than minutes while Regula was tended to and eventually taken off the ice on a stretcher.
Ohio State announced Saturday that Regula had suffered a neck injury but was expected to make a full recovery after having been released from the hospital Friday night.
10. Wall is, indeed, a wall
Tyler Wall – who arguably has the best name for a goaltender of all time, period, the end – earned a place in UMass Lowell program history when the River Hawks beat RIT Friday night by earning his 52nd career win, the most ever for a Lowell goaltender.
Wall, a senior and a sixth-round draft pick of the New York Rangers in 2016, is having a career season. His 1.81 goals-against average is sixth-best nationally and his .941 save percentage is second.
