Each week, USCHO.com will pick the top 10 moments from the past weekend in our Monday 10 feature.
1) Minnesota makes a statement that it’s the team to beat in the Big Ten
Count me among those who thought upstart No. 13 Michigan State could grab a split from No. 4 Minnesota at home.
The Golden Gophers shut out the Spartans 5-0 on Friday, giving goaltender Justen Close his third shutout of the season. Close also made a career-high 40 saves in Saturday’s 6-3 win over the Spartans.
The sweep opens up a five-point lead in the Big Ten standings for Bob Motzko’s Gophers.
2) St. Cloud State sweeps North Dakota at home for the first time in 21 years
No. 3 St. Cloud State kept within two points of Denver in the NCHC standings with 7-2 and 6-3 come-from behind wins over the Fighting Hawks.
Huskies senior forward Zach Okabe recorded his second career hat trick and his first career natural hat trick on Saturday, helping his team score six straight goals to overcome a 3-0 deficit.
“We asked our guys before the game what our biggest strength was, and they said, ‘Resiliency,'” said St. Cloud coach Brett Larson after the game. “They thought they were willing to stick with it no matter what.”
North Dakota has been struggling defensively and in net. The Fighting Hawks have given up six or more goals four times this season and have a combined .861 save percentage.
3) Ferris State gets the road sweep at No. 11 Minnesota State
Ferris State accomplished something no team had done since 2015: sweep the Mavericks in Mankato.
On Friday, the Bulldogs took a 2-0 lead in the first and held on for a 2-1 win behind a 33-save perfomance by sophomore goalie Noah Giesbrecht. Ferris State blocked 27 Minnesota State shots in the win.
The Mavericks jumped to a 2-0 lead in the first 2:46 of the second game of the series, but the Bulldogs scored twice late in that period to tie it. Stepan Pokorny scored with under five minutes to play to give Ferris State the win. Junior netminder Logan Stein stopped 37 shots for the win.
Minnesota State fell to six points behind first-place Bowling Green in the CCHA with the losses, but the Mavericks have two games in hand.
4) Wisconsin upsets No. 5 Michigan on Friday; Wolverines salvage split
The Badgers recovered from a 2-0 deficit to down Michigan 6-3 on Friday for their first Big Ten win of the season. Michigan won on Saturday 4-2.
Wisconsin had won four straight coming into the weekend, with non-league sweeps of LIU and Lindenwood. Friday’s win was the Badgers’ first over a ranked team since a sweep of then-No. 10 Minnesota Duluth in October.
Friday night was also a tribute to the Suter family at Wisconsin’s Kohl Center.
5) No. 1 Denver gets a sweep over Arizona State amid replay controversies
A goal credited to Denver’s Carter King at 18:02 of the third period staked the Pioneers to a 3-2 win over the visiting Sun Devils on Friday.
Denver challenged the call on the ice that it was not a goal, as it appeared that it had been played by a high stick. After review, officials ruled that the winning goal had gone in off the glove of ASU’s Tim Lovell. Arizona State challenged that ruling, maintaining that the stick of Denver’s Jack Devine had caused Lovell’s glove to bat the puck in.
Denver coach David Carle credited hockey operations director Travis Culhane for the challenge, saying that Culhane was insistent that Devine had not contacted the puck.
Definitely went off the hand of a Sun Devil. pic.twitter.com/qyydxW3UTk
— Denver Hockey (@DU_Hockey) December 3, 2022
Denver prevailed 5-2 on Saturday, but not without some more replay controversy. The Sun Devils challenged Denver’s fifth goal but were told that the replay system was not operational.
6) Fit to be tied
No. 10 Providence and Boston College each picked up three Hockey East points on the weekend in a home-and-home series. The Friars picked up the shootout win on Friday at BC in a 1-1 game, while the Eagles returned the favor at Providence after a 2-2 contest.
Meanwhile No. 15 UMass and No. 16 UMass Lowell played to a 1-1 tie after 65 minutes, with the visiting River Hawks picking up the extra point in the standings with the shootout win.
Connecticut is on top of Hockey East with 27 points, but with 13 league games played compared to as few as eight by Maine and UMass, the standings are a bit misleading at first glance.
7) No. 7 Harvard sees its first ECAC Hockey loss at the hands of Colgate
After a 2-1 overtime win against longtime rival Cornell on Friday, the Crimson were dealt a 6-4 upset loss to Colgate on Saturday. Harvard led 3-1 midway through the contest before Colgate scored four straight, including two on the powerplay and one shorthanded goal. Junior Alex Young tallied his first career hat trick.
The Raiders’ 5-1 win over Dartmouth on Friday gave Colgate a weekend conference sweep and boosted its ECAC record to 6-2 and third place in conference standings.
8) Rochester Institute of Technology puts up 10 on Canisius
RIT scored six times in the third period to put away Canisius 10-4 on the road Saturday night after dropping a 2-1 overtime loss to the Griffins in Rochester on Friday.
The Tigers were helped by a pair of majors to Canisius with under 2:00 left in the second period. After a Tiger minor expired early in the third, RIT had 3:00 of 5-on-3 and scored three times to open a 7-2 lead.
RIT junior Cody Laskosky had a hat trick in the contest for the Atlantic Hockey first-place Tigers, who are the only team this season to reach double digits in a game.
9) Just where do things stand?
As I mentioned above, the standings in Hockey East are a little hard to decipher with such a disparity of games having been played by each team. That said, you can’t take points away after they’re earned, and UConn is the team everyone else is chasing right now.
Quinnipiac has a five-point advantage in ECAC Hockey as the Bobcats are a perfect 8-0 while second-place Harvard at 7-1 has lost two possible points with overtime wins. Colgate and Cornell are just three points behind the Crimson.
RIT, picked fourth by Atlantic Hockey coaches in the preseason, has earned 30 of 36 possible points, giving the Tigers a seven-point lead over American International and Sacred Heart, though the latter has played two more games than AIC and RIT. Among first-place teams in D-I men’s college hockey, only RIT has more than a weekend’s worth of wins between it and its closest rival.
With its weekend sweep, Minnesota has opened up a five-point lead in the Big Ten over Penn State. Though Notre Dame and Michigan trail the top four with nine league points, both have played two fewer games than the teams above and are a weekend sweep away from them.
Bowling Green’s spot at the top of the CCHA is helped by the Falcons having played two to four games more than much of the conference. BGSU’s sweep of Lake Superior State this past weekend while Minnesota State was swept has given the Falcons a six-point margin over the Mavericks and a one-point lead over Michigan Tech.
The NCHC standings show Denver with a two-point lead over St. Cloud though both have 6-2-0 records. Denver has an overtime loss while the Huskies have an overtime win, accounting for the two-point difference.
10) The circle of suck
The Twitter account @BUHockeyStats has published its 2022-23 College Hockey Circle of Suck. Going counterclockwise around the circle shows wins by teams over the next teams in order. This weekend’s results have closed the circle, which is a nice, non-scientific illustration of how anybody can beat anybody on any given night in D-I men’s college hockey.
Presenting…Your 2022-23 NCAA Division I Men's College Hockey Circle of Suck pic.twitter.com/qiwYU1kfw7
— BU Hockey Stats (@BUHockeyStats) December 4, 2022
