Head-to-head, winner-takes-all matchups between the top two teams in the conference in the regular season’s final weekend don’t happen all the time.
But when they do, they should be savored.
In the past decade, we’ve seen this happen once before in the race for the MacNaughton Cup. The last time it happened – the 2019-20 season – Minnesota State had clinched at least a share of the title entering the final series but needed to sweep second-place Bemidji State to clinch outright. Instead, the Beavers won 3-1 in Bemidji and the season came down to Saturday’s finale – a 4-1 MSU win.
That was the penultimate year of the old WCHA, a season cut unceremoniously short by the pandemic. You’d be forgiven for forgetting the details of how that season played out. Luckily, we haven’t had to wait long for another similarly-exciting end-of-season series.
This weekend’s CCHA series between first-place Minnesota State and second-place Michigan Tech in Mankato – in the midst of a late-winter blizzard raging across much of southern Minnesota – has all the hallmarks of an instant classic. Either team could win the MacNaughton Cup outright, adding to the intensity of the occasion.
“I think if you looked at the voting at the beginning of the year, everybody in our league, maybe we didn’t know who, but we just knew that at the end of the day, it would be close,” MSU coach Mike Hastings said. “It’s following that script. At the beginning of that year, you hope you’re in that situation. Our first goal is to get home ice, and then your second goal is to hopefully be competing for the league championship and we’re in that position now.”
The Mavericks (20-11-1, 15-8-1 CCHA) currently lead the Huskies (21-8-4, 14-6-4 CCHA) by two points in the league standings. A regulation win on either day will clinch the MacNaughton outright for the Mavs, while the Huskies need five points to take it for themselves. A four-point weekend for Tech — say, a win and an overtime loss — and the teams share the cup.
Tech already took four points from the Mavericks earlier this season in Houghton, which the Huskies say gives them some confidence going into this weekend.
“My previous freshman and sophomore years, we didn’t really get a sniff against Mankato, (so knowing we’ve already beat them once), there’s a mental side of things, thinking and knowing we can do it,” Michigan Tech captain Brett Thorne said. “This year, we have a really deep team, and we know we can compete with some of the top teams in the nation like BU and Michigan State, teams like that, and obviously Mankato is right up there. So I think we’re a little more confident this year, so we can bring that mental game to what we bring to the ice and see what happens.”
Both teams seem to be playing their best hockey down the stretch in 2023: Michigan Tech is 9-2-1 while Minnesota State is 10-2. And both have been getting superb goaltending in Keenan Rancier and Blake Pietila.
Everyone knows about Tech’s Pietila. He’s a Mike Richter Award finalist with eight shutouts on the season, has a 1.98 goals-against average and a .928 save percentage.
“Blake is the best goalie I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing with,” Thorne said. “His work ethic is insane. Playing in front of Blake, knowing you have a goaltender that’s so reliable and able to win you games by himself, it increases the confidence of the D core and the forwards in front of us. Knowing we can make mistakes and he’s going to be there. Us on the D core have talked about it, we want to play for him. He has a really good chance of winning that award this year, and I think he should win it. We have a lot of respect for Blake and what he’s been able to accomplish.”
Rancier, on the other hand, has been a revelation since the calendar turned to 2023. He struggled in the first half of the year but has started every single game for MSU in the season’s second half. His goals-against is No. 4 nationally at 1.89 and has a respectable .912 save percentage.
“If you don’t have (good goaltending) you can do a lot right and not find ways to win hockey games,” Hastings said of Rancier. “If you do have that, it provides you some flexibility in your game, whether it’s more survival, more confidence, and he has been that guy for us. There’s been some peaks and valleys from the start of the second half until now, but not nearly as many as there were in the first half. And I think that’s been a big difference for us (in the second half). We’ve defended better, he’s done a really good job between the posts for us, and that combination has allowed us to garner a little bit more confidence.”
So what should we expect this weekend?
“We’ve done a good job to get ourselves in opposition to possibly take home first place at the end of the season,” Thorne said. “So mentally, it’s a bit different this week. We know what’s riding on this weekend, but in the room, we are basically doing the same thing that’s brought us success over the past couple months. If we just stick to our game and do stuff the right way, I think we’re going to get a good outcome.”
Whatever happens, both teams know this isn’t the end of the journey. In most ways, it’s just the beginning. Both MSU and Tech have home-ice advantage for the first round of the CCHA’s Mason Cup playoffs, and both are on the Pairwise bubble.
“We want to enjoy the opportunity, but understand that it’s just the next step,” Hastings said. “Whether we do or we don’t, our season isn’t over, nor is Tech’s. Is it important, absolutely. But we’ve got hockey ahead of us also.”
