Much has been made about how close the CCHA was this year.
If someone asked you to take a look around and assess the state of the league, you’d be well aware that the second-place team in the standings was separated by just five points from the seventh-place finisher.
So when the CCHA’s Mason Cup playoffs started last weekend, it was hard to know what to expect in the quarterfinal round. Everyone beat up on everybody in the regular season, hence every team’s overall records all hovering around the .500 mark for much of the year. It seemed that if any college hockey conference’s playoff was ripe for multiple upsets–for the entire ecosystem to be re-arranged–it was this one.
But, for the most part, that didn’t end up happening.
Top-seeded Bemidji State, the McNaughton Cup champions who had been rolling coming into the playoffs, kept their momentum going with a sweep of Ferris State. The Beavers have now won eight straight. Third-seeded Michigan Tech, who finished the regular-season tied for second but lost the tiebreaker, dispatched Bowling Green for the fourth time in three weeks, winning 7-0 and 6-5 to advance. And two-time defending Mason Cup champions Minnesota State, who came into these playoffs with something to prove after seeing their six-year MacNaughton Cup streak snapped by BSU, managed to fend off fifth-seeded Northern Michigan with a two-game sweep.
One series didn’t quite fit in with the rest of the chalk. Perhaps it’s fitting that it was the two-seven matchup. Seventh-seeded Lake Superior State beat second-seeded St. Thomas in an entertaining three-game series in Mendota Heights, Minn., demonstrating for everyone just how close five points really is.
“I’m happy for the guys,” LSSU head coach Damon Whitten said in a phone interview on Tuesday. “I thought we competed extremely hard all series, and so did St. Thomas. It probably just shows how college hockey in general, and certainly the CCHA, is so close and how competitive everything is. It’s hard to win games at this level. Anybody can beat anybody on a given night, and you’ve got to play 60 minutes. It took all of that for us, just about, minus six seconds, on Sunday to win the series, so I’m really pleased with the result.”
As Whitten referenced, the Lakers (17-19-1) and Tommies (15-20-2) were just six seconds from going to overtime in Game 3 on Sunday, but the Lakers managed to get one final odd-man rush in the last 15 seconds. Luke Levandowski picked up the puck in the neutral zone, did a little give-and-go with Connor Millburn and managed to get a shot off with 9 seconds left. St. Thomas goalie Aaron Trotter made the initial save, but the puck took a super-ball bounce and landed in the perfect spot for Dawson Tritt, who knocked it down with his chest; the puck landed perfectly for him to tap it in with his stick and and past the sprawling Trotter with 6.6 seconds on the clock.
“We’re a young team in a lot of ways and I thought we did a really good job for a lot of guys playing their first college hockey playoffs,” Whitten said. “We don’t have a lot of those fifth-year guys, who have been through that and bring that experience. So, it was a real good road win for a younger team.”
The Lakers have seven seniors, but most of them are somewhat late bloomers. Only five of them (including goaltender Ethan Langenegger, defenders Artyom Borshyov and Jeremy Gervais and forwards Joshua Wildauer and Tyler Williams) were on the team the last time LSSU won a playoff series in the 2020-21 season, when won the WCHA tournament title and made an NCAA tournament appearance. None of those five saw a ton of ice time that season.
But Whitten appreciates that group’s leadership. One of them (Borshyov) scored an empty-net goal Friday to help seal the 4-1 Lake State win.
“He’s not a guy that shows up on the score sheet every night,” Whitten said of his captain, who has two goals and eight points this season. “But he’s that heart and soul guy. He’s a playoff hockey type of guy. He’s 6-3, 210, he’s gonna compete extremely hard. He’s gonna do all the little things it takes to be successful this time of year.”
The Lakers have done a lot of things right this season. Their special teams were the best in the CCHA, and their scoring offense finished the regular season second only to Bemidji State. A number of players, including Connor Millburn, senior Jared Wescott and freshman John Herrington, are receiving all-CCHA recognition.
Wescott, a first-team all-CCHA player and finalist for the CCHA forward of the year, finished the regular season leading the CCHA in points with 34. Millburn, a finalist for best defensive forward and a second team all-league selection, was one of five CCHA skaters along with Wescott to reach 30-points in the regular season. And Herrington, who was named to the all-rookie team, finished the regular season with 19 points while playing on the Lakers’ top line.
And that doesn’t even include the other players who aren’t awards finalists but who Whitten relies on to score key goals, like Tritt, Harrison Roy, Timo Backos and Carter Batchelder, just to name a few.
“We’ve got decent, spread-out depth of scoring. And that’s been a pretty good weapon,” Whitten said. “When Jared hasn’t been able to get on the scoresheet, we’ve got other guys who can step up and do it. So whether it’s our forwards or our d-corps, we have some pretty consistent offense, which helped us. I think we ended up being the highest scoring team in the regular season, and that depth paid off.”
The Lakers will travel to Bemidji on Saturday for their single-game semifinal matchup with top-seeded Bemidji State (19-15-2). The Beavers are the league champions, but the Lakers are just about the only CCHA team BSU didn’t take the majority of points from this season. LSSU went 3-1 against BSU this year, with a five-point sweep in Sault Ste. Marie and a split when the teams met in Bemidji. That last series in December featured a 7-1 Beaver win followed by a 6-1 Laker blowout the next night.
“We played Bemidji four times, and the last set was in December, so it feels like three seasons ago maybe at this point,” Whitten joked. “So we’re not putting too much into it. We can maybe pull a couple things. We’ve met in the playoffs a ton the last couple of years as well. So I think they know who we are, we know who they are.”
A difference in the series in December is that the Beavers were then without CCHA first-team goaltender Mattias Sholl, they were also missing a few other key contributors. Both teams should be at full strength for this game
“They’ve been one of the best teams in the country in the last month or two. You can see it with four first team all-league players,” Whitten said. “They got nominees for player of the year, defenseman of the year, goalie of the year, so they really earned it with a great year. (BSU head coach Tom Serratore) has done a tremendous job with them. And we’ve got to be road-minded when we go up there and find a way to be that underdog.”
