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Subscribe to USCHO Game of the Week:Rankings roundup: How the top 20 NCAA Division I men’s hockey teams fared, Feb. 21-22
Here is a rundown of how the top 20 teams in the USCHO.com Division I Men’s Hockey Poll of Feb. 17 fared in games over the weekend of Feb. 21-22.
No. 1 Michigan State (22-6-4)
02/21/2025 – No. 18 Penn State 2 at No. 1 Michigan State 2 (OT)
02/22/2025 – No. 18 Penn State 3 at No. 1 Michigan State 2
No. 2 Boston College (24-6-1)
02/21/2025 – No. 2 Boston College 6 at RV Vermont 3
02/22/2025 – No. 2 Boston College 4 at RV Vermont 1
No. 3 Western Michigan (23-6-1)
02/21/2025 – No. 3 Western Michigan 3 at No. 12 Arizona State 5
02/22/2025 – No. 3 Western Michigan 4 at No. 12 Arizona State 3 (OT)
No. 4 Maine (19-6-5)
02/21/2025 – No. 4 Maine 2 at No. 11 Connecticut 3 (OT)
No. 5 Minnesota (23-7-4)
02/21/2025 – No. 7 Ohio State 1 at No. 5 Minnesota 4
02/22/2025 – No. 7 Ohio State 3 at No. 5 Minnesota 6
No. 6 Denver (23-8-1)
02/21/2025 – No. 6 Denver 5 at Miami 1
02/22/2025 – No. 6 Denver 5 at Miami 2
No. 7 Ohio State (20-10-2)
02/21/2025 – No. 7 Ohio State 1 at No. 5 Minnesota 4
02/22/2025 – No. 7 Ohio State 3 at No. 5 Minnesota 6
No. 8 Providence (18-8-5)
02/22/2025 – No. 13 UMass Lowell 2 at No. 8 Providence 4
No. 9 Boston University (18-12-1)
02/21/2025 – Northeastern 5 at No. 9 Boston University 1
02/22/2025 – No. 9 Boston University 3 at Northeastern 1
No. 10 Michigan (17-12-3)
Did not play.
No. 11 Connecticut (17-10-3)
02/21/2025 – No. 4 Maine 2 at No. 11 Connecticut 3 (OT)
No. 12 Arizona State (18-12-2)
02/21/2025 – No. 3 Western Michigan 3 at No. 12 Arizona State 5
02/22/2025 – No. 3 Western Michigan 4 at No. 12 Arizona State 3 (OT)
No. 13 UMass Lowell (15-12-3)
02/22/2025 – No. 13 UMass Lowell 2 at No. 8 Providence 4
No. 14 Quinnipiac (21-9-2)
02/21/2025 – Yale 1 at No. 14 Quinnipiac 4
02/22/2025 – Brown 0 at No. 14 Quinnipiac 4
No. 15 Minnesota State (22-8-2)
02/21/2025 – No. 15 Minnesota State 4 at Lake Superior State 0
02/22/2025 – No. 15 Minnesota State 4 at Lake Superior State 1
No. 16 Massachusetts (17-12-3)
02/21/2025 – No. 16 Massachusetts 3 at RV New Hampshire 3 (OT)
02/22/2025 – RV New Hampshire 1 at No. 16 Massachusetts 3
No. 17 North Dakota (17-12-2)
02/21/2025 – Minnesota Duluth 2 at No. 17 North Dakota 4
02/22/2025 – Minnesota Duluth 1 at No. 17 North Dakota 6
No. 18 Penn State (17-11-4)
02/21/2025 – No. 18 Penn State 2 at No. 1 Michigan State 2 (OT)
02/22/2025 – No. 18 Penn State 3 at No. 1 Michigan State 2
No. 19 Clarkson (20-9-3)
02/21/2025 – No. 19 Clarkson 3 at RV Cornell 1
02/22/2025 – No. 19 Clarkson 5 at Colgate 3
No. 20 Colorado College (17-14-1)
02/21/2025 – No. 20 Colorado College 4 at St. Cloud State 3
02/22/2025 – No. 20 Colorado College 2 at St. Cloud State 4
RV = Received Votes
NCAA D-II/III East Men’s Ice Hockey Weekend Wrap-up – February 23, 2025
Well, wasn’t that some playoff-style hockey to finish out the regular season! Everyone had to be scoreboard watching and calibrated on what the tiebreaker formulas looked like with shootout points, head-to-head and regulation wins coming into play across the conferences. There was great drama in the NE-10 playoffs where St. Anselm had to rally back from two goals down to win in overtime after tying the game with a 5-on-3 shorthanded tally late in the third period against Assumption. All this drama points to some very interesting playoff matchups that begin across the region on Wednesday. But before we go there, here is the recap of the wild finishes over the weekend in the east:
CNE
The CNE wrapped up their regular season on Friday night setting the stage for the conference tournament that will begin on Wednesday with the quarter final round.
Regular season champions Curry extended their win streak to fourteen games with a 3-1 decision over Johnson & Wales. Ryan Prewitt scored two goals and Shane Soderwall made twenty-one saves as Curry finished the regular season schedule at 22-3-0.
The University of New England closed out their conference schedule with a 3-0 road win over Wentworth. The Nor’easters were led by Drew Olivieri who recorded a goal and an assist while Stefan Carney earned the shutout making thirteen saves against the Leopards.
Endicott concluded their regular season schedule with an 8-1 rout of Western New England led by two goals from Domenic Garozzo. Michael Casey, Primo Self, and John Goldowski each chipped in with a goal and an assist for the Gulls win on home ice.
Suffolk and Nichols closed out the CNE schedule as a playoff teaser with the game ending in a 1-1 overtime tie and the Rams winning the shootout 2-1. CJ Hapward was stellar in goal for Suffolk stopping twenty-five of twenty-six Bison attempts on goal.
With the regular season complete Western New England and Johnson & Wales are eliminated from the playoffs. On Wednesday, No. 6 Wentworth will visit No. 3 Endicott and No. 5 Nichols will face No. 4 Suffolk in the quarterfinal round of the CNE tournament. On Saturday, the lowest remaining seed will travel to face No. 1 Curry and the remaining winner will travel to Maine to face UNE in the semifinals. The conference championship will be played at the highest remaining seed on Saturday, March 8.
Independent
Keene State closed out its season with a two-game series against Misericordia. On Friday, the Owls secured a 3-2 win with Jack Unger scoring the game-winning goal just thirty-eight seconds after Jack Tos had toed the score at 2-2 with a power play goal for the Cougars. Ben Skelton was sharp in the Owls net making thirty-four saves including eighteen in the final period. On Saturday, the last game of the season for both first-year clubs saw the Owls skate off with a 5-2 win to finish the season with a 13-10-1 record. A three-goal first period paced the visitors to a quick lead to help close their maiden season with a six -game win streak.
MAC
The MAC playoff slate was determined based on Friday’s games with Alvernia joining Wilkes, Stevenson, and Neumann in the tournament bracket. The Golden Wolves will travel to face No. 1 Wilkes on Saturday in one semifinal while No. 2 Stevenson will host Neumann in the second semifinal. The winners will play in the first MAC championship game on Saturday, March 8, where the winner receives and auto-bid to the NCAA tournament.
Alvernia took a 7-0 win over Lebanon Valley on Friday to clinch their playoff position. Vincent Servizzi scored two goals, and Patrick Del Vecchio scored a goal and setup two more in the runaway win over the Flying Dutchmen. Goaltender Jacob Stern stopped thirty-four shots, including seventeen in the third period to pick-up the shutout.
Stevenson closed out their MAC slate with a 2-1 win over Arcadia. Connor MacDonnell and Evan Beers provided the offense and goaltender Ford DeLoss finished with thirty-four saves, losing his shutout bis in the final minute of regulation on a goal from Cody Mastay for the Knights.
After Friday’s 3-3 overtime tie with King’s (King’s win shootout) where the Monarchs rallied from 2-0 and 3-1 deficits inn the third period to earn the tie, Neumann closed out their regular season with a Saturday game against Lebanon Valley. The Knights finished the regular season with an offensive flourish in a 9-3 win over the Flying Dutchmen. Matt Dimaline paced the Knights’ attack with two goals and two assists.
With the top four teams clinched into the MAC playoff bracket, Arcadia, King’s, Lebanon Valley, and Misericordia ended their 2024-25 seasons.
MASCAC
The MASCAC standings were tight entering the final week of play with lots of different scenarios including who would be atop the conference at the end of regulation play with Anna Maria and Plymouth battling head-to-head on the final day. Lots of battles for position in the new one-eight playoff format (Thanks Coach Millerick for confirming format on Saturday) and games that ultimately saw Plymouth State repeat as regular season champions for the eighth consecutive season, and their last as a member of MASCAC.
Anna Maria moved into first place with Tuesday’s overtime win over Worcester State with Pearce Baker sealing the win in the extra session. Salem State was next on the schedule for the AmCats and the Vikings having aspirations of moving up in the standings picked up a big road win on Thursday, 5-2. Landyn Greatorex figured in four of the goals, scoring a hat trick and assisting on another Viking goal. With Plymouth State’s drubbing of MCLA on Thursday, the stage was set for a winner take all regular season title with the Panthers and AmCats playing on Saturday.
The Panthers were not about to cede their streak of conference championships to Anna maria as five different players scored for the Panthers and goaltender Brandon Shantz was stellar in goal stopping all twenty-six AmCat attempts on goal in a 5-0 victory that sealed their eighth straight regular season title.
Salem State remained unbeaten in February as they closed out the regular season with a 6-4 win over Worcester State led by two goals and an assist from James Tatro and two goals from Luke Day.
Fitchburg State needed a win in their season finale against Rivier to move into fourth place – last home-ice playoff position for quarterfinal round – and eked out a 4-3 win over the Raiders. The falcons started fast with three goals in the first period but needed Marcus Macchioni’s power play goal late in the third period to hold off the Raiders and pick-up the points needed to move into fourth place. Macchioni finished with one goal and two assists.
While Framingham State and Rivier were eliminated from playoff consideration, the playoff matchups for the quarterfinals this week look like this: No. 8 MCLA travels to No. 1 Plymouth State; No. 7 Westfield State plays at No. 2 Anna Maria; No. 6 Massachusetts-Dartmouth plays No. 3 Salem State and No. 5 Worcester State will face-off against No. Fitchburg State. Quarterfinal games will be completed on Thursday this week with semifinal action on Saturday March 1 and the conference championship game at the highest remaining seed on Saturday, March 8.
NE-10
The quarterfinal round of the NE-10 tournament was played on Tuesday with No. 3 Southern New Hampshire hosting No. 6 Franklin Pierce and No. 3 Assumption hosting No. 5 Post.
SNHU found themselves in a dogfight despite outshooting the Ravens by a 36-20 margin. Nic Dallaire provided the only goal of the game in the second period and goaltender Collin Berke kept the Ravens off the scoresheet with a twenty save shutout in a 1-0 victory for the Penmen. The win earned SNHU a semifinal date on Saturday against No. 2 St. Michael’s.
Assumption hosted a Post team that had beaten them thee of four games in the regular season. Dean Simeone scored a power play goal in the first period that would be all the offense Thomas McLarnon would need as the senior goaltender stopped all thirty Eagles attempts on net to earn a shutout win. Daniel Lemanski and Sean Donoghue added third period tallies for the final margin in the 3-0 win. Assumption earned a semifinal date with top seed St. Anselm.
On Saturday, SNHU traveled to Vermont where Patrick Last scored two goals in a 3-1 win for the host Purple Knights. Ryland Dukes iced the contest with an empty-net goal late and Evan Plunkett stopped thirty-five Penmen shots to earn St. Michael’s a spot in the conference championship game.
In the other semifinal, Assumption took a 2-0 lead on top seed St. Anselm but goals by Garrett Alberti and Richie Colarusso, shorthanded while killing a 5-on-3 late in the third period, tied the score at 2-2 sending the contest to overtime. In the extra session, it was Colarusso who sealed the win for the Hawks less than one minute after the puck drop in a 3-2 overtime win.
St. Anselm will host St. Michael’s in the championship game next Saturday, March 1.
NEHC
Hobart had clinched the top spot in the final season of the NEHC weeks ago but would figure prominently in the battle for second place as they visited Babson who was battling Norwich for the second position. On Friday, the Statesmen took a 2-0 win over the Beavers in what was a playoff atmosphere while Skidmore downed Norwich, 5-3 setting up a final game scenario for points to keep or take second place. If goals were at a premium on Friday, Saturday’s game at Babson saw outstanding goaltending by Mavrick Goyer for Hobart and Nate Mueller for Babson in a 0-0 OT tie. The one point for Babson meant Norwich needed a win against Skidmore on Saturday to jump over Babson in the standings. The Cadets led 3-0 before Skidmore mounted a comeback and cutting the deficit to 3-2 in the third period. Holden Daggett’s empty-net goal gave the Cadets breathing room in a 4-2 win that vaulted them into second place.
With Albertus Magnus splitting their two-game series with New England College over the weekend, Elmira needed a sweep of VSU-Castleton to move ahead of the Falcons into seventh place in the standings. Friday saw the Soaring Eagles rout the Spartans, 8-1 but Saturday’s finale was a dogfight that needed overtime to decide a winner. The Soaring Eagles held a 3-1 lead entering the third period but goals from Aiden Roben and Zach Papapetros tied the score at 3-3 requiring overtime. “Big Goal Bailey” Krawczyk netted the overtime winner to give Elmira the sweep and move into seventh place over Albertus Magnus.
With Massachusetts-Boston, VCU-Castleton, and Southern Maine all missing qualification for the conference tournament, the quarterfinal matchups look like this for Saturday, March 1: No. 8 Albertus Magnus travels to No. 1 Hobart; No. 7 Elmira plays at No. 2 Norwich; No. 6 New England College will play at No. 3 Babson and No. 5 Salve Regina will face-off against No. 4 Skidmore. The semifinal round and championship game will be held at the highest remaining seed on March 8-9.
NESCAC
Hamilton and Trinity had entered the weekend with the two top seed positions all but guaranteed but after those two positions the hunt for playoff positions three through eight were wide open among the remaining teams.
Amherst made a big move picking up six points with wins over Middlebury and Williams to guarantee the continued streak for Coach Jack Arena whose teams have not missed the conference tournament. On Friday, the Mammoth trailed 3-2 before scoring five unanswered goals in the third period for a 7-3 win over the Panthers. Ben Kuzma and Vincent Velocci each scored two goals while Josh Burke recorded four points with a goal and three assists. In Saturday’s season finale against the Ephs, Amherst continued to find goals with a 5-2 win.
Conn College moved from ninth into a playoff position with a win over Bowdoin on Friday and an overtime tie (with shootout win) over Colby on Saturday. Quinn Kennedy scored the game-winning goal early in the third period to give the Camels a 2-1 win over Bowdoin. On Saturday, goaltender Will McEvoy was the hero stopping forty-nine of fifty-one shots, including three in the shootout that earned Conn College the extra point and secure the eighth seed in the tournament.
Middlebury rebounded from Friday’s lopsided loss to Amherst with a come from behind win over Hamilton, 4-2, to secure their position in the NESCAC tournament. Jackson Morehouse assisted on the game-tying goal before scoring the game-winning and extra margin goals for Middlebury while goaltender Andrew Heinze made forty-three saves in the win.
Tufts secured their position in the playoffs with an overtime loss to Colby on Friday and dominating win over Bowdoin on Saturday. After dropping a 3-2 overtime game to the Mules, the Jumbos rebounded with a 5-0 win over the Polar Bears led by goals from five different players, two on the power play and twenty-six saves from Gus Bylin who earned the shutout win in goal.
Trinity won handily on Friday over travel partner Wesleyan, 5-0. In Saturday’s season finale, the Bantams needed a third period rally with goals from Theodore Griffin, Ty Broad, and Ryan Panico to erase a 3-2 deficit and win 5-3.
Williams and Wesleyan have their seasons come to an end having not qualified for the NESCAC tournament. Next Saturday’s quarterfinals will see these matchups. No. 8 Conn College will travel to No. 1 Hamilton; No. 7 Middlebury will play at No. 2 Trinity; No. 6 Amherst will face No. 3 Colby and No. 5 Tufts will face-off with No. 4 Bowdoin in a re-match of Saturday’s season finale. The semifinal and championship games will be hosted by the highest remaining seed on March 8-9.
SUNYAC
The regular season title was decided on Friday night with Cortland’s win over Morrisville and all the seeding for the SUNYAC tournament confirmed.
Cortland took advantage of Domenic Settimo’s hat trick as the Red Dragons scored ten goals in a 10-2 rout of Morrisville on Friday night to clinch the regular season title. On Saturday, the Red Dragons closed out the regular season against No. 2 seed Oswego, who dispatched Canton on Friday night, 7-3 paced by Brandon Cohen’s hat trick and four-point game. The Red Dragons remained unbeaten on the road eking out a 2-1 win over the Lakers with netminder Ronan Mobley playing great with thirty-two saves against the Lakers.
Buffalo State downed Fredonia 4-3, to lock up the No. 3 seed in the playoffs. Jason Kwestel scored two goals and added an assist while Vadim Kiriakov scored one goal and added two assists in the Bengals win over the Blue Devils.
Plattsburgh downed travel partner Potsdam in what was a preview of the quarterfinal playoff round coming up on Wednesday. The Cardinals broke a 1-1 tie with three unanswered goals in the final two periods to post a 4-1 win over the Bears. Vlad Pshenichnikov opened and closed the scoring for the Cardinals to pace the offense.
Wednesday’s quarterfinal games find No. 3 Buffalo State hosting No. 6 Canton and No. 4 Plattsburgh hosting a re-match with No. 5 Potsdam. The lowest seed remaining will play No. 1 Cortland in one semifinal on Saturday while the second lowest seed will travel to play No. 2 Oswego. The championship game will be held on Saturday, March 8. With the end of the regular season Fredonia and Morrisville have seen their tournament hopes come to an end.
UCHC
With all six teams eligible for the playoffs, the biggest remaining question was which of Geneseo or Utica would take the regular season title and top seed in the UCHC tournament. Utica closed out their season with Manhattanville while Geneseo faced Nazareth in the final two games on the schedule.
Utica needed a sweep of the Valiants and maybe some help from Nazareth to take the No. 1 seed and that is exactly what happened. On Friday night, the Valiants scored first but the Pioneers answered with five unanswered goals in a 5-1 win. Johnny Mulera scored twice for Utica in the win. On Saturday, it was the Pioneers who took an early 2-0 lead only to see Manhattanville answer back on goals from Lane Paddison and Nicholas Rogers for a 2-2 tie midway through the second period. Mulera provided what proved to be the game-winner on the power play with just over a minute remaining in the middle stanza and Utica held on for a 3-2 win before scoreboard watching the result from Nazareth.
Geneseo had also taken care of business on Friday night with a 9-1 rout of Nazareth in their last home game on the schedule. Peter Morgan and Cooper Fensterstock each scored a goal and added two assists in the Knights lopsided win over the Golden Flyers. On Saturday, Nazareth was the home team and playing their last regular season game for the program’s only coach George Roll which may have added some additional motivation for a win. Zach Purcell and Alex Dameski helped the Knights to a 2-1 lead in the second period, but the host erupted for four unanswered goals and added two empty-net tallies in the third to skate off with a 7-4 win over Geneseo that gave Utica the regular season title.
With the standings finalized, the UCHC playoffs look like this: No. 6 Brockport plays No. 3 Manhattanville and No. 5 Nazareth plays at No. 4 Chatham in the quarterfinal round on Wednesday, February 26. On Saturday, March 1, the lowest remaining seed will travel to No. 1 Utica while the highest remaining seed will play at No. 2 Geneseo. The championship game will be played at the highest remaining seed on Saturday, March 8.
Three Biscuits
Landyn Greatorex – Salm State – recorded four points with two goals and two assists in the Vikings’ 5-2 win over Anna Maria on Thursday night.
Domenic Settimo – Cortland – scored a hat trick for the Red Dragons and added an assist in their lopsided 10-2 victory over Morrisville on Friday.
Richie Colarusso – St. Anselm – scored a shorthanded goal during a 5-on-3 to tie the game at 2-2 and scored the game-winner less than a minute into overtime to send the Hawks on to a 3-2 OT win.
I do not think it is just me that feels like this regular season flew by so quickly. The action has been so great, it is hard to believe that we have already arrived at the win-or-go-home portion of the season where the games mean more because there are championships on the line starting this week. It is definitely going to be an exciting couple of weeks leading up to the NCAA tournament with a lot to be decided on the ice for who will be there.
Toughest loss for Northland hockey team doesn’t show on scoreboard
Northland played the final game of its men’s hockey season Saturday night. And like 25 other times this year, the Lumberjacks lost.
They fell 4-0 to UW-Eau Claire in the second and final game of an opening round WIAC tournament series.
But this loss feels different. It has a colder and harsher reality to it as there will be no hockey for Northland moving forward. There wont be any sports at the school for that matter once it closes its doors at the end of this academic year.
It’s an unfortunate thing for any school to endure, but it’s something that has become more common in recent years in this ever-changing college landscape at the small school level.
Northland isn’t the first school to announce its closing its doors. And, sadly, it won’t be the last.
Schools are struggling to stay open because the cost of operation is just too high. And as hard as those schools try to fight against it, to find ways to keep the doors open and the lights on, it often takes a miracle bigger than the one on ice in 1980 to pull it off.
You feel the worst for the athletes because now they have to find a new place to play or give up their sport all together.
On Northland’s roster, there are 27 underclassmen. Fourteen of them are freshmen. That means all but two either have to hope they can land on their skates at a new school or bid farewell to playing the sport they have poured their hearts and souls into for most of their lives.
And for the coaches, Shane Buckley and Scott Gregor, they now have to find new place to coach if they want to stay in the profession. The news of Northland’s closing has to be especially tough for Buckley as he’s an alum of the school and once played hockey for the Lumberjacks.
The WIAC will also now have one less school in its conference when it comes to hockey, leaving the league to fill in scheduling gaps.
Northland hasn’t won many games lately. The Lumberjacks were 1-26 this year, their lone win coming against Saint Mary’s on the road on Jan. 17. They have dropped 11 straight since then.
It’s their second consecutive one-win season.
They haven’t had a non-losing season since the 2018-19 campaign when they finished 12-12-3.
Win or lose, though, the Lumberjacks always competed. Effort was never in question.
Loghan Gallagher led the team in scoring this season, tallying seven goals to go along with two assists. Joe Weber finished with three goals and four assists. Ben Stewart added a goal and five assists. Brock Hart tallied a goal and four assists. Mac Reed also finished with four assists.
You hope all those guys find a new place to play and continue to grow their games. You hope their teammates do the same.
Perhaps the future of hockey at Northland would have been bright. That this program was due for better days ahead.
But now we’ll never know as the Lumberjacks have suffered the biggest loss of all, a loss that doesn’t show up on a scoreboard but one that will forever sting.
SATURDAY COLLEGE HOCKEY ROUNDUP: Fink, No. 18 PSU upset No. 1 Michigan State, No. 5 Minnesota now tops in B1G; No. 3 WMU salvages points with OT win at No. 12 ASU; No. 8 Providence rallies past No. 13 UML for key league points; Army ends Riley era in West Point with OT win
Penn State jumped to a 3-0 lead early and then held off the nation’s top team Michigan State, holding on for a 3-2 victory in Lansing on Saturday.
Combined with Friday’s 2-2 tie where Penn State won the shootout, the Nittany Lions held Michigan State to just a single Big Ten point this weekend allowing Minnesota to move into first place with one weekend left in the regular season. The Gophers swept Ohio State this weekend, 4-1 and 6-3.
Charlie Cerrato opened the scoring for Penn State just 59 seconds into the game and JJ Wiebusch extended the lead 41 seconds later.
In the second, Aiden Fink scored his 22nd goal of the season to momentarily take the national lead in points, one ahead of Michigan State’s Isaac Howard.
The game-winner from @PennStateMHKY's Aiden Fink that secured the big upset 💥#B1GHockey pic.twitter.com/ad6MsB98BV
— Big Ten Hockey (@B1GHockey) February 23, 2025
Penn State’s 3-goal lead survived a rally in the third as Tommi Mannisto scored with 7:58 left and Karsen Dorwarf tallied with nine seconds left. Howard assisted on the Dorwarf goal pulling him into a tie for Fink for the scoring lead.
The five-point weekend for Penn State pulls the Nittany Lions within a single point of Michigan for the final home ice spot in the playoffs.
SCOREBOARD | STANDINGS | POLL | PAIRWISE
No. 3 Western Michigan 4, No. 12 Arizona State 3 (F/OT)
Iiro Hakkarainen scored at 2:49 of overtime to complete a comeback for Western Michigan and salvage two points in the NCHC standings.
With two weekends to play, the Broncos now lead Arizona State by five points and third-place Omaha by 10. Western Michigan can clinch the NCHC title with a win in its final four games.
The Broncos never led in the game as Arizona State took leads of 1-0, 2-1 and 3-2. But Liam Valante’s goal with 7:01 remaining tied the game at 3 and forced the overtime.
No. 8 Providence 4, No. 13 UMass Lowell 2
In a key game for positioning in the Hockey East standings, host Providence scored three third-period goal to overcome a 2-1 deficit against UMass Lowell in a 4-2 win.
Nick Poisson, a graduate student for the Friars playing his final regular-season game at home, netted a hat trick, scoring the game’s opening goal, the tying goal in the third and a late empty-netter. Logan Sawyer scored what turned out to be the game-winner.
A look at Logan Sawyer's GWG at the 17:07 mark of the third period! pic.twitter.com/KHcsK9qMeA
— PC Men's Hockey (@FriarsHockey) February 23, 2025
Scout Truman scored on a penalty shot for UMass Lowell and Pierson Brandon scored in the final two minutes of the second to send the River Hawks to the third with the lead.
Army West Point 3, AIC 2 (F/OT)
Vincent Salice made sure Saturday night that the Riley Era in West Point ended on a high note.
Salice’s overtime tally gave the Black Knights a 3-2 victory over AIC in what was coach Brian Riley’s final game behind the bench at Tate Rink. A member of the Riley family (father Jack, brother Rob) has been head coach at Army for 75 years, a streak that ends this season.
The stick work from Salice to go bar down and send the fans home happy 🤩
His goal gives @Coach_BRiley an OT victory in his final regular season game at Tate!#SCTop10pic.twitter.com/8YfBZMxR9u
— ArmyWestPoint Sports (@GoArmyWestPoint) February 23, 2025
AIC did everything it could to rain on Army’s parade late in regulation as John Lundy scored for the Yellow Jackets with 1:09 left to tie the game.
Saturday was also AIC’s final regular season game as a member of Atlantic Hockey. The program will reclassify to Division II next season.
FRIDAY COLLEGE HOCKEY ROUNDUP: No. 12 Arizona State drops No. 3 Western Michigan; Northeastern upsets No. 9 Boston University; No. 18 Penn State ties No. 1 Michigan State; No. 2 Boston College doubles up Vermont; No. 11 UConn nips No. 4 Maine in OT
Ty Jackson scored twice to lead No. 12 Arizona State to a 5-3 win over No. 3 Western Michigan at Mullett Arena in Tempe, Ariz.
CLUTCH KIRWAN'S 100TH CAREER POINT 💯 pic.twitter.com/Sazqu9TTiP
— Sun Devil Hockey (@SunDevilHockey) February 22, 2025
Ryan Kirwan, Kyle Smolen and Bennett Schimek had the other Sun Devils’ goals and netminder Luke Pavicich made 39 saves.
For the Broncos, Alex Bump, Samuel Sjolund and Zach Nehring scored and goalie Cameron Rowe stopped 27 shots.
SCOREBOARD | STANDINGS | POLL | PAIRWISE
No. 18 Penn State 2, No. 1 Michigan State 2 (Penn State wins shootout)
Maxim Štrbák’s goal at 8:36 of the third period brought Michigan State into a 2-2 tie with Penn State at Munn Ice Arena in East Lansing, Mich.
Penn State won the subsequent shootout and extra Big Ten standings point.
https://www.twitter.com/PennStateMHKY/status/1893112262778331427
Tiernan Shoudy also scored for the Spartans and goaltender Trey Augustine made 31 saves.
For the Nittany Lions, Dane Dowiak and Reese Laubach scored and Arsenii Sergeev finished with 36 saves.
No. 2 Boston College 6, Vermont 3
Andre Gasseau and Eamon Powell each tallied a goal with two assists as Boston College doubled up Vermont 6-3 from the Gutterson Fieldhouse in Burlington, Vt.
James Hagens, Michael Hagens, Ryan Leonard and Will Skahan also scored for the Eagles, while goalie Jacob Fowler made 29 saves.
https://www.twitter.com/BC_MHockey/status/1893121508140097549
Joel Maatta had a goal and two assists for the Catamounts and Colin Kessler and Sebastian Törnqvist scored.
Vermont goalie Axel Mangbo compiled 28 saves.
No. 11 UConn 3, No. 4 Maine 2 (OT)
Jake Richard’s second goal of the game at 4:20 of overtime gave UConn a 3-2 win over Maine at the Toscano Family Ice Forum in Storrs, Conn.
https://www.twitter.com/UConnMHOC/status/1893135422576034132
Kaden Shahan also scored for the Huskies and Callum Tung made 32 saves in goal.
Nolan Renwick and Owen Fowler scored for the Black Bears and goalie Albin Boija stopped 42 shots.
No. 5 Minnesota 4, No. 7 Ohio State 1
Brody Lamb scored two goals to lift Minnesota past Ohio State 4-1 at 3M Arena at Mariucci in Minneapolis.
Oliver Moore and Ryan Chesley added goals for the Gophers to back Liam Souliere’s 25 saves in goal.
https://www.twitter.com/B1GHockey/status/1893134752124641766
Davis Burnside scored for the Buckeyes and goalie Logan Terness stopped 21 shots.
No. 6 Denver 5, Miami 1
Jack Devine had a goal and an assist and Matt Davis made 18 saves in goal as Denver beat Miami 5-1 at Steve Cady Arena in Oxford, Ohio.
https://www.twitter.com/DU_Hockey/status/1893095025254236384
Garrett Brown, Carter King, Jake Fisher and James Reeder added goals for the Pioneers and Aidan Thompson chipped in a pair of assists.
Colby Ambrosio scored the lone RedHawks goal and netminder Ethan Dahlmeir finished with 28 saves.
Northeastern 5, No. 9 Boston University 1
Jack Williams went for a goal and three assists as Northeastern upset Boston University 5-1 at Agganis Arena in Boston.
Cam Lund added two goals and an assist and Huskies goaltender Cameron Whitehead made 24 saves.
https://www.twitter.com/GoNUmhockey/status/1893115695589650548
Jake Boltmann had a goal and an assist and Ryan McGuire also scored and Dylan Hryckowian notched two assists.
For the Terriers, Quinn Hutson scored and Mikhail Yegorov kicked out 15 shots.
No. 14 Quinnipiac 4, Yale 1
Four different players – Travis Treloar, Jack Ricketts, Jeremy Wilmer and Aaron Schwartz – scored as Quinnipiac downed Yale 4-1 at M&T Bank Arena in Hamden, Conn.
Bobcats goalie Matej Marinov made 22 saves.
https://www.twitter.com/QU_MIH/status/1893114384072822820
Will Richter netted the lone Yale goal and Jack Stark finished with 35 saves between the pipes.
No. 15 Minnesota State 4, Lake Superior State 0
Alex Tracy stopped all 32 shots he faced as Minnesota State blanked Lake Superior State 4-0 from Taffy Abel Arena in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.
https://www.twitter.com/CCHAHockey/status/1893107548326097338
Josh Groll and Brian Carrabes each scored two goals for the Mavericks.
Lakers goalie Easton Hesse made 37 saves.
No. 16 UMass 3, New Hampshire 3 (UNH wins shootout)
New Hampshire scored three goals in the third period to earn a 3-3 tie with UMass at the Mullins Center in Amherst, Mass.
The Wildcats then picked up the extra Hockey East standings point by winning the shootout.
'Cats win the shootout!#BeTheRoar pic.twitter.com/WEMa2LrYXl
— UNH Men's Hockey (@UNHMHOCKEY) February 22, 2025
Robert Cronin, Ryan Conmy and Kristaps Skrastins scored for UNH and goalie Jared Whale made 13 saves.
Aydar Suniev scored two goals for UMass, Jack Musa the other, and Michael Hrabal made 16 saves in goal.
No. 17 North Dakota 4, Minnesota Duluth 2
Ben Strinden, Cade Littler, Sacha Boisvert and Carter Wilkie scored to lead North Dakota to a 4-2 win over Minnesota Duluth from Ralph Engelstad Arena in Grand Forks, N.D.
Name a better duo than Cade Littler and scoring against the Dogs. #UNDproud | #LGH pic.twitter.com/ItmhTeMhG9
— North Dakota Hockey (@UNDmhockey) February 22, 2025
Fighting Hawks goalie T.J. Semptimphelter made 30 saves.
Blake Bechen and Joe Molenaar tallied the goals for the Bulldogs, while Adam Gajan put together a 30-save performance of his own.
No. 19 Clarkson 3, Cornell 1
From Lynah Rink in Ithaca, N.Y., Clarkson defeated Cornell 3-1 on the strength of goals from Ayrton Martino, Ryan Richardson and Garrett Dahm.
🚨 Clarkson Wins 🚨 Knights pick up huge win on the road. pic.twitter.com/dXgUXVTaTI
— Clarkson Men’s Hockey (@ClarksonMHockey) February 22, 2025
Golden Knights goalie Ethan Langenegger made 24 saves.
For the Big Red, Sullivan Mack scored and Ian Shane made eight saves in goal.
No. 20 Colorado College 4, St. Cloud State 3
Colorado College used four different goal scorers to edge St. Cloud State 4-3 at Herb Brooks National Hockey Center in St. Cloud, Minn.
Three in a row thanks to the captain, Stanley Cooley.#CCTigers pic.twitter.com/mUZR18kxQY
— CC Hockey (@CCTigerHKY) February 22, 2025
Gavin Lindberg, Tyler Coffey, Bret Link and Stanley Cooley all found the net for the Tigers, while goaltender Kaidan Mbereko made 42 saves.
Cooper Wylie, Verner Miettinen and Gavyn Thoreson scored for the Huskies and Isak Posch made 26 saves between the pipes.
NCAA D-III West Men’s Hockey Weekend Picks
It’s the final weekend of hockey in the MIAC as far as the regular season is concerned. In the WIAC and NCHA, the first round of action gets underway in their respective tournaments.
Here’s a look at some of the games and picks for the weekend ahead.
Gustavus (13-8-2, 9-3-2) vs. Hamline (7-16, 5-9)
The Gusties can wrap up the regular season championship this weekend and will certainly be favored to do it. Though they only have one win in the month of February, they’ve shown they can be a tough team to beat on any given night. Gustavus has scored the most goals in the MIAC, tallying 83, and it is the only team to allow fewer than 60 (56).
Hamline, which has given up 97 goals on the year while scoring 54, has its work cut out for it.
Gustavus, 5-1 and 4-2
St. Olaf (12-8-3, 7-6-1) vs. Bethel (12-8-3, 8-4-2)
The Oles and Royals both have a ton to play for. Bethel holds a three-point lead over St. Olaf in the standings but that advantage can flip in a hurry. Tyler Braccini is the top goal scorer in the league, with 16 goals, but the Oles have a pretty solid offensive threat of their own in Jonathan Panisa, who has scored 14 goals. Should be a fun series to watch.
St. Olaf, 4-2; Bethel 5-4
Saint John’s (10-13-1, 7-7-1) vs. Concordia (11-10-3, 7-5-3)
The Johnnies lost the opener on Thursday by a 4-2 score and hope for a little revenge in the series finale. The Cobbers are tied for third in the standings with the Johnnies, so a lot is on the line to say the least. Look for both teams to leave it all on the ice for this one.
Concordia, 4-3
Northland (1-24) vs. UW-Eau Claire (10-14-1)
This weekend marks the final time Northland will play hockey as the school is closing at the end of the year.
The storybook here would be if the Lumberjacks could pull off the upset of upsets and move on in the WIAC tournament.
But the reality says the Blugolds are the better team and should come away with a sweep in this situation. The Blugolds outscored the Lumberjacks 13-0 in their three games this season.
Eau Claire, 5-0 and 4-1
UW-Stout (12-11-2) vs. UW-River Falls (14-10-1)
The Blue Devils face a tough task on the road in the WIAC tourney against a Falcons team that was ranked in the Top 15 of the USCHO.com poll earlier this season.
Two of the three games between these teams in the regular season went to overtime and all three were decided by a goal.
Home ice might be the ultimate difference here as the Falcons are 9-4 in their own building. It’s also worth noting that River Falls is 93-34-5 all-time against the Blue Devils.
River Falls, 4-3 and 3-2
Aurora (21-3-1) vs. Lawrence (7-15-2)
The No. 2 Spartans are having their best season in program history, winning 21 games, and now they begin their quest for an NCHA tournament title. Aurora has won three in a row and features two of the best offensive threats in the the game in Landry Schmuck and Hassan Akl. The two have combined for 40 goals.
Lawrence will have its work cut out for it against the Spartans after losing by identical 5-1 scores to Aurora in the regular season.
Aurora, 5-1 and 4-1
Trine (18-5-2) vs. Marian (9-15-1)
The seventh-ranked Thunder are unbeaten on their own ice this season, sporting a 10-0 record, and that’s huge going into an opening round series against the Sabres.
Now, it’s worth noting Marian did beat Trine a couple of weeks ago, winning 5-4 to earn a series split. So this one could get interesting.
Trine, 3-2 and 4-3
Adrian (16-8-1) vs. MSOE (12-9-4)
The 12th-ranked Bulldogs won both games against the Raiders in the regular season and hope that success continues this weekend. Ian Amsbaugh and Ryan Pitoscia lead the Bulldogs with 12 goals apiece, and if they are on, Adrian will be tough to beat.
Eddie Shepler is one to watch for the Raiders, who hope to pull off an upset in this series. They do come into the matchup on a two-game winning streak and have a win over St. Norbert this season, so they’ll be unfazed.
Adrian, 4-3 and 5-4
St. Norbert (20-5) vs. Concordia (12-13)
The No. 6 Green Knights are rolling right now, winning six in a row, and they are 11-3 at home this season.
They split with the Falcons in the regular season, though, losing 2-1 before avenging it with a 3-0 win. If the duo of Liam Fraser and Logan Dombrowsky are clicking, the Green Knights are going to be a tough team to be at home in the postseason.
Concordia has played well on the road, going 9-6, and it will need its best effort to get the job done here.
St. Norbert, 4-2 and 5-2
NESCAC’s final weekend – every team has something to play for
While there are many things yet to be resolved in the conferences across the east in D-III, only NESCAC finds the final weekend where every team is still alive with playoff hopes and positions among the ten teams are pretty much all up for grabs with the exception of Hamilton’s first place perch. Just two points separate teams five (Tufts) through eight (Williams) in the standings but look a little further up or down the table and it is clear that Bowdoin, Colby, Connecticut College, and Wesleyan are all in play for home-ice berths with the Maine schools and playoff eligibility for the two Connecticut Schools. Nowhere will the points be more valuable than the four teams separated by just two points as Middlebury and Amherst will be battling with Tufts and Williams to stay in the top eight, and maybe even sneak into a home-ice seed with some favorable scoreboard watching results. As a fan, it would be hard to ask for more meaningful hockey than it all coming down to the final two games on the schedule that have now become playoff games for virtually everyone. Here’s a look from the coaches’ perspective on what this weekend means and how all the teams ended up here battling to the end.
Tufts – Patrick Norton (5th place)
“The parity in this league is just incredible. Top to bottom is exactly why the final two games mean so much to every team having something to play for. I think we all feel like we left some points and results on the table over the course of the season but I like how we have been playing and see how some of the elements that helped with las year’s run to the champions hip game are coming together in similar fashion.”
“Gus [Bylin] has been very good in goal for us, especially in the second half. Joe Horn has been a point-per-game player for us and he has been playing well since returning from injury. If we can get our top guys with a little more puck luck and our power play clicking better than 11%, we can make some noise in the playoffs, but we have to get there first. These last two games with Colby and Bowdoin will be like playoff games for us as they look to keep home-ice berths and our team looks to lock in a place as high up as we can get. It helps to be playing at home where we have to take advantage of the things we can control.”
Jack Ceglarski – Middlebury (6th place)
“It is frustrating to be where we are at where I think we have missed out on wins and points that would have had us locked in coming into the weekend. We have a very young team so we have learned some lessons the hard way with losses in games where we didn’t close well or took an untimely penalty to give the other team opportunity to comeback. Hopefully ,we have learned from those experiences as we prepare for Amherst and Hamilton this weekend. While we haven’t had great success against those two teams recently, we have played very well at home, and we will look to take advantage of the home-ice and home crowd.”
“It is a great time of the year to have a hot goaltender, and Andrew [Heinze] has been that for us lately but pretty much all season. He has two shutouts in a row and gives us a chance to win so he will be an important factor for us this weekend. Offensively, it has been fun to watch the line of [Revy] Mack, [Jackson] Morehouse, and [Reece] Brendich emerge. They play with size and create space for each other in the offensive zone. We will need them to produce chances and get on the scoresheet if we want to guarantee points and a playoff position in these final two games.”
Jack Arena – Amherst (7th place)
“Our MO is that we play pretty well and often times outshoot our opponents, sometimes by a wide margin and then we sometimes win and sometimes lose. We haven’t finished a lot or very well this season and have not scored many 5-on-5 goals. We have mirrored a lot of other teams with good one game on the weekend and then not so good and that really reflects as much about the balance in the conference as it does our consistency. We could finish anywhere from fourth to tenth based on how things play out this weekend, but we really do not want to be in that number nine slot – someone is going to finish there but we have to do everything we can to get some points and clinch our spot.”
“We have been opportunistic on special teams and have had on occasion this season a better chance of scoring a shorthand goal than a power play goal. We get lots of chances and on the right players’ sticks but have not got the bounces consistently throughout the year. [Josh] Burke and [Bobby] Luca have been very good on the penalty kill and have scored shorthanded for us. [Oliver] Flynn came in a the break and gave us a boost offensively and we will need that this weekend on the road against Middlebury and Williams.”
Bill Kangas – Williams (8th place)
“You can’t call the results upsets when the league is as balanced as it is from top to bottom. We practice hard all season and just need to keep having that next shift mentality around producing some winning hockey. It is good that we are at home, get to stay in our own beds and play in a building where we have been pretty good this season. I don’t remember it ever being this close and watching the scoreboard for other game results like this season. We have been a goals by committee type of team all season and this would be a good weekend to get some goals on the board.”
“[Cal] Sandquist wears the “C” like only one other goaltender has here and that was Evan Ruschil a couple of years ago when we made it to the championship game as the eight seed and played number seven in the title game. Cal has that calming leadership effect like Evan did and we hope he gets some of that magic like Evan had in that run. I think we will see what pans out on Friday from the games and be ready to do what we need to do on Saturday to see if or where we can be in the playoff mix.”
Friday night could certainly reduce some of the drama if anyone in places five through eight wins in regulation or overtime to eliminate the pursuits of Conn College and Wesleyan. But the battles for seeding and home-ice are likely to play out through Saturday’s contests. With the remote possibility of tied teams needing to play a shootout as the final tie-breaker for playoff eligibility, the conclusion to the NESCAC schedule will absolutely be must-watch hockey!
Western Michigan at Arizona State, two Big Ten games, three in Hockey East analyzed: USCHO Edge college hockey podcast Season 3 Episode 16
USCHO Edge hosts Jim Connelly, Dan Rubin, and Ed Trefzger look at money lines and over/under for six college games on February 14, 2025:
- Ohio State +170 @ Minnesota -220; over/under 5.5
- Penn State +220 @ Michigan State -298; o/u 6.5
- Western Michigan -154 @ Arizona State +120; o/u 6.5
- Maine -160 @ UConn +124; o/u 5.5
- UMass -130 @ New Hampshire +100; o/u 5.5
- Northeastern +220 @ Boston University -298; o/u 6.5 (our “pizza money” game)
This episode is sponsored by the NCAA Men’s Division I Frozen Four, April 10 and 12 in St. Louis. A flash sale is underway through Sunday, February 23, 2025. Get your tickets now at ncaa.com/frozenfour
Subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, in your favorite podcast app, or on Spreaker.
Check out all of USCHO’s podcasts, including USCHO Weekend Review and USCHO Spotlight, plus our entire podcast archive.
This Week in Atlantic Hockey America: Final weekend of ’24-25 regular season on tap with much still to be determined for postseason
It’s hard to believe, but we’re entering the final weekend of the regular season in Atlantic Hockey America.
Well, there’s one extra game to be played on Monday, Feb. 24 – more about that later.
The format is as follows:
First Round, March 1
Single elimination
No. 11 seed at No. 6 seed
No. 10 seed at No. 7 seed
No. 9 seed at No. 8 seed
Quarterfinals, March 7-9
Best-of-three series
Lowest surviving seed at No. 1 seed
Next lowest surviving at No. 2 seed
Highest surviving seed at No. 3 seed
No. 5 seed at No. 4 seed
Semifinals, March 14-16
Best of three series
Lowest remaining seed at highest remaining seed
Second-lowest remaining seed at second-highest remaining seed
Championship Game
March 22
Lowest remaining seed at highest remaining seed
The final stretch
With one weekend to go in the regular season, much has been decided. We know the five teams who have earned the five first-round byes, but not their seeding. Seeds 6-11 are still mostly up for grabs.
What we know at this point:
– Holy Cross, Bentley, Sacred Heart, Niagara, and Army West Point have secured first-round byes.
– Holy Cross, Bentley and Sacred Heart will host quarterfinal series.
– Niagara and Army West Point are fighting for the final home ice slot in the quarterfinals.
– Canisius will host a first-round playoff game.
– Mercyhurst will be on the road in the first round.
After this weekend’s games, expect tiebreakers to come into play to determine tournament seedings. They are:
1. Head-to-head points (a change from last year’s head-to-head winning percentage).
2. Conference wins.
3. Head-to-head goal differential.
4. Goals allowed in head-to-head competition.
5. Head-to-head winning percentage in games against teams starting with the No. 1 seed down to the No. 11 seed.
6. Goal differential in games against teams starting with the No. 1 seed down to the No. 11 seed.
Here’s my take on possible outcomes this weekend. Any errors in calculations are mine.
HOLY CROSS
Currently: First
Games remaining: Home vs. Bentley, home vs. AIC
Possible seed: First-Second
Outlook: The Crusaders are unbeaten in their last 12 games and can wrap up their first regular season title since 2006 with a single point in their final two games.
BENTLEY
Currently: Second
Games remaining: At Holy Cross, at Sacred Heart
Possible seed: First-Fourth
Outlook: Bentley has clinched home ice in the quarterfinals and has an outside chance at its first DeGregorio Trophy but needs to win out and have Holy Cross go pointless in its final two games. The teams square off on Thursday.
SACRED HEART
Currently: Third
Games remaining: At AIC, home vs. Bentley
Possible seed: Second-Fourth
Outlook: The Pioneers were in the driver’s seat for most of the season but a series against Army West Point last weekend that saw SHU take just one point doomed its chances for first place. Sacred Heart will host a quarterfinal series.
NIAGARA
Currently: Fourth
Games remaining: at Canisius, home vs. Canisius
Possible seed: Second-Fifth
Outlook: Consistency has been key for the Purple Eagles. They have taken points in every conference series this season, heading into this weekend’s Battle of the Bridge series with Canisius. Niagara has earned a bye and has about a 95% chance of finishing in the top four and hosting a quarterfinal series.
ARMY WEST POINT
Currently: Fifth
Games remaining: At AIC, home vs. AIC
Possible seed: Fourth-Fifth
Outlook: The Black Knights are virtually locked into a fifth seed, meaning they get a bye but will be on the road in the quarterfinals. First is a final series with AIC, sure to be an emotional time for coach Brian Riley, who is retiring at the end of the season.
CANISIUS
Currently: Sixth
Games remaining: Home vs. Niagara, at Niagara
Possible seed: Sixth-Eighth
Outlook: The Golden Griffins will host a first-round game, opponent TBD. Last weekend they snapped a six-game losing streak and face archrival Niagara this weekend.
AIR FORCE
Currently: Seventh
Games remaining: At Robert Morris (2)
Possible seed: Sixth-Ninth
Outlook: The Falcons have struggled in the second half of the season, with just one regulation win since Jan. 11. But Air Force is still in excellent shape to host a first-round playoff game.
AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL
Currently: Eighth
Games remaining: Home vs. Army West Point, at Army West Point, at Holy Cross
Possible seed: Seventh-10th
Outlook: The Yellow Jackets are looking at the final stretch of games in Division I program history. There’s a decent chance for a final home playoff game. AIC can clinch that by taking six points in its final three games.
ROBERT MORRIS
Currently: Ninth
Games remaining: Home vs. Air Force (2)
Possible seed: Seventh-10th
Outlook: The Colonials have struggled in the second half of the season (2-11-2 since the holiday break) but still have around a 30% chance of hosting a first-round game.
ROCHESTER INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Currently: Tenth
Games remaining: Home vs. Mercyhurst (2)
Possible seed: Eighth-11th
Outlook: The Tigers have a (very) slim chance of hosting a first-round game but the defending champs will most likely be on the road throughout the post season.
MERCYHURST
Currently: Eleventh
Games remaining: At RIT (2)
Possible seed: 10th-11th
Outlook: The Lakers will be on the road for as long they stay alive in the AHA tournament. They will need to sweep RIT in regulation this weekend to avoid finishing in the basement.
Better late than never?
The original schedule had American International hosting Holy Cross for a single game on Dec, 7, but AIC had no healthy goalies at the time.
Rather than forfeit, the schools worked with the league to reschedule, and the game will be played on Monday, Feb 24, two days after the season was supposed to end. The location was also moved from Springfield to Worcester.
I applaud the game being played as opposed to being declared a forfeit – players want to play. But the timing is less than ideal. Air Force has about a 90% chance of finishing in sixth-eighth place, good enough to host a first-round game. But the visiting team will have to scramble to make travel arrangements on just four or five days notice. More than one coach has pointed this out to me.
So we won’t get final standings/seedings until Monday evening. Hopefully this won’t present too much of a hardship to the team that gets paired with Air Force.
NCAA D-II/III East Men’s Ice Hockey Game Picks – February 20, 2025
So here we are at the end of the 2024-25 regular season and still so much yet to be decided by the competition on the ice. While some teams have already established their position entering the post-season, including this weekend’s semifinal action in the NE-10 conference, lots of teams have opportunities to solidify playoff eligibility, claim a home-ice playoff spot or win the regular season title that was just a goal on a board way back in October, 2024. Now is not the time for slow starts or undisciplined play on the ice moreover, it is the opportunity to bring your best brand of hockey to the action and focus on the controllable in your game on the ice. Always time to scoreboard watch later.
Last week my picks finished at a solid 7-3-1 (.682) short one result based on the ever-changing make-up game between Cortland and Oswego now scheduled to close out the SUNYAC schedule on Saturday, 2/22. Overall, my season numbers are at a robust 105-46-8 (.681) but the number of weeks with a lot of games to choose is dwindling rapidly so I must pick-up the accuracy in the remaining weeks of action. These are the week’s game picks including some games with a lot riding on the outcomes on the eastern hockey landscape:
Thursday, February 20, 2024
Salem State v. Anna Maria
The Vikings have been a pleasant surprise in the MASCAC this year and may catch the AmCats looking ahead to Saturday and their showdown with Plymouth State for the regular season title. That would be a mistake for the home team who finds a late game rally for a big win on home ice – Salem State, 5-3
Fitchburg State v. Westfield State
The Falcons have been on a roller coaster this season but seem to be finding their game at the appropriate time of the season as they ready for playoff hockey. The Owls are right there with them in the standings so this result could feed a seeding need and or a matchup for the quarterfinal round. Points mean more for the visitors – Fitchburg State, 4-3
Friday, February 21, 2024
King’s v. Neumann
The Knights are locked into the three seed in the MAC tournament but want to keep building on their strong play of late that includes a playoff necessity in good defense and balanced scoring. Nothing better than a one-goal win to tune up for the post-season – Neumann, 3-2
Suffolk v. Nichols
The Rams have locked up the four seed in the CNE and could very well be seeing the Bison in the quarterfinal round of the conference tournament. CJ Hapward has been stellar all season and this could be his time to shine when stakes are highest – Suffolk, 2-1
(1) Hobart v. Babson
The Statesmen have already wrapped up the regular season title but want to send a clear message to a title contender that they don’t take any opponent or game lightly. Babson needs the points to fend off a resurgent Norwich for second place but find the guys in orange a tough out in a playoff style contest – Hobart, 4-2
Amherst v. Middlebury
The Panthers are currently sitting in a fifth placetie with Tufts, but so few points separate fifth from ninth that a bad weekend could mean being ousted from the NESCAC tournament. Fortunately, the Panthers have been very good at home and have a very hot Andrew Heinze in goal to backstop a big win and three very valuable points – Middlebury, 3-1
Keene State v. Misericordia
This will be the final games of the regular season for the newcomers from New Hampshire with a winning record on the line in their two-game series with the equally nascent Cougars. The Owls have a four game win streak and would like nothing better than to close out with a six-game streak. Can’t get there without a win on Friday and Chisafideis, Unger, and Carney chip in with the needed offense for the “W” – Keene State, 6-3
Saturday, February 22, 2025
(5) Geneseo v. Nazareth
The Knights need to win and watch the scoreboard to see what Utica does in their series with Manhattanville as first place in the UCHC is on the line this weekend. The Golden Flyers are always tough at home and play harder as Coach George Roll moves closer to last games behind the Nazareth bench. Slow start, big finish for the visitors – Geneseo, 4-3
Anna Maria v. Plymouth State
The AmCats have had great success against the Panthers dating back to their days as an independent team. Now the stakes are much higher with the regular season title and home-ice advantage for the playoffs and potential re-match at stake to close the regular season. Each team has won at home so not digressing from that model here as the Panthers seek to continue their championship pedigree in their final season in MASCAC – Plymouth State, 4-3
SNHU v. St. Michael’s
The Penmen took out Franklin Pierce on Tuesday in the quarterfinals and now look to make a big statement in the semifinals against the Purple Knights. Kurt Watson and Company have shown a playoff pedigree and eke out a big upset in overtime on the road. Brendan Lynch is the offensive hero that returns SNHU to the title game – SNHU, 3-2
(14) Trinity v. Wesleyan
The Cardinals are desperate for points, but the Bantams are more in need of complete game wins to be playoff ready as the probable number two seed in NESCAC. Spencer Korona has the offense covered and Devon Bobak makes it hard for any team to score at this time of the year. Fun game in Middletown that goes to the Bantams – Trinity, 4-3
Norwich v. Skidmore
The Cadets are chasing Babson for the number two seed and Skidmore is chasing points to move up and maybe get some help in other matchups to optimize their playoff seeding. The Thoroughbreds have been very good at home recently and the trend continues as Kaeden Patrick paces the offense for a big win to close out the regular season in the NEHC – Skidmore, 4-3
(14) Cortland v. Oswego
I picked this game weeks ago now when I thought it would decide the top spot in SUNYAC play. I still think that is the case and true to my initial pick I am going with the visitors upsetting the Lakers in a very close and playoff atmosphere type contest. This could be an overtime thriller to top off my “Baker’s Dozen group of picks this week – Cortland, 4-3
Can’t wait to see how this all pans out for who is in and who is out and then what the pecking order is as every point is likely to be important in those critical determinations – “Drop the Puck.”
This Week in Big Ten Hockey: Michigan State preparing for ‘heck of a weekend’ with Penn State, ‘maybe the hottest team in the country’
Magic is a fickle thing.
A week ago, the only Big Ten team mathematically capable of finishing first in the conference while controlling its own destiny was Minnesota. Entering the weekend, the Golden Gophers were five points behind first-place Michigan State with two games in hand on the Spartans, who had a bye.
In their previous two weekends, the Spartans had split with B1G opponents, giving the Gophers just enough of a chance to overtake them last week. In a road series against Michigan last weekend, though, Minnesota lost and tied, securing only two points and erasing the Gophers’ season-ending magic numbers.
For now, that is.
This weekend, Minnesota is at home against Ohio State, the team with whom the Gophers are tied for second place in the B1G standings. The Gophers and Buckeyes are each three points – one little game – out of first place, but neither can get there without help from the team at the top.
And once again, the Spartans control their own destiny. If Michigan State wins three of its four remaining games, the Spartans will take the regular-season crown. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that Michigan State begins this final run with a home series against Penn State this weekend.
“We’ve had a couple good weeks of practice and the chance to get a little bit healthy … down the home stretch here,” said Spartans coach Adam Nightingale in his weekly press conference.
“We’re playing a really good Penn State team, you could argue maybe the hottest team in the country and fighting for their life to make the tournament, so it’ll be a heck of a weekend.”
The Nittany Lions have gone 7-2-3 in the second half of the season, most recently sweeping Notre Dame at home. Riding a four-game winning streak into East Lansing, this confident Penn State team has already beaten the Spartans once. The Nittany Lions’ two losses in their current hot streak have come to Michigan State and Michigan on split weekends.
The Spartans will honor their seniors Saturday night, an added incentive for play this weekend.
“It goes by fast,” said Nightingale. “When you look back at your college career, it happens quick. You think you’ve got a whole bunch of time and all of a sudden it’s senior night, so those guys will be excited to play.”
Nightingale said that he’s grateful that this year’s seniors have been rewarded for buying into the vision for Michigan State hockey that he and his coaching staff brought to the program three season ago. When seniors Tanner Kelly and David Gucciardi were freshmen, there were some quiet nights in Munn Ice Arena. That was 2021-22, when the Spartans finished with six Big Ten wins and 12 overall.
Nightingale said that the fans will make a big difference in this weekend’s series, especially Saturday night.
“We’re not a perfect team,” said Nightingale, “but they do like watching our team play.”
Heading into the weekend against Penn State, the Michigan State coaching staff is working to help the Spartans focus on Friday and nothing more.
“It’s always the next game,” said Nightingale. “I think our guys have done a great job these last two weeks. We practiced hard. I think we owe it to our guys, our young hockey players. They’ve got dreams of not only finishing our season on a high note but also keeping growing as players.
“This time of year, as much as you want to pull back, you’ve got to keep pushing. They got to do their part, resting and eating the right way and being locked in, but they’ve given us everything we’ve asked in practice.”
The Spartans have more on the line than Big Ten laurels as the season winds down. Michigan State is shoo-in for the NCAA tournament, but the Spartans – who sit at No. 2 in the PairWise Rankings – want to finish as high as possible for postseason seeding.
”The guys have done a good job where you’re playing meaningful games down the stretch,” said Nightingale. “Obviously, right around the corner is the Big Ten tournament and the NCAA tournament.
“We’ve just got to try to keep playing our best hockey. I think that’s the goal for our group. We want to make sure that when we play, the other team sees our best, and that’s not easy to do in our conference, night in and night out.”
Penn State is No. 16 in the PWR. While the top 16 teams make the tournament, the Nittany Lions will not be in without some help from teams around them and without capitalizing on their own chances.
The 15th and 16th seeds in the NCAA tournament will likely be winners of the Atlantic Hockey and CCHA playoff championships. Neither conference has a team currently among the top 16 PWR teams, and conference playoff championships convey an NCAA tournament autobid.
It’s mathematically impossible for the Spartans to finish any lower than third place in B1G standings and it’s mathematically impossible for Penn State to finish higher than fourth – but that fourth-place finish would mean first-round Big Ten playoff home ice, so that’s another incentive for the Nittany Lions.
To get there, though, the Nittany Lions would likely need a little help from the Buckeyes, who host Michigan in the final weekend of season. The Wolverines have the bye this week and sit six points ahead of Penn State.
The two other Big Ten series this weekend have Minnesota hosting Ohio State and Wisconsin hosting Notre Dame.
Like Michigan State, both Minnesota and Ohio State are in the NCAA tournament already, so each is chasing a regular-season conference title as well as seeding as high as possible in postseason play. The Gophers are third in the PWR, the Buckeyes sixth.
Wisconsin’s series against Notre Dame this weekend is the last time the Badgers will play before the Big Ten playoffs as they have a bye in the final week. The Badgers and the Fighting Irish would need to win the Big Ten playoffs championship to advance to the NCAA tournament.
The Nittany Lions and Spartans face off at 6:00 p.m. Friday and Saturday nights in Munn Ice Arena. Both games are carried by the Big Ten Network.
The Golden Gophers host the Buckeyes in 3M Arena at Mariucci at 7 p.m. CT Friday and 5 p.m. CT. Both games are carried locally on Fox 9, and both are streaming on Big Ten Plus.
The Badgers and Fighting Irish meet in the Kohl Center at 7:30 p.m. CT both Friday and Saturday nights, and those games can also be seen on the Big Ten Network.
Bethel’s Tyler Braccini more than an ‘average D-III hockey player’
Tyler Braccini was once told by a coach that he’d never be that great of a college hockey player, not even at the Division III level.
“I was told some harsh things,” Braccini said. “One coach, I won’t name names, told me I’d never even be an average D-III hockey player. That’s been on my whiteboard since I was a freshman.”
Now a junior, Braccini is a standout for the Bethel Royals. In fact, he leads the MIAC in goals scored (16) while also dishing out 11 assists.
He’s far ahead of where he was a season ago when he scored 11 goals and tallied eight assists. That success comes down to the way Braccini has approached the game and the way he handles the pressure of being a player his team counts on.
“I think about it quite a bit. I think last year I had like two goals until about January 2nd, and my coach and I looked at how much pressure I was putting on myself to succeed, to score. I still put pressure on myself, but now I focus on the process, knowing I’m going to get chances and I’m not as hard on myself when I miss.”
The approach has worked well and the Royals are one of the best teams in the MIAC, sitting in second heading into the final weekend of play. They are 12-8-3 overall and 8-4-2 in the league.
“Everyone has bought in to the one body commitment,” Braccini said. “It relates to a passage in the Bible where every part of the body has a role, and we’ve truly bought into that. Everyone is playing hard for the guy next to them.”
Braccini is from Minnesota and grew up playing hockey. He didn’t like it as much at first but then saw Pittsburgh Penguins legend Sidney Crosby play in the Stanley Cup Finals and his love for the game changed big time.
“It sparked my love for the game and for Crosby and how he went about the game,” Braccini said. “I’ve watched a lot of videos on him and tried to implement things he does into my game. I even name my dog after him, with my family’s consent of course.”
Braccini wasn’t a highly recruited player while in juniors but Bethel gave him a chance. He’s thankful for it.
“I love how they spoke about loving you no matter what and that they implement faith into hockey rather than try to separate it,” Braccini said.
This season has been his best one yet with the Royals and he said he continues to trust the process.
“I’ve learned to stay level headed throughout a game,” Braccini said. “I know I’m going to get chances and I don’t get too high or too low. I’ve had great games and I’ve had bad games, but none of them truly define me. I still put pressure on myself, but it’s healthy. I wouldn’t work as hard if there wasn’t pressure. Pressure is privilege.”
He’s looking forward to helping Bethel contend for a MIAC title. And when he thinks back to being overlooked on the recruiting trail, he takes pride in knowing he’s come so far.
“It’s definitely rewarding and something I thank God for,” Braccini said. “I could have given up, but God put it on my heart that I was made for more and no one else’s words define me. It’s cool to see where I am, but there is still so much more I want to do.”
This Week in Hockey East: In first full year as coach, Wielder has ‘very resilient’ Catamounts believing, ‘pushing the program forward’
A year and a month after having the interim tag removed, Vermont coach Steve Wiedler is obviously focused on results, but it’s safe to say he’s not as obsessed as he might have been at this point in 2024.
“At the end of the day, you go home to your wife and kids and you gotta try to put as many wins on the board as you can,” Wiedler said on Friday night after his team’s 4-2 win at Merrimack. “Whereas going into this offseason and knowing that our staff would have a chance to run this program for a little while, you can get it way more culture based and focus on longevity.”
Thrown into the spotlight during the summer before the 2023-24 season after the abrupt dismissal of Todd Woodcroft, Wiedler admirably led the Catamounts to a 13-19-3 record, good for the No. 9 seed in the Hockey East tournament, where they lost 4-1 at Connecticut in the first round.
UVM signed Wiedler to a four-year contract in January 2024. The Catamounts currently are 11-14-3 overall (6-10-2 in Hockey East), only one game behind where they were after the same number of games last season.
Well aware that success for his program was not going to be instantaneous, Wielder said the Catamounts biggest improvement is in the culture department. He pointed to Friday’s win at Merrimack, where UVM clung to a 2-1 lead after two periods but added a pair of insurance goals in the third.
“We grinded out that win,” he said. “(Even) guys that are goal scorers to the guys that are maybe fourth line and play that role for us, it was all about winning.
“I think that’s the biggest step that our program has taken — our guys have bought in. They’ve bought in all the way and they care about the logo a lot. They’re pushing the program forward and it’s great to be a part of.”
Vermont got two goals and an assist in that game from team captain Joel Määttä, part of a four-point weekend that moved the senior forward from Helsinki into the team lead in scoring (8-14-22).
Wiedler said Määttä, a seventh-round draft pick by the Edmonton Oilers in 2022, is not only a solid leader for the entire team but acts as the “Pied Piper” for the club’s eight European players.
“He wears the ‘C’ for a reason, and he’s been unbelievable at it,” Wiedler said. “He just plays the game to our identities, hard. He really digs in, he cares about our program. (He’s) a great player and he’s really pushed the program forward in his four years.”
When the Catamounts return to Gutterson Fieldhouse Friday for the first of a two-game set against Boston College (currently No. 2 in the USCHO D-I men’s poll), it will be their first home game in more than a month. UVM went 3-2-0 on the preceding five-game road stretch over three weekends, which included wins at then-No. 18 New Hampshire and then-No. 9 UMass Lowell. Currently, Vermont sports a winning record (8-6-1) on the road this season.
“Having us go on the road for three weeks in a row was daunting,” Wielder said. “We were like, we gotta be ready for this stretch, and our guys have done an unbelievable job to respond to it. We’ve gone through everything in the last four weeks — the whole sickness thing, injury bug, playing really big-time opponents that are nationally ranked (and) our guys have responded. That’s the one thing about our group — they’re very resilient.”
With six games left in the regular season, Wielder has his team believing it’s capable of making some noise in both the Hockey East standings and tournament.
“Our guys have a strong belief in the locker room,” Wiedler said. “They want to represent our school and our university. I haven’t been with a group of guys that took that weight this seriously. They really do think they have the talent level and the buy-in to push the program forward and I believe in them. They care enough to get it done.”
Northland College has ‘no sustainable path forward’ as school announces closure at end of 2024-25 academic year
The Northland College Board of Trustees today voted unanimously to close the college at the end of the 2024–25 academic year.
Founded in Wisconsin in 1892, Northland was the first United States college to fully integrate an environmental focus with its liberal arts curriculum.
Located on the south shore of Lake Superior, surrounded by northern forests, Northland College inspired its students to explore the fundamental interconnections between nature, place and people.
“Despite the collaborative efforts of the entire Northland family, we no longer have the resources needed to navigate the economic and demographic storms endangering small, liberal arts institutions today,” said Ted Bristol, chair of the Northland College Board of Trustees, in a statement. “With declining enrollment and soaring costs, it takes more to operate the college than we raise in tuition. Even after enacting aggressive measures to cut costs and raise revenues, Northland College has no sustainable path forward.”
Northland’s innovative, interdisciplinary learning approach fostered dynamic educational experiences, research and partnerships that extended well beyond its classrooms. The college’s mission was driven by the belief that understanding and addressing complex environmental and social challenges requires inclusion of diverse perspectives, critical thinking, creativity and collaboration.
Northland’s capacity to finance itself had been in jeopardy since March 2024, when its board declared financial exigency. More than 1,000 donors responded to a spring 2024 fundraising appeal and the college reduced costs by streamlining its academic offerings and cutting staff. Northland began the fall 2024 semester with a smaller student body and a focus on nine majors.
The board of trustees today also accepted the resignation of president Chad Dayton and appointed VP for academic affairs and dean of the faculty Barb Lundberg as Northland’s interim president.
The school has NCAA D-III men’s and women’s hockey programs in the WIAC with combined records of 1-43 this season.
This Week in NCHC Hockey: Arizona State on mission to make NCAA tournament as Sun Devils ‘want to be a top-10 perennial program’
It’s these days, at the business end of the college hockey season, when coaches really bang the drum to get their players geed up for what’s left.
On Tuesday, Arizona State coach Greg Powers used his weekly press conference as a soapbox.
The Sun Devils are now firmly on the NCAA tournament bubble, 15th in the PairWise Rankings following an overtime defeat and shootout win last weekend at Minnesota Duluth. The Bulldogs are 18 points below ASU in the NCHC standings, and at 40th in the PairWise, they would need to win out to make the national tournament themselves.
ASU isn’t in quite that situation. But ahead of a home series this weekend with No. 3 Western Michigan and then two road games against a surging Omaha squad to wrap up the regular season, Powers is taking a pressure-makes-diamonds approach.
“We need to have fun with this,” he said. “We’ve earned this. This is a great opportunity. This is what this program has built for and towards for the last decade, to be in a league and be in late February in front of what’s going to be a sold-out crowd against one of if not the best team in the country to date and have it within our destiny and our control to take the season by the throat. That’s what we have. That’s a pressure that you can only look at as a privilege.”
In its first season in any NCAA-sanctioned league, ASU sits five points behind NCHC leader Western Michigan. The Sun Devils had won three of their last four games, including an overtime loss Feb. 7 at defending national champion Denver, but they’ll want portions of last weekend’s series in Duluth back.
The Bulldogs scored first in both games, and two power-play goals Friday contributed to UMD’s 3-2 win. ASU then led 3-2 past the halfway point of Saturday’s rematch, thanks in part to two Artem Shlaine goals, but couldn’t put the game away in regulation or a five-minute overtime.
But again, Powers looked on the bright side.
“Duluth’s a hell of a team,” he said. “I’ve said it for a long time, since we played them here (with ASU winning two close games in December), I just think that they’re way better than their record. A lot of draft picks, a lot of high draft picks, a lot of really talented kids, obviously a legendary coach (in Scott Sandelin), a program that has won three national championships in the last decade, and what’s perspective, I think, is feeling a little disappointed going on the road to such a good program and getting three out of six points and not feeling content.
“I think that speaks volumes about, most importantly, where our players have put ourselves in position this year. This is what I said to them today. I said, ‘Hey, if you go back to November, after our first Omaha loss, we’re 3-7-1, and over the course of our next 20, we’re gonna go 14-4-2. Three of those losses are gonna be in overtime, one’s gonna be with a 4-1 lead that we kind of stunk away, and put ourselves in a position to be where we need to be, if we have success over the next four games, from a PairWise standpoint, to get into the NCAA tournament, which we are where we need to be, to still, if we have a great weekend this weekend, take over first place in the conference.’ There’s not a guy in this room, including myself, that wouldn’t have taken that.”
The Sun Devils, and teams in similar situations in the PairWise, don’t have use now for looking too far ahead. What better way, then, to approach what will be two of the country’s biggest games this week?
“We’re a clear second-place team, with still an opportunity this weekend to reclaim first,” Powers said. “We have a target on our backs, and I think they’ve done a tremendous job. We came into the season kind of being on the hunt, and to their credit, and it’s all because of the players, they’ve turned the season around and became the hunted.
“That’s an exciting thing. It’s what we want. It’s what we want to be: we want to be front-runners, we want to be a top-10 perennial program here that’s fighting to get into the Frozen Four every year, and that’s where we think we are.”
This Week in CCHA Hockey: Augustana making major impact in conference as ‘our guys have held their own’ in 2024-25
Augustana’s first full season as CCHA members is turning out better than most outsiders could have expected.
It’s been pretty clear since they started conference play that they were going to be one of the teams to beat in the conference, and have spent much of the season’s second half fighting a handful of teams at the top of the standings for the right to call themselves conference champions and hoist the MacNaughton Cup.
The Vikings, who are 17-9-4 overall, went 9-5-2 in their inaugural season as full CCHA members. Last season, they were 7-7-2 against their future conference foes. They played 16 games (eight series) against every other conference team in both of their first two seasons. Augustana will play a full 26-game CCHA schedule next season.
“This league’s a hard league; this is our second tour of duty,” Augustana coach Garrett Raboin said on Saturday, after his team fought to rally for a tie against Michigan Tech. “Now we’ve been everywhere once, and everyone’s been to us once. I think our guys have held their own. I’m proud of our group.”
The Vikings showed just how many steps they’ve taken as a program against the Huskies. Last season, Michigan Tech took five of the six points from the series in Houghton. This year, with Tech making its first ever trip to Sioux Falls, S.D., the Vikings turned the tables and showed off their depth. A 5-1 win on Friday was followed up by a hard-fought tie on Saturday in which Augustana rallied from a 3-0 deficit then again needed a third-period goal to tie it up and earn the extra point.
“As much as I didn’t like our start, I did like our fightback,” Raboin said. “We were able to do it down 3-0, we were able to come back and even the score, and then down 4-3, the power play scored again.
“To come away with four of six points on the weekend, against a tough team like Tech, I’m happy.”
The Vikings have done a good job whenever teams have visited Sioux Falls this season. They are 8-2-2 at the newly-opened Midco Arena. Their only losses at home were against Long Island at the beginning of the season and in overtime against Bemidji State. Of the rest of the CCHA, only Minnesota State (12-4-2) has a better home record than the Vikings, and that’s because they’ve played six more home games than Augustana.
Luckily for the Vikings, they’ll be home for at least another two weekends. After they host Alaska in a nonconference serie this weekend, they will be at home in the first round of the Mason Cup playoffs. Their win against the Huskies on Friday night clinched at least a first-round playoff series.
“It’s not something we put a whole lot of stock into,” Raboin said when told the Vikings secured home ice for at least the first round of the Mason Cup playoffs after Friday’s 5-1 win. “We’re trying to play our best hockey late in the year. It’s great for our fans, let’s blow the roof off this place.
“But we still have (two) more games before we get there. We still have a lot of stuff that needs to get sorted out.”
Augustana finished its CCHA schedule and will only be able to watch as the rest of the league plays out the rest of their games against one another. The Vikings host Alaska this weekend and have a week off before the playoffs begin.
That means the Augustana doesn’t control its own fate when it comes to the league standings. The Vikings are currently in second place behind Minnesota State, with a points percentage of 0.625. The Mavericks are at 0.697. Minnesota State can clinch the MacNaughton Cup over the next two weekends with five points for at least a share of the MacNaughton and six points to win outright. They travel to Lake Superior State before hosting Bemidji State in the final weekend of the regular season.
Women’s Division I College Hockey: The PodKaz Episode 38 – Playoffs start for some, others chase championship on final regular season weekend
Nicole Haase and Todd Milewski from USCHO.com look around NCAA women’s hockey as the regular season ends and the playoffs begin. Cornell wrapped up the ECAC Hockey championship, leaving Boston University and UConn to battle for the Hockey East crown and Long Island and Sacred Heart to chase the NEWHA title.The PairWise Rankings look a little different this week, and that has changed some potential NCAA tournament matchups.
Nicole and Todd weigh in on the question of whether the Women’s Frozen Four should be held in NHL arenas. Read Nicole’s column on the subject here.
The five conference tournaments all have different formats and dates. Read up on those here.
The show wraps up with a look at the first weekend of the Atlantic Hockey America and ECAC Hockey tournaments and the final weekend of the regular season for Hockey East, NEWHA and the WCHA.
The PodKaz is a production of USCHO.com. Have a question for our mailbag? Reach out to Nicole (@NicoleHaase) or Todd (@ToddMilewski) on social media or email [email protected].
This Week in ECAC Hockey: Cornell emphasizing to ‘stay in the moment’ with end to 2024-25 regular season, Schafer’s tenure fast approaching
My brother and I used to travel a lot for college hockey.
This was way back in the mid-2000s, an era identified by its lack of available video streaming services. Internet broadcasting was still in its infancy, and Brown, his alma mater and the school for which he’d started broadcasting at the turn of the century, headed to Cornell and Colgate for a road trip historically unkind to the Bears. They hadn’t won both ends of the road trip since the Nixon Administration (or some absurdly similar statistic), so we spent the bulk of the ride telling stories about our worst experiences against opponents.
It inevitably returned to a story from the 1999-2000 season. As a senior, he was Brown’s team manager, and a November trip to Cornell and Colgate offered the first road trip of his season. As an Ivy League school, the Bears started the year at the end of October with a league game against travel partner Harvard before Vermont and Dartmouth ventured south, but the road trip to Central New York loomed especially large because of the Big Red’s overall reputation as a national powerhouse.
Just three years earlier, a 21-win team won a second consecutive ECAC championship under newly minted head coach Mike Schafer. The three years of lower-tier finishes were a distant memory, and even in a league with St. Lawrence and RPI, a trip to play the Big Red and a Colgate team lining the top of the ECAC table was perilous for any team.
Brown was overmatched in those two games during that year and surrendered 15 combined goals to both Cornell and Colgate. The Saturday game at Starr Rink had actually been insanely competitive in a sense that the Bears went back-and-forth with a team bound for the top-10, but the weekend’s opening game at Lynah ended with an 8-1 loss that featured, in my brother’s words, “Give My Regards to Davy [the Cornell fight song] playing over and over until I heard it in my sleep.”
Cornell was a fearsome opponent, and opponents walked into Lynah knowing that they’d lose. It was darker, and the fans knowledgeably hurled insulting chants over the cramped boards. The team wore that red-and-white color scheme akin to the same years ahead of when Ken Dryden broke the hearts of so many Boston Bruins fans.
And the coach. Oh, the coach. As long as Mike Schafer stood behind that bench, Cornell had a chance to score a come-from-behind win. For 30 years, he tortured opponents with the merciless unction of ECAC’s truly elite program. He won, and he won a lot.
And now, as the regular season winds into its final two weeks, the Schafer era prepares for its final act amidst a huge weekend of hockey within ECAC’s race to the end of the regular season.
“I think a lot of things have been the last thing,” said the retiring Schafer ahead of his final regular-season weekend at Lynah Rink. “Our staff kind of joked that this is the last time that I’d do a budget, the last time I’d do scheduling, and the last time I’d do [things]. For me, this weekend is going to be busy because it’s not just about me. I get to have the 1986, the 2005 and the 2010 championship teams returning, so there are going to be a lot of guys that I played with, that I coached, or that I recruited, and I’m looking forward to seeing them come back to celebrate a little bit.
“We’ve been very fortunate to have a lot of great players and great teams, but it still hasn’t really sunk in [that I’m retiring] because I’ve had so much to do with the alumni and everything else that’s occurring. It’s going to be a tough weekend, and I’m sure it’ll be an emotional weekend at the end. But right now, we still just have to grind through the details and get prepared for it.”
Cornell entered this season as the odds-on favorite to replace Quinnipiac atop the ECAC standings, but an 11-8-6 overall record combined with an 8-6-4 mark in conference play cost the Big Red any momentum towards ousting the Bobcats for the Cleary Cup. An early season loss to the Bobcats at home set a tone that continued with a 6-3 loss to Colgate and a 4-0 loss to Arizona State in the Desert Hockey Classic, after which a tie and loss to Sacred Heart ended Cornell’s opportunity for an at-large bid.
Like the rest of ECAC, the second half of Cornell’s season shifted into a conversation about needing to win the conference, and points, already at a premium, became even harder-fought than usual. A pair of losses to Dartmouth and St. Lawrence sent the Big Red tumbling down the ECAC standings ahead of a split against RPI and Union, but last weekend’s six-point weekend sweep over Brown and Yale reminded the league why they were the preseason favorite to challenge for a national spot.
“This weekend was the first time that we played 12 forwards since we played UMass in early January,” Schafer admitted. “There’s been a host of reasons regarding why we haven’t reached expectations, but it’s been a disastrous year for injuries, which has meant we’ve had to change things with how we’re going to play. We were able to practice a lot harder and longer than we normally would at this type of year, but that’s because we had to [balance] having four different types of checks based on our numbers.”
Weird as its sounds, getting healthier enabled Cornell to sneak into the race for a top four spot at a time when the incumbent teams looked to solidify their position under Quinnipiac’s top slot. Nobody had assurances for a national tournament berth, but tying Dartmouth for fifth place pushed the Big Red within a four-point swing of Union and Colgate with Clarkson sitting in second place with a six-point cushion.
What started as blasting Brown with a 5-0 lead en route to a 6-1 victory continued with a come-from-behind rally of sorts after Yale returned fire twice to erase Cornell’s 2-0 lead from the first period. Goals across a seven-minute stretch of hockey from the second period ended the threat, but the emergence of offense from Dalton Bancroft, Jake Kraft and Ryan Walsh showcased depth that didn’t exist when Schafer’s team couldn’t roll full complements of forwards or defensemen towards an opponent.
“We’d been snake-bitten offensively,” he admitted, “and then last week, we went back to focusing on the one thing that we could focus on, which was our defense. We could focus on playing physical and with discipline, so we went out and didn’t make mistakes on the defensive side. We used that to shore up our systems by not whining or complaining that we weren’t scoring, and we focused on the things that we could control.
“Fortunately for us, we were able to score goals, but that’s the mantra we need to carry forward because we can’t get frustrated with things that we don’t control.”
In many ways, the master class was a staple ending to Schafer’s long and storied career. As per usual, Cornell enters its last weekend at Lynah with an absurd home ice advantage. For 30 years, the 11 ECAC regular season championships and 13 postseason crowds hung over the rink as a haunting reminder of the difficulty associated with beating Cornell, and the 26 Ivy League championships from the six-sided subgrouping complemented the 24 different NCAA tournament berths from Schafer’s reign.
Even without the infamous 2019-20 season’s eventual No. 1 seed and a possible run to the national championship (thanks, COVID), the intimidation of facing the Big Red was obvious.
Most intimidating, though, was the understanding that the head coach with 550 career wins wouldn’t ever back down, even as his reputation transformed from the iron-fisted defender of his troops. Now the elder statesman within the league, this is one last opportunity for Cornell to appreciate its success and its 30-year installation into the national spotlight.
And while the league won’t send more than one team to the national tournament, the race for the top four is heightening and tightening right around the one team nobody else wanted to play its best hockey at the end of the season.
“This has made our guys’ mentality tough,” said Schafer. “When you have high expectations and you’re not reaching them, you go through a lull mentally because you sense that something could have been special. Obviously, it hasn’t [lived up to expectations]. Some of it was our own doing and not playing great. Some of it has been the injuries. Some of it has been a lack of consistency. But when you wrap it all up, it doesn’t make a difference.
“We could talk about it, but all we can control, right now, is Clarkson on Friday night. That’s it. We have to come out and play as hard as we can. I haven’t looked at the standings, and I haven’t looked at them for a long time for a lot of different reasons. Where we end up is where we end up. So we need to stay in the moment. It’s cliche, but our guys do a good job of it. We’ve had good, strong, and tough practices, and I think that’s helped us turn the tables a little bit.”
BRACKETOLOGY: On the NCAA tournament bubble, a sweep this coming weekend could put Arizona State back in the fold
Welcome to Week 6 of Bracketology.
Each week from now until Selection Sunday on March 23, I will outline the current 16 teams in the men’s NCAA Division I tournament and attempt to seed a bracket based on the current field.
This past weekend, it was Massachusetts that helped its case the most. A bubble team heading into the weekend, UMass played its way inside the PairWise bubble for the moment with a series split against No. 1 Boston College. The UMass win came on the road, giving the Minutemen enough bonus points to move to 13th in the PairWise.
Ohio State also helped its cause with a two-game sweep over Wisconsin. The Buckeyes have won four straight to start the month of February and are now sixth overall in the PairWise.
As we mentioned in last Tuesday’s bracketology, Boston College and Michigan State have clinched their bids. After this past weekend, we can add three teams to the list of clinched bids as Minnesota, Maine and Western Michigan are now secure in the tournament field.
All that said, here are the 16 teams who would qualify for the NCAA tournament if the season ended today:
1. Boston College*
2. Michigan State*
3. Minnesota
4. Maine
5. Western Michigan*
6. Ohio State
7. Boston University
8. Providence
9. Connecticut
10. Denver
11. UMass Lowell
12. Michigan
13. Massachusetts
14. Quinnipiac*
15. Minnesota State*
16. Holy Cross*
* – Indicates team that currently has the top conference winning percentage in their respective conference. While each conference is awarded an autobid for its tournament champion, for the purposes of this exercise we will use the first-place team (based on winning %) to receive the autobid.
With the field of 16 in place, we can now seed the four regions using basic bracket integrity (1 vs. 16, 2 vs. 15, 3 vs. 14, etc.).
1. Boston College
8. Providence
9. Connecticut
16. Holy Cross
2. Michigan State
7. Boston University
10. Denver
15. Minnesota State
3. Minnesota
6. Ohio State
11. UMass Lowell
14. Quinnipiac
4. Maine
5. Western Michigan
12. Michigan
13. Massachusetts
As a reminder and also for those who aren’t regular readers of Bracketology, there is one thing that the committee seems to avoid at all costs and that is first-round matchups between teams from the same conference. In the above we have two: 8 Providence and 9 Connecticut as well as 4 Maine and 13 Massachusetts.
The Maine/UMass conflict is easy to fix. Simply switch 13 Massachusetts with 14 Quinnipiac (you’ll see as you read on that this works out in more ways than one). The second inter-conference first round matchup isn’t as easy to fix.
9 Connecticut can’t face 8 Providence, another Hockey East opponent. But switching UConn with 10 Denver or 11 UMass Lowell creates additional Hockey East first-round matchups, making the only switch possible that solves the inter-conference issue is to swap 9 UConn with 12 Michigan.
I don’t love this move. Both teams are in the same “band,” in other words both are 3-seeds in the tournament. But to switch UConn and Michigan, you’re basically moving one team up three positions (Michigan from 12 to 9) while moving UConn down three slots. But if you want to avoid having Hockey East teams play in the first-round, this is the only solution.
With that, we have the following bracket:
1. Boston College
8. Providence
12. Michigan
16. Holy Cross
2. Michigan State
7. Boston University
10. Denver
15. Minnesota State
3. Minnesota
6. Ohio State
11. UMass Lowell
13. Massachusetts
4. Maine
5. Western Michigan
9. Connecticut.
14. Quinnipiac
With this bracket in place, let’s assign regions to each four-team group. When considering this, we must place host schools in the region they are hosting. Right now, none of the four hosts are in the field (New Hampshire, Bowling Green, North Dakota and Penn State). So that’s not an issue this week.
Boston College is the top seed and should play closest to home in Manchester, N.H. Michigan State is the second seed and the closest region is Toledo, Ohio, less than two hours from Lansing. Minnesota is the third overall seed and would head to Fargo, N.D., which leaves Maine to play in Allentown, Pa.
That gives us the following:
Manchester Region
1. Boston College
8. Providence
12. Michigan
16. Holy Cross
Toledo Region
2. Michigan State
7. Boston University
10. Denver
15. Minnesota State
Fargo Region
3. Minnesota
6. Ohio State
11. UMass Lowell
13. Massachusetts
Allentown Region
4. Maine
5. Western Michigan
9. Connecticut
14. Quinnipiac
Now, we need to take into consideration how the four teams in each region will impact attendance. Manchester is fine with BC, Providence and Holy Cross. Minnesota will help draw in Fargo. Allentown has been an issue every week we’ve published the column, but having Quinnipiac (2+ hours) and Connecticut (3+ hours), you at least have two teams that are driving distance to Allentown.
Toledo will have good attendance with Michigan State, but it seems strange to have an Ohio-based team in Ohio State in the field but not playing currently slotted for Toledo. Can we get Ohio State closer to home?
We can’t make a simple switch of 6 Ohio State and 7 Boston University as that would set up a first-round game between BU and UMass Lowell in Fargo. But what if we moved the entire first-round pairing between the two regions. In other words, move the BU/Denver game from Toledo to Fargo and move Ohio State and UMass Lowell to Toledo. You’ll likely bolster the Toledo attendance with the Ohio State fanbase, while all of the other moves (Denver, BU, UML) all will have little to no negative impact on attendance.
Making that move, it gives us our final bracket:
Manchester Region
1. Boston College
2. Providence
3. Michigan
4. Holy Cross
Toledo Region
1. Michigan State
2. Ohio State
3. UMass Lowell
4. Minnesota State
Fargo Region
1. Minnesota
2. Boston University
3. Denver
4. Massachusetts
Allentown Region
1. Maine
2. Western Michigan
3. Connecticut
4. Quinnipiac
Last in: Michigan, Massachusetts
First out: Arizona State, Penn State
Keep an eye on: Arizona State. They’ll host Western Michigan for two games this weekend where a sweep likely moves the Sun Devils back into the tournament field.
TMQ: Time running out on 2024-25 college hockey season as discussion turns to Hobey, Richter candidates, Four Nations tournament
Each week during the season, we look at the big events and big games around Division I men’s college hockey in Tuesday Morning Quarterback.
Paula: Well, Dan, we’re in mid-February, which means that time is running out on the regular season. The competition is tightening, especially as teams attempt to finish as high as they can in conference standings for better playoff position and the regular-season title is up for grabs in several conferences.
We saw that in play among the top teams in the USCHO.com Poll, resulting in a new No. 1 this week – a team that didn’t play a game last weekend.
Michigan State regains the top spot in the poll as voters were clearly torn. The Spartans received 23 first-place votes to knock Boston College down to No. 2 after the Eagles posted losses in two of their last three games. I don’t think that the loss to Boston University in the Beanpot title game Feb. 10 would have affected BC’s standing if the Eagles had followed that up with a sweep of No. 16 Massachusetts, but a split with the Minutemen last weekend gave voters some pause.
That split also opened the door for No. 4 Maine to move into a tie for first place in Hockey East with a tie and win against New Hampshire.
The Eagles still received 11 votes for first place in the poll. My vote went to Western Michigan, whose sweep of Omaha puts some distance between the Broncos and the second-place Sun Devils. No. 12 Arizona State lost to and tied Minnesota Duluth.
The sweep wasn’t the only reason the Broncos earned my vote. Western Michigan is 9-1-0 in NCHC play since the start of 2025.
Things got interesting in the conference I cover, too. With Michigan State idle, No. 5 Minnesota had a chance to gain some ground on the Spartans, but a loss and tie to No. 10 Michigan kept the Golden Gophers in second place – a spot they now share with No. 7 Ohio State, who swept Wisconsin.
There’s movement in other places in the poll but, more importantly, in PairWise Rankings where some teams are working hard to play themselves into the tournament, most notably No. 14 Quinnipiac and No. 18 Penn State.
What stories do you see developing here, Dan? What are we looking at now and in the weeks remaining in the regular season?
Dan: We’ve known for a while that the cut line for the national tournament is going to land around the No. 14 spot, but the tightening around that position is getting more and more pressure-packed as we’re nearing the end of the season. Even for Quinnipiac, which is credibly earning its way into another Cleary Cup as the ECAC regular-season champion, won’t likely stay above the cut line if it loses a postseason game or doesn’t win the Whitelaw Cup as league tournament champion. Even worse would be a two-game loss in the quarterfinal series, and even worse still would be a series loss to any of the teams like Harvard, Brown or Princeton.
There’s simply not enough wiggle room remaining for teams without a scheduling benefit, but there’s also a stark difference in how those teams are gambling with their RPI points. Take UMass, for instance, which gained extra credit for beating Boston College on the road before dropping Saturday’s game at home. The team’s final three weekends are against New Hampshire, UMass Lowell and Maine, the latter two of which are ahead of the Minutemen in the Pairwise. Gaining wins against those two teams or even not losing to New Hampshire makes it harder for a team like Quinnipiac to close its .0013 gap in the RPI because the Bobcats only play Yale, Brown, Clarkson and St. Lawrence – a group that has two teams under the No. 50 spot in the Pairwise Rankings and nobody higher than No. 21.
A team like Penn State, meanwhile, has to make up nearly a full percentage point within the RPI but plays both Michigan State and Minnesota before entering into the Big Ten’s postseason. Considering how well Penn State’s played lately, I would then argue that the Nittany Lions have a better chance of making the postseason as an at-large than Quinnipiac despite sitting well outside of the present company bubble.
I’ve taken a few shots at Quinnipiac through this whole thing, but I want to make one thing clear: this is where playing your best hockey matters the most, and for those teams around the cut line, there’s tons of pressure to make quick adjustments on a game-to-game basis.
UNH fell off the cliff because of a bad run in its conference, and a team like Minnesota State doesn’t have the same juice within the CCHA to gain the same ground on Arizona State, which finally ran into a bit of a wall this weekend when it lost and tied Minnesota-Duluth on the road. Even then, Arizona State plays Western Michigan this weekend, so a win in either game gets the Sun Devils right back into a hunt that’s starting to leave teams behind.
Paula: Yeah, I’m looking at strength of schedule pretty hard this week, particularly in the Big Ten. The B1G team that stands to lose the most is Michigan State, who faces both Penn State and Notre Dame to end the season. The Spartans will play in the tournament, but losses in the final two weeks can knock them out of the top spot in a regional, which is where they’re sitting now and have for pretty much the whole season.
Minnesota is the other B1G team currently looking at a No. 1 regional seed, and losses in remaining games against Ohio State probably won’t undermine that, but losses to Penn State in the final weekend might.
Of course, this is something that many top teams contend with in their conference playoffs. If they’re high enough in the PWR, they don’t have to worry about dropping out of tournament contention, but they can draw less favorable opponents with lower PWR positions. I imagine that a lot of coaches are courting insomnia and/or ulcers at this time of the year.
I look at how strong the Big Ten is this season and the advantage that gives a team like Penn State – just that ability to play their way into the national tournament, potentially. Then I look at Atlantic Hockey and Holy Cross, a team that has a solid chance of finishing the regular season with 20 wins and yet may not see NCAA post-season play.
The Crusaders are unbeaten (11-0-1) in conference play in the second half, just a hotter-than-hot streak in which they’re averaging over 4.30 goals per game while allowing fewer than two per game. Liam McLinskey is averaging .62 goals per game this season, tied with Minnesota’s Jimmy Snuggerud for 10th in the nation. McLinskey has been one of the most consistent offensive players in the country all season, and his play has earned him some well-deserved Hobey Baker talk.
For as good as they are, though, the Crusaders sit at No. 27 in the Pairwise. Should they fail to capture the AHA playoff championship, their brilliant season will be over Mar. 22 or sooner.
McLinskey brings to mind the Hobey and Richter awards. Who are you liking for the Hobey Hat Trick and Richter finalists?
Dan: A couple of weeks ago, I talked about the Hobey Baker and the Richter Awards through a decided eastern lens. My picks – Ryan Leonard and Jacob Fowler – are both starring for Boston College, and the Eagles (disclaimer: for whom I work) were steamrolling through teams ahead of the Beanpot first round game that hadn’t happened when we were bantering through TMQ.
The last week opened a bit of daylight for the rest of the country, in my opinion, and I’m not fishing towards dark horses or unknown names who I’m lodging into the conversation. Over the past two weeks, I’ve found myself opening the debate internally in my own head, and I’m learning now towards Aiden Fink as a name to watch for the Hobey Baker and Alex Tracy as a name deserving serious consideration for the Richter Award.
I’ll start with Tracy and his 733 saves, 1.53 goals against average, and .941 save percentage. He’s been electric over the past couple of months in terms of shutting down every team he’s faced. He hasn’t allowed more than three goals in any of his appearances and went on a tear between November and January where he allowed two or less goals to every single opponent. The lone three-goal games since the turn into 2025 came against Northern Michigan and St. Thomas, but even his losses to Michigan Tech and Ferris State involved impressive performances where the Mavericks endured an offensive power outage.
Fink, meanwhile, is the single-most important reason why Penn State is surging towards the tournament bubble and why I wouldn’t want to face that team under any circumstances. Just under half of his 44 points have come since the first of the year, and he rebounded from his two pointless games by scoring a pair of goals against both Ohio State and Michigan. He’s had at least one goal in 10 games since playing Army West Point on Jan. 12, and he’s now one of the nation’s top scorers on par with Ryan Leonard.
I’m wondering out loud if Leonard, arguably the most talented player in college hockey right now, will deal with a demerit for the number of empty-net goals he’s scored, which is about double Fink’s total. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to, but I know voters are finicky about silly things.
I do want to shift gears a bit because my wind just wandered a bit. You mentioned Holy Cross and leading Atlantic Hockey, but this past weekend was the final two-game series of the year between Army West Point and Air Force. From an apolitical conversation, the matchups between those two teams always seem to embody the best things in college hockey. This year, it felt more special because of Brian Riley’s impending retirement. For the final time, a Riley was behind the bench for the nation’s rivalry.
I think I’m gaining more perspective on that one factoid as the year ends. I’m going to miss Brian’s candor and gentlemanly attitude within “our league” in the AHA, but I know the entire national landscape loves and respects him.
As college hockey evolves, this is a fact that some of the most experienced coaches are angling for retirement. Count me among those who owe a debt of gratitude to Coach Riley and all he’s meant to the game.
Paula: I love the love for Fink, as you may imagine, and the advocacy for Tracy. It really can’t be said that anyone in the Big Ten flies under the radar, and Fink was named to the preseason all-Big Ten team by coaches for a reason. You’ve admirably outlined the reasons here.
And Tracy is a phenom this season, a true dark horse. I fear that he’ll be overlooked because of where he plays – which seems to be a theme for our column this week, in some ways.
On to Brian Riley, one of the great gentlemen of college hockey. My professional contact with Coach Riley has been limited, but he’s always been knowledgeable, gracious, and generous whenever I’ve spoken with him or observed him interacting with others. His reputation is sterling and with good reason. It’s also a bit of a mental challenge to think of Army hockey without the Riley family, given the last 75 years.
Your mention of Brian Riley also brings to mind two other great coaches – two other really wonderful men – who are retiring. We knew at the start of the year that Jeff Jackson would step away from the bench at Notre Dame and that Fighting Irish alum and associate head coach Brock Sheahan will lead the Irish beginning next season.
Jackson is one of the most knowledgeable coaches I’ve met and through my years in covering hockey, I’ve always appreciated his candor. I’ve also appreciated Notre Dame’s ability to develop players under Jackson’s tenure.
Then there’s Bob Daniels. In January, Daniels announced that he would be retiring after 33 years at Ferris State. From my earliest days covering college hockey, Daniels proved himself to be one of the nicest coaches in the business. Yes, he’s a solid coach, he’s knowledgeable, he’s become a legend in Big Rapids and to all who know him in the college hockey world, but you and I know that niceness is underrated.
And it’s such a small world, our little college hockey universe. I think of current Tampa Lightning assistant Jeff Blashill and how he grew up on the campus of Lake Superior State, living next door to current Notre Dame associate head coach Paul Pooley when Jeff’s father, Jim, taught at Lake State and how much Jackson, the head coach then, influenced Blashill. Blashill played for Daniels at Ferris State, too. One small story from a very small world.
Of all my cherished Daniels memories – aside from his stories about teaching Blashill how to golf, which may or may not be entirely accurate – my favorite is when the NCHC was forming and people involved in the league were bandying about potential conference names. They were purportedly thinking of calling it the “Super League,” and when Daniels caught wind of that, he said that maybe the league formed by the old CCHA and WCHA teams left behind by what is now the NCHC should call themselves the “Super Duper League.”
I heard that secondhand and when I called Daniels to ask him if I could use that on the record he said, “Absolutely.”
Sometimes I wonder if we college hockey fans appreciate just how good we have it.
And on that note, I do want to point out something regarding the Four Nations tournament. In the U.S. win over Canada Saturday, every single player on the American scoresheet was an NCAA alum. Every goal, every assist, every save.
College hockey really is something special.
Dan: It really is, and the current success levels inherent to college hockey remind me of two separate branches. The first is the natural link to the USA development pipeline and how it’s really reaping the benefits of its success and sustainability within the World Junior circuit. College hockey, we argued a couple of months ago, is partially overtaking the CHL and the Canadian junior system, and it’s likely to skew even further towards the American side after the floodgates open for those Canadian league imports. By its very nature within the growth of the game, we’re seeing an explosion of players that came through college before NIL and the transfer portal, and that’s pretty impressive.
The second is more personal for me because it echoes a bit of the women’s game and the success enjoyed by USA Hockey after the college game produced its gold medal in 2018. I still remember watching the Americans win in 1998 with a team built by Tara Mounsey, a high school-aged Angela Ruggiero, Colleen Coyne, Karyn Bye, Cammi Granato, AJ Mleczko and Katie King, not to mention Sarah Tueting in net.
They all came through college hockey, and in 2018, Alina Muller and Marie-Philip Poulin led scoring despite not winning gold medals. The American team, meanwhile, won its first gold since 1998 because of a roster built from the collegiately-developed all stars. Personally speaking, especially now that I have two daughters, I’ve found myself drawn to how college hockey was the conduit for growth that led to the PWHL and the ongoing reset of equality standards.
Last point from me, though, and it’s about the Four Nations and specifically Team USA. I don’t get hung up on off-ice rivalries between the Americans and Canadians (more direct: I’m not addressing the anthem thing. The whole argument, to me, is kind of a pointless endeavor), but there’s one piece of off-ice business that separates Team USA apart from any other team on the international stage.
More than anything, I’m blown away from USA’s commitment to remembering the Gaudreau brothers, and the pictures and images of handing out Johnny’s No. 13 to the player of the game while inviting Guy Gaudreau into team pictures is, to me, the very best part of both college hockey and the American hockey system. At the risk of getting wispy, I wish this tournament, along with the Olympics and the World Cup of Hockey, received a chance to have Johnny skate next to someone like Auston Matthews.
It’s an honor, in not so many words, for American hockey to continue remembering both Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau. Seeing that jersey means the world, and I hope that this tournament, for all who continue to remember and mourn that duo, is providing an extra layer of comfort within the American success.
