What a weekend! While we have no new teams in the top ten, it was a weekend of tough sledding as five top ten teams took a loss, and two came out with only a tie.

Right off the bat, last week’s #1 team, Miami of Ohio, took a loss and a tie against Ferris State, dropping Miami of Ohio to the #4 spot. Minnesota-Duluth, #2 last week, took on last week’s #9 North Dakota, splitting the weekend; UMD stayed at #2, and North Dakota dropped to #10. Last week’s #3 Boston University tied last week’s #7 Maine, and on the losses of so many teams, BU is now ranked #1 and Maine is now ranked #5. In our last heralded matchup, last week’s #4 BC played last week’s #10 New Hampshire. UNH prevailed over BC, and they won a second game against UMass-Lowell as well, rising to the #9 ranking. Remember my note last week about BC finding a cozy, not so near #1 spot? BC is now ranked #7.

Which also takes us to this week’s question: How do you stop Speelman, Henrion, and Moses? These three forwards from UNH have scored half their team’s goals so far this season, with four each (in only seven games), and the team total at 25. Last weekend both Speelman and Henrion scored one against BC and one against UMass-Lowell. If anyone has any insights on how to play these guys . . . . I guess we’ve already learned there is no stopping Moses . . . .

I read some WCHA blogs this week, and there is a strong feeling that with a win over North Dakota, UMD should be ranked #1 at this time. Perhaps so. How long can BU hold the #1 spot? Time will tell. BU has an interesting stretch coming up: This weekend against seemingly lowly Merrimack, which handed BC a loss in the last few weeks, then a weekend against #9 UNH and the screaming trio of Speelman, Henrion and Moses, and then a weekend against #7 BC.  I will have the priviledge of seeing Minnesota-Duluth play Minnesota (The U)  in Minneapolis in four weeks, on Friday, December 10th, with one of our readers, Greg Schreader, and I am expecting a magnificent hockey spectacle.  It will be the first time I’ve seen a college hockey game in eleven years, my last being Boston University winning a 2-1 OT thriller against UMass-Amherst, in Boston, on December 3, 1999 (it was complete with a slice at Little Stevie’s Back Bay House of Pizza on Boylston after the game — yes it’s still there, and they still do not serve Pepsi).  Having seen the Frozen Four in April of that year, I saw four college hockey games in 1999, all of them fantastic!  Can’t wait to see the UMD-Minnesota game on December 10th!

And what great matchups do we have this weekend? There are no top ten matchups, but we do have a nice assortment of top fifteen matchups. #8 Michigan will face a streaking #11 Notre Dame. #4 Miami of Ohio will face #14 Alaska-Fairbanks. #10 North Dakota will face #13 Wisconsin. And you have to love these in-state (and in this case, in-town) rivalries, as we have Air Force playing Colorado College.

This provides the top ten teams, rankings, records, and last week’s results:

[table id=3 /]

That’s all for now. Stay tuned, and go Terriers!

— Tom