Nearly all the top twenty teams split last weekend in one fashion or another — a win/loss, or a tie thrown in there.  Let’s start with the weekend’s top matchups.  #3 Denver split with suddenly hot #15 St. Cloud State, and #5 Miami of Ohio split with #18 Ferris State.  #6 North Dakota split with #11 Boston University, #7 Notre Dame split with #10 Western Michigan, and #12 Michigan suffered a painful tie and a loss at the hands of #16 Northern Michigan, losing the second game by just one goal.

There were a few exceptions to this weekend of splits.  #1 Boston College did bag two wins over Maine and UMass-Amherst, but #2 Minnesota split with Mankato,  and #4 Cornell split with Colgate.  #8 Union College swept RPI, while #9 New Hampshire lost to UMass-Amherst, and beat Maine.  #14 Harvard beat Brown, but lost to Yale, and #20 Colorado College swept Wisconsin.  Another hot team this year, #13 St. Lawrence was idle, as were #17 UMass-Lowell and #20 Minnesota-Duluth.

So how hot is St. Lawrence this year, and what has caused them to be so hot?  Well for starters, there is the perfomance of Kyle Flanagan, who is leading the nation in points so far this year — he is averaging 2.8 points per game!  To get an idea of how slick he is on ice, check out this YouTube video and his ridiculously good goal shot behind him and between his legs.  Kyle is the nephew of Paul Flanagan, who was the St. Lawrence captain in 1980, and who is currently the head coach of the Syracuse women’s ice hockey team.  I’d like to thank our contributing field reporter, Bruce Carlisle, for steering me to this link (hopefully we’ll get a game summary from Bruce during this season) —

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM7Mt5NYTw0&feature=youtube_gdata_player

A very interesting series from last weekend was the Cornell/Colgate matchup.  Cornell somehow won the first game by a 3-1 margin, while being outshot 46-14 on the night.  You don’t see that one very often.  In the second game, the shooting was even, a 27-25 tally, and from that one, Cornell only came out with a 2-2 tie.

This weekend there are some real scorchers.  #1 Boston College will face both #7 Notre Dame, and #11 Boston University, and #5 Miami of Ohio will host #16 Northern Michigan for a pair.  #6 North Dakota will travel to play two at #13 St. Cloud State, and #8 Union College will play one at #14 Harvard.  While not a top twenty matchup, it’s sure to be a real fight as #12 Michigan has a home/road series with Michigan State.

This provides the top twenty teams, rankings, records, and last weekend’s results:

[table id=46 /]

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

— Tom