College Hockey Update:  What an eventful weekend we just had with so many top-twenty matchups.

Right off the bat,  St. Cloud State swept North Dakota, at North Dakota, sending St. Cloud up six spots to the #3 ranking, and dropping North Dakota down six spots to the #11 ranking. You might ask what’s a St. Cloud?  The answer, which is so simple, yet begs for investigation into a mystery, is below.  Oh — Quinnipiac beat Cornell (and also beat Colgate), moving Quinnipiac up to the #5 ranking, and dropping Cornell (which beat Princeton the night before) a notch to #15.  Providence split with Boston University, dropping Providence down three pegs to the #6 ranking, and BU moved up a spot to #17.  Meanwhile, Yale beat Clarkson (having tied St. Lawrence the night before), lifting Yale up to the #11 ranking; Clarkson moved up to #16, having beaten Brown the night before.

Elsewhere, #1 Minnesota was idle, and Michigan swept Michigan Tech, moving Michigan up to the #4 ranking.  Notre Dame opened play in Hockey East with a loss to Vermont, and beat Vermont the next night, dropping Notre Dame down to #4.  Miami of Ohio swept Canisius, and Miami nudged down to #7 on the ascent of St. Cloud State.  Boston College swept Northeastern, retaining the #8 spot, and RPI lost to Harvard, but beat Dartmouth, to retain the #10 ranking.

UMass-Lowell swept New Hampshire, and now finds itself knocking on the door of the top ten at #12, while Mankato split with Bemidji State, and dropped to the #16 ranking.  Ferris State swept Alabama-Huntsville, and entered the poll at #19, while Minnesota-Duluth split with Ohio State and held at #20.

What about this great weekend for St. Cloud State?  The sweep of North Dakota in Grand Forks was just huge.  Remember, this is a team that last season made it to the Frozen Four.  At #3, I am thinking this might be just about as high as they’ve ever been ranked.  But not quite.  You probably remember the solid run St. Cloud had from 2000-03 when they made the NCAA tournament all four years, and won the WCHA tournament in 2001.  During that run, they finished the last two weeks of the 2000-2001 season ranked #3.  Then in the 2001-02 season, they were ranked #3 in late October, then rose in the next two weeks to #1, for only one week.  But they came back ranked #1 from early December through early January — in five consecutive polls —  and ended the season ranked #2.

All of which brings up the obvious question, what exactly is a St. Cloud?  I mean the imagery is great, and how could you not like a school called St. Cloud?  But where does that name come from.  Well, it happens to come from France, directly as it is spelled (but pronounced sen-clu).  You see, Minnesota was organized as a territory in 1849, and the the St. Cloud area was opened up to settlers in 1851, after treaty negotiations had been concluded with the Winnebago tribe in 1851.  The treaty was further finalized in 1852.  A fellow by the name of John Wilson, a Maine native with French Huguenot ancestry and an interest in Napoleon, named the settlement St. Cloud after Saint Cloud , the community six miles outside of Paris, which was the site of a palace that was favored and occupied by both Napoleon I, and later, Napoleon II.  Leave it to the French, I suppose, to name a community, six miles from Paris, using a word that doesn’t exist in French.  To some, this might suffice as the answer.  But not so to the inquisitive College Hockey Update reader, who would ponder, “Why did the French name that place Saint Cloud?  That is a mystery that begs further investigation.”  So, here goes — in France, King Chlodomer of Orleans (at a time when France was divided into four kingdoms among four brothers), had three brothers, two of whom, Clothar and Childebert, decided in the year 532, to murder Chlodomer’s three sons (not nice guys, and perhaps an earlier invention of hockey could have given them another place to work out this angst).  They killed two of the sons, age seven and ten, but the third escaped by fleeing to the southern region of Provence, and accepting a life in a monastery (the first two refused that option, hence death).  This third son eventually returned to Paris, and became a priest, and his name was . . . . Clodoald.  He established a collegiate church, and after he died, to honor him, the village containing the church was called . . . . St Cloud.  No kidding, not St. Clodoald.  Anyway, that is where St. Cloud in Minnesota gets it’s name, and the history behind it just doesn’t add up, does it?  I’m afraid we’ll have to, at least for now, place this one in the “mysteries unsolved” bin.

Now — St. Cloud in Minnesota, however, adds up.  It is the eighth largest city in Minnesota at 66,000 people.  It has grown steadily and has doubled in size since 1960.  It gets cold there.  Really cold.  Record cold is -42.  Average cold in January is -1; it’s only 5 in December and 6 in February.  Average high, December through February, is only 23, 18, and 26.  It’s cold.  It sits right on the Mississippi River with a few bridges crossing it.  St. Cloud State sits right on the River, between downtown, and a stretch of the river containing nine islands where people like to kayak.  Not in December, January, or February.  Probably only May through September.  St. Cloud State is the biggest of the Minnesota State Universities, and is second in size in all state-funded schools in the state only to U Minnesota Twin Cities.  It has 16,000 students and it was founded in 1869.  The legendary Herb Brooks coached there from 1986 to 87, and in 1989 the school opened a new 5,800 seat arena called the National Hockey Center, just renamed this year as the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center.  Notable alumni?  John Stumpf, the current Chairman, CEO, and President of Wells Fargo, James Bullard, current President of the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis, Leo Kottke, who is about the most gifted, talented guitarist to ever walk the earth (seriously, his finger-picking style of play keeps nine and ten fingers on the strings, constantly in motion, creating a wall of sound out of an acoustic guitar that is hard to believe, and if you ever see him live, you won’t believe what you are watching), and MacGyver — for God’s sake, the guy can take a battery, book of matches, and can of hairspray, and blow the wall out of an office building — the actor, Richard Dean Anderson, and many, many more — staunch hockey fans, all, I am sure.

Well ok, now we know quite a bit more about St. Cloud State, how it got it’s name (simple), and the crazy French story behind it, which still leaves us wondering how anyone in France could use the English word, cloud, to honor a Frenchman named Clodoald.

For this weekend, we have half of the top twenty facing each other in top-twenty matchups.  Here’s a great one — #1 Minnesota will go to #4 Notre Dame to play two; the first game will be on NBC Sports Network (DirecTV 220, Dish 159, Comcast in San Francisco on channel 81) at 5:00 Pacific Time, today.  And #3 St. Cloud State is on the hot seat again as it hosts #7 Miami of Ohio for two games.  #5 Quinnipiac will host #9 Yale on Saturday for a one game rematch of last year’s NCAA championship final game; this game will be shown on Fox College Sports (DirecTV 608/623/626), Saturday at 4:00 Pacific Time .  #8 Boston College will take the short trip on Friday to play #17 Boston University for one game, and #10 RPI will host #15 Cornell for one game on Friday night.

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

[table id=69 /]

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

— Tom