College Hockey Update:  This is not the report from last weekend (Jan. 3-5), it is the report from the prior weekend (Dec. 28-30), and did a lot go on that weekend, perhaps most notably, #3 Michigan dropping two games to two unranked teams!  Admittedly the losses were to two in-state rivals, Michigan State, and Western Michigan, but nonetheless, the two consecutive losses to unranked teams dropped Michigan down to #7 in the Dec. 30 poll.  Elsewhere, a great top-ten matchup as UMass-Lowell faced Clarkson in the Catamount Classic in Vermont, yielded the lower ranked #10 UMass-Lowell the 3-1 winner over #9 Clarkson.  The weekend lifted UMass-Lowell to #9 (they had beaten Canisius the night before), and it dropped Clarkson out of the top ten (they had lost to Vermont the night before).

#5 Providence also stubbed its toe, losing to Air Force the night after beating Dartmouth, but rose up to #4 on the vacuum created by Michigan’s descent.  #8 Quinnipiac tied UMass-Amherst, and beat Sacred Heart, and held on to its ranking.  #7 Boston College beat both Bowling Green and Penn State, and rose up a rung in the rankings, while Yale beat Holy Cross and rose up a notch to the #10 ranking.  #1 Minnesota and #2 Ferris State held their rankings on idle weekends, while St. Cloud State rose up a notch to the #3 ranking on its idle weekend and Michigan’s losses, and Union College did the same on it’s idle weekend, rising up a rung to #5.

The following weekend (which is the weekend just completed) offered a possible Mariucci Classic Championship game of #1 Minnesota and #2 Ferris State, and it also offered a extremely rare two game series, completing three games in a row in a one-week period, between two highly ranked teams — #9 UMass-Lowell and #11 Clarkson.

The ECAC is “suddenly” hot, if you consider going back a more than a year to when Quinnipiac and Yale started stirring things up in huge way in college hockey.  And this as of the Dec. 30 poll, the ECAC’s Union College was ranked #5.  So what do you know about Union College?  Union College was founded in 1795, in Schenectady, NY, which was founded in 1661 by the Dutch, at a bend in the Mohawk River, just up the Mohawk from its confluence with the Hudson River.  Today Schenectady has a population of 66,000, about the same size as St. Cloud Minnesota, except that Schenectady is in a metropolitan area of 870,000 that includes the cities of Albany and Troy.  Union College has 2,200 students, and its campus was used in the 1973 Redford/Streisand movie “The Way We Were.”

Union College is coached by Rick Bennett, who is in his third year as head coach, having been promoted from a four year tenure as associate head coach, when previous head coach, Nate Leaman, left to take the job as head coach at Providence.  Ironically, Rick Bennett came to Union from four years as an assistant coach at Providence, and is a Providence graduate; he had a great playing career there.  He was a Hobey Baker finalist in 1990, and in that year was named to the All Hockey East second team.  Leaman did a very good job building up the program at Union, and Bennett has not skipped a beat in continuing it on.  So far his lifetime coaching record is 60-24-15, and his team made it to the frozen four in his first year, and last year made the NCAA tournament again, beating Boston College in the first round and losing to Quinnipiac in the second.  While Union is ranked #5 in the December 30 poll, they will certainly have their work cut out for them when they face Quinnipiac on Jan. 10 and Yale on Feb. 8, and have to navigate their way through the ECAC tournament with those two in the hunt.  The Union roster is loaded with upper classmen experience as it has five seniors, eight juniors, five sophomores, and nine freshman.  There are only four players to have come straight from high school, while twenty-three came from elite junior leagues.  They play their games in The Achilles Center, which is just big enough to hold every student in the school, and is the old “barn” style of arenas that were quickly built in the late sixties and most of the seventies — theirs was completed in 1975.  They were a DIII hockey school until the 1991-92 season.  And they’re called the Dutchmen in tribute to the historical founders of the town of Schenectady.  I have not heard that they face any legal action from the Dutch for retaining this name.  — Thanks to Bruce Carlisle for his help with this Union write-up.

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

[table id=76 /]

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

— Tom