College Hockey Update:  This is the report from the weekend of Jan. 3-5, and is it a great one — talk about stuff to write about, how about Colgate going to downtown Midwest Hockey and promptly playing #1 Minnesota to a regulation tie, then beating them in a shootout, followed up quickly by them additionally beating #2 Ferris State?  What do you suppose might have happened there?  Perhaps a little case of Midwestern Hockey Myopia — looking the other way because they’re “only Colgate, only an ECAC team?”  Surprise!!  Things have changed quite a bit in the last couple of years, if you haven’t been paying attention!  Nothing against Colgate, and I’m sure that they are a talented team, but I have to think there was a little of this going on.  It doesn’t seem they should have beaten both of these teams, and I have to think that a lot of self-congratulation-in-advance-of-the-game on the parts of the losing teams contributed to these outcomes.  And good for Colgate for representing themselves and their conference well and playing to make it happen.  It does make for more interesting college hockey now, doesn’t it?  Minnesota retained the #1 ranking (they beat RPI the night before), while Ferris State slipped to #3 (while they had beaten RPI the night before, Colgate pretty well blew these guys out).

Next, let’s look at the continuing one-week “mini-saga” of #9 UMass-Lowell and #11 Clarkson.  UMass-Lowell had beaten Clarkson in the previous weekend at the Catamount Classic, and just this last weekend, Clarkson travelled to play two at UMass-Lowell.  Friday night the two teams fought to a low-scoring stalemate, ending in a tie.  Saturday night’s game was different as Clarkson jumped out to a two-goal early lead only six minutes into the first.  Mass-Lowell responded four minutes later, and second half of the first was stale-mated, ending 2-1, Clarkson.  The second was a mirror-image of the first, with Lowell scoring two goals in the first ten minutes, and then Clarkson responding two minutes later.  The second half again played to a stalemate, and it ended tied at 3-3.  In the fourth the teams held each other in check to the midpoint, when Lowell scored, and then the teams held each other in check for the next ten minutes; Lowell did a good job of keeping the action in the Clarkson zone late, preventing Clarkson from pulling their goalie for an extra attacker until there were only 7 seconds remaining.  UMass-Lowell took it 4-3, and in the three game, one week series, took two wins and a tie, and each team held their places in this week’s poll.  Hmmm…. Clarkson ……  What do you know about Clarkson?  See below for an introduction.

Elsewhere, St. Cloud State rose up to #2 on their “win” over the US Under-18 team, and the vacuum created by Ferris State’s drop to #3, while Boston College took a game from Notre Dame, edging up a notch in the poll to #5, and let’s throw in there that Providence settled on a tie with Merrimack and dropped down to #6.  Quinnipiac beat Maine 2-1 and edged up to #7, while Yale held at #10 on a tie with Vermont, and Cornell jumped up, somehow, three spots to #12 on a combination of their exhibition “win” over the Russian Redstars, and losses by Wisconsin and Notre Dame (understandable), and an idle weekend by Miami of Ohio (not very understandable).  An idle Union edged up a notch to #4 on the vacuum created by Providence’s loss, and an idle Michigan dropped a slot to #8 on Quinnipiac’s ascent to #7 on their win over Maine.

This weekend presents a couple of great, great top-twelve matchups, as #4 Union College travels to play one game tonight at #7 Quinnipiac in about five minutes, and #5 Boston College hosts one game tonight against #6 Providence, also in about five minutes.

So what do you know about Clarkson?  Clarkson was founded in 1896 in Pottsdam, NY, and is a school of 3,500 students.  The campus sits on the banks of the Raquette River in Pottsdam, a town of 17,000, across the river from downtown Pottsdam and SUNY Pottsdam.  It is in a cooperative consortium of library and academic services with SUNY Pottsdam, and St. Lawrence University and SUNY Canton, both of which are ten miles away in Canton, NY.  One can easily walk to both downtown and SUNY Pottsdam.  It gets cold in this neck of the woods, and it has been known to get very, very cold.  The average low/high for January is 6/26, and for February is 8/30.  The record low is -41.  Yikes!  It is 90 minutes from Lake Placid, the site of the 1980 Winter Olympic Games, and about two hours away from the Canadian cities of Ottawa and Montreal.  Their hockey home used to be the 1938, 1,800 seat Walker Arena until 1991, when they moved to the 3,000 seat Cheel Arena.

The Golden Knights started playing hockey in 1921, and have a historical record of 1,333-763-130, and have completed 69 winning seasons.  They have claimed ten regular season ECAC titles, and five ECAC tournament titles.  They have made twenty NCAA tournament appearances, and they have had thirty-six All-Americans.  They are coached by Casey Jones, who is in his third season there; his first two were losing seasons, but look how they’re doing now!  Jones started out as an assistant at Clarkson for two years, from 1993-95, and then moved on to Ohio State, where he was an assistant for thirteen years, from 1995-2008.  His next stop was three years at Cornell, from 2008-11, which he left for this job as head coach.  He is a graduate of Cornell, and played four years there from 1987 to 1991.  He scored thirty goals and had eighty-two assists for a total of 112 points in 112 games played.  He was drafted by the Boston Bruins in the tenth round of the 1987 draft.  The Golden Knights are a younger team; while they have seven seniors, they have only three juniors, while they have nine sophomores and eight freshmen.  Only three players are straight from high schools, while twenty-four came from elite junior leagues.

This provides the top twelve teams, rankings, records, and most recent results:

[table id=77 ]

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

— Tom