College Hockey Update:  Last weekend ten of the top fifteen teams were involved in top-fifteen matchups (by last week’s rankings), and perhaps none was more eventful than Minnesota’s disastrous two-loss trip to Wisconsin; Minnesota dropped down to #2, and the sweep propelled Wisconsin up four pegs to #8.  Boston College beat Merrimack, helping to lift BC to the #1 ranking, and then after the poll came out, went on to beat Northeastern to capture their fifth straight Beanpot championship; Northeastern dropped a notch to #12 (Northeastern lost earlier to UMass-Amherst).  Right now Boston College is about as hot as it gets, and they are just mowing down everything in their path — kind of the right time of the season to be peaking.  Union College beat Yale, and nudged back up to #3 (Union had beaten Brown the night before), while Yale held at #13 (Yale had beaten RPI the night before).  Quinnipiac beat Clarkson, and dropped a spot to #4 (Quinnipiac lost to St. Lawrence the next night), and Clarkson held at #14 (Clarkson went on to beat Princeton the next night).

Friday night St. Cloud State hosted Denver and the teams fought like dogs, and traded goals to end in a 2-2 tie.  Saturday night’s game was a little different as Denver scored first to go up 2-0, with the second goal answered only a minute later by St. Cloud, to make it 2-1.  And there it stood for the last nine minutes of the second, and the first eleven minutes of the third.  Was St. Cloud destined to lose the game, and take only a tie and loss on the weekend?  Not to be the case as David Morely scored to tie it with nine minutes to go in the game, and was followed three minutes later by his teammate Ethan Prow, to make it 3-2, St. Cloud.  Denver’s attempt at using an extra attacker to tie resulted in an empty-net goal by Nic Dowd, for a final of 4-2, St. Cloud State.  Big weekend for Ethan Prow and Nic Dowd, both of whom scored a goal in Friday night’s tie, and then scored again in Saturday night’s win — Prow with one, and Dowd with two, including the empty-netter.  St. Cloud State held at #6 on the weekend, and they knocked Denver out of the top fifteen, down a few rungs to #18.

Elsewhere, Ferris State swept Northern Michigan, and edged up a notch to #4, UMass-Lowell tied Boston University and beat UMass-Amherst, holding at #7, and Providence dropped a spot to #9 on their idle weekend.  Michigan split with Penn State, and held at #10 (this was Penn State’s first win against a “Big-Ten” opponent, and in their win they slammed Michigan 4-0), Cornell lost to Colgate and dropped a couple of slots to #11, and Vermont swept New Hampshire and jumped up four pegs to the #15 spot, knocking UNH from their #20 ranking, out of the top twenty.

Vermont, eh?  So what do you know about the University of Vermont?  And what is a Catamount, the nickname of Vermont’s teams?  First, a catamount is any of the variety of medium-sized wild cats, or felines, such as a puma or a lynx.  So, if you thought is was essentially a mountain lion, you were right.  Now, the University of Vermont was founded in 1791, making it the 23rd college founded in the US, and the fifth in New England.  It sits on a 451 acre campus in Burlington, and has 12,000 students, 10,500 of whom are undergraduates.  Burlington is a town of 42,000 and that makes it the largest city in the state of Vermont.  The total population of the Burlington area is 215,000, which is a bit more than a third of the entire population of the state.  Burlington, originally settled in 1783, sits on the edge of Lake Champlain, and it’s quite picturesque when you drive into town, descending a hill, with the town below and the lake in the background.  The University was founded by a fifty acre land donation by Ira Allen, the youngest of six brothers, the oldest being Ethan Allen, who captured Fort Ticonderoga from the British in 1775 when Ethan led the Green Mountain Boys militia in the early stages of the Revolutionary War.  Oh, and it gets cold in Burlington; the average low in January is nine degrees and in February is eleven.  Some very significant figures in the sports world have come from the University, including Albert Gutterson, who won the gold medal in the long jump at the 1912 Olympics, beating out Jim Thorpe, Billy Kidd, the US alpine skier who earned the silver medal in the 1964 Winter Olympics, and Rollie Massimino, who coached Villanova to the 1985 NCAA Basketball Championshp, beating out heavily-favored Georgetown.  And Sacagawea, who led the Lewis and Clark Expedition, also attended the University of Vermont.

Vermont Hockey went DI in the 1974-75 season.  They have five NCAA tournament appearances since then, and since 1990 have hosted the Catamount Cup during the Christmas break — this is not a tournament, but instead it determines the pairings in advance for both of the two nights of play.  A number of Vermont players have gone on to be notable NHL players, including goalie Tim Thomas ’97, who hoisted the Stanley Cup with the Boston Bruins in 2011.  Vermont has been coached by Kevin Sneddon since 2003 — Sneddon’s teams have a Frozen Four appearance in 2009, and another NCAA Tournament appearance in 2010.  Sneddon played at Harvard, graduating in 1992, and he played on their team that won the 1989 NCAA Championsip.  He coached as an assistant at Union from ’93-’98, and was the head coach there from ’98 until he came to Vermont in 2003.  His lifetime coaching record is 212-282-74, and in his tenth year, his record to date at Vermont is 147-174-53.  In his first nine seasons his teams completed six straight winning seasons from his second season through his seventh.  His roster this year is balanced in terms of upper classmen experience and new blood, with seven seniors, six juniors, five sophomores, and ten freshmen.  His roster has one transfer (from Clarkson), three straight from high school (with two of those from the US Under 18 Development Program), and all the rest from elite junior teams.  Vermont plays its games at the Gutterson Fieldhouse, which is called a Barrel-Vaulted construction.  It looks like a huge Quonset Hut, with rectangular brick facades in the front and back.  On the inside, huge steel arched beams are visible, and behind them a beautiful wooden-plank ceiling is exposed.  It has seating on all four sides of the ice, and it holds 4,035. Vermont is 15-9-3, and this week has the dubious honor of hosting #1 Boston College for two games.

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

[table id=82 /]

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

— Tom