Last week featured three top ten teams facing top twenty teams, and Boston University had it’s hands full of Merrimack College Friday night, as the Terriers fell behind in the second, but scored in the third, and hung on in OT to salvage the tie; Saturday night was different as BU got on the board early in the first and often in the second to gain a convincing win.  BU rose up a notch to #2, and Merrimack dropped a spot to #19.  Harvard had a convincing win over Quinnipiac Saturday night, and they jumped up four pegs to #5 on the weekend, with Harvard having also earned a narrow win over Princeton Friday night (meanwhile, Quinnipiac held at #15 on its weekend).  Miami of Ohio participated in a couple of one-sided games over the weekend, beating Nebraska-Omaha Friday night, but losing to them Saturday night, and the Red Hawks dropped a couple of spots to #6, partially being pushed down by Harvard’s rise; Nebraska-Omaha held at #12.

North Dakota convincingly swept Lake Superior State, and held on at #1, while Mankato State split with Alaska-Fairbanks, and slid a couple of spots to #3.  Minnesota beat, then tied, Michigan State, and edged down a peg to #7, and UMass-Lowell beat Connecticut, and beat Maine in OT, also dropping a notch to #8; both Minnesota and Lowell dropped down in the rise up by Harvard.  Minnesota-Duluth gained an OT win, and a one-sided win to sweep Colorado College, and they also dropped a peg to #9, on Harvard’s rise in the poll; Denver lost to Cornell and slid a spot, out of the top ten, to #11.  An idle Michigan Tech rose up a spot to #5 on Miami’s split, and an idle Vermont rose up a spot, into the top ten at #10, on Denver’s loss.

Can Harvard be stopped?  Only Yale has accomplished that this season; Harvard has only this one loss, and now, with a dozen games under their belts, it’s quite significant as they are 9-1-2, and are mowing down everything that gets in their path.  One thing for certain is that the six-game winning streak they established on December 6th will go unblemished for at least three weeks, as they won’t play again until December 28th.  Is this team going to bring Harvard the glory of its 1989 team that won the NCAA championship?  Clearly that’s the goal of this team, coached by Ted Donato, who was had a great sophomore year on that 1989 team, as he scored 14 goals and added 37 assists.  In Donato’s four years at Harvard, he scored 50 goals and added 94 assists.  He also played fourteen years in the NHL, the first eight with the Boston Bruins, for which he scored 25 goals and added 26 assists in the 1996-97 season.  His NHL totals are 796 games, 150 goals, and 197 assists.  Donato went straight from the NHL to the head coaching job at Harvard in 2004, and in his first two years, coached two 21-game winning teams into the NCAA tournament.  His current lifetime record as head coach at Harvard is 145-157-41.

Last weekend Harvard had huge help from sophomore forward Sean Malone, of West Seneca, NY., as he contributed a goal and an assist in their narrow 4-3 win over Princeton Friday night, and he contributed another goal in their 5-2 win over #15 Quinnipiac Saturday night.  The six foot tall, 190lb Malone is tied for eighth on his team in goals, with two, and is tied for tenth on his team in assists with two.  Malone attended the Nichols School in Buffalo, a very small, top-drawer private school, where, in 2011-12, he was the team MVP on both the soccer and hockey teams, and he lettered in three sports.  He played in fifteen games on the US National Development Team in 2012-13, tallying five goals and eight assists.  He was drafted by the Buffalo Sabres in the sixth round with the 159th pick in the 2013 NHL Entry Draft.  Last year he was Ivy League co-rookie of the year (while there is no formal Ivy League for hockey, the six Ivy League teams are recognized by the Ivy League for a League championship based on the record of the six schools among themselves, and players are recognized for awards as in a regular, normal league).  Sean’s hometown of West Seneca is home to 45,000; it borders Buffalo, and the drive time from central West Seneca to Downtown Buffalo is ten minutes.  Because West Seneca sits on what was previously Buffalo Creek Reservation Land, it was not opened to white, and other non-Native American settlement until the mid-1800s.  It’s the hometown of NHL’ers Chris Mueller (who played four years at Michigan State) and Lee Stempniak (who played four years at Dartmouth), as well as GooGoo Dolls bass player Robby Takac.  And as one might guess, being ten minutes from downtown Buffalo, it gets the same winters as Buffalo, which means a lot of snow and cold.  Recently it got a whole bunch of snow, as you might have heard, and if you’re not sure what that might mean, here’s a video from West Seneca that was posted three weeks ago, that should clarify that:  https://youtube.com/watch?v=5m6oXJcg7aM hope you like it, it’s pretty good.

This weekend’s game schedule is a little lighter than usual, with Christmas Break approaching.  There is a great top-ten matchup as #4 Michigan Tech will host #9 Minnesota-Duluth for two games; this could be another big, big test of Michigan Tech.  And in the category of a top-ten team playing a top-twenty team, #1 North Dakota will travel to play two at #11 Denver.

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

[table id=97 /]

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

— Tom