Last weekend featured, and I mean featured center stage, one single matchup for two games, and an exhibition game as well, and #12 Nebraska-Omaha had Alabama-Huntsville down 2-0 with time running out in the third Saturday night, when the Chargers added an extra attacker and netted one with eleven seconds remaining, but taking the 2-1 loss.  Sunday night the Chargers got on the board twice in the second and early in the third to register a 3-0 lead, but UNO didn’t take it sitting down, and responded 15 seconds later, and again five minutes later, to come within one.  Following the Chargers’ lead script from the night before, UNO added the extra attacker, and with twenty-one seconds left on the clock, they netted the tying goal, sending the game to OT.  Could UAH capture their fourth win of the year?  In OT UNO outshot the Chargers (but only 3-1), and the game ended deadlocked at 3-3.  So UAH avoided collecting another loss, and UNO extended their unbeaten streak to five (four wins, and this tie).

Meanwhile, on Friday night, Boston University hosted the US World Junior Team, and found out what it’s like to play against their freshman sensation Jack Eichel.  Not to mention the cream of the Freshman class among college hockey.  With so many college hockey players today coming in from elite junior teams and departing to NHL contracts after their sophomore, or even freshman year, it seems that this has created teams that are very concentrated on freshmen and sophomores.  Recruiting is on overdrive, the need to have a solid freshman class is a make-or-break reality, and the teams are driven by lower classmen.  Gone are the days that teams have five or six freshmen.  Comments are made by coaches such as “well, we have eleven freshmen this year, and we are trying to figure it out.”  Well, what was your option — a team of fourteen or fifteen players??!  So take Jack Eichel off of BU, and have that team play against the US World Junior Team, well, that’s basically the college freshman all-star team, in a world where college hockey has become primarily freshmen and sophomores.  The US Junior Team did great,  and won this puppy 5-2.  Let’s hope that they have a great World Championship Tournament in Montreal, and in Toronto if they make it that far.  Starts on today and ends on January 5th.

Minnesota-Duluth is currently ranked #7 and is having a great season.  They are getting a lot of help from their sophomore forward Dominic Toninato, of Duluth, MN.  Toninato graduated from Duluth East High School, widely recognized as the best high school in Duluth, and in all of Northern Minnesota.  On the UMD Bulldogs, Dominic is first in goals scored with 13, and is tied for ninth in assists with five.  Last year he was tied for fifth on the team in goals with seven, and was eighth in assists with five.  Prior to UMD he played a year for Fargo in the USHL and scored 29 goals and added 41 assists in 64 games.  During his three years of hockey at Duluth East High, he was a Mr. Hockey Award Finalist, he made the second team All-State, and he scored 27 goals and added 34 assists in 25 games in his last year.  He was drafted in the fifth round of the 2012 NHL Entry Draft with the 126th pick by the Toronto Maple Leafs, and was the first Minnesota high schooler selected in that draft.  His father, Jim, played at UMD from 1982-86, and scored 19 goals and added 35 assists in his 155 game career.

Minnesota-Duluth is coached by Scott Sandelin, originally from Hibbing, MN., who played at North Dakota, graduating in 1986, where he was one of ten Hobey Baker finalists.  He was also an All-American at North Dakota and was the team MVP.  He went on to play seven years in the NHL for Montreal, Philadelphia, and Minnesota, after being drafted in the second round of the 1982 NHL Entry Draft with the fortieth pick.  He was only able to play in 25 NHL games in even seasons, and eventually had to stop playing as the result of a nagging back injury.  This is his fifteenth season as head coach, and his record to date is  125-85-30.  He has had the team in the NCAA playoffs four times, and I hope we all remember their great win over Michigan for the 2011 NCAA Championship.  Before becoming head coach at UMD he spent six years as an assistant at the University of North Dakota.

The University of Minnesota at Duluth was originally established in 1902 as a women’s teachers’ college, but was then established as a university in 1947.  With 9,000 undergraduates and 1,000 graduate students, it sits on a 244 acre campus among fifty buildings, most of which are connected by concourses or hallways.  UMD has eight colleges and schools and offers fourteen bachelor’s degrees in 85 majors, as well as degrees in 27 graduate programs.  Its teams are called the Bulldogs, and they wear maroon and gold.  The hockey team plays in the Amsoil arena, which was completed in 2011, and seats 6,600.

UMD is in . . . . Duluth.  And what do you know about Duluth?  Duluth is a lakeport, or technically a seaport, since ships can make the long, long (over 2,000 mile) trip to the Atlantic by navigating through the Great Lakes and Seaways.  With a population of 86,000 in the city, and 280,000 in the surrounding area, Duluth is the county seat of St. Louis County, and it is the site of America’s only freshwater aquarium.  It is also home to the headquarters of Cirrus Aircraft Corporation.  The area was first explored by the French in 1679 by Daniel Greysolon, Sier du Lhut.  His last name was “anglicanized” to Duluth.  The area was primarily occupied, by white settlement, as a result of fur hunting/trading until 1847.  In 1850 the primary settlement changed to copper and iron ore mining, as well as the timber industry.  From 1869-70 Duluth was the fastest growing city in America.  In the early 1900s the port shipping tonnage briefly eclipsed that of both Chicago and New York, and the mining shipping was not alone as the city became the site of many massive grain elevators.  In 1907 a huge US Steel plant was established in Duluth and immediately thereafter came a huge influx of Finnish immigrants — Duluth to this day has a large population of people of various Nordic ancestries.  Duluth today is the banking, medical, and tourist center of Northern Minnesota.  It is also characterized by a very high hill that rises our of the lake, and for that reason it is sometimes referred to as the San Francisco of the Midwest.  Duluth has a humid climate and its high temperatures are below 32 degrees 106 days per year, on average, and its nighttime lows are at or below 0 degrees 40-41 nights per year, on average.  The record low there is -41 degrees.  Duluth has a number of parks, and its residents can partake in winter skiing, spring/summer/fall sailing, and when conditions provide it, surfing on the lakefront.  Duluth is the site of the first indoor shopping mall in America, which opened in 1915.  It is where Pie-A-La-Mode was first served in 1885.  Now doesn’t it seem like you’d like to go to Duluth?

In the next week a number of teams will play in several Christmas Season tournaments.  There are no top-ten matchups, but a good matchup of #10 Vermont and #16 Providence in the second night of the Catamount Cup on Monday night.  In addition the Three Rivers Classic matches #19 Robert Morris and #20 Penn State (yes, that’s correct, #20 Penn State) Monday night, with one of the two playing #17 Colgate Tuesday night.

This provides the top ten teams (no new poll this week, this is the Dec. 15 edition, repeated), rankings, records, and last week’s results:

[table id=98 /]

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

— Tom