College Hockey Update:  Last Weekend featured two top-twelve matchups, and St. Cloud State edged up to #1 after they hosted, tied, and beat North Dakota, which edged the Screaming Hawks down to #6.  Ohio State leaped up six spots to #9 after they hosted and swept Minnesota, knocking the Gophers down three pegs to #10.

Elsewhere, Denver edged down to #2 after two ties in a home-and-home series with Colorado, and Notre Dame edged up to #3 after traveling to, and sweeping Wisconsin, edging the Badgers out of the top twelve to #13.  Clarkson edged down to #4 after hosting and sweeping St. Lawrence; Mankato State edged up to #7 after traveling to, and brutally sweeping Lake Superior State; and and Northeastern moved up two rungs to #8 after they traveled to and beat Boston College, as BC held at #14.  Providence dropped two notches to #11 after an ugly split at home with R.I.T.; Western Michigan edged down to #12 after a split at home with Miami of Ohio; and Cornell edged up to #5 on their idle weekend.

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Last weekend Mankato State had huge help from sophomore forward Parker Tuomie, of Bremerhaven, Germany, who scored a goal Friday night in his team’s 5-1 win, and scored two goals Saturday night in his team’s 7-0 win, both against Lake Superior State University. Tuomie is tied for fourth on the team in goals scored, with four, and is tied for sixth in assists, with six.  Last year he scored eight goals and added ten assists.  Prior to Mankato, he captained Sioux Falls of the USHL and scored 30 goals and added 24 assists in 59 games, making him was 7th in the USHL in goals scored in 2015-16.  The year before that he played for Germany in the U20 World Junior Championships.  The year before that he played for Wenatchee in the NAHL, and scored 24 goals and added 25 assists in 49 games.  And the year before that he played for Jangadlen Mannheim, where he scored 26 goals and tallied 46 assists in 36 games.  His hometown of Bremerhaven, founded in 1827, is a North Sea port town of 110,000 that sits about 40 miles down river from Bremen.  It was a critical port for the Nazi Navy, and as such was about 80% bombed to rubble in the Bremen area bombing raids, so it is a very modern city today.

Mankato State was founded in 1868, and today it has an enrollment of 13,000 undergraduates and 2,000 graduate students.  It was officially named Mankato State College in 1957, and then Mankato State University in 1999.  Their teams are called the Mavericks, and their Mascot is Stomper The Bull; their team colors are purple and gold.  Hockey started there in 1969 as a DII program until 1984; it switched to DIII from 1984 to 1992, and then back to DII from 1992 to 1996; in 1996 it switched to DI.  The team is coached by Eugene, Oregon native Mike Hastings, who was a defenseman at St. Cloud State from 1986-88; Hasting is in his sixth season at Mankato, and in his first five years his teams amassed a 121-60-18 record, and made appearances in the NCAA Tournament in each of his first three seasons.  He started coaching with stints as an assistant at St. Cloud State and the Omaha Lancers of the USHL, and then served as Head Coach and General Manager for the Lancers from 1994-2008.  He then had stints as an assistant at Minnesota and Nebraska-Omaha immediately prior to becoming head coach at Manakato State.

Last weekend was a serious shellacking of Lake Superior State by Mankato.  Normally I only provide a summary of one game from the previous weekend, but since this will amount to no more than a listing of goals by Mankato, what the heck, I’ll throw in both games at no extra charge.  So . . . . let’s see, Friday night at Lake Superior State, the Lakers actually had a really good first period; they held off 14 Mankato shots on goal, took eight of their own, took a 1-0 lead at the fifteen minute point on a Hampus Erikkson goal, and held the lead going into the break.  I suspect that Coach Mike had a few choice words for his Mavericks in the locker room given what developed in the second.  Mankato held the Lakers to only five shots on goal while taking 16 of their own, and scoring five unanswered goals:  Three minutes in, by Jared Spooner; Six minutes in on a 4-on-3 powerplay shot by Parker Tuomie (the game winner); Two minutes later by Jared Knutson; Six minutes later on a powerplay by Jake Jaremko; and With four minutes left by Daniel Brickley.  Whew.  The third was a stalemate as the Lakers repelled all nine Mankato shots, and Mankato repelled all 11 of the Lakers shots, a 5-1 final.  Saturday night at Lake Superior’s Taffy Abel Arena was somehow even worse, as the attendance understandably dropped from 1,396 to 1,157.  Mankato’s seven unanswered goals were:  Four minutes into the first by Dallas Gerads; With a minute left in the first by Zeb Knutson on a powerplay; On a powerplay five minutes into the second by Ian Scheid; Two minutes later by Ian Scheid; With five minutes left in the second on a powerplay by Parker Tuomie; Eleven minutes into the third on a five-on-three powerplay by Parker Tuomie; and With two minutes mercifully left in the game by Brad McClure.  Mankato outshot the Lakers 44-13 in this one, with the Lakers only getting three shots off in the second, and only two in the third.  Ouch.

This weekend there is very little on the schedule.  Friday night a total of five games will be played by ten teams, mainly WCHA; Saturday night the ten teams will repeat for five more games, joined by six more teams playing three more games, and one team facing the US U-18 team; and Sunday four of the added teams from Saturday will repeat their two games.  A total of 16 teams will play a total of fifteen games, plus the one facing the US U-18 team.  So I’m willing to list every matchup involving a ranked team, and it just so happens that there are only three, and they are all top-twelve teams:  #2 Denver will host Dartmouth for two games (should be a total bloodbath after the two ties Denver settled on last weekend); #7 Mankato State will host the University of Alabama-Huntsville for two games (bound to be another bloodbath, as they just administered to Lake Superior); and #8 Northeastern will visit Merrimack College Saturday night, probably the only one of the three matchups that will provide a contest.

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

[table id=160 /]

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

— Tom