College Hockey Update:  Last weekend featured one top ten match-up, and Minnesota-Duluth edged up to #3 after hosting, and splitting with, Denver; the Pioneers held at #7 on the results of their weekend on the road.  Elsewhere, Massachusetts edged up to #2 after sweeping its home-and-home weekend with Boston College; and Quinnipiac edged up to #5 after settling on a tie at Union College, and getting a win at R. P. I.  Ohio State tumbled down four spots to #6 after getting swept at home by Minnesota; Western Michigan edged up to #8 after salvaging a split on its weekend at home against North Dakota; and Cornell edged down to #9 after a tie at Brown and a loss at Yale.  Providence re-entered the top ten at #10 after sweeping its home-and-home weekend with UMass-Lowell, and knocking the River Hawks down for pegs to #14; an idle St. Cloud State held at #1; and an idle Mankato State edged up to #4.

Friday night in Duluth, Denver came hot out of the gate and scored only three minutes into the first period, but Justin Richards evened it up for Minnesota-Duluth at one apiece a minute later.  The score remained 1-1 going into the first break after a first period in which there were no penalties, and Denver had a 10-7 shot advantage.  The game went for twenty-six minutes with no scoring, until Nick Swaney gave Duluth the 2-1 lead ten minutes into the second, and that was the score going into the second break, after a second in which Duluth had two penalties, Denver had one, and Duluth had a 10-6 shot advantage.  The game saw a second scoring drought, this time for twenty minutes, until Justin Richards came back midway through the third to make it 3-1, Duluth; only a minute later Tanner Laderoute scored the fourth unanswered goal to give Duluth the 4-1 lead.  With four minutes remaining, Denver found the net to make it a 4-2 game, and added an extra attacker with 1:15 remaining, but Cole Koepke found the empty net for Duluth only thirty seconds later to make the final score 5-2, Duluth.  Saturday night’s game couldn’t have been much different; Slava Demin put Denver on the board eight minutes into the first for the 1-0 Denver lead.  While Duluth took 27 shots, compared to 29 the night before, a change in the net for the Pioneers from Filip Larsson to Devin Cooley seemed well-timed as Cooley stopped all 27 shots Saturday night, and while Denver was stymied to only 16 shots, compared to 22 the night before, they managed to get the only goal of the night for the 1-0 shutout win, and get the split on the weekend.

College Hockey Update Featured Player

While we’re on the subject of goalies . . . . let’s take a look at St. Cloud State — quite a pair of goalies, and they seem to be getting a great deal of help from their team.  Sophomore goalie David Hrenak, of Povazska Bystrica, Slovakia, has started/appeared in 22 games, and sports a 2.21 GAA.  Pretty impressive stuff.  I think normally when we see a GAA that low, we expect to see a saves % north of .910, such as a .915 or maybe even a .920.  In this case his saves % is .900, which suggests that with a GAA as low as a 2.21, perhaps he gets a ton of help from his team, staying in front of the puck, and limiting down the number of shots on goal.  In any event, it suggests some great goal-tending, and some great team defense.  I am not remotely trying to take anything away from his goal-tending.  Wearing the other oven mitt is senior Jeff Smith, of Maple Ridge, B.C., who has started six games and appeared in nine, who sports a GAA of 1.88 and a saves % of .923.  What a pair!  St. Cloud State has plenty of firepower with the second-highest scoring average in the country at 3.82 goals per game, and with these two in the net, you can add in the ninth-lowest goals against average of 2.14 — that’s quite a combination.  An average differential of 1.68 should get you a lot of wins, and it sure seems to be working.  As a freshman, the 6’2″ 190lb. Hrenak started 23 games and appeared in 29, and he sported a 2.11 GAA and a saves percentage of .919; he was named to the NCHC All-Rookie Team and was an All-NCHC Honorable Mention.  Before St. Cloud State, he played a season on the Green Bay Gamblers of the USHL, and he ended the season with a 2.24 GAA and a .923 saves %.  In a student newspaper interview, Hrenak said that he has adjusted well to life in the USA, and is enjoying his time at St. Cloud State.  He went on to say that his biggest surprise, and greatest difficulty, has been the massive increase in his consumption of cake, saying, “It is players from town called Cakeville, used to be called Lakeville, eating cakes and bringing to us cakes from bakeries of cakes all of time.  They taste good, yes, but not sure this very good for us really.  We score goal, we eat piece of cake.  We win game, we eat piece of cake.  All these Poehlings and David Zevnick from Cakeville are cake eating maniacs.  And Jack Ahcan from town called Savage, and Jimmy Schuldt from town Minnetonka.  I think word for it is cake eaters.  Cakes come from place called Eagan.  And place called Edina.  Cakes, cakes, cakes.  I try to say no but then I must eat cake anyway.  So during week I only eat vegetable so I can eat all the cake on the weekend.  Very strange custom, and very strange way to eat.  For me anyway.”

Hrenak went to high school in his home town of Povazska Bystrica, which is home to its 42,000 residents, and sits on the Vah River at an elevation of about 950 feet, about 19 miles from the city of Zilina (Zilina is the fourth-largest city in Slovakia, with a population of about 85,000).  Považská Bystrica sits in a fold of the Strazovske Vrchy and Javornkiy Mountain Ranges.  The first recorded history of Považská Bystrica dates back to 1316, and it suffered many ups and downs as the result of different Slavic Kings here and there in bordering regions over the next 570 years.  The town became part of the Czechoslovak republic in 1918, which was a pretty good deal for a while, and then came the late 30’s and 40’s, and you can imagine how things worked out, being located right next to Germany.  Luckily for them, they were “rescued” from the Germans by the Russians, who stuck around until about 1989.  See how things got so much better than that 570 year stretch?  Luckily, during the 44 year stretch of the Russian/Soviet brain trust, central control, and provisioning for “all the people,” industry flourished and led to the manufacture and allocation of upwards of 11,000 automobiles for the 15 million people living in Czechoslovakia, as well as the manufacture and allocation of a total of 21.5 million rolls of toilet paper for the population over this period of time.  And if we’re really, really lucky, Sanders and Cortez will unite to bring all that right here to the USA!

St. Cloud State is having a great season under first year coach, Brett Larson, who came from a three year stint as an assistant at Minnesota-Duluth.  Prior to that he was an assistant at Ohio State for two years following two years as the head coach of the Sioux City Musketeers of the USHL; prior to the Musketeers he was an assistant for his first three year stint at UMD.  Larson played college hockey for four years at UMD as a defenseman, after graduating from Denfeld High School in Duluth, MN.; Denfeld is universally regarded as fielding the best high school hockey team in Duluth, as well as being the best academic high school in Duluth, both particularly from the late sixties through the mid nineties.  Last Spring I wrote what some in the St. Cloud community might have considered sacrilege, when I said that perhaps the Gopher hiring of Motzko could be a blessing in disguise for St. Cloud State.  While St. Cloud State had compiled great regular season records, they had not made it to the big game under his tutelage.  I have been keeping my eyes and ears open for the hockey “chatter” out of the frozen state in the north, and lately there is a growing, but not remotely surprising, sentiment brewing up there that St. Cloud State and Minnesota-Duluth are a certain lock on the NCAA Championship game in Buffalo on Saturday, April 13th.  Impossible?  Well, it could be, depending on how the NCAA sets up the tournament bracket . . . .  but outside of that, it’s not impossible.  However, given that St. Cloud State has not made it that far in the past, it would be quite a huge, huge accomplishment for them.  And if it happens, I’d have to say that what I wrote last Spring could not any longer be considered sacrilege in the St. Cloud State community.  St. Cloud State, 21-4-3, and ranked #1, travels to play two games at Nebraska-Omaha this weekend.

This weekend there will be one top ten match-up, when #2 University of Massachusetts will travel to play one single game at #10 Providence College on Saturday.  Game time is 2:00pm Pacific Time.  Hey know what?  The season is drawing to a close.  Including this weekend, there are only two more weekends of regular season play remaining for Atlantic Hockey, The Big Ten/Seven; The ECAC, and The WCHA, after which they will commence their conference tournaments.  Including this weekend, Hockey East and the NCHC have three more weekends of regular season play remaining, after which they will commence their conference tournaments.  Who do you think will make it to the Frozen Four in Buffalo?

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

[table id=191 /]

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

— Tom