College Hockey Update:  Last weekend provided a couple of great top-twelve matchups.  In the opening round of the Northstar College Cup, it was all Minnesota as they prevailed by a 4-1 margin over St. Cloud State.  Minnesota scored one on an empty net and penalties proved very costly for St. Cloud State — even though they had only two all game long, they were unable to keep Minnesota out of the net on either of these Gopher opportunities.  Some thin-skinned St. Cloud State fans feel that the two penalties were “cheesy,” or “iffy” calls.  St. Cloud State put up quite an attack on the net with 38 shots on goal, but just couldn’t get past the hot goal-tending of Minnesota goalie Adam Wilcox, according to St. Cloud State coach Bob Motzko.  Minnesota held on to the #1 ranking (as they tied Minnesota-Duluth the next night and won the tournament in a shoot-out), and St. Cloud held at #5 (as they beat Mankato the next night in the consolation round of the tournament).  Providence split with UMass-Lowell, with each team winning at home, and Providence retained the #7 ranking, and Mass-Lowell retained the #8 spot.

Boston College held on to the #2 ranking after beating both Merrimack and Penn State, while Union College beat Harvard and lost to RPI, dropping a peg to #4.  The game against RPI was the second annual “Capitol District [Albany/Schenectady/Troy] Mayor’s Cup” game, in which the two rivals, which are located only twenty minutes apart, played for their rivalry trophy.  In this game there was a last-second face-off, immediately after which a Union player high-sticked an RPI player who was moving in to closely defend him, which instantly turned into a fight.  The benches cleared and it was a full-on melee.  Including the coaches, who initially were yelling at each other, but then started swinging at each other.  Two Union players and two RPI players received automatic one-game suspensions, the ECAC handed out some additional one-game suspensions, and Union College added on a two-game suspension of their coach, Rick Bennett, who was just written about here at CHU recently.  Whew!  Got that one out of the way.  Union College dropped a notch to the #4 ranking on their loss.

Ferris State split with Michigan Tech, and held on to the #6 ranking, Wisconsin split with Ohio State, and held on to the the #9 ranking, and Northeastern split with Notre Dame — each team shutting the other out — and nudged up to the #10 ranking.  Cornell had a good weekend as they tied with St. Lawrence, then beat Clarkson, nudging Cornell up to the #11 ranking, and Michigan was the only top-twelve team besides BC to win two on the weekend, sweeping Michigan State, and re-entering the top twelve at #12.

Well, no question about it, it is really crunch time in college hockey as the regular season has only five weekends remaining (Atlantic Hockey, ECAC, and Hockey East) , six weekends remaining (NCHC and WCHA) , or seven weekends remaining in the Big Ten.  Teams will be fighting to get on the right track and jockey for position in their conference tournaments, and for the NCAA selection process.  This weekend provides a couple of great top-twelve matchups as #2 Boston College travels to #7 Providence for one game tomorrow night, Friday, and #9 Wisconsin travels to #12 Michigan to play two games.  In addition, Monday night will kick off the 62nd annual Beanpot tournament of the four DI Hockey teams in/around Boston.  Monday night’s early game will pair #10 Northeastern against Harvard, and the late game will pair #2 Boston College with Boston University.  The championship and consolation games will be played the following Monday — all games are at the TD Bank Garden (Boston Garden) and even if you wanted to go, all 18,000 seats were sold out weeks ago.  This is the first time in a while that it appears that Northeastern has a reasonable chance of winning this tournament, seeing as they are ranked #10 in the country; Northeastern has the least number of wins in the tournament’s history, with only four.

And what do you know about Northeastern?  Northeastern was founded in 1898 as a school offering night classes at the Boston YMCA.  A lot has changed since then.  Today Northeastern has 16,000 undergraduates and 8.000 graduate students.  But it was the largest private school in the US in the early 80s, when its enrollment hit 60,000.  In the 90s enrollment was pulled back to 40,000, and this year they will only admit 2,800 freshman for the Fall.  Northeastern students have the option of a four-year track or a five-year track, and most choose the five year “co-op” track (which was introduced in 1909), which builds in a year of work instead of school, which students usually start in the spring of their second year or in the fall of their third year.  Last year 51% of graduates went into jobs with companies they had spent time working for in their co-op year.  Students in their third year of the five year track are referred to as “middlers.”  When I was a grad student at BU, I lived in an apartment with my roommate Jim (co-publisher of The Update) in the Fenway, closer to Northeastern than to BU, in a small building with students from UMass-Boston and Northeastern.  Our friend, Lori Sloboder, who would come upstairs and visit us every once in a while, was a Northeastern “middler” who was fun, a truly nice person, and a pleasure to have as a neighbor — she fell somewhere on the scale between “surrogate little sister,” and “if I didn’t have a girlfriend, I think I’d ask her out.”  If she was any indication of the typical Northeastern student (and we have no reason to believe she wasn’t), then the Northeastern students were (and we assume are today) a great group of nice kids and great neighbors.  And where is Northeastern?  It’s in the heart of Boston, close to downtown, between the Fenway and downtown, on Huntington Ave.  In terms of hockey games, it’s 1.5 miles to the BU arena, 3.5 miles to the Harvard Arena, and 5 miles to the BC arena.

The hockey team plays at Matthews Arena, formerly known as the Boston Arena, the predecessor to the original Boston Garden, built in 1910, and the oldest surviving ice rink/arena in the world.  It is a great and grand old place, recently refurbished, with a second level, and a capacity of 4,666 hockey fans; it hosted the original Beanpot Tournament, and the 1960 NCAA Frozen Four.  Northeastern Hockey is led by third year coach Jim Madigan, a 1986 Northeastern alum; in his first year his team went 13-16-5, and last year they went 9-21-4.  So far this year they are already 15-8-3, bringing his lifetime record to 37-45-12.  Madigan played at Northeastern from 1981 to 1985, and played in the 1982 NCAA Frozen Four; during his four years he scored 34 goals and added 44 assists.  He was an assistant coach at Northeastern from 1986 to 1993, and worked as a scout for the Penguins and Islanders from 1993 to 2011.  His very young team is winning this year with only four seniors and five juniors, seven sophomores, and count ’em — twelve freshmen.  The roster features only one player directly from high school — and that one is from the US Under-18 team, while 25 are from elite junior leagues, and two are transfers — one from Army, and one from Sacred Heart.  Northeastern’s next game is Monday night in the early game of the first round of the Beanpot Tournament.

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

[table id=80 /]

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

— Tom