Each week, USCHO.com will pick the top 10 moments from the past weekend in our Monday 10 feature.
1) Another new No. 1?
Friday night marked a seismic event for the national radar when No. 1 Michigan lost 5-2 to a 17th-ranked Western Michigan squad at home at Yost Ice Arena. Five different players scored for the Broncos, who struck first behind Aidan Fulp’s goal with less than a minute remaining in the first period. They added two more in the second period before Michigan finally scored close to the halfway point, but Dylan Wendt’s goal slammed the Wolverines’ rally.
Michigan rallied the next night for a 3-2 win, but being pushed to overtime in Kalamazoo on Saturday opened the door for potentially the fourth different No. 1 team in the nation in as many weeks after St. Cloud beat Wisconsin.
2) St. Cloud badgers Wisconsin
Speaking of those Huskies, they staked their claim to the No. 1 overall ranking by outscoring Wisconsin 9-2 in two games at home in the State of Hockey. Both Spencer Meier and Kevin Fitzgerald scored twice on the weekend for St. Cloud, which split its last two weekends against Minnesota and Minnesota State.
The wins marked the first games for St. Cloud against an opponent from outside its state borders, but the Badgers, who swept Army West Point at home last weekend, have now lost four of six games to start the season. With the weekend against Michigan Tech, Wisconsin has now been outscored 19-5 in games lost to those two opponents.
3) Duluth plants flag in state of hockey’s ship
A Lee Corso-esque “not so fast, my friend” to St. Cloud’s possible No. 1 ranking came from less than three hours away, though, after Minnesota Duluth completed its sweep over Minnesota for an in-state battle.
In a game fit for an instant classic, Tanner Laderoute and Blake Biondi scored in the first period on Saturday to build on a 5-3 win from Friday night. Biondi’s goal lifted him to two goals on the weekend after five different goal scorers tallied red lamps for UMD on Friday night.
Minnesota-Duluth is now 5-1 with its only loss coming against Michigan in the IceBreaker Tournament held last weekend, while the Gophers fell to .500 after starting the year with the No. 4 overall ranking. Following the split against St. Cloud, Minnesota has now lost three of its last four games with only an overtime 4-3 win over the Saints coming after the season-opening sweep over Mercyhurst.
4) Splitsville in Hamden
The western teams took center stage this weekend, but New England’s college hockey programs created a massive thunder clap when No. 7 Quinnipiac earned a split over No. 6 North Dakota in a two-game series in Connecticut.
The Bobcat win, which was the first-ever victory for the program over North Dakota, occurred on Friday night with four unanswered goals pacing a sweeping, overpowering performance between the midway point of the first through the midway point of the third. Quinnipiac scored two power play goals as part of that run, which overtook a 1-0 UND lead, before Jake Sanderson brought the Fighting Hawks within two goals.
The next night, Wyatt Bongiovanni scored to give Quinnipiac a 1-0 lead just over six minutes into the game, but three consecutive goals by North Dakota evened the weekend series with a 3-1 win for the visitors.
5) So long, Sparty
UMass Lowell’s bid for similar eastern dominance didn’t receive the fanfare of the North Dakota-Quinnipiac series, but the River Hawks’ hosting of Michigan State went similarly as good compared to the Bobcats’ role as New England enforcers.
UML rallied twice in the first game against Sparty to tie a 2-2 result, scoring goals from Andre Lee and Brehdan Engum to pull back from one-goal deficits each time. But after tying the game with 90 seconds left in the first contest, the team exploded for four goals in the second game with two coming in the second. The River Hawks scored twice via special teams, punctuating the weekend with a shorthanded bid from Andranik Armstrong-Kingkade, the first of his two goals down the stretch of that game.
6) RIT takes one, SHU takes one, Canisius … almost takes one
Atlantic Hockey has long been recognized for its need to fight for better results in the non-conference schedule, and while the league likely hasn’t done enough to earn a second bid to the NCAA Tournament this year, its week’s performance is impossible to discount against some stingy, tough competition.
It started with a Tuesday night tilt for Canisius at Clarkson where the Golden Griffins erased a 3-1 first period lead for the Golden Knights with four unanswered goals. The four different goal scorers involved six different players on assist and overtook Clarkson for a 4-3 lead before Zach Tsekos, who scored his team’s first goal, tied the game on the power play with less than a minute remaining.
The tie was still a positive for the conference, which summarily watched both RIT and Sacred Heart tally big wins over both Notre Dame and Maine. The Pioneers were particularly effective in beating the Black Bears 1-0 on Friday before tying them in a second game on Saturday, but the drama of the Tigers’ 3-2 overtime win over the No. 13 Fighting Irish sent AHA supporters into a frenzy when Carter Wilkie scored 30 seconds into the extra frame.
Notre Dame rallied for a shutout win after the Friday victory, but outside of Penn State’s sweep over Niagara, it was a very good weekend for the peskiest league in the nation.
7) Purple firsts
Not to be outdone, Holy Cross coach Bill Riga celebrated his first-ever win as a head coach on Saturday when his Crusaders knocked off a Bentley team bidding for a weekend sweep in the 20-year rivalry between the teams.
The Crusaders had previously cost themselves a chance at the win when they watched the Falcons rally from a 2-0 deficit two nights earlier, but their 3-0, first period lead earned the coach and freshman goalie Thomas Gale their respective first victories.
A bigger first occurred further west for a different team clad in purple when St. Thomas earned its first Division I hockey win by beating Ferris State, 5-2. Luke Manning scored twice and Christiano Versich potted three assists for the Tommies, who had a 5-0 lead before the Bulldogs staged a late game rally with two goals over a three-minute span in the third.
8) Bemidji, baby
Nobody could fault Bemidji State for losing its first four games of the season, but the Beavers won a badly needed overtime game to earn a split last weekend against No. 6 North Dakota.
It was the third game against the Fighting Hawks as part of a season start that included two games at Minnesota Duluth, which is why this weekend’s series against Northern Michigan, albeit on the road, represented a significant step forward for the team’s early prospects.
It was of crucial importance, then, that Bemidji won both games with one-goal margins to open its CCHA portion of the schedule. After trading five goals with the Wildcats in the first period, NMU scored twice in the second to take a 4-3 lead into the third, but Lukas Sillinger and Jakub Lewandowski scored, the latter on the power play, to push the Beavers to a 5-4 win in Marquette.
The next night, the Wildcats led by two after scoring seven minutes apart, but Alex Ierullo and Tyler Kirkup notched goals within a minute to tie the game before Ierullo scored a second goal late in the second period. NMU’s AJ Vanderbeck scored his second goal of the weekend to even the score at 3-3 before Austin Jouppi’s goal with 11 minutes remaining in the game gave Bemidji the weekend sweep.
9) Ivies nearing first weekend
It’s impossible to overlook the importance of the exhibition games for the ECAC’s Ivy League contingent this weekend after the teams sat out the 2020-21 season during COVID-19. The Ivy League was memorably the first league to cancel its spring season during the pandemic’s initial outbreak, and the withdrawal of the schools helped touch off the cancellation of the 2020 hockey postseason. All six schools sat out last year – along with Union and RPI – as part of the larger ECAC conference, which shrank temporarily to four teams.
The non-Ivies returned to the ice earlier this year, but the return of the six Ivies included a 3-2 win for Dartmouth over UMass and a 4-2 win by Cornell over the United States Under-18 national team.
The Ivy portion of the ECAC schedule formally kicks off on Friday when No. 14 Harvard visits Dartmouth and No. 15 Cornell hosts Alaska, but the full contingent all play on Saturday when Brown hosts Yale and Princeton, Cornell, Dartmouth and Harvard all compete in non-conference action. With their return, it will mark the first time every available Division I team is in action in 609 days.
10) Welcome home, LIU
Long Island University debuted very softly as members of the college hockey university last year after COVID-19 laid waste to the souffle of scheduling the Sharks attempted to compile.
After nonconference scheduling removed the independent from every team on its initial season, the Sharks joined Atlantic Hockey as the only nonconference opponent for the 11-member league. The affiliation was promptly scuttled over the course of the season after teams summarily paused with pandemic outbreaks. The Sharks eventually played 13 games and went 3-10 with an additional split at the ACHA club program at Liberty University, but they never hosted games at their home facility in East Meadow, N.Y.
That all changed this weekend when LIU hosted its first-ever hockey games at the Northwell Health Ice Center. The games were against two teams from the Division II Northeast-10 Conference, but the 7-0 win over Assumption on Friday preceded a 6-1 win over Post University on Saturday. Jordan Timmons, a transfer from Robert Morris University, scored four goals for the Sharks while Bowling Green transfer Carson Musser added two goals against Post. Spencer Cox, a freshman recruited to the LIU program, scored a goal in each game.
LIU returns to the road next weekend for two games at Omaha before a midweek game at UMass Lowell, but two games against Saint Michael’s College, another D-II team from the NE-10, precede the first-ever home game against a Division I opponent when the Sharks host Princeton on November 12.
