Vegoe’s Top 20 – 11/4/2024
1-Denver
2-Boston College
3-Minnesota
4-Michigan State
5-Maine
6-Cornell
7-Colorado College
8-Michigan
9-Providence
10-Boston University
11-North Dakota
12-Western Michigan
13-St. Cloud
14-Ohio State
15-UMass-Lowell
16-Quinnipiac
17-Minnesota State
18-Penn State
19-Union
20-Bemidji State
Denver, Boston College and Minnesota all took care of business this weekend with sweeps. The Eagles soared the highest out of this trio though by taking down St. Cloud State twice at the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center. It was entertaining to read the BC Hockey Blog’s take on the broadcast (spoiler alert, they were not impressed) and they had an interesting note that it was the first time Boston College has swept a top ten team on the road since 2010. The Gophers had a tough test against Penn State during the weekend and Liam Souliere shined on Saturday. An interesting local note is the last time Minnesota won a game 1-0 was against Minnesota State on November 19, 2016.
There were two big surprises from the weekend scoreboard. The first was Cornell’s sweep over North Dakota. I’m sure their lone number one voter in the USCHO was happy with themselves, but Brad Schlossman did want to highlight that the Fighting Hawks were clipped a bit this weekend missing six players due to injury. Cameron Berg was the big piece missing, but the sweep is a massive poker chip for Cornell to have in their stack at the end of the season for the PairWise Rankings because they play a very limited non-conference schedule. The second surprise was seeing Michigan sweep Boston University. The Wolverines came from behind in both games at Agganis Arena and their power play was very effective against the Terriers. Michigan is putting out some interesting analytics and the one standing out to me is getting 23 high danger chances to BU’s 16.
There were even more sweeps further down the polls including Maine over Merrimack, Colorado College over Air Force, Providence over New Hampshire and Ohio State over Lake Superior State.
College hockey fans are blessed with another great weekend of big matchups and this time it’ll be some Hockey East showdowns with Boston College-Maine and UMass Lowell-Boston University. The Big Ten also has Ohio State visiting Michigan State, so maybe we will see if Steve Rohlik’s team is for real this season.