Vegoe’s Top 20 – 1/27/2025

The top two teams in the GopherPuckLive top twenty expanded the gap between them and the rest of the country with strong performances this past weekend. Boston College did it with a 6-2 road win over Boston University and then a home 2-0 victory. 

“Just from the way the guys were in the locker room, they understand that these were big games, but there’s big games coming again next week and the week after,” Boston College coach Greg Brown told The Heights after the Saturday shutout. “The older guys really said the right things about staying calm, keeping our presence. Relax and enjoy this, but right away we have to be focused on Friday.”

Michigan State did it with a runaway 9-3 win over Minnesota on Friday at Munn Ice Arena and then played a back and forth game with the Gophers ending in a 3-3 tie as far as the Pairwise Rankings are concerned. 

The Spartans won the shootout over the Gophers again — Minnesota is now 2-17 in Big Ten history for the shootout and the Gophers have missed 25 attempts in a row. Michigan State’s coach Adam Nightingale squad has nearly locked up a No. 1 seed for the NCAA tournament according to PlayoffStatus.com and have an 87% chance of winning the league with four series to go.

“In all that, that was an excellent hockey game. Those are two of the better teams in the country going at it, and it was a battle out there,” said Gophers coach Bob Motzko after the series. “We have to make that standard for us right now and I think games like this are going to put us back into that frame, that mentality we have to be in.”

Other notable results in the top half of the poll included Western Michigan not letting up against struggling Miami during a sweep, Denver splitting on the road against a struggling Minnesota Duluth, Providence tying UMass Lowell on the road 3-3 and then losing the next night at home 1-0 and then Connecticut winning the Connecticut Ice Tournament beating Quinnipiac 2-1 and Sacred Heart 1-0.

“It’s been a long time coming for us,” UConn coach Mike Cavanaugh told the Connecticut Post. “I think it’s just a great team win and great program win. I don’t know if it was our best game from start to finish, but we accomplished what we wanted to do in getting the trophy today.”

The Huskies are fourth in the Pairwise Rankings at this point of the season — they’ve earned wins over Maine, Boston College, Massachusetts, UMass-Lowell, New Hampshire and have a huge home and home series coming up this weekend against Providence.

The second half of the poll is more chaos. Arizona State dropped a game to Colorado College. St. Cloud State was swept by Omaha. Michigan lost and went to overtime with Wisconsin. New Hampshire split with Vermont. Minnesota State dropped a game to Ferris State — which dropped them to 17th in the Pairwise. 

Long time scribe Shane Frederick knows that dropping games in the CCHA is trouble and the Mavericks have now split series with Northern Michigan, Michigan Tech and Ferris State. The Wildcats are 61st in the Pairwise, the Bulldogs are 57th in the Pairwise and at least the Huskies are 30th. While losing games to conference foes isn’t death to the math, losing games like this to teams with terrible records can be trouble and the Mavericks are now only 55% likely to make the NCAA Tournament.