Big Ten Tops Poll, But Gophers Drop Out

Minneapolis, Minn, — College hockey parity is certainly a thing in 2025 as we saw plenty of splits among teams in the Top 20 this past weekend and a few teams were swept by lower ranked opponents. It’s making ranking college hockey quite the challenge this year as the outdated PWR, the new NPI, and traditional reliable KRACH are all still pretty useless. One of the teams struggling unfortunately for local fans is the Pride on Ice as the Gophers getting swept by the Badgers in Madison dropped them out of the GPL Top 20.

A tremendous follow on X, Gopher Game Notes noted a couple shocking tidbits about Minnesota’s 2-7-1 start which dropped them out of the USCHO Top 20 for the first time since February 10, 2020. The Gophers have their worst winning percentage through 10 games since 2003-04, when the team also started 2-7-1. That season, the Gophers finished 27-14-3, won the WCHA Tournament, and reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament–so give GGN credit for finding a silver lining. For those looking into more pessimistic parts of this year Minnesota’s stat book, the 22 goals through 10 games are its fewest since it tallied 21 goals through 10 games in 1971-72 and the Gophers are averaging just 21.9 shots on goal per game this season, their lowest average since at least 1968-69.

The Gophers have played a challenging schedule this year, but the stats cited by Gopher Game Notes are concerning for a program that’s made five NCAA Tournaments in a row and had expectations to get back there this season. Minnesota coach Bob Motzko has even questioned his team’s effort at times this year — which in my years covering the team has rarely been acknowledged when the team has struggled to get results. It certainly didn’t help the program to lose Jimmy Snuggerud, Sam Rinzel, Matthew Wood, Oliver Moore, Ryan Chesley and Connor Kurth to early departures as only two of those six have played NHL games so far this season, but it can’t come as a surprise though either. At least Moore finally got called up to the NHL this week.

Motzko is not the only coach of a blueblood going through some growing pains right now though as Jay Pandolfo’s Boston University (3-5-1), who fell down my ranking to No. 12, was just swept by Maine and Greg Brown’s Boston College (2-4-1) was just swept by Northeastern to hit their lowest ranking for me this year at No. 16.

There are teams at the top of my poll right now from the Big Ten that are overcoming parity — Michigan State, Michigan and Penn State. The three teams have powered the league to the best intra-conference record in college hockey at 32-12-4 (.708) which bests the NCHC (.693) and Hockey East (.559). When a conference has the advantage here, it certainly makes it easier for more teams in the league to get NCAA tournament bids and it makes it easier to rank those programs highly. Conference play started for a lot of schools this past weekend and while the Spartans were off, the Wolverines swept Notre Dame and the Nittany Lions swept Ohio State.

My poll saw a couple newcomers to the Top 20 including Omaha after their sweep of Colorado College, Miami which ended a long 41-game drought of NCHC games without a win after a split with Arizona State to validate their 7-1 start and St. Cloud State (6-3) after their split with highly ranked Western Michigan. 

The Mavericks continue to ride their brick wall of goaltender Simon Latkoczy to success. Mike McMahon pointed out this week just how extraordinary Latkoczy has been this season with a GSAx of 9.5 (+1.9 per 60). He noted the national leader last season was Jacob Fowler (BC), who was +0.9 per 60 and McMahon also recognized that Latkoczy has faced 57.6% of his shots from the high-danger area which is well above last season’s national average of 30%. Gopher fans probably remember Latkoczy from his performance against Minnesota last seaso and the goalie is a big reason Omaha is a threat every weekend.

Wisconsin, fresh off their sweep of Minnesota, rises to No. 11 in my rankings and will get an even bigger test this weekend as they’ll travel to No. 2 ranked Michigan. It’s one of a couple big games coming up as we’ll also see Maine at Massachusetts, Providence and Connecticut playing home and home, Denver at Western Michigan and the biggest game of the slate Penn State at Michigan State which looks like it will only be available on BIG+ at this point. Putting the game on streaming seems like a massive miss that a College Hockey Czar would surely find a way to overcome despite ESPN broadcasting football powers Tulane at Memphis, ESPN2 playing Harvard at Columbia football, FS1 showing Houston at UCF football and BTN showing a bouncy ball tip of Northern Illinois at Wisconsin. Oh well — if you followed GPL and got the BTN+ discount, then you’ll be set.