Vegoe’s Top 20 – 12/9/2024

Liam Souliere said after Minnesota’s sweep over Michigan that ‘at the end of the day we’re just a show and the show was really good tonight.’ The Gophers have certainly been putting on a show all season, only losing two games so far on the year. Minnesota was ‘goalied’ by Omaha early in the season where they out-attempted the Mavericks 81-45 to lose in overtime 2-1. They were then ‘goalied’ again at Bemidji State out-attempting the Beavers 85-39 for their only regulation loss on the year 3-1. Minnesota has one more game to close out the half against the previous No. 1 team, Michigan State. The Gophers are banged up with injuries, but they’ve been dealing with that for weeks already.

Michigan State dropped a bit in the Top 20 this week after losing four of six points to unranked Wisconsin in Madison. They nearly dropped all the points to the Badgers on the weekend, but they were able to come back from a 2-0 deficit to force overtime and get the win on Saturday. The Spartans even got a little help from the Badgers as Wisconsin was called for too many players on the ice in the second period that led to Michigan State’s first goal of the game on the ensuing power play. “In games like this, tight games, those are difference makers,” Wisconsin coach Mike Hastings told Todd Milewski.

The Denver Pioneers sort of snapped a three game losing streak by winning in overtime against Western Michigan on the weekend. Their offense has been sparse the past two weekends, scoring just two goals in regulation their past four games. It was a recipe that worked for them in the NCAA Tournament last season, but something to keep on eye on for them going forward.

Boston College is the top team in college hockey according to KRACH and Pairwise Ranking after a weekend where they went to overtime in both games. The Eagles pulled out an OT win over Connecticut 2-1 and tied UMass Lowell on the road helped by scoring 37 seconds apart late in the second period. The Eagles close out their first half with a game on Monday in a rematch with the Riverhawks and BC Hockey Blog thinks the game could be extra spicy.

The Providence Friars had a nice weekend with two wins over visiting Colorado College on the weekend. Nate Leaman’s squad is just one point back from Maine in Hockey East and closed out a nice first half of the season by sweeping the Tigers. CC Coach Kris Mayotte was a little disappointed with his team after the loss. “We just didn’t make a push… we weren’t great without the puck… we were just loose without it and when you give a good team time and space and allow them to dictate like that, they’re going to find a way to make you pay.” Big series is coming up this weekend in Colorado as the Tigers play their rival Denver for a home and home.

The back half of the Top 20 had a few surprises in it as Massachusetts shutout Boston University, Cornell needed overtime to get a win against Colgate and then dropped a road game to the Raiders. Brett Chorske had a goal and assist on the weekend for Colgate against the Big Red and is his team’s leading scorer through the first half. Another surprise in ECAC was Clarkson winning road games at Harvard and Dartmouth to close out the first half. No ECAC teams are in the top 14 of the Pairwise Rankings at this point and this Top 20 reflects some of the dissappoint results from that conference.

BC-UMass Lowell closes out this week of games on Monday and we’ve already mentioned the big matchups with Minnesota-Michigan State where the Gophers will debut their taconite jerseys on Friday and Denver-Colorado College, but we also can look forward to St. Cloud-North Dakota for what will be a lightly scheduled weekend of college hockey.