Durham, NH – While it was snowing outside, New Hampshire and Union put on a show in front of smallish crowd at the Whittemore Center. Union opened the scoring at 15 minutes, five seconds of the first period when Mark Bennett put in a goal from zero angle on the backhand to give the Dutchmen a 1-0 lead. UNH responded seconds after its star defenseman, Trevor van Riemsdyk, went down with an apparent right leg injury, as Kyle Smith sent a pass to Tyler Kelleher to send the game into the first intermission tied at one.

The second period was a sluggish period of hockey, at best, by both teams. Union scored the only goal of the second period at 17:26 off a beautiful tip from Max Novak. The Dutchmen took the 2-0 lead into the third period, looking for its second win in as many nights against UNH. Union added an empty netter in the third period to cap the 3-1 win, securing the weekend sweep at UNH. Union improves to 15-4-3 on the season, while UNH falls to 13-12-1.

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Allston, MASS- Cornell came out flying in the first period in front of a rare, packed house at the Bright Landry Hockey Center. The Big Red held the Crimson without a shot for nearly ten minutes of the first period, and were rewarded by a short-handed goal on a breakaway by Madison Dias at the six minute, 22 second mark of the first period. The lead was doubled with just four seconds remaining in the period, as Joakim Ryan picked up his second assist of the night on a beautiful individual effort on a 2 on 1 break by Christian Hilbrich. Cornell held the Crimson to just five first period shots, and the Crimson struggled to possess the puck on the much bigger Big Red.

Harvard played a much better second period and came charging back in the period. Sean Malone brought the Crimson to within one, while getting tripped in the slot on a feed from Jimmy Vesey at 10:17 of the second period. Devin Tringale scored his first collegiate goal to tie the game, short-handed, five minutes later. But Cornell scored another last minute of a period goal, when Brian Ferlin fed a pass to Dustin Mowrey all alone in front of Steve Michalek sending Cornell into the second intermission up 3-2.

Cornell would hold on, literally, in the third period for the win. Harvard arguably gave its best performance of the season, as it outshot the Big Red 11-7 in the third period but it was not to be, as Cornell won the game 3-2. Cornell improved to 9-4-3, 5-3-2 in the ECAC with the win, while Harvard fell to 5-9-3, 2-7-3. Cornell moves within seven points of league leading Quinnipiac, with still three games in hand. (more…)

Ohio State (11-6-1, 1-2-1 B1G) at Minnesota (15-2-3, 5-0-1 B1G): Jan. 17 at 8:07 p.m., Jan. 18 at 5:07 p.m.

The No. 2 and 3 offenses in the country will face off in the Hockey City Classic on Friday, which will be played at Minnesota’s TCF Bank Stadium. The Gophers average 3.95 goals per game, while the Buckeyes average 3.83 goals per game. Minnesota hasn’t lost since Nov. 24 and holds the longest unbeaten streak in the country.

Ryan Dzingel’s 27 points leads the Buckeyes and the Big Ten in scoring. Three different freshmen — Logan Davis, Christian Frey and Matt Tomkins — have started in net for the Buckeyes this season.

Sam Warning paces Minnesota’s offense with 23 points this season. Adam Wilcox, who’s started all but one game in net, has a .925 save percentage and a 2.13 goals-against average.

This is the first meeting between both teams since 2007.

Prediction: Minnesota sweeps the series

Penn State (4-12-1, 0-4-0 B1G) at Michigan State (6-10-3, 0-2-2 B1G): Jan. 17 at 6:35 p.m., Jan. 18 at 7:05 p.m. (NBCSN)

The Nittany Lions have yet to win a conference game this season and have lost nine of their past 10 games. Michigan State’s lone win over the past six contests came against Michigan at the Great Lakes Invitational.

These teams faced off last season, splitting the series. Penn State’s Casey Bailey and Max Gardiner each had four points, while Mike Ferrantino netted three for the Spartans.

Goalkeepers Jake Hildebrand and Matthew Skoff are both from the Pittsburgh are and played together for the Sioux City Musketeers in the USHL. The two netminders faced off in Penn State’s 3-2 win last season.

Eric Scheid leads Penn State’s offense with 13 points and eight goals. Michigan’s State’s Jake Chelios has 14 points, while Greg Wolfe has tallied seven goals.

Prediction: Series split

Another week and more movement at the top. Clarkson continues its struggle in the second half and plummets in the rankings this week, while RPI, Dartmouth, Princeton and St. Lawrence are really close at the bottom of the rankings. Quinnipiac defeated Union on Friday night in Hamden, in a game that saw the two top teams in the ECAC faceoff. Quinnipiac took back the lead in the league with the win by a measly point, with teams behind them having a ton of games. See this week’s Three Things I Think for that storyline. Without further ado here are my rankings for the week. Feel free to send your opinion by twitter and follow me @JoshSeguin24

1. Union (13-4-3, 9-2-0 ECAC) – Last Week 1

Like I didn’t penalize Quinnipiac for its road loss to Union in the first half, I won’t penalize Union for its road loss to Quinnpiac. At this point, there is no doubt that Union and Quinnipiac are interchangeable at the top of these rankings. The Dutchmen’s loss to the Bobcats on Friday, was its first blemish in ten games. This weekend gets no easier for Union, as it travels to the Olympic Sheet of Lake Whitt on the University of New Hampshire for a pair. Both games will have huge implications for Union in the Pairwise Rankings., which it currently sits sixth. (more…)

There were a mix of non-conference games and some in-conference games. In the biggest ECAC game of the weekend, Quinnipiac defeated Union 2-1. The win by the Bobcats propelled them back into first place in the conference. Harvard and Yale played the big stage on Saturday night in front 15,524 paying patrons, a game that Yale won 5-1. Princeton ended its long losing streak over the weekend, defeating another struggling team, Rensselaer, on Friday. But there were other games.

Be sure to check out the CHN standings page for the updates of where your team falls. The Pairwise is also a very good place to see just where your team is nationally, in terms of the NCAA tournament. If the tournament started today the ECAC would place five teams in comfortably, which would be a huge accomplishment for the league. Quinnipiac and Union sit in fifth and sixth place respectively in the Pairwise rankings, while Cornell, Yale and Clarkson are in positions 12-14. I think four of those five teams stay in there and another might find there way in, maybe Colgate? Without further ado here are is what I think this week.

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This past week is the first time all six Big Ten teams were engaged in conference series. Yes, it’s January. At the same time, this past week also kicked off BTN’s Frozen Friday doubleheaders that are to be a staple in the second half (the conference play half?) of the season.

And I enjoyed it.

The pre-game and doubleheaders, which admittedly I watched after the fact on DVR, weren’t without issues. There was some awkwardness in the analysis. Schottenstein Center couldn’t look worse on television. On the same weekend that Penn State and Minnesota played a Sunday game that wasn’t televised or even on BTN2Go, aka a doomsday “Big Ten is ruining college hockey” argument, BTN had two games which, as dirty as I feel to say, the conference couldn’t have scripted better with a pair of hat tricks.

More importantly, what won me over was the presentation. College hockey often gets shifted to the back pages of the sports section or has national games where, once it ends, gets ignored as the station goes right into the next program. BTN made it feel like an actual event rather than a second-class production.

For once, the discussion that normally happens on Twitter happened during intermission and a post-game show.

That is something you expect to see with sports although it doesn’t happen that often with hockey in the U.S. (CBS Sports Net probably comes closest with the college game). There aren’t many talking heads. The mixture of regional games with national broadcasts is still slanted towards the former or nothing at all.

Of course, one weekend doesn’t make everything hunky-dory. Not even everything this weekend was when it comes to college hockey on TV, yet coming out of the first BTN Frozen Friday broadcast, my thought was why couldn’t the conference give this type of attention towards the first half (aka the non-conference half)?

That’s a good place to be given some of the other problems in the first year of realignment.

This week’s attention shines a light towards the following things: Ryan Dzingel and Michael Mersch both notching hat tricks, Michigan and Wisconsin passing each other like ships in the night, and how Penn State can take a page from Minnesota. (more…)

There has been much change in the ECAC Power Rankings, mainly because the semester is anew and some teams are either making statements or have fallen off. Union hasn’t played since early December and they take the number 1 spot for the first time this season, as Quinnipiac and Clarkson have stumbled a bit. Union sits at the top of the ECAC standings but many teams are within striking distance of the top. Without further ado, here are this week’s power rankings.

1. Union (12-3-3, 8-1-0 ECAC) – Before Break 2

Union has not played since December 14th. It will get a trial by fire on Friday, as it will face Quinnipiac for the top spot in the ECAC standings. If there is one coach that would have his team more ready in this situation than Rick Bennett I would love to see said bench boss’ resume. Bennett will have his Dutch more than ready for this big tilt. (more…)

Cambridge, MASS – Harvard and Quinnipiac squared off for the 21st time in their short history as opponents. Harvard held a slight edge at 9-8-3 in the all-time series coming into the night. The first period was very Quinnipiacesque, as the Bobcats dominated the possession. It outshot the Crimson 11-6 in the period and left with a 1-0 lead. Kellen Jones scored the only goal in the first period from the slot on a wrister at the seven minute, 33 second mark of the period.

The second period was much of the same but Harvard had the best goaltender in the period. Raphael Girard was phenomenal in the period stoning quality shot, after quality Bobcat shot. Girard’s efforts were rewarded at 12:22 of the period, when Max Everson sent a beauty of a pass to Kyle Criscuolo in the low slot that gave Harvard a 1-1 tie with Quinnipiac in the second period. Matthew Peca scored a go-ahead goal at 2:14 of the third period, which looked to be the game winner until the waning moments of the contest. Harvard’s Alexander Kerfoot scored a game-tying,extra-attacker goal with 49 seconds remaining, which sent the game into overtime.

Harvard and Quinnipiac played an entertaining, scoreless overtime and the 2-2 tie would hold as the final score. Quinnipiac moves its record to 15-3-5, 6-2-3 in the ECAC,  while Harvard goes to 5-7-3, 2-6-3. The point puts Quinnipiac a point behind ECAC leader, Union in the race for the regular season title who waits in the wings for a huge matchup on Friday night in Hamden. The Bobcats, though, have played three more games the Dutchmen and its time may be running out to make a run, as most teams around it have played three less games. (more…)

There have been some interesting storylines since I last posted. Some teams seem to be on the rise, while others are going in the opposite direction. As a whole, the conference is sitting in a good spot in regards to the NCAA tournament with four teams comfortably on the inside. That is of course all arbitrary because the second half always has a team or two or three that drops out of the top 14 or 15 teams in the Pairwise. The second half always has teams that come out of nowhere as well, so what you see now is not set in stone.

Colgate went out to the Mariucci Classic in Minnesota and shocked everyone by winning both of its games, taking home the tournament title. It not only defeated number one ranked Minnesota in a shootout but it backed up its performance by winning 3-0 against number two ranked, Ferris State . I will discuss what I think about it below but it is a trend that can only be positive for such a young team such as Colgate. Lets not get ahead of ourselves, though, in thinking that it is all of a sudden great team and in the hunt for a National Championship because of one two game stretch. I guess you kind of have a hint of what I am going to say.

Quinnipiac and Harvard will reopen conference play for the second half on Tuesday. QU heads into the game second in the conference with 14 points, but after the game most teams in the conference will have three games in hand on it. Union continues to lead the conference, but teams such as Clarkson, Cornell and Colgate sit within six points of the top. The season is still relatively young though at halfway. Full conference slates will commence at the end of February with most teams playing two conference games a week at that point. Without further ado, here are my thoughts of the week: (more…)

Finally, the “less Big Ten teams played than number of things” week is upon us and honestly, it isn’t as bad as I would have thought.

Okay last weekend wasn’t pretty. In fact, it was probably for the best that Big Ten play did not start again right after the holiday break. Everyone besides Ohio State (and many of the top ten teams nationally) has had at least one game where rust was prevalent in the last couple weeks. Friday may have been the worst night in conference history.

(After the jump, this week’s 3 Things about just 2 clubs playing turns in 5 things. Things discussed include the lack of Big Ten expansion, Minnesota’s shootout woes, Wisconsin’s Jake McCabe scoring twice to save the weekend for the Badgers, and next weekend’s showdown with Michigan.) (more…)