BOSTON — In a season where Boston University has struggled to develop consistency, the Terriers overcame deficits in two games over the weekend and earned three Hockey East points against Massachusetts. The Terriers tied UMass, 2-2, at the Mullins Center in Amherst on Friday, and earned a 5-4 overtime win at Agganis Arena Saturday night. For UMass, the disappointment was palpable after the game. UMass had leads of two goals and three goals on Friday and Saturday night, respectively, but only have one point to show for its effort.

What I Saw

• After discouraging performances against Holy Cross last weekend and UMass on Friday, BU managed 60 minutes of good hockey to earn its second Hockey East win. Parker certainly sent a message to his team by starting senior goalie Grant Rollheiser and making junior forward Alex Chiasson a healthy scratch. The coach said after Friday’s game that he would award playing time to those he thought had clearly earned it. Chiasson looked disinterested in play at times against Holy Cross, despite offering a two-goal performance.

• Similar to Friday night’s game at the Mullins Center in Amherst, BU found itself in a multiple-goal deficit. Only this time the Terriers game back to win, rather than settling for a 2-2 draw. However, the circumstances were certainly different. UMass played much better Friday and truly earned its two-goal advantage. On Saturday, UMass benefited from scrappy play and several fortunate bounces. In addition, BU was playing much better hockey on Saturday when it went down 3-0 in the first. After the game, Parker said that he was not concerned with his team’s play, and communicated that message to his team during the first intermission.

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Five conference series and 11 of the 12 teams are in action this weekend around the league. Here are a look at my WCHA power rankings as we hurdle towards November:

1 — Colorado College (Last week: 1)

The Tigers got the week off last week and head out east for a nonconference series at RPI this weekend. Should be a great chance at a pair of wins.

2 — Denver (Last week: 3)

DU got off to a sluggish start Friday against Minnesota State, allowing the Mavericks to keep it a game until the very end. Saturday, they took advantage of a banged up MSU bunch and hung 10 goals en route to a relatively easy 4 points.

3 — Minnesota (Last week: 2)

Nobody in the league in scoring more than the Gophers, but the goaltending effort by Kent Patterson on Sunday was not good enough. It didn’t help that Minnesota was taking dumb penalties. Shore those things up and Minnesota can beat anyone in the country.

4 — Minnesota Duluth (Last week: 6)

The Bulldogs quietly went out east and took 3 points from Providence, a boost for UMD’s confidence more than anything. They’ll need at least that many this weekend against Bemidji in order to be considered a true contender.

5 — Nebraska-Omaha (Last week: 7)

Alex Hudson returns to the line-up and the Mavericks gain four points. I guess he was as big a loss as advertised.

6 — North Dakota (Last week: 4)

To say Aaron Dell and Brad Eidsness have not provided the type of goaltending they did last year would be like saying after A, B, and C comes D. With a young group, combined with some injuries and eligibility issues, North Dakota is limping through the first month of the season.

7 — Bemidji State (Last week: 9)

Yes, it was Michigan Tech. But the Beavers showed some killer instinct last weekend and the ability to put the puck in the net. That could come in handy this weekend in Duluth.

8 — Wisconsin (Last week: 10)

The Badgers rebound off being swept at Michigan Tech by sweeping North Dakota. Only in the WCHA, I tell you…

9 — St. Cloud State (Last week: 11)

After opening their home schedule with a win and a tie last weekend against UNH, the Huskies open their conference schedule back on the road at UND. They need to take advantage of a staggering North Dakota team, as these points could be crucial in March.

10 — Alaska-Anchorage (Last week: 5)

After a good start, the Seawolves hit the road for the first time last weekend and were promptly swept in Omaha. Back in Anchorage this weekend, their challenge gets even tougher as a red-hot Minnesota team comes to town.

11 — Michigan Tech (Last week: 8 )

After already equaling their win total from the year before, perhaps asking Tech to start the season with a three game conference winning streak was a bit too much. They’ll get a true test this weekend as the Pioneers come to Houghton.

12 — Minnesota State (Last week: 12)

Never has a week off been better timed. MSU was down eight players last Saturday because of injuries, and it showed as MSU was pounded 10-2 at Magness Arena. This weekend is all about getting healthy before jumping back into WCHA action next week. The Mavericks need points and will have a shot to get some at Tech in seven days.

THIS WEEKEND AROUND THE WCHA

Denver at Michigan Tech

The Huskies better get their goaltending taken care of or, like Minnesota State, Tech will get run out of the building. Beau Bennett dished out five assists in a game and a half before a game misconduct Saturday took him out of the goal scoring bonanza. With Drew Shore and Jason Zucker already in midseason form, adding a playmaker like Bennett to the mix is truly unfair.

Bemidji State at Minnesota Duluth

The Beavers have had their share of success against the Bulldogs over the years, including a Final Five quarterfinal match-up in St. Paul last season — a 3-2 BSU win, the final time UMD suffered a defeat en route to the national title. Nine goals last weekend against Michigan Tech could be a precursor to what they will need this weekend, as the ‘Dogs can still score, seemingly at will.

Nebraska-Omaha at Wisconsin

A pair of Jekyll and Hyde outfits do battle in Madison this weekend as the Mavericks (poor start, nice sweep last weekend) take on the Badgers (swept by Tech two weeks ago, sweep of North Dakota last weekend). Wisconsin must take advantage of shaky goaltending like they did last weekend, scoring 10 goals in two games despite putting only 41 shots on goal. John Faulkner has been a model of inconsistency so far, but kept the previously hot UAA virtually off the board all weekend (just two goals in two games).

St. Cloud State at North Dakota

The Fighting Sioux broke with history last season by starting the year red-hot — and pretty much carrying that momentum all the way to the Frozen Four. UND is back to its old tricks this season, but with questionable play in net combined with missed man games from Rocco Grimaldi, climbing out of this hole will be significantly harder than in years past. UND can’t win the MacNaughton Cup in October, but they’ll certainly able to lose it. SCSU is the only team without a conference game played, so any points this weekend will be points in hand on everyone else.

Minnesota at Alaska-Anchorage

It’s safe to say the Gophers offensive explosion is more a trend than a mirage. They even scored four in their first loss of the season Sunday against Vermont. As long as Minnesota learns from its mistakes in game two against the Catamounts, they’ll be fine. A sweep in Alaska would go a long ways towards silencing the critics. It would also exact a bit of revenge for UAA’s sweep of Minnesota at Mariucci Arena in the first round of the WCHA playoffs last season.

Colorado College at RPI

RPI is off to a 1-4-0 start, with that lone win coming at home to Minnesota State (a night after they were shut out by the Mavericks). If CC can jump ahead early, these games could get ugly.

First off, apologies for the lack of content this week. Anyone who has followed my blog for the few years before moving exclusively to CHN knows I also coach high school football. And anyone who reads a sports page here in Minnesota knows the high school football season is ramping up, meaning time to update the blog as regularly as I’d like to is just not an option right now. No worries though, as the team here at College Hockey News will keep you updated with all of the latest news I may not get to during the hectic time in this guy’s life. Fortunately, I will be around to watch plenty of WCHA puck this weekend, so follow along on Twitter (@CHNDanMyers) as conference play kicks into high gear with four league series in action.

All that said, here are my updated conference power rankings as the college hockey season hurdles into its third weekend of play this weekend:

1 — Colorado College (Last week: 1)

After winning 3-1 on Friday, Tigers goalie Joe Howe entered the game Saturday with his team trailing to Bemidji State and in danger of dropping a couple of points to a team they should sweep at the World Arena. Howe came into the game stopped 11 straight shots and waited for his team to pick him up. They did, and CC rolled to a sweep. All Howe has to do is keep his team close, because the Tigers have more than enough offense to pick up the slack.

2 — Minnesota (Last week: 3)

Somehow, the Gophers allowed 100 shots, on the road, against the defending national champions… and got 4 points. Minnesota rallied from a late one goal deficit to secure overtime, where the Gophers scored a late goal to win 5-4. UMD jumped ahead early again Saturday, but Minnesota rallied with five straight goals. It would have been easy to be happy with two points on the road, but credit is due for the gutty effort to respond. Keep an eye on that Minnesota power play: The Gophers went 6 for 9 with the man advantage last weekend, and if they can keep it going, Minnesota is going to be tough to stop.

3 — Denver (Last week: 2)

The Pioneers should be happy with a road split in Boston. Few teams in the country would be able to boast such a fact after facing Boston College and Boston University on consecutive nights.

4 — North Dakota (Last week: 4)

UND will have to accept a three-point weekend to avenge last season’s sweep at Maine. Brad Eidsness’ victory Friday — he made 30 saves — will make Aaron Dell’s already tenuous hold on that goaltending job even more delicate.

5 — Alaska-Anchorage (Last week: 8 )

The Seawolves just keep on rolling. After shutting out conference foe Nebraska-Omaha in a nonconference game, UAA hammered Mercyhurst 6-2. It’s been a balanced offensive effort and now the Seawolves may have not one, but two goaltenders going strong. An intriguing rematch with Omaha in Nebraska awaits this weekend where we should learn a lot more about where the Seawolves stand.

6 — Minnesota Duluth (Last week: 5)

UMD put 100 shots on Minnesota goaltender Kent Patterson and scored eight goals last weekend but got swept. Saturday, Kenny Reiter made just 11 saves on 16 shots. There’s still enough offense to get it done in Duluth, but Reiter needs to channel his playoff self in order for the Bulldogs to compete for an upper half spot.

7 — Nebraska-Omaha (Last week: 6)

How big of a loss has Alex Hudson been? After scoring five goals in their first game — a win over Mercyhurst — UNO has scored just four goals over their last three games — all losses. Whatever ails them, UNO better figure it out quickly. The Mavericks are in the midst of a stretch where they play games on 10 straight weekends.

8 — Michigan Tech (Last week: 12)

Are the Huskies for real? They’ve already equaled their win total from ALL of last season. Just one victory this weekend would equal the number of points Tech had ALL of last season. At Bemidji Friday and Saturday, this is the first time the Huskies will play away from MacInnes Ice Arena this season. And the Tech power play? An impressive 29 percent thus far — 14 percentage points better than last season.

9 — Bemidji State (Last week: 9)

The Beavers were in line for a split at Colorado College last week, but ran into a bit of a wall (named Joe Howe) in the third period Saturday. The Tigers won that game 6-4, and the Beavers won’t win many shootouts this season. They should have a chance at some points against a significantly less talented offensive group this weekend.

10 — Wisconsin (Last week: 10)

Overtime hasn’t been good to the Badgers during the Mike Eaves era. Since 2007-08, Wisconsin hasn’t won a single league game that has gone to overtime — 23 tries in all — while losing nine times over that same stretch. Overall, they’ve won just once in that stretch (32 tries there). So it probably wasn’t a good thing when both games in Houghton went to overtime last weekend. The Huskies won them both, continuing a rough stretch of free hockey for UW. (Thanks to Madison.com scribe Andy Baggot for the leg work on those overtime stats)

11 — St. Cloud State (Last week: 11)

After opening with four straight road games (and a 1-3-0 record), the Huskies open the home portion of their schedule with a weekend series against New Hampshire at the National Hockey Center. For the sake of getting its season kick started, the Huskies better hope things go much better at home than they have on the road or this year could spiral out of control quickly. In a related but totally unrelated stat, SCSU was just 6-8-4 at the NHC last season.

12 — Minnesota State (Last week: 7)

Tumbling down the rankings after getting swept by Massachusetts-Lowell (in Mankato, no less) are the Mavericks, who are decimated by injury right now. MSU will travel to Denver this weekend (gulp), where it could get ugly. Counting their third goaltender, the Mavericks have exactly 21 healthy hockey players right now. Michael Dorr, Eriah Hayes, Max Gaede, Tyler Elbrecht, J.P. Burkemper and Danny Heath are all nursing injuries and are not on this road trip. The good news? A bye weekend next weekend is extremely well-timed and could help MSU get a couple of players back before a stretch of seven straight busy weekends in November and December.

Denver opened its season with a big 4-2 win at Boston College on Friday night, but followed that up with a 4-3 loss to Boston University on Saturday. Adam Murray looked pretty good in his first weekend as Denver’s No. 1 goalie, while the defense in front of him suffered a letdown against BU after playing very well against BC. Offensively, Drew Shore and Jason Zucker — who registered 46 and 45 points, respectively, last season — picked up right where they left off with three goals and two assists combined.

What I saw

-Denver’s defense, which features three freshmen, did a great job minimizing its mistakes against BC. The Pioneer blue-liners didn’t get caught up ice and they managed to keep the Eagles’ dangerous forwards on the perimeter for the most part. Saturday was a different story, though. The Terriers repeatedly spread the Pioneers out and got them running around. Two of their goals came on breakaways resulting from Pioneer defenders getting caught out of position in the neutral zone. If Friday night showed what the Pioneers can be defensively, Saturday served as a reminder that they still have some work to do on the back end.

-The power play struggled all weekend. The Pioneers finished the weekend 0-for-10 on the man advantage with just nine shots on goal. They frequently struggled to set up, and once they did, it was a case of too much passing, too much looking for the perfect play, and not enough just getting the puck to the net. Coach George Gwozdecky said he still expects the power play to be a strength for his team, but he acknowledged that it didn’t look good at all this weekend. (more…)

Looks like we’ve got quite a photo pool starting to build up in the College Ice Hockey Fans group over on Flickr. Some excellent shots out there. If you have some photos to contribute or are looking for some good photos of your favorite team, check it out.

We’ve added a few more worthy college hockey blogs to our “BlogRoll” over on the right hand side recently.

Writer for Eagle Tribune out of Lawrence, MA and newly added staff writer Mike McMahon’s Warrior Rink Rat Blog is one of the most in-depth team blogs out there, and is worth a look especially if your team is facing Merrimack on any given night.

The UNH Hockey Blog is up and rolling. TheTempGuy is doing a fine job there, but he’s looking for some extra help, so if any of you Wildcat die-hards are interested, be sure to drop him a line.

We’ve linked up the Northern Wildcats blog of Mining Journal writer Matt Wellens.

We’d also like to welcome aboard Damien “dggoddard” Goddard of LetsGoDU! (one of the inspirations for Brett and I starting to blog our respective team) to the College Hockey News staff. He’s been weighing in on a wasted Ivy League scandal and long distance romances in the WCHA in his new column the Penalty Box, which we’re sure will be awesome.

A quick shout-out to Terrier Hockey covering Boston University and the Hockey East Blog which have both recently joined the blogosphere. It’s good to see more eastern schools getting involved in something that was previously reserved for parts of the country that win NCAA championships. Brutal? Yes sir! Regardless we hope to see more and more schools featuring some of that sweet sweet blogging action.