NORTH ANDOVER, Mass. — Vermont goaltender Mike Santaguida hasn’t played since Dec. 5, when he suffered an undisclosed injury against Boston University. He’ll make his return in tonight’s regular-season finale, when the Catamounts travel to Merrimack College, needing a win to clinch home ice in the Hockey East playoffs.

Santaguida dressed for the first time in almost three months last night, backing up freshman Packy Munson. The Catamounts fell behind 3-0 before eventually losing, 4-1, to the Warriors.

On the season, Santaguida has a 2.70 goals-against average and a .911 save percentage, including a 4-9-2 record as a starter. Munson was 8-9-1 between the pipes, posting a 2.40 goals-against average and a .917 save percentage.

Santaguida returned to skating a little more than a month ago, and has been practicing with the team. WPTZ’s Jack Korte reported earlier this week that Santaguida would dress, but UVM head coach Kevin Sneddon said he “might not play” this weekend.

ORONO, Maine — For 48:48, Merrimack and Maine played scoreless hockey on Saturday night at Alfond Arena.

Then, the floodgates opened.

Five goals in the final 13 minutes, including overtime, saw the Black Bears take a 3-2 win from the Warriors on senior night. Daniel Perez scored the game-winner for Maine after Merrimack struck twice with an extra attacker inside of the final two minutes.

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Maine at Notre Dame — Maine hits the road after getting swept by Providence last weekend, while Notre Dame is looking to put together a new unbeaten streak, after Boston College snapped the longest streak in the nation two weeks ago. The Irish got back on track with a sweep over Vermont last weekend.

During a stretch of 15 games where the Irish have gone 11-1-3, goaltender Cal Petersen has a .946 save percentage.

For Maine, much of any success rest of season will come down to how well its goaltender plays. In overall games (not just conference games), Maine’s 1.93 goals per game is worst in Hockey East. Last weekend, in a 1-0 overtime loss to Providence, Matt Morris made 50 saves to almost earn Maine a point, despite the Black Bears getting almost doubled-up in shot attempts, 85-45 (75-39 at even strength).

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The Minnesota State coaching job is officially open for business after the school reassigned Troy Jutting Sunday evening. At a press conference this morning, Athletic Director Kevin Buisman said people have already inquired about the position. He says they will move quickly to fill the position.

I have no reason to think otherwise. Shane Frederick of the Mankato Free Press, who is the man to follow in this pursuit (@puckato on Twitter), also thinks it would behoove the Mavericks to move quickly on this. And if there really is a shortlist, this thing could get done by the end of the month.

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A lot has been said by fans over the years about the job done by now-former Minnesota State coach Troy Jutting.

Some have been supportive. Some have been critical. Some have been ridiculously critical. Ask Shane Frederick of the Mankato Free Press. Moderating his live blog on game nights has become a bigger and bigger chore for him over the years.

Calling for a coach’s job is nothing new. Since the advent of talk radio and message boards on the internet, it’s become almost customary. Heck, as a sophomore at Minnesota State, I once wrote an editorial calling for Jutting’s job. I even named guys I would replace him with.

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If there was any doubt about St. Cloud State’s goaltending situation before St. Cloud State’s 4-3 win over No. 1 Minnesota Friday night, there sure isn’t much anymore.

After an injury to SCSU’s Mike Lee last month — an injury which will likely cost the junior his season — the Huskies were forced to turn things over to Ryan Faragher, a freshman from Fort Frances, Ont. via the North American Hockey League.

And the freshman has responded.

“When Mike went down, we didn’t really know what was going to happen,” admitted junior forward David Eddy, who had three assists Friday. “But he’s stepped up huge. Bigger than we expected. He makes saves where you’re just like ‘Wow, how did he do that?’ He made a couple of those tonight.”

Faragher playing well has become somewhat redundant in the Granite City. It seems to be a topic that comes up for head coach Bob Motzko each week.

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A bit of a different look at Friday’s rivalry game between Minnesota and North Dakota.

THE BOTTOM LINE

At the University of Minnesota’s media day Wednesday, Gopher captain Taylor Matson predicted a “bloodbath.”

And while the blood wasn’t necessarily flowing, the Gophers and North Dakota combined for 69 minutes in penalties Friday (29 penalties in all) in a 2-0 Minnesota victory at Mariucci Arena, with much of the action coming in a rough second period.

Seth Ambroz got the festivities started with a five minute major for contact to the head just 30 seconds into the middle frame, although he also checked UND captain Mario Lamoureaux from behind. Minnesota killed the five minute UND power play however, and according to numerous players and coaches after the game, that was the turning point.

Tied 0-0 at the time, the major penalty seemed to stir the emotions a bit, and at 11:47, feelings boiled over as a melee ensued, sending 3 players from each team to the box. North Dakota got the extra 2 minutes though, setting up a Gopher power play. Minnesota took advantage as Nick Bjugstad scored what amounted to the game winner with the extra attacker on.

The Gophers got a separation goal with 8 minutes and change remaining in regulation when Nick Larson’s pass sent Tom Serratore in on Aaron Dell for a breakaway. The sophomore buried his second goal of the season to make it 2-0.

For the night, Minnesota outshot North Dakota 32-24. It was a historic night for Gopher goalie Kent Patterson, as the senior secured his fifth shutout of the season — tying a school record set by Robb Stauber in 1987-88. Just nine games into the year, Patterson may have a couple chances to break that record this season.

Stauber, by the way, won the Hobey Baker Award that season.

AROUND THE LOCKER ROOM

On Patterson tying the shutout record

• “Our team has been doing a great job of letting me see pucks,” Patterson said. “I’m going to have to make a few big saves every once in a while, but guys are back checking through the middle and picking up guys so they aren’t getting those opportunities.”

• “I enjoy each and every day. When I do get a shutout, great, but you have to take the good with the bad.” Patterson said. “I just have to make sure I come to the rink everyday preparing for each game individually, and take my game day by day.”

• “He’s something special, he gives us a chance to win each and every night,” Matson said. “He does all the little things right and everything is going well for him right now.”

On getting the separation goal

• “That was great to see, especially off the face off,” Patterson said. “Tom works hard. He had a huge blocked shot at the beginning of the game. He deserved that goal, he worked his butt off.”

• “We’ve been doing a great job of scoring first this season, but that second goal was huge for us,” Matson said. “Especially off the face off, we’ve been stressing intensity off the face off this season, so it was big to get that goal from our fourth line.”

• “We didn’t have a lot of breakdowns, but that was one of them,” said UND head coach Dave Hakstol. “They took advantage of it.”

On the intensity and atmosphere

• “It was the type of game we expected. It was hard hitting, it was physical, it was blocked shots, it was goaltending. The game was settling in and you knew it was going to be a low scoring game,” said Gophers head coach Don Lucia. ”

• “These games are pretty special to us, there was a lot more hitting, a lot more intensity. The atmosphere was something special to be apart of here tonight,” Matson said.

On killing the UND 5×3 power play in the second period

• “I think the pivotal moment for us was that 5-on-3,” Lucia said. “It was a 0-0 game and we were able to get a little bit of momentum from our [penalty] kill.”

• “It was a huge momentum boost, especially when the crowd gets into it like that,” Patterson said. “It gets our bench going and gave our guys a momentum boost.”

IN OTHER ACTION FROM AROUND THE LEAGUE
Michigan Tech 1, Minnesota State 0
St. Cloud State 7, Wisconsin 2
Nebraska-Omaha 7, Colorado College 5
Denver 3, Minnesota Duluth 3 (OT)
Bemidji State 3, Lake Superior State 2 (OT)

This is a great article about a very unfortunate topic:

http://www.mercurynews.com/sharks/ci_17245875

From the San Jose Mercury-News … It confirms something not explicitly stated at the time — that former Harvard star Tom Cavanagh committed suicide. It goes into details of his mental deterioration and schizophrenia that he hid for a long time but became more acute over the last year.

I remember Tom Cavanagh’s time at Harvard, and he was everything that the article says — an “honest” player, a hard worker, whose play “exceeded his skill.”

I seem to be in the minority among hockey “purists” about the Phoenix NHL situation, and about Sun Belt hockey in general. They seem to ally with the cause of Canadians who lament the NHL’s Southward drift, at the expense of old-school NHL places like Winnipeg and Quebec, and perhaps new ones like Hamilton.

But, perhaps because I have seen the boon to college hockey in recent years, I don’t look at it that way. All you have to do is take a quantitative look at college hockey rosters over the last 10 years to see the impact of the game being grown in non-traditional places. First it was places like Long Island and Pittsburgh that started getting more and more college players on the rosters. But then it becames places like Washington, then Texas just exploded, followed by the Carolinas and California, and yes, even Phoenix.

The Phoenix franchise itself might stink on the ice, but they could’ve stunk anywhere. (And let’s not forget — Winnipeg and Quebec were not NHL cities until 1980.)

The fact that NHL commissioner Gary Bettman gets so roundly booed everywhere he goes in a clueless reaction, I think, on the part of most fans. I don’t even think they know what they’re booing. It’s like the Canadians who boo the American anthem.

Recently Bettman met with the NHL Players’ Association, and I found it refreshing that player rep Michael Peca (a Canadian) chose a contrarian viewpoint to many of his fellow players.

“I actually share a lot of the feelings that the commissioner conveyed about the Phoenix situation,” Peca told ESPN.com. “When you’ve got a kid that plays hockey and you know hockey’s their life, you don’t want to ever see that taken away. You’ve got to build roots in communities.

“It’s easy to transplant a team into Toronto or Southern Ontario and it would succeed, but there’s a growing base of kids that are playing hockey and in minor hockey systems that are thriving now in these communities that you don’t want to rip away. It’s a touchy thing and hopefully those organizations work out.”

Here here to that.

Changes in the NHL overtime system have led to more games going to overtime. Link here.

In 2000, the National Hockey League began rewarding teams for ties at the end of regulation by granting a point in the league standings to teams that lose in overtime. That makes overtime games worth one more point than other games, because winners of any game get two points. In the nine seasons since that rule change, the probability of games going to overtime has increased by 21% compared with the nine seasons before the change, according to Justin Kubatko, vice president of Sports Reference LLC, as teams have scrambled to hold on for overtime and the guaranteed point it confers.