Thanksgiving break has ended, and with Christmastime right around the corner, the first part of the college hockey season is wrapping up.
Since no article was released over Thanksgiving, this week’s issue features the matchups of the past two weeks, with rankings coming from when the matchup occurred.
The first week kicked off Thursday with a matchup between No. 17 UMass and No. 15 Providence in a home and home concluding Saturday. UMass’s Mikey DeAngelo won his team the first game in overtime, with Providence taking game two 5-1.
Despite the series split, Providence dominated the shot game, outshooting UMass 49-30 and 45-20.
No. 11 UConn and New Hampshire played a home-and-home. UConn took game one 4-1, and UNH came back down 3-1 in game two to win 4-3.
New Hampshire outshot UConn by 15 in game one, making it a huge statement series for the Wildcats between the two games.
No. 10 Maine travelled to No. 15 Boston College for a two-game set, with BC taking game one in a dominant 7-3 final. Maine answered with a shutout performance from Mathis Rousseau to win 3-0.
No. 12 Northeastern and No. 18 Boston University played a home-and-home as well. Northeastern did not have star goaltender Lawton Zacher in net either night, making this series a great opportunity to prove that they’re more than just their goalie.
Northeastern’s Joe Connor scored late in game one to win 3-2, and the Huskies tied it up with a minute to go in game two as well, though Cole Hutson won that one for BU in overtime.
The Huskies were outshot significantly in both outings, but two great performances from Quentin Sigurdson guided them to the win. Though the question remains about the rest of their teams’ strength, it’s hard to argue with two goaltenders playing at such a high level.
Merrimack took on Long Island University for a singular game, with the Warriors winning 6-2.
Vermont hosted Harvard for a lone matchup, and despite only allowing 14 shots on net, the Catamounts fell 5-1.
Last week featured no conference matchups in Hockey East, with quite a few one-off games for some teams.
Last week began with a Tuesday matchup in Hartford between No. 12 UConn and Stonehill, with a 4-3 Stonehill shootout victory that goes down as a draw in the standings. CHL transfer forward Carlin Dezainde recorded three points for the Huskies.
Wednesday featured Notre Dame and Merrimack in an evenly matched game that the Fighting Irish took 5-4.
No. 15 Boston College also hosted ND, though they’d win the game 5-3 driven by a James Hagens hat trick.
The undefeated No. 13 Dartmouth hosted two Hockey East teams in Vermont and Merrimack, and the Big Green stayed undefeated with wins of 7-2 and 1-0 respectively.
No. 16 Providence visited Colorado College in a two-game set, falling 3-2 in game one but finding redemption with a 3-2 victory Saturday.
UMass Lowell partook in the Adirondack Winter Invitational in Lake Placid, N.Y., which this year featured Lowell, Alaska Fairbanks, Clarkson and St. Lawrence.
Lowell came up short in the first set of games, falling 2-0 to Clarkson and moving the River Hawks to the consolation game against St. Lawrence. A dominant 7-3 performance headlined by a Dalyn Wakely hat trick gave Lowell third place in the tournament, which Alaska Fairbanks would go on to win over Clarkson.
No. 11 Northeastern hosted Brown, taking them down 4-1 in another great performance by Sigurdson.
New Hampshire visited Bently for a single game where Kyle Chauvette’s shutout performance drove a 3-0 UNH win.
No. 18 Massachusetts faced off against Army, looking to survive another week in the rankings. But Army didn’t make things easy for the Minutemen, as the game was tied 4-4 and looked like overtime.
Army forward Brent Keefer had other plans, scoring with less than four seconds remaining to finish a 5-4 upset.
No. 19 Boston University and No. 17 Cornell faced off in their biennial Red Hot Hockey game in Madison Square Garden, as BU looked to win their first game of the series since the 2013 season, though BU has proven triumphant in all three of their NCAA tournament meetings in that span.
The Terriers pulled through a tightly contested bout, taking it 2-1 and finally reclaiming victory in the Garden.
For the first time since March of 2022, no Hockey East member is ranked in the top ten nationally. The conference hasn’t held up well enough against non-conference opponents, and the elites have fallen to the conference’s bottom far too many times. As it currently stands, Northeastern and the conference tournament winner would be the only representatives in the NCAA tournament if the season ended today, per NPI rankings.
This week, New Hampshire heads up to No. 11 Maine for a two-game set while Vermont heads to No. 18 BU for a series of their own.
No. 14 UConn takes on Merrimack in a home-and-home, as will No. 15 Boston College and UMass Lowell.
Now-unranked Massachusetts and No. 12 Northeastern play a series in Boston that’ll begin Saturday and finish on Sunday.