UMaine men’s hockey coach Ben Barr watches players run through drills during an Oct. 1 practice at the Alfond Arena in Orono. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer

Maine Trust for Local News sports columnist Travis Lazarczyk is a voter in the U.S. College Hockey Online men’s poll. Each week, he’ll share his top 20, as well as hit on a few items of interest in the sport.

With the last poll of the regular season, some movement in and around the top 10:

1. Boston College
2. Michigan State
3. Western Michigan
4. Maine
5. Minnesota
6. Denver
7. UConn
8. Boston University
9. Providence
10. Penn State
11. UMass
12. Ohio State
13. Arizona State
14. Minnesota State
15. Quinnipiac
16. Michigan
17. Clarkson
18. North Dakota
19. Omaha
20. Holy Cross

Maine earns No. 2 seed. On Friday, the Black Bears played their worst game of the season in a 5-1 loss to UMass. Maine rallied for a 2-2 tie Saturday to end the regular season. Friday’s loss eliminated any chance the Black Bears had to overtake Boston College for the top seed in the Hockey East tournament. Still, Maine earned its highest seed since 2006, when it also was the two seed. Maine’s opponent Saturday night at Alfond Arena will be determined with Wednesday first-round matchups: No. 11 Vermont at No. 6 UMass, No. 10 New Hampshire at No. 7 UMass Lowell, and No. 9 Northeastern at No. 8 Merrimack. Following those games, the lowest remaining team will play at Boston College on Saturday, while the next to lowest remaining team will travel to Orono. Despite the lopsided loss to UMass on Friday, I kept Maine at No. 4 overall, in part because Hockey East has been a meat grinder of a league all season, and in part because of what happened elsewhere around the country…

Fun with the PairWise: By losing in the first round of the Big Ten tournament to Notre Dame, Minnesota dropped to No. 4 in the PairWise rankings used by the NCAA to seed the tournament. The Gophers could very well have played themselves out of one of the four top seeds by failing to at least reach the conference semifinals. The biggest benefactor so far to Minnesota’s slip is Maine, which jumped from No. 4 to No. 3 in the PairWise despite the loss to UMass. The Minutemen were No. 12 before this weekend and on the NCAA tournament bubble. Now, UMass is tied for 10th with Ohio State and in a more secure spot for the tournament. That gives Hockey East six of the top 11 of the PairWise, meaning half the conference is in good shape to make the NCAA tournament.

Penn State is making a run: The Nittany Lions are getting hot at the right time. Penn State is 8-1-1 in its last 10 games and swept Michigan in the first round of the Big Ten tournament last weekend. The Nittany Lions are now No. 12 in the PairWise rankings. I have them No. 10 on my ballot this week, and probably had them too low in recent weeks. On the other hand, Michigan almost certainly played itself out of the NCAA tournament with the losses to Penn State. The Wolverines are now No. 14 in the PairWise rankings. Given that a few spots in the field will go to automatic qualifiers outside the top 16 that win their conference tournaments, Michigan’s bubble appears ready to burst.

Conference tournament games worth keeping an eye on: Three leagues: the ECAC, Atlantic Hockey Association, and Central Collegiate Hockey Association, look like one-bid conferences when it comes to the NCAA tournament. The AHA holds best-of-3 semifinals this weekend, with No. 5 Army at No. 1 Holy Cross, and No. 3 Bentley at No. 2 Sacred Heart. The CCHA single elimination semifinals feature No. 7 Bemidji State at No. 1 Minnesota State and No. 4 Bowling Green at No. 3 St. Thomas. In the ECAC, the co-favorites are top seed Quinnipiac and No. 2 Clarkson. Quinnipiac hosts No. 8 Brown Friday, while Clarkson hosts No. 7 Harvard in best-of-3 quarterfinal series. In the Big Ten semifinals this weekend, No. 7 Notre Dame is at No. 1 Michigan State, with No. 5 Penn State at No. 3 Ohio State.