Maine Trust for Local News sports columnist Travis Lazarczyk is a voter in the USCHO.com men’s hockey poll. Each week he will share his top 20 votes, as well as hit on a few items of interest in the sport.
A little shuffling in my vote this week, with parity seemingly the buzzword for the start of the college hockey season.
- Michigan State
- Western Michigan
- Michigan
- Penn State
- Denver
- Boston University
- North Dakota
- Quinnipiac
- UConn
- Maine
- Boston College
- Minnesota-Duluth
- Minnesota State
- Colorado College
- Providence
- Ohio State
- UMass
- Wisconsin
- Cornell
- Northeastern
Maine is up and down, like others. The Black Bears, who are ranked 12th in the national vote this week, split two games with Colgate this weekend, falling 3-2 on Friday before Saturday’s come-from-behind 3-2 overtime win. It was more of the same for the Black Bears, who at times looked like they could compete for a national title and at times like they would struggle against anybody. But through the first few weeks of the season, that’s the case for a lot of teams. A week after shutting out Maine, Quinnipiac lost to Merrimack. Penn State eked out a pair of close wins over Stonehill. It’s not unusual that Boston University split atwo games with UConn, but the Huskies scored eight goals against the Terriers in an 8-4 win Friday. Denver took a 7-3 win at Boston College, only to follow it up with a 1-0 loss at Northeastern the next night.
Maybe it’s the influx of major junior players that’s made this season so unpredictable. Traditionally, college hockey has played a much more defensive style than the junior leagues. Maine is one of the leaders nationally, with nine former junior players, and it’s an adjustment. For the Black Bears, and every team with a number of junior players, how quickly that adjustment is made could be the difference as the season progresses.
The schedule cares not for your growing pains. The Black Bears jump into Hockey East play this weekend at Alfond Arena against Boston University, one of its biggest rivals for the conference title.
Michigan comes in 1-2-3. I kept Michigan State at No. 1 this week after the Spartans swept Northern Michigan. Defending national champion Western Michigan and Michigan split a pair of games, so I put the Broncos at No. 2 and the Wolverines at No. 3 (in the overall vote it went Michigan State, Michigan, Western Michigan). Michigan State won’t play again until a Nov. 7 game against Penn State. Western Michigan plays at St. Cloud State this weekend while Michigan heads to Notre Dame.
Welcome the Ivy League. While the rest of Division I has been playing for almost a month, the Ivy League schools, which compete in the ECAC for hockey, begin this weekend. I have Cornell ranked No. 19, and the Big Red open the season at UMass.
