In the CCHA, which used to be the WCHA for both men and women, it couldn’t be more competitive. Bemidji State leads with 37 points on an 11-7-2 record; St. Thomas and Bowling Green are tied with 35 points and identical 11-8-1 records. Minnesota State Mankato also has 35 points and an 11-7-2 record. 

This weekend, things could get straightened out a bit — or even more tangled — in the CCHA when Bemidji State faces two games at St. Thomas, while Lake Superior State invades Mankato, Michigan Tech is at Bowling Green and Northern Michigan at Ferris State.

In the Big Ten, Minnesota stumbled at Notre Dame, but came back from a 6-1 embarrassment to gain a 3-2 overtime victory in the rematch when Jaxon Nelson scored late to tie it, and Jimmy Snuggerud scored at 1:18 of overtime to win it.

Nevertheless, Minnesota’s stretch of 9-1-1 was broken, as was the Gophers hope to vault up into the top spot in the conference. At 12-6-4, the third-place Gophers have 37 points to stay ahead of Notre Dame, but they still trail first-place Michigan State (46 points, 14-4-2 record) and second-place Wisconsin (13-6-1, 39 points). The Gophers are idle this weekend, while last-place Ohio State heads for Michigan State after ruining Wisconsin’s title hopes with 3-2 overtime and 3-1 victories for the Buckeyes last weekend.

The NCHC, meanwhile, which had some struggles early, has now settled into its usual position as the nation’s best conference. The top five teams could legitimately feel as though they could win any other conference in the country. Those top five are North Dakota, St. Cloud State, Colorado College, Denver and Western Michigan, and they are all bunched within eight points.

Rough weekend for UMD vs. Denver
Minnesota Duluth isn’t among the NCHC title-chasers this season, but if they can pull all their loose ends together for the final six regular-season games, the Bulldogs may well decide who wins it. The Bulldogs languish in seventh place after being swept 5-4 in overtime and 5-2 by Denver last weekend at AMSOIL Arena. While Denver looked like the best team any hockey fans in Duluth have seen this year, they trail the leaders: North Dakota (11-6-1, 37 points), St. Cloud State (10-4-4, 36 points) and surprising Colorado College (12-6, 33 points). Denver is 11-6-1 with 31 points.

UMD, having lost twice to powerful Denver, now finishes the regular season at North Dakota this weekend, at Colorado College and back home against St. Cloud State. How’s that for a playoff tuneup?

Last Friday night’s game might have been the most entertaining and exciting games of the season for the Bulldogs who, if they didn’t have their torturous loose ends together, they pulled them together in that wild finish with two goals after pulling goaltender Zach Stejskal to tie the game 4-4 — only to fall on a goal by Aidan Thompson at 1:46 of the 3-on-3 overtime.

The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, all within about four minutes of elapsed time.

The loose ends came back to haunt UMD Saturday night, after another similar rally seemed to lift the Bulldogs from a horrible three-goal opening deficit fashioned in a shaky first seven minutes, to self-destructing when two of their promising scorers — Ben Steeves and Anthony Menghini — wound up sharing penalty box time for misconduct penalties through the final minutes to eliminate any chance of continuing the rally.

It was, in a word, embarrassing. That, after an embarrassing start of three goals on five shots that caused coach Scott Sandelin to pull Stejskal and send in Matthew Thiessen.

“And you know what the most embarrassing thing was?” Sandelin said, challenging three media types who showed up after the game. “That stuff at the end. Having two guys sitting there for mouthing off. It’s frustrating, and I get it, but I’m sorry, if they don’t learn it’s not going to bode well for us. You don’t disrespect the team.”

And with that, Sandelin stalked away from the podium. Press conference over.

That Saturday night, UMD’s fire was extinguished early when Zeev Buium scored on the first shot of the first shift, at 0:31, and Connor Caponi shoveled in a backhander at 5:25. Jared Wright got loose on the right boards and flew in to score short-side on his breakaway for a 3-0 lead at 6:39. Shots were 5-5, but the score was 3-0 Denver, and the crowd was silent. Thiessen was sent in to tend goal, and he was sharp immediately, and made saves on all eight shots the rest of the first period.

Denver took a 5-2 lead in the third period, and the air went out of the balloon. At 9:57 of the third period, it got worse. That’s when Menghini, who has scored seven goals as a freshman, was called for checking from behind. Menghini said something to the ref, and was given a 10-minute misconduct, too. Sandelin sent Steeves over to serve the minor, and it ended just as a whistle blew. Steeves skated out and, as he passed the ref, he made a comment. Bang! He also was awarded a 10-minute misconduct, with eight minutes to go.

Losing the chance to make one last bid to win was too much for Sandelin, and while he has defended his players all season, he blew up this time, although UMD’s dressing room full of players might have been a better audience than the three-person media contingent that showed up after the game.

UMD women’s hockey close to home-ice advantage
Meanwhile, on the women’s front, UMD had a more beneficial answer to the women’s WCHA run to the playoffs. Needing three points to clinch home ice for the first round, the Bulldogs edged St. Cloud State 1-0 on Clara Van Wieren’s goal at 4:33 of the third period, and goalie Hailey MacLeod held on for the victory by that score. Playing as afternoon preliminaries to the UMD men, the Bulldogs played another amazing battle with St. Cloud on Saturday, this time going 0-0 through all three periods and overtime, and sending the game to a shootout to be decided.

Goalies Jojo Chobak of the Huskies and freshman Eve Gascon of UMD were brilliant throughout, but when the shootout started, everybody scored! Hanna Baskin scored for UMD; Emma Gentry scored for the Huskies. Van Wieren scored for UMD; Laura Zimmermann matched it for St. Cloud. Then Olivia Wallin skated in but was stopped by Chobak, putting all the pressure on Finnish freshman Sofianna Sundelin, who scored on Gascon and gave the extra point to the Huskies.

In what might be a brilliant political PR performance, UMD’s MacLeod was named goaltender of the week by the WCHA for her first-game performance, overlooking Chobak’s two-game performance, stopping 28 of 29 shots in the first game and all 39 shots the Bulldogs pelted her with in the second, for a weekend tally of 57 saves on 58 shots.

UMD coach Maura Crowell admitted she was pleasantly surprised that her sophomore goalie got the award, but added Chobak’s cumulative two-game performance deserved something.

UMD senior center Mannon McMahon was cited for playing in her 164th and 165th consecutive games over an illustrious five-season career, and she admitted stopping the game to acknowledge her achievement was “a special moment.”

More importantly, the Bulldogs will play at Minnesota this weekend, after which UMD and St. Cloud will reconvene at AMSOIL Arena next weekend for the first round of the best-of-three WCHA playoffs. And the Huskies, after very impressive performances in both games of last weekend’s series, will not be bothered by not having home ice.

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When the University of Minnesota concluded its interconference rivalry series against Minnesota Duluth in early November, the Bulldogs rallied from a 3-1 deficit in AMSOIL Arena with a spirited third-period rally, which forced overtime. Nobody scored in the overtime, so the game went to a three-player shootout, which UMD won when Quinn Olson and Ben Steeves scored and UMD goaltender Matthew Thiessen stopped the first two Golden Gopher shooters, giving UMD a 4-3 victory in the game.

But that was in the view of all the players on both sides, and the 7,345 fans who saw UMD bounce back from a 5-1 loss in Minneapolis the previous evening to gain a split with their long-time rival. That’s what they saw happen in front of them, so that’s what they took home with them, even though the NCAA counts the game as a tie, for purposes of nationwide rankings.

No matter, Minnesota coach Bob Motzko treated the loss as though it had been a tie game, which is the same attitude he had after the Gophers lost shootouts against Michigan and at UMD. The fans and players know better, of course, but they also know that sometimes what you see is not what you get.

College hockey lives in its own world, and in Minnesota, we’re lucky to have six Division I programs and they participate in three of the best college hockey conferences in the country with the NCHC, Big Ten and the CCHA. Plus, we have the WCHA that is now strictly for women’s hockey. The NCAA leaves it up to the leagues to decide how to treat their ties, and they can award an important extra point to a shootout winner. But in non-conference games, it is closer to mass confusion.

You could make the case that if we as observers aren’t sure what rules they’re going by, maybe the coaches and the officials of the different conferences aren’t sure, either.

Hailey MacLeod was engulfed by her teammates after recording her first UMD shutout, 3-0. She came back to anchor a 1-1 tie in the second game. (MHM Photo / John Gilbert)

UMD women have strong showing vs. No. 2 Colgate
We can gather a unique bit of evidence at Duluth’s AMSOIL Arena, where the UMD women’s team last weekend was host to Colgate, the No. 2 team in the nation which brought a 12-game winning streak to the Head of the Lakes. UMD played its best game of the season, winning the first game 3-0 behind Hailey MacLeod’s first shutout for the Bulldogs.

In the second game, Colgate played much more intense. But UMD turned it up, too, and took a 1-0 lead into the third period. After their second straight strong showing, the Bulldogs seemed ready to clinch the sweep when Colgate’s Kristýna Kaltounková was penalized at 18:58 of the the third period.

A power play for the final 1:02 seemed to secure the victory. But in the last-minute scrap for possession behind their own net, the Bulldogs botched the breakout control, and the puck suddenly popped out to the right circle. Red Raiders right defenseman Allyson Simpson read the play perfectly, moved in from the right point and got her full force on a shot that MacLeod couldn’t block.

The stunning tie defied the five-minute, 3-on-3 overtime, so it was time for a shootout. But as the few fans waited for what would be the highlight of the game, the teams broke off into handshake lines and headed for their dressing rooms, and left the game unsettled at 1-1.

“It’s the choice of the home team,” said UMD coach Maura Crowell. “We don’t have to have one, and it’s up to the home team. I didn’t like the way the game was going at the end, so we chose to not have the shootout.”

St. Cloud State men’s team hosts Michigan 
Let’s switch our attention to the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center in St. Cloud, with the only remaining full Olympic-size 200-by-100 foot ice surface. The Huskies had come out of a tough preseason stretch and welcomed Michigan to town last weekend. The Wolverines had earlier lost a shootout to Ohio State and beaten Minnesota in another. Michigan beat the Huskies 2-0 in the first game and grabbed a 3-0 lead in the second game. 

Colgate’s Allyson Simpson (10) scored the only Red Raiders goal of the weekend against UMD goaltender Hailey MacLeod, shorthanded with 44 seconds remaining, for a 1-1 tie that fueled a debate about mandatory shootouts. (MHM Photo / John Gilbert)

“I thought we played really good all weekend,” said St. Cloud State coach Brett Larson. “We hit a pipe and three crossbars the first game and just couldn’t put one in.”

In that second game, Veeti Miettinen scored a shorthanded goal to cut the deficit to 3-1 late in the second period, and Kyler Kupka scored a power-play goal early in the third to trim it to 3-2. With the goalie pulled at the finish, Kupka scored again with 0:07 remaining, sending the big crowd into a frenzy and forcing overtime. Five minutes, 3-on-3, and still 3-3. Time for a shootout, and each team scored. Kupka scored yet again for the winner.

“In conference play, you get an extra point,” Larson said. “In non-conference, you get nothing, but everybody on both teams and all the fans in the building knew that we won the game.”

I told Larson what had just transpired in the Duluth women’s game, where Crowell said she didn’t want to have a shootout and as home team coach, her decision ruled.

“We were told we had no choice,” Larson said. “We were told we had to have a shootout against Michigan. But here’s a crazy thing: A few weeks ago we played in Mankato, and Luke Strand, their coach, and I talked it over and said we had to agree. So we agreed that if we tied, we would have a shootout. As it turned out, we did tie the second game but they beat us in overtime.”

So, incredible as it may sound, three distinct games involving St. Cloud State’s men and UMD’s women exposed three completely different concepts of how to decide a tie game. And nobody seems to be prepared to change what they did. Well, except for UMD.

“I had long conversation with our commissioner of the WCHA,” Crowell said. “She told me we had to have the shootout and should have had it against Colgate. I told her I never understood it that way, but we’ll do it from now on.”

That’s a relief. So from now on, college coaches realize they can have the glass have full, or the glass half empty, but they no longer can tip the glass over and leave the result spilling onto the floor.

Coming up
UMD’s women, who just ran a gauntlet by facing Minnesota and Colgate on back to back series, heads for Wisconsin and a rare Saturday-Sunday series against the league-favorite Badgers. While Minnesota is at home trying to avert an upset against Bemidji State. Two other Minnesota rivals, Minnesota State Mankato and St. Thomas, will play a home-and-home series. St. Cloud State hits the road to face No. 1 ranked Ohio State in Columbus.

The men are scattered around, too, with Minnesota at Penn State for a Big Ten series, St. Thomas is at Ferris State in a CCHA series, while MSU-Mankato is at Lake Superior State in another. UMD comes back from a bye week to play host to Omaha.

The Gophers have found consistency an elusive target this season, and they found out Michigan State was for real in the Big Ten last weekend when they lost 4-3 in a shootout opener on Friday. They had a 5-3 lead at Mariucci Arena on Sunday afternoon, but the Spartans came back for two in the last five minutes to forge a 5-5 tie. This time, Jimmy Clark scored at 3:58 of the sudden-death, five-minute overtime to lift the Gophers to a 6-5 victory.

The first game? Forget it. That was a shootout, when the Gophers built leads of 1-0, 2-1 and 3-2, only to have the Spartans come back for a tie, then won it in overtime. Or was it a tie. It was both, depending on your point of view and the rules used that night.

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The University of Minnesota, for example, has a backlog of traditional rivals that go back to Michigan, Michigan State and North Dakota from the early days of college hockey. More recently, the expansion of Division I college hockey teams within Minnesota has led to ferocious rivalries mainly with the University of Minnesota Duluth, and still more recently, Wisconsin and St. Cloud State, along with Minnesota State Mankato and Bemidji State, and St. Thomas arriving on the DI scene.

By going into the Big Ten Conference, the Gophers pretty well forfeited the intensity of the rivalries with North Dakota, UMD and the other in-state colleges, in exchange for keeping Wisconsin and renewing acquaintances with Michigan and Michigan State. Another thing that is certain is that even if the Gophers don’t consider some of those in-state foes as huge rivals, all of them point to the Gophers as the team they most want to beat.

Gophers goaltender Justen Close got the tip of his pad on this shot by UMD’s Luke Bast (38). (MHM Photo / John Gilbert)

In the middle of November, the Gophers can’t take a weekend off from running a gauntlet of those big rivalries. After a banner season that ended as the NCAA Frozen Four runner-up, the Gophers enjoyed some early weeks as the No. 1-ranked team in the country — despite the signing of five defensemen and three prize forwards that are, frankly, impossible to replace.

The Gophers opened with tune-up victories over Bemidji State and a pair against St.Thomas — including a breathtaking 6-5 overtime win in their season opener against the Tommies. Then things got serious, as Minnesota split a series at North Dakota, then returned to 3M Arena at Mariucci and felt the sting of a pair of setbacks pinned on them by Wisconsin, 5-2 and 3-2.

That set up last weekend’s home-and-home series against UMD, which began under a cloak of emotion as the teams paid pregame tributes both nights to Adam Johnson, a quick and skilled center who played for Hibbing/Chisholm and UMD. Johnson died Oct. 28 after a tragic incident during a game in England when an opponent’s skate made contact with Johnson’s neck.

Tributes have been constant from all around the world, and a celebration of life for Johnson was held in Hibbing earlier this week. Without a doubt, the emotional drain for the Bulldogs left them running on empty for their first game against the Gophers last weekend, losing 5-1 at Mariucci to the speedy Gophers.

The next night, the rivalry shifted to Duluth where UMD rebounded with a 4-3 shootout victory at AMSOIL Arena, which the NCAA counts as a tie. Both games were sellouts, with more than 10,000 at Mariucci and 7,345 at AMSOIL.

Time for a breather? It would be nice, but the Gophers go right to Ann Arbor to face Michigan. For any team, facing North Dakota, Wisconsin’s rejuvenated Badgers, UMD and Michigan on consecutive weekends should earn a trip to Acapulco. But not in the crazy world of college hockey’s biggest rivalries.

“We knew it would be a tough series against Duluth,” said Gopher coach Bob Motzko, after the Bulldogs came back from a lethargic first game for a high-speed and intense rematch. “We knew they’d be better in the second game. And we’re not close to getting into our offensive rhythm yet. They had a quick start and we took two really bad penalties. On the road, you have to be disciplined.”

Rhett Pitlick continues his flight as UMD secures shootout victory. (MHM Photo / John Gilbert)

Back-and-forth between Gophers, Bulldogs
UMD, on the other hand, is also rebuilding a bit, and the experience gained early by the Bulldogs, who started off 3-0-2 with both of the ties being shootout wins, got another shot at the game-deciding plan, which counts for an extra point in league play but is only for deciding official ties in interleague play.

In the second game of the weekend between UMD and the Gophers, the Bulldogs’ Jack Smith scored his first collegiate goal for a 1-0 lead, but Jimmy Snuggerud tied it with his sixth goal of the season for Minnesota. Midway through the second period, Snuggerud took a cross-checking penalty in front of UMD’s goal — one of the bad penalties Motzko later referred to. It was made worse when UMD’s Cole Spicer showed the merits of getting a chance to center the first line and drilled a power-play goal to regain the lead at 2-1. Minnesota again tied it, when Aaron Huglen scored a power-play goal after UMD coach Scott Sandelin might have had a gripe about the hooking penalty Kyler Kleven was assessed to create that Minnesota power play.

Minnesota took a 3-2 lead when Jaxon Nelson scored later in the second period, which ended with Connor Kurth took a last-minute penalty for hooking. The overlapping power play gave UMD’s top sniper, Ben Steeves, a small opening, which was all he needed to drill a perfect pass to the top of the right circle from Luke Loheit at 0:53 of the third period for a 3-3 tie. It stayed deadlocked through to the end of regulation and 3-on-3 overtime, which was mostly 4-on-3 because Minnesota’s Rhett Pitlick was called for an extra man, and then UMD’s Carter Loney was called for tripping Snuggerud as he tried to break out of the Minnesota end to give the Gophers the extra skater.

But repeated blocks of Gopher missiles and some huge saves by UMD goaltender Matthew Thiessen held the tie, and it was on to the shootout, where Thiessen again was the star. Brett Olson skated in and beat Gophers netminder Justen Close inside the left post on the first try, and Thiessen made a big save on Brody Lamb at the other end. Steeves then skated in and whistled a shot past Close on the second UMD try, so when Thiessen went down and stacked the pads to block Pitlick’s shot and send him flying across the crease, UMD had regained its form with a 4-3 shootout victory (though officially a tie).

UMD sophomore Cole Spicer celebrated his goal that gave the Bulldogs a 2-1 lead in Saturday night’s 3-3 tie with Minnesota. (MHM Photo / John Gilbert)

Familiar foe for UMD’s Spicer
Spicer’s goal in the game was another contribution to the rivalry scenario.

“I played two years at the U-18 team in the U.S. Development program,” Spicer said. “When I was there, I was teammates with Snuggerud and Ryan Chesley of the Gophers.”

So, matching goals with Snuggerud was a special treat for Spicer, a sophomore who didn’t play much last year after transferring from North Dakota. Spicer grew up in Grand Forks, and his family has a tradition of great athletes who all played for the Fighting Sioux back in the day when that nickname was proper.

“I committed to North Dakota when I was 14 years old, because my dream growing up was to play there,” Spicer said. “I left high school after one year and played on a Triple-A team in Michigan, then played my junior and senior years on the U-18 team. A year ago, I went to North Dakota and enrolled as a freshman, but they told me because of COVID, some older players had stayed for a fifth year, and they brought in some older junior players, so they wanted me to go back and play another year in junior.”

To say that was a disappointment would be an understatement, so Spicer decommitted at UND and opened his recruiting channels again. UMD associate head coach Adam Krause called Spicer, followed by a call from Sandelin, according to Spicer.

“I accepted their offer right away, because I love the whole culture at UMD,” Spicer said. “Coach Sandelin might have great players or not, but he manages to win. We’ve got a big family here. I’m living with four other guys, and we get together and have other players over to our place every Sunday to watch football and have a lot of laughs. Everybody is a great guy on this team, and I don’t regret what happened to me at all.”

Spicer, who was placed between grad students Quinn Olson and Loheit on the first line when Dominic James suffered a season-ending injury two weeks into the season, now has four goals and is seeing quality time on both the power play and penalty kills. And as rivalries go, he has another one coming up imminently.

North Dakota comes to Duluth for a series to open the NCHC regular season at AMSOIL Arena.

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