Holiday Tournament Wrapup

In no particular order…

GLI

Michigan won the GLI, which is probably no surprise, but Colorado College put up a good fight in the championship game, eventually losing 6-5. The Tigers have scored exactly 5 goals in 4 of their last 5 games, which is good news for them because Jaden Schwartz is out for roughly 6 weeks. The Tigers will need all the offense they can get, as they are 7th in the WCHA in scoring defense.

Michigan Tech, meanwhile, looks like they are in for more of the same. They lost their 12th and 13th games in a row at the GLI and are now 3-13-2 on the year. They have some good youngsters on the team, but there just isn’t much good going on in Houghton right now.

Mariucci Classic

Bemidji State grabbed a pair of upset wins over Ferris State and Union to surprisingly take the Classic. The Beavers got two goals from Matt Read and one from Jordan George to upset Union in the title game, and the Beavers could have a four game winning streak going into Nebraska-Omaha and have a decent chance to make a little run in the 2nd half as they appear to have made an adjustment to the WCHA.

Union meanwhile gets St. Lawrence before an extremely important game against Clarkson. Union and Clarkson sit in 5th and 6th in ECAC Hockey respectively (though they each have multiple games in hand on the leaders) and are separated by just two points.

But the weirdest part about this tournament was the third place game, in which Minnesota tied Ferris State. Usually there is a shootout in this scenario, but Don Lucia opted to go without one for some reason. The Gophers are currently 22nd in the Pairwise, so they are within shouting distance of a tournament berth, but it looks like a third straight year with no postseason play is in store for the Gophers.

Ledyard Bank Classic

Missing three players at the WJC, Boston College outlasted Colgate 6-5 in the opener in a weird back and forth game before throttling Mercyhurst, who had won their opener against Dartmouth in a shootout, in the title game. The Eagles have Providence before tough games with Maine and BU, and with how well Chris Kreider played at World Juniors they will be no doubt excited to see him, but they must at least partially be nervous about how Brian Dumoulin and Patrick Wey played.

Shillelagh

In definitely the biggest shocker Minnesota State beat Notre Dame 4-3 and then throttled Brown 7-3 to take the Shillelagh championship. The two wins evened their record to 8-8-4 and much like fellow WCHA mates Bemidji State, the Mavs can sweep AIC and take a 4 game winning streak into a pair of huge series with Denver and Wisconsin. Though they don’t score a lot (8th in the WCHA), Kurt Davis is tied for 2nd among all WCHA defensemen in goals.