Linkorama

My column this week for College Hockey News deals with some of the tired cliches you hear in terms of recruiting.

Speaking of recruiting, I was going to do this, but Chris Heisenberg has already done a great job of collecting links to press releases put out by teams about their new signings.

I'm still not sure how this happened, but UAA swept North Dakota this past weekend.

Possibly spurred by this surprising output from the Seawolves, UAA Fan Blog is off to a solid start in this short week. I present the following posts:

Jeff Carlson and Winston Daychief both committed to Anchorage.

The blog also subscribes to my theory of looking at points lost to determine the standings, rather than points gained.

A look at scoring among WCHA freshmen. St. Cloud's freshmen lead the league with .67 points per game played by a freshman. Minnesota has the most games played by freshmen, followed by Wisconsin. Minnesota State would have the lead, if not for injuries to freshmen.

Speaking of which, Minnesota State has 24 games lost due to injury this season in the first 12 games. I'm guessing that Wisconsin would probably be the only other team even close to that mark. By the end of Saturday's game with Colorado College, the Mavericks, who only have 8 defenseman on the roster, were missing their top 4 defenseman due to injury. Minnesota State plays NCC rival Nebraska-Omaha on Tuesday, before getting the holiday weekend off and trying to get healthy for their series against Minnesota.

The guys over Crimson Issue discuss whether or not anyone really cares about the Spirit of the Maverick trophy that MSU and UNO will start playing for on Tuesday. The rivalry has been mostly one-side in MSU's favor pretty much since its inception. This series could use a brawl or some controversy to really get things heated up again. Of course, with MSU as beat up as they are, and with Minnesota on the schedule next, I doubt you'll much fire on Tuesday night.

It seems really weird to say this, but for the first time this season, a team from the west is atop INCH's power rankings. Other big movers this week were Notre Dame, who finally got the credit they deserve from INCH and moved up five spots, North Dakota, who dropped 7, and Colorado College whose home sweep was enough to bump them up 5 spots.

Per the folks over at GopherPuckLive, White Bear Lake's Jake Hansen was spotted taking his official visit to Minneosta this weekend.

Here's a good sign for Denver fans. The Pios recently got a commitment from Tyler Bozak, a 20 year old forward for the Victoria Grizzlies, who is leading the BCHL in scoring. The last three players to lead the BCHL in scoring were all also 20 year old forwards. Those players were: Brandon Wong(20th in the country in scoring), Les Reaney(3rd in the country in scoring), and Kyle Greentree(16th in the country in scoring).