Weekend Hockey Preview: Men take on U-18

It’s Friday! You know what that means…hockey time!  Here’s what’s on tap this weekend for the maroon and gold:

Men

The boys will take a break from WCHA play this weekend to host the U.S. Under-18 team tonight and Canisius Sunday at Mariucci arena. Though it is their last exhibition game of the season, it should be worth paying some attention to. The U-18 team, based out of Ann Arbor, MI, is not a bunch of guys that are going to simply lay down under D-1 pressure. The team outshot both the University of North Dakota and Bemidji State although they lost both games, 6-4 to UND and 4-3 (so close!) to Bemidji.

There are a few guys to watch out for tonight on the U-18 team, particularly Vinni Letteiri and Hudson Fasching, who have both committed to Minnesota (also, props to Letteiri for having the coolest name ever).  Nic Kerdiles is another one to watch for. He’s currently serving out a ten-game suspension from the University of Wisconsin on the U-18 team after he was accused of speaking with an agent*.  He plans to  return to the Badgers later this year.

Personally, I’m hoping to see some guys on the ice tonight that we haven’t seen yet this year. Specifically, I’ve been wondering what happened to Justin Holl. I’ll have more about that later this week, but be on the lookout for some newbies as well.

Sunday the boys will play host to the Canisius Golden Griffins for the time in the program’s history. Canisius is 1-3-1 on the season and this game does count, despite it being out of conference. Canisius beat Alaska-Fairbanks 3-1 earlier this month.

I’m going to go ahead and predict double wins here this weekend, although I think we learned a tough lesson about wining in Michigan last week: This team cannot just show up and win. Hopefully Don Lucia puts some less-than-familiar faces on the ice tonight who are willing to bust their butts and pull off a victory.

Women

The women travel to Grand Forks this weekend to take part in arguably the best rivalry in college hockey: UND vs. Minnesota. Exciting! So far,  UND ( ranked 8th in the USCHO poll) has split a series with Minnesota State Mankato and Ohio State. Last weekend they swept St. Cloud State.

Junior forward Amanda Kessel is on track to break into the top 10 leading scorers this weekend; she’s three points away from tying Emily West for 10th place (currently sitting at 155-career points). I think we all can rest assured that is going to happen.

As always, it will be enjoyable to watch the Lamereux sisters who are both doing well this season (no surprise there). You may recall that these twins played for the Gophers during their freshman season before making the move to UND.

These will be fun games and I’d really like to lean towards predicting double wins here, but my superstitions are poking me in the shoulder. That would put the Gophers at 10-0-0. The last time they went 9-0-0 was in 2005; this is currently only the fifth time the Gophers have made it to 8-0-0. I want to predict a split for fear of jynxing the team.

The heck with it, lets go with a couple of W’s!

**From what I understand, Kerdiles had some pics surface on a social networking site of him mingling with some agents. The NCAA allows student athletes to speak with unpaid agents that act as “family advisors” only. The agent in question is Ian Pulver, out of Canada. Kerdiles allegedly stayed in his hotel room during the draft and later, his family is said to have paid Pulver back, a violation of NCAA rules. There has been a lot of controversy surrounding the 10-game suspension, which is actually reduced. The original suspension spanned an entire season. Many believe Kerdiles is not at fault.