The Frozen Four is a little less than a month away but the most exciting weekend in college hockey is coming up in just a few days: Championship weekend. The field across the country has been whittled down from 59 teams to just 26 (thanks, insipid Big Ten tournament that allows all six teams!) and for the most part, hope is alive for all 26.And look, I’m about to say that a lot of these tournaments are anyone’s to win. I hate saying this kind of thing, because that’s all that most college hockey writing and analysis is.
Big Ten
Yup, six teams. Two of them Michigan State and top-seeded Minnesota have the honor of not-playing on Thursday. Meanwhile, Michigan and Wisconsin, and Penn State and Ohio State, will participate in play-in games to determine who gets the honor of playing the Spartans and Gophers.
The good news for Michigan and Penn State is that they are clearly the two best teams of that group of four. The bad news is that if/when they win, they have to play their archrivals and the best team in the conference, respectively. State gave the Wolverines plenty of trouble this weekend, and in fact won Saturday night’s contest to lock up the No. 2 seed so they wouldn’t have to play a maximum of three games in as many days.