This weekend on FloHockey, a CCHA series with championship flashbacks, the ultimate high-latitude showdown, and magic milestones will be under the microscope in Marquette.

After a season of more lows than highs, a season in which coach Tom Serratore saw his Bemidji State Beavers allow more goals than they scored, the veteran coach was finally in a position to relax Saturday night in Houghton. Serratore was enjoying the CCHA’s equivalent of a fireside chat after upsetting No. 2 seed Michigan Tech. The veteran coach was now front and center in a league press conference—his team sitting in the catbird seat, guaranteed a berth in the CCHA championship game while his opponents were still playing a timezone away in Mankato. Entering the night sub-500 was now a distant memory. His Beavers were on the precipice of making the NCAA tournament for the second year in a row.

With his Northern Michigan Wildcats loudly celebrating their grueling three-game quarterfinal of Lake Superior a few steps away, Cats coach Grant Potulny soberly assessed the next round in the CCHA playoffs: a single-game semifinal against the nation’s premier team, Minnesota State.

In the aftermath of calamitous events—typhoons, stock market crashes, building collapses and the like—investigators look back and usually find salient clues that could have tipped off the masses before the catastrophe: an ill wind, over-leveraged mortgage securities, a rusted out beam.

Northern Michigan broadcaster Dave Danis is a traveling man. He has driven all the highways and byways of college and minor league hockey—he knows the truck stops and the long stretches without any. As the CCHA’s regular season was counting down to its completion Saturday night, Danis was the first to sort out the reshuffled deck of the CCHA standings from his broadcast position at the Berry Events Center. That’s when it struck him that Bowling Green, ensconced in a home ice position all season long, had just fallen to sixth place, which made them a road club in the quarterfinal round. They would be facing Bemidji, which got the veteran road warrior doing some mental math.

In addition to the obvious competitiveness of a No. 4-No. 5 matchup, the fact that this series is a rematch of last year’s conference championship game makes for appointment viewing this weekend. The fact that these two teams were involved in a three-team race for the last home-ice berth—a pennant race that took until third period of the regular season finale—adds even more drama to a matchup that already has plenty.

Although this is the first Division I playoff game in the history of St. Thomas hockey, head coach Rico Blasi is in a very familiar place. For the 15th time in his career, he is leading his squad into the CCHA playoffs. A decade ago with Miami, Blasi won the same Mason Cup that his current peers are all fighting for today. Although his Tommies are not expected to survive this first round against national power Minnesota State, he will not go quietly into the night.

Week 2 in the CCHA brings fans a tripleheader of tasty matchups: the mirror-image clash of Minnesota’s two supreme defenders; the return of a CCHA coaching giant; and the collision of two No. 1 squads, a series that should settle all debates as to who is the premier team in college hockey.

On June 30, WCHA president and men’s Commissioner Bill Robertson will complete his final contract. From that point on the Men’s WCHA, the granddaddy of college hockey circuits will cease to exist after 70 years of play. Robertson, on the other hand, has emerged from a nearly untenable two-year stint as a lame-duck commissioner to take over as president and commissioner of the USHL, America’s premier junior league. FloHockey’s Tim Rappleye caught up with the immensely popular commissioner to hear his tale of surviving and thriving.

Coast To Coast is FloHockey’s monthly, cohesive news on North American hockey and live-streaming partnerships.

The era of NCAA free agency has swept through college hockey like a thunderclap. Also known as the “Transfer Portal,” it has delivered both pain and pleasure to Division I teams, depending on what side of the portal you are on.

Minnesota native Bill Robertson took over the helm of the revamped WCHA in 2014. In two months he will be charting new waters as college hockey’s league of distinction for seven decades will cease to exist. FloHockey’s Tim Rappleye got a chance to debrief the man known as Billy Rob following the Frozen Four, a gratifying finale to a most challenging season. 

NCAA hockey media protocol is an emotional meat grinder. Three of the four teams in Pittsburgh will face, and ultimately surrender, to their season’s mortality, a step or two from snatching that coveted brass ring. 

On Thursday, Dryden McKay — College Hockey’s Mr. Zero — was named a Hobey Hat Trick Finalist, the only goalie among the final three candidates for the NCAA player of the year. The announcement came less than two weeks after the All-American had hit an all-time low point as a Division I athlete. 

The opening round of the 2021 NCAA Hockey Tournament featured all five Division I hockey programs from the state of Minnesota, adding to its unofficial nickname as The State of Hockey.