This week's CCHA action on FloHockey features a spoiler-alert in Ohio, prey becoming predator in Marquette and an old-school clash in the State of Hockey.

MONCTON, New Brunswick – Adam Gajan wasn’t supposed to be here. When Team Slovakia announced their preliminary roster for the 2023 IIHF World Junior Championship, the 18-year-old from Poprad was not one of the three goaltenders listed.

As the rest of the CCHA scrambled for meager Pairwise points this past weekend, the “rebuilding” Minnesota State Mavericks were essentially clinching an NCAA bid with their third straight win over a top-5 nationally ranked squad. Sweeping perennial heavyweight Minnesota Duluth was the equivalent of hauling in a table full of poker chips with pocket aces.

It is barely mid-October, yet the post-season prospects of the CCHA will be carved into this weekend of non-conference play. The iron of college hockey, the NCHC, will travel three teams to different CCHA venues for games with oversized implications.

Men's college hockey has always been a haven for high-level NHL prospects. In recent years, that's only become more true as more and more high draft picks have chosen college hockey as their preferred route to the big leagues.

Summer is nice, but if you’re a hockey fan it doesn’t get much better when the calendar flips to October. This year, the Oct. 1 will also bring the first official action of the men’s college hockey season with a series of exhibitions, but also a pretty large slate of non-conference games and even a couple of full-on conference showdowns.

Shortly after lunch on Monday, the news was spreading fast up in the Soo: Lake State had been picked sixth in the CCHA coaches poll. The team’s captain sought out the coach.

Since Jack Schneider caught Bradbury Robinson's toss for the first reception in football history 117 years ago, pass-catchers have grown ever increasingly vital to the game. To wit, there were an incredible 22 players to eclipse 1,000 yards receiving at the Div. II level in 2021.

Just when you thought the Grinch had finally stolen hockey's Christmas, the state of hockey came to the rescue.

It’s only fitting that the NCAA hockey calendar year ends with four power teams from Minnesota banging heads.

College hockey is streaming paradise for fans, literally dozens of games to choose from on winter weekends. But one series, and one game in particular, stopped most fans from clicking away: Northern Michigan versus No. 1 Minnesota Duluth up in Marquette. Not only were the Wildcats leading on the scoreboard, but they didn’t retreat one step from the renowned checkers from the western shores of Lake Superior. Despite the extra-wide ice surface, body blows were being thrown and received on every square foot of ice.

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.

Emma Soderberg, Minnesota-Duluth’s junior goalie, is waiting out a five-hour layover at Chicago O’Hare, reminiscing about returning to her hometown, Ornskolsdvik, Sweden, a hockey hotbed three latitudinal degrees south of the Arctic Circle.