Thirty-One Seconds. The time it takes for one shift in a hockey game, a single 31 second stretch shaped the 2019-20 Big Ten regular season.
Trailing Minnesota 2-1 in the third period, Penn State’s Nikita Pavlychev tied the February 22nd game with his 7th goal of the year. The roar from the goal announcement had yet to linger before Pavlychev found freshman Kevin Wall and put the Nittany Lions ahead 3-2.
Penn State’s ensuing win and six-point swing put the Nittany Lions three ahead of the Gophers, Ohio State and Michigan when the following weekend and February came to an end. One shift made a world of difference. For the first time in program history, the Nittany Lions, who began the 2010s by announcing a men’s hockey program, were regular-season champions.
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Outside of October’s eternal new season hopes, perhaps no month springs college hockey optimism quite like February. A number of teams find themselves hitting their stride after taking some lumps in slow starts. Others spent months building up to this point, being the best of the best and willing to prove it each weekend. With conference tournaments ahead for all but a small handful of teams, almost every team believes in its heart of hearts that it has a shot.
March and April get championship credit. February, the culmination of five months of the regular season, sits home to many more championship dreams.
Some of the best college hockey teams I’ve seen are ones who ran into a hot goalie with the game of his life, or had a single off night and did not make the Frozen Four. A nearly six-month grind that begins when leaves change colors and ends when flowers begin to bloom, the regular season does not get enough love.
Champions walk together. Even regular-season champions. However, the ones remembered more end up being the ones surviving the quick, short second season.
Let’s be honest. College hockey history gets written by those who have two fantastic weekends in March and April.
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For those 31 seconds to shape the Big Ten regular season, several years of behind-the-scenes work needed to first happen.
Penn State being atop the conference was no surprise. In 2017 the Nittany Lions went from losing four straight regular-season games to Minnesota to conference tournament champions. Over the ensuing seasons, Penn State won four straight games against Minnesota at Pegula Arena and then more.
Picked preseason to win the Big Ten, the Nittany Lions brought back six of the seven players who had scored 14 goals or more. Peyton Jones returned for his fourth season as PSU’s starting goaltender. Aarne Talvitie was healthy after the gold medal-winning captain for Finland missed the second half of his freshman season due to injury.
A number of players with opportunities to leave decided to return for one more chance. Despite just missing the 2019 NCAA Tournament, expectations were high. “Next year’s the year,” I said to Penn State radio announcer Brian Tripp in a packed KeyBank Center elevator during the 2019 Frozen Four.
Sure, Penn State was not alone. Minnesota Duluth returned the majority of a two-time national champion core. So did Minnesota State, who spent most of 2018-19 among the nation’s elite, along with Cornell. They were a group who saw its window stay open following years of improvement. (Or, in the case of Minnesota Duluth, continued success with a group of talented underclassmen mixed with senior leadership.) Several more went through the side yard to open the window, announcing to the world that they had arrived.
“Look out for us,” said Sacred Heart senior forward Jason Cotton after the Pioneers defeated Connecticut staples Yale and Quinnipiac to take home the state’s first bragging rights in late January. Literally announcing Sacred Heart’s arrival.
Even then, in the middle of the best season in program history, Sacred Heart’s moment came from dozens of small steps over the past two seasons with a number of Pioneers gracing the Atlantic Hockey all-rookie teams. Those players were now upperclassmen.
The same can be said about Boston College and North Dakota, who like Penn State just missed the 2019 NCAA Tournament, being among the nation’s best after disappointing seasons. The Eagles senior leadership meshed with a talented rookie class. The Fighting Hawks lost 12 games last season where the team outshot its opponent. 2019-20 swung the regression curve back.
Each shift leads into another.
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By now, you know the story. 2020 was not the year for any team.
The road to Detroit ended, not with four teams driving down different roads to the Motor City, but a March 12th announcement that the 2019-20 season was canceled due to the COVID-19 global pandemic.
March annually brings with it disappointment to the college hockey world. Inevitably every team except one ends its season the same way. Disappointed. Single-elimination weeds out February’s optimism in the harsh reality of March and April, but this was far different.
Every NCAA Tournament game concludes with a winner and a loser. There’s a sense of finality with two sides of the same story. I’ll never forget the time in 2014 when lost in the bowels of Wells Fargo Center, I ended up in the North Dakota locker room after the 0.6 game. Twenty-plus heartbroken young adults, heads down, eyes red, counting out the clock until they could leave the other side of one of the most memorable Frozen Four finishes in history.
There’s the time I got into a conversation with a college hockey photographer about his 1200 mile car trek to St. Paul for the 2002 national championship game. As a Maine fan, he was excited to watch the Black Bears pull off a storybook ending after former head coach Shawn Walsh months earlier lost his battle with cancer. To him, the overtime penalty call and non-call are not remembered as fondly. Nor are Matt Koalska or Grant Potulny compared to 18,000 others in the building singing a Minnesota Rouser for the ages.
At times the other side of the story pops up in a different light, such as when Denver giving up a heartbreaking last-minute goal to North Dakota in 2016 turned into a championship celebration in the Frozen Four return the following season. Some stories require epilogues.
If anything, the lack of a conclusion makes this year’s end result so tough to swallow. No final chapter exists. There is no story. No winner. No tournament. No finality. In the blink of an eye, the world shifted and went on pause. Sports included.
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In a cruel way, I got something I long wanted. College hockey’s regular-season always deserved much more importance. Single-elimination quickly shifts perception in a sport where the final at-large bid has won three national championships since 2013 and the number one overall seed was upset in the first round just as many times.
That’s not the case this year. Without a postseason tournament, the best teams for five months remain the best. No one experiences March and April's disappointment. Only what-ifs.
Cruelly, it’s those what-ifs which turn the current situation into a monkey’s paw wish. The regular season should get more respect. However, it’s the sweet treat of the postseason which makes the hearty meal coming before easier to digest. A regular season on its own leaves too many unanswered questions.
At the beginning of the month, I wrote a men’s hockey feature for NCAA.com titled “11 teams to watch in March” Cutting it to 11 was difficult. So many stories were there to be told in March 2020. No matter the direction the games took, the end results were full of endless possibilities built up over months and years.
Instead, the only stories told are ones we are left to wonder.
Would Cornell, a year after losing goalie Matt Galajda for the NCAA Tournament, make the most of being a No. 1 seed again? What would Minnesota State, a contender for the championship, do with its window for a first NCAA Tournament win closing? Could UMass and Denver return to the Frozen Four? How would Boston College and North Dakota, two bluebloods whose players had little to no NCAA experience, handle March after elite regular seasons? Which second-half rise was ready to pay off with a Frozen Four berth?
Could Minnesota Duluth pull off the three-peat and join 1951-53 Michigan in the most exclusive of clubs?
A number of teams saw windows closed on career seasons. Sacred Heart’s declaration to look out ends without knowing when the next time the Pioneers contending for NCAA Tournament contention will happen. Hundreds of seniors throughout the country, many who came back for one final opportunity, never get one. They never knew they had played a final game.
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The final 2019-20 game I covered in person ended up being Penn State’s 31-second comeback against Minnesota. I did not expect it to be mine. Expectations were to be heading back to State College, to Boston for the women’s Frozen Four and Allentown for the NCAA men’s regionals, and then to Detroit for the men’s Frozen Four.
Penn State took a similar path. When the season ended, the Big Ten regular-season champions knew the road to the conference tournament eventually went through Pegula Arena. There would be no more road games nor trips outside the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania unless the Nittany Lions advanced to the Frozen Four. Being hosts and a virtual certainty to make the NCAA Tournament, PSU already knew it would be in Allentown March 28-29.
While other fanbases followed along week-to-week with bracketology, Penn State’s plans were set in stone to the point where I was just saying “Allentown” to Tripp on a weekly basis. No team featured more concrete plans. Head coach Guy Gadowsky’s squad would get going after a two-week break.
Of course, that did not happen. The shift which shaped the Big Ten regular season was among the last before the global pandemic canceled a Big Ten semifinal rematch with the Gophers and more. Two weeks off turned into months.
I was ready to cover that game for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Minnesota, finding its identity and learning what it takes to win, had dispatched Notre Dame in a thrilling three-game series the weekend before. The final memories for the Gophers ended up coming back from a 1-0 deficit in both games and goals, never getting the opportunity for another chance to redeem itself.
They aren’t alone. It’s tough to not think about the Minnesotas of the world, or about RPI, who had its best second half in Dave Smith’s tenure culminating with hosting an ECAC quarterfinal series. It’s tough to not think about Maine, or Michigan, or a number of men’s hockey teams in the midst of conference tournaments. It’s tough to not think about how the women’s NCAA Tournament field was unveiled and unplayed, imagining who continues the run to Boston for the first or 15th time.
Even if unpredictability and the difference of one shift make hockey such a remarkable sport, it’s tough to see concrete plans change in an instant.
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Both Frozen Four weekends have now come and gone without an event. The world is different. Social distancing has become a way of life to social creatures, keeping everyone apart in person and trying to keep everyone safe from COVID-19. Routines have been disrupted. Same with sports, which all take a backseat to the severe situation presently going on at the moment.
College hockey, stripped to its core, is a simple game where two teams try to score the most goals. Go beyond it and the game, and sports in general, becomes much more complicated much more quickly. Sports mirror life.
Whether it’s a chess match between foes going one-on-one, an individual constantly striving for improvement, the community coming together, or the weekly routine leading up to games each Friday and Saturday, the two can not be separated.
In the month between the season being suddenly canceled and this writing, coming to grips with the shift has been a challenge. On one hand, it’s nothing compared to those participating. For many, sports serve as an escape. For me, they serve as a job. In an instant, sports and every bit of work set up both disappeared.
There’s no escaping the current situation, as much as it would be nice to do so. All routines have been upended. Social distancing means sports communities turned digital. Watching sports in an age without sports has become a reminder of past success. Every team/organization/sports network shows the highest of highlights in a time of lows.
Sadly, several longtime members already left the community between layoffs, new jobs and pro signings. Losing the routine, seeing friends in State College, Boston and Detroit, and losing the opportunity to get together one last time makes it that more difficult to say goodbye. Like the game, much remains unfinished away from the rink.
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So how to honor an unfinished season? That’s the 3000 word question. History won’t recognize a 2020 NCAA Tournament champion, meaning hundreds and thousands of players can walk away feeling like one. Every path may be different. Someone like Mercyhurst’s Jonny Lazarus takes away different lessons in his years building up to nothing than Hobey Baker Award winner Scott Perunovich.
With some time to reflect, the stories told from a canceled 2019-20 will not be of regular season importance, but of individuals and community. Stories on the other side of the winners. Stories of big-time players, showcasing February optimism on and away from the rink. Stories of games and opportunities will continue to be told like Penn State’s 31 seconds.
It’s easy to spend the time looking at past accomplishments when no championships are on the horizon and a mask is mandatory to enter every business. Windows closing and special seasons can be seen in a different light.
Rather than hosting regionals, the DCU Center in Worcester has been home to Massachusetts’ first COVID-19 field hospital. 214 beds take up the spot where four teams would have played. Allentown’s PPL Center has been made available if necessary. The community response away from college hockey continues to show the importance of a shift when nothing is guaranteed.
No one and everyone won all at once. We all walk together through these times.
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Personally, the biggest shift involves not being around my community. Hanging with friends and colleagues postgame, catching up on life and discussing the sport we love and cover remains something I look forward to any game I cover.
Frozen Four weekends are the two times a year the entire college hockey world comes together in one place. People gather from all over, sporting sweaters ranging from popular to defunct. Regardless of where the sport has been or adapts, Frozen Fours continued to be a constant.
It’s disappointing to not go to State College one more time this season, getting the full picture of two teams trying to make the most and being able to discuss it afterward. Same goes with Boston and Detroit, where days worth of plans were already made and a friend planned on wearing his Wayne State sweater to the games.
Sports may serve as an escape, but it’s the community that is missed more than a lack of an unfinished chapter. Hindsight being 20/20, it’s fitting that the last major feature I wrote was on RPI’s community and the Big Red Freakout. Adapting to life without a Frozen Four, without a community in one place reminds me of what is truly important in a time when sports do not exist.
When sports return to normal, when there will be work and college hockey to write about, there is a lot we won’t take for granted. Covering a sport. Being in a crowd. Watching a sport we love. Seeing friends. It’s been a long, strange trip to go through five months of a sport only to see it abruptly cut off without a community, but the community will only be stronger when the epilogue gets written.
Until then, only four words need to be said: Next year in Pittsburgh.
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