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

The year 2021 will long be remembered as the year that the state of Minnesota entered five teams into the NCAA tournament, three advancing into the Frozen Four. Each of the three Frozen Four teams: Duluth, Minnesota State and St. Cloud, plus Elite Eight Bemidji will be paired off in prime time, on consecutive nights, to end the new year.

No. 6 Duluth Vs. No. 1 Minnesota State

This game has three different headlines to thrust up on Mankato’s Mayo Clinic Event Center marquee on Thursday, starting with the “Sandelin Bowl,” as the Mavs junior sniper Ryan Sandelin (team-leading 12 goals) will be facing his father’s Duluth Bulldogs. 

He will also be jostling in the corners with 19 other Minnesotans he knows from schoolboy hockey, including a pair of pals from the 2017 Hermantown state champs. If there is any truth in the saying that “familiarity breeds contempt,” then this should be a war on ice for 60 minutes, seeing as a combined 28 skaters on both sides hail from the land of 10,000 frozen lakes. 

Headline two is the “Goaltender’s Showdown,” as statistical heavyweight Ryan Fanti of Duluth stares down MNSU’s “Mr. Zero,” Dryden McKay, from 200 feet away. For those who love a loud debate over who is the country’s top goalie, the two biggest names in the sport will settle the shouting for at least one night on Thursday.

But the ultimate headline is that Thursday’s tilt is the battle for the state’s top spot: in the polls, in the Pairwise rankings, and in the hearts and minds of future recruits. This might be the game in which all the Minnesota hockey fans who aren’t Flo subscribers come to their senses. Duluth at Minnesota State, showdown for Minnesota hockey supremacy. Time to jump on the Flo bandwagon.

This is a home-and-home series for these national powers. Look for the both home teams to win on their own ice, 5-2 Mavericks Thursday night in ’Kato. 

No. 7 St. Cloud Vs. Bemidji

Last year’s NCAA finalists and NCHC powerhouse St. Cloud rides the bus north for a rare clash  with Bemidji to close out the year. Regardless of the road conditions in northern Minnesota this time of the year, this trip has danger written all over it for the Huskies. Tom Serratore’s Beavers play a smothering, multi-layered defense, and it appears they have found their stopper in goal in freshman Mattias Sholl (.908, 2.81). 

BSU senior center Owen Sillinger is having an All-American type year: second in the CCHA in points per game (1.35); a killer in the faceoff dot (.536); and his league leading three game-winning-goals speaks to his performance in the clutch. 

He and Serratore both know what an opportunity St. Cloud represents in terms of Bemidji’s chances for a repeat invite to the national tournament. The Huskies are seventh in the nation in the crucial Pairwise Rankings, while Bemidji lurks outside the bubble at number 21. This game means nothing in their respective league standings, but it means everything to the Beavers postseason dreams. 

Bemidji likely finds a way, stifling the Huskies in the Serratore quicksand. We’re looking at a 2-1 game, one that thrusts the Beavers back into the postseason picture.