TANNER HOUSE
Maine
Jr. | F | Cochrane, Alberta

His Statistics: 4-2—6, GWG, PPG, +5 in wins vs. UMass Lowell and St. Lawrence.

His Impact: Maine’s junior captain came through with a big weekend to help the Black Bears to a pair of noteworthy wins. House scored twice in Maine’s 3-1 win at nationally-ranked UMass Lowell. His first goal knotted the score 1-1 in the second period and he added another in the third period to give the Black Bears a 3-1 lead.

Saturday night’s 10-1 win over St. Lawrence at Portland included a two-goal, two-assist four-point effort from House. He scored a power-play goal in the first and scored again in the third period. Maine scored five goals in the first period en route to a big win.

The win over UMass Lowell helped Maine move into a tie for fourth place in the Hockey East standings as the Black Bears evened their conference record at 4-4-1. Maine is 5-2-1 in its last eight games to pull to within one game of the .500 mark after a slow start.

His Runners-Up: Carl Hagelin, Michigan; Keith Kincaid, Union; Danny Kristo, North Dakota; Chris McKelvie, Bemidji State; Eric Sefchik, Army

The INCH Player of the Week is presented by The INCH Shop

Brown’s 8-1 win over the weekend gave new head coach Brendan Whittet his first as a Division I head coach. The Bears emphatically defeated Connecticut after scoring five goals in the first period. Prior to that win, Brown had suffered three straight one-goal losses. His other rookie coaching colleagues, C.J. Marattolo of Sacred Heart got his first win in an impressive victory over Union and Bowling Green’s Dennis Williams is guiding an improved Bowling Green team that has wins over nationally-ranked Alaska and Michigan.

One reason the Big Ten wouldn’t mind adding hockey to the league’s stable of sports is to provide additional programming for the conference’s television outlet—especially on Friday nights, the dead zone of college athletics. But the Big Ten Network’s commitment to college pucks has to be called into question as based on its decision to forego televising any of last weekend’s College Hockey Showcase games, choosing to instead broadcast Northwestern men’s basketball on Friday and Saturday night.

In case you’re keeping track at home, four hockey programs—all of which have won national championships in the last 12 years—were bounced in favor of a hoops team that has never qualified for an NCAA tournament. That, Big Ten Net, is well below average.

“That was men against boys out there. They looked like the Maine Black Bears of old.”

St. Lawrence coach Joe Marsh to Larry Mahoney of the Bangor Daily News following the Black Bears’ 10-1 thrashing of the Saints Saturday at Portland’s Cumberland County Civic Center. Fifteen of Maine’s 18 skaters registered at least one point in the team’s best offensive output since a 12-5 win over Boston College on Nov. 22, 1997.

We could harp on voters who favored Michigan again—the Wolverines did beat Minnesota and Wisconsin last weekend to even their record at 7-7-0, so we’ll let it slide even though they’re 11th in the CCHA standings. We could pick on those whose ballots included sub-.500 teams Boston University, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Princeton. Our sights are set on an even bigger travesty, however.

In this week’s USCHO.com Division III men’s poll, bitter SUNYAC rivals Oswego and Plattsburgh are tied for first place and Plattsburgh has one more first-place vote—odd considering Oswego beat Plattsburgh, 5-2, in Plattsburgh’s rink a little more than three weeks ago. If two teams are considered the consensus top two in the country, wouldn’t logic dictate that the team that won the head-to-head matchup should be considered superior?

@kausatoday Who would have thought that Sidney Crosby and Dustin Penner would both have 15 goals and 15 assists after 27 games this season?

Other than Penner’s family, some die-hard Maine and Edmonton Oilers supporters, and INCH’s Joe Gladziszewski, probably no one. But as USA Today NHL scribe Kevin Allen pointed out recently, the ex-Black Bear—who NHL GMs point to as the poster boy for not spiriting away restricted free agents from other teams—has so far this season proven to be worth every penny of his $4.25 million annual salary.