Congratulations go to Massachusetts sophomore forward Steven Iacobellis for being named the Hockey East Player of the Week.  While Iacobellis was named the team’s Rookie of the Year last season, this is the first Hockey East weekly honor for Iacobellis who had two goals and two assists in Saturday’s win over Michigan State.  Patrick Lee was named one of the weekly Top Performers for his three point weekend that included the game winner in the waning seconds of Saturday match.

Iacobellis was also named co-UMass Athlete of the Week with running back Shadrach Abrokwah.

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Hockey East owns an entire block of this week’s top ten in the USCHO poll with Providence, Boston College, and Lowell coming in as the 5th, 6th, and 7th schools respectively.  The Friars didn’t move in the poll after playing an exhibition game against the USA Hockey U18 team this past week.  BC moved up a slot with their 6-2 win at RIT while Lowell jumped two spots after gaining a win and a tie against Quinnipiac.  Boston University’s win over UMass keeps on giving as the Terriers have still only played that one game on the season yet slid up to #12 in the poll.  Vermont has joined the rankings at #17 after starting the season 3-0-0.  Notre Dame, Merrimack, New Hampshire, and Northeastern are all getting votes.

Like the USCHO poll, the Minnesota Gophers are the top team in the USA Hockey Magazine/USA Today poll.

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The highlights from this past weekend have been posted on UMass Athletics.  They’re worth a watch.  From Friday’s highlights I was impressed by Shane Walsh’s long cross ice set up to Keith Burchett’s first goal as well as the nice job by Dennis Kravchenko and Zack LaRue on the shorthanded goal.  On Saturday, the Lee gamewinner is certainly the big highlight, but the second goal of the game shows some excellent puck movement and a nice job by Lee in collecting a loose puck to start the whole play off.  On that sequence is some of the best passing I’ve seen from UMass in recent memory so make sure to check it out.

Here’s the weekend recap from the Collegian.

And here are some weekend thoughts from the Spartan viewpoint at The Only Colors.

Jeff Cox of SBN College Hockey has UMass at #10 in his Hockey East power rankings.

USHR is reporting that former UMass and BU recruit Liam Coughlin is now committed to Vermont.  Coughlin was all set to join UMass this semester until he backed out of his commitment in April for BU, which he had dubbed his “dream school”.  Well that dream didn’t last long as he was already on the outs with BU by the end of the summer.