Penn State men’s hockey will open the 2020-21 with the highest preseason ranking in program history coming in at No. 9 in the USCHO.com poll released Monday.
The Nittany Lions -who have now been ranked in 64-straight polls- will have some amount of work cut out for them in order to prove their worth. Penn State saw a fair amount of roster turnover this past offseason due to both graduation and professional departures. The losses included the likes of longtime goaltender Peyton Jones as well as forwards Liam Folkes and Evan Barratt.
With talented returnees and incoming players both as transfers and freshmen, Penn State isn’t short on potential answers for the loss of longtime players, but the Nittany Lions will certainly have to prove that 2019-20s success can be continued into a wildly unique season.
Penn State is the Big Ten’s highest rated team with Ohio State (No. 10), Michigan (No. 12), Minnesota (No. 14) and Notre Dame (No. 20) rounding out the group. Arizona State which will be a part of the 2020-21 schedule comes in at at No. 15.
The Big Ten has yet to announce a schedule for the upcoming season which is slated to begin as soon as November 13.
North Dakota starts the season the nation’s top ranked program picking up 28 of the 40 first-place votes with Boston College (No.2), Minnesota Duluth (No. 3), Minnesota State (No. 4) and Cornell (No. 6) each receiving at least one first-place vote.
As per usual, the postseason field is determined by the Pairwise rankings, a formula which rates teams based on a handful of variables including strength of schedule. In turn the USCHO ranking is a helpful benchmark for in-season meetings, but is not in any way the determining or influencing variable in the postseason selection process.
