Friday-morning reading

The Mavericks are off this weekend, but you might want to take in some scoreboard watching and see where they end up in the WCHA standings come late Saturday night. Minnesota State is in seventh place with 20 points, one point behind Minnesota, Colorado College and Duluth, two points ahead of St. Cloud and four ahead of Alaska-Anchorage.

St. Cloud is at Anchorage this weekend, Minnesota hosts Wisconsin, Colorado College is at Michigan Tech and Denver is at Duluth.

Here's what's being said about those other series:

In Anchorage, all eyes are on the possible eruption of volcano Mount Redoubt, perhaps the only thing that can slow down St. Cloud's Ryan Lasch right now. Meanwhile, the Seawolves are getting good production from their defensemen, however, Anchorage hasn't beaten the Huskies in their last eight meetings.

In one of the tightest WCHA races in recent history, Minnesota Duluth will try to move within one point of first-place Denver when it hosts the Pioneers this weekend. With a team-leading 33 points, Denver forward Anthony Maiani has experienced everything but a sophomore slump.

Colorado College is this season's opponent for Michigan Tech's Winter Carnival games and had to make a long trip for the celebration. The Huskies, meanwhile, have healed up a bit after having last weekend off.

Finally, the Gophers will play their biggest rival, the Badgers. Coach Don Lucia didn't take any more veiled shots at MSU but did refer to playing more physical after last week's losses to the Mavericks, telling the Pioneer Press, "The thing we talk about all the time is when you get punched in the nose, you've got to punch 'em back. Standing up to 'em, basically." Lucia was more diplomatic with The Capital Times of Madison, saying that there is "not enough respect between players in how the play the game," and would like to see a return to the way the game was refereed early in the season and, perhaps, extra punishment to players who have multiple major penalties. He added that his players "did some stupid stuff, too, and that's going to be addressed." Another issue for Minnesota is that it has given up six goals in four of its last six games. As for Wisconsin, it is getting solid play from junior Andy Bohmbach.

Here are previews from INCH and USCHO and a column from This is the WCHA.