1. Michigan State

2. Boston College

3. Minnesota

4. Western Michigan

5. Providence

6. Colorado College

7. Maine

8. Denver

9. Minnesota State

10. UMass Lowell

11. North Dakota

12. St. Cloud State

13. Michigan

14. Ohio State

15. Cornell

16. Boston University

17. Quinnipiac

18. Arizona State

19. Dartmouth

20. UNH

Maine slips to No. 7. After a three-week break, the Black Bears opened the second half of the season with a 4-2 loss to Bentley in Portland on Sunday. It should serve as a lesson for the Black Bears, who face a tough schedule the rest of the regular season. The next four games are against two teams I have in the top 10, a pair at Alfond Arena this weekend against defending national champion Denver, and a pair at UMass Lowell on Jan. 10-11. Maine peppered Bentley goalie Connor Hasley with 45 shots, but it never felt like the Black Bears were really making Hasley work hard in the crease. The Black Bears will need to generate better chances the next two weekends. Although Denver will likely arrive in Orono without top defenseman Zeev Buium and coach David Carle, who are representing the United States at the World Junior Championships in Ottawa (if Team USA advances to the semifinals, the game is Saturday), the Pioneers are still a talented team coming off its own game that stung.

What to do about exhibition games? That’s the question after a lot of teams returned from the break by playing either a Canadian university team, like UMass Lowell (a 2-0 win over Simon Fraser), the U.S. national development team, like Arizona State (4-3 and 1-0 wins for the Sun Devils), or a talented club team, like Colorado College and Denver did in playing UNLV. Colorado College beat UNLV, 8-0. Denver, on the other hand, earned a tie against UNLV but lost the shootout. The Pioneers did rally from a 5-1 deficit after two periods to salvage the tie, but still, Colorado College beat the same team by eight goals. Is it comparing apples to apples or apples to hockey pucks? The games don’t really count, but at the same time they count. I went with my gut and slid Colorado College up to No. 6 and Denver down to No. 8. Plenty of hockey left to sort it all out. In the case of Clarkson, which took a 5-1 loss to Concordia of Quebec, I took the Golden Knights out of the No. 20 spot and replaced them with UNH, which earned a 7-4 win over RPI, improving the Wildcats to 4-0-1 since a loss to Maine on Nov. 22.

Providence is on a roll. The Friars picked up wins over Northeastern and Dartmouth over the weekend to win the Ledyard Classic at Dartmouth, a tournament Maine won last season. Those victories improved Providence’s win streak to seven. With Maine’s loss to Bentley, it was an easy call to jump the Friars up to No. 5 on my ballot, ahead of the Black Bears. Providence is off until facing city rival Brown on Jan. 7, followed by a home-and-home against Boston College on Jan. 17-18.