College Hockey:

This Week in the WCHA: Jan. 12, 2006

First things first:

Wisconsin’s Adam Burish likely will get a rude welcome this weekend in Colorado Springs, after his hit on Scott Thauwald at the end of the last series the Badgers played with Colorado College ended the Tigers forward’s season. But these two teams are too good and playing for too much for anything to get out of control at the World Arena. We hope.

This is a crucial weekend for Minnesota-Duluth. If the Bulldogs are going to make a second-half run at solidifying a home-ice playoff spot, one would think they must sweep 10th-place Michigan Tech at home. Then again, that battle likely will go down to the wire anyway.

This tidbit from North Dakota SID Dan Benson’s weekly notes: The last four North Dakota-Minnesota regular-season series at Mariucci Arena have had a common thread. All were in January. UND won each Friday night game by scoring four goals. Minnesota won each Saturday night game. Like it was scripted or something.

Four-Week Frenzy

You’re going to have to wait until after the first weekend in March to know exactly how things will shake out in the WCHA standings, but the next four weeks should provide a glimpse.

In those four weeks, there are six series between teams currently in the top half of the league, starting with a pair of dandies this weekend: first-place Wisconsin at second-place Colorado College and fifth-place North Dakota at third-place Minnesota.

Next week, Denver plays at Wisconsin while CC goes to Minnesota. Then Minnesota plays at the Badgers on the weekend of Jan. 27-28, followed by a series between North Dakota and CC on Feb. 3-4.

Wisconsin can’t wrap up the league title in the next few weeks, but it can get the league office to start filling out the shipping label. At the other end, North Dakota needs some wins to not only move up the standings but also to hold off Minnesota-Duluth, which is one point back in sixth place.

CC, Denver and Minnesota are in the position of still being in the race for first because they still have games against Wisconsin remaining. If someone can bring the Badgers back to the pack by sweeping them — or even by a string of splits — the landscape will change completely.

“As you look around, you’ve got Minnesota-North Dakota, you’ve got Denver and St. Cloud. There’s some good matchups here in the next few weeks,” CC coach Scott Owens said. “I think our league is strong and continues to look strong and seems to be growing as the season goes on this year. These are crucial for positioning — PairWise and standings — because there’s still a lot of things that can happen.”

Not that the jockeying for position will be limited to the top half of the league, either. Minnesota State plays four of the five teams around them in the standings over the next four weeks, starting with a series against Alaska-Anchorage this weekend.

“I think it’s a situation where it’s all out in front of us,” Mavericks coach Troy Jutting said. “It’s time for us to go grab it.”

A lot of teams could be saying the same thing.

Trivial Matters

The top five teams in the WCHA standings are separated by 10 points at the halfway point of the league’s schedule. What’s the closest finish for the top five teams in terms of points since the league expanded to 10 teams in 1993-94? Answer below.

CC’s Chance

Colorado College has good reason to be excited to start the second half of the WCHA schedule.

The Tigers have plenty of momentum coming out of their impressive performance at the Great Lakes Invitational, even despite a week off between that and this weekend’s home series against Wisconsin. They’ve got the Badgers in their building and another chance to get closer to the top spot in the league standings.

“This may be the last chance to get to the Badgers for us,” Owens said. “But we’re trying to get home ice and top three and PairWise — all those things become very important right now.”

The Tigers played like a veteran team at the GLI, Owens said, and it showed in the dominating way they took care of Michigan and Michigan State.

That’ll get challenged against Wisconsin, another veteran team. Owens wants his team to use its quickness on the big sheet and hopes to take advantage of having the last change to get the matchups he wants on the ice.

“That being said, no one’s been able to do it, home or away,” he said. “They’ve got impressive sweeps at Minnesota, who’s quicker than us and play on the same size sheet and they weren’t able to do it. I think we’ve got to be at the very top of our game to have any chance. Hopefully we can get some special teams opportunities and go from there.”

Owens said he doesn’t expect any leftovers from the last CC-Wisconsin series, which ended on a sour note when Burish, the Wisconsin captain, hit CC’s Thauwald as the second game of the series ended. Burish received a game DQ for the incident but no further suspension from the league.

“It’s too big of a series and that just serves as a distraction,” Owens said. “I feel bad for Scott, but the reality of the situation is it’s just too big of a weekend. Nothing good ever comes of that, anyway.”

Unheard Appeals

Minnesota coach Don Lucia was so upset with a call that will keep his most experienced defenseman in the stands for the opener of this weekend’s series against North Dakota that he confronted WCHA supervisor of officials Greg Shepherd in the Mariucci Arena hallways after last Saturday’s game.

Gophers defenseman Chris Harrington and Niagara’s Jason Williamson were each assessed fighting majors and game disqualifications for a scuffle in the third period. Lucia claimed it was no more than wrestling and no punches were thrown.

The DQ carries a one-game suspension that will sideline Harrington for Friday’s game against North Dakota.

At present, teams are not given the opportunity to appeal decisions like the assessment of a DQ, which are final once the referee signs the scoresheet. Lucia thinks that’s wrong.

“When there’s an obvious mistake, you should have some recourse to have the ability to appeal a disqualification like that,” he said. “There has to be an avenue because we have a situation here where there wasn’t a punch thrown and gloves never came off and they wrestled a little bit. But boy, that’s a big leap from wrestling to a disqualification because that’s such a costly penalty.”

Interim No More

In Bob Motzko’s first series as St. Cloud State’s head coach — interim tag removed — he’ll go up against one of his former bosses.

Motzko was officially tabbed as the Huskies’ coach this week when the school removed the “interim” before his title that existed since he took over for the retired Craig Dahl in the offseason.

According to the St. Cloud Times, Motzko was one of four people who applied for the job and was the only finalist. The paper reported he has a four-year contract that will pay him $110,592 in base salary this year.

This weekend, Motzko has his first head coaching meeting with Denver’s George Gwozdecky, under whom he worked as an assistant coach at Miami from 1991 to 1993.

Score to Win

Jutting has a pretty simple explanation for why his Minnesota State team has had some success recently. Just look at the scoreboard.

The Mavericks have scored five or more goals three times in their last five games after doing so twice in their first 17 contests.

“I think we’ve actually played really well since our third week of the season,” Jutting said. “The problem that we had is that we weren’t scoring goals. We had been getting a ton of opportunities and just not cashing in. Obviously that wears on players when you’re getting your chances and they’re not going into the net.”

In the 16 games since the Mavericks opened the season 0-6, they have lost only five times and all have been by one goal. In four of those losses, they scored two goals or fewer.

That shows how important getting more than a couple of goals on the board is for Jutting’s team, which is seventh in the league in scoring offense.

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