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Twice Shy

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When Air Force lost 4-3 to Minnesota in last year’s NCAA tournament, you might have thought there would never be a game any more heartbreaking. The heavy underdog Falcons held a two-goal lead in the third period, only to watch it slip away.

At the time, many also felt that the close game was a moral victory for Air Force. It was, after all, their first-ever NCAA tournament appearance, and many felt the club might have been a two- or three-goal underdog.

So Saturday, when the Falcons once again came as close as possible to upsetting top-seeded Miami in the Northeast Regional semifinal, this time letting a 2-1 third period lead slip away and finally falling in overtime when Miami’s Justin Mercier lifted a backhanded over the shoulder of Air Force goaltender Andrew Volkening at 15:21 over overtime, you might think this was once again a moral victory for Air Force and head coach Frank Serratore.

Think again.

“Minnesota gets here every year,” said Serratore. “Michigan gets here every year. Miami can get here every year. We’re not going to get here every year. We’re only going to have so many chances. I could say that I’m happy to be here, but that’s not the case, I’ll take these two [losses] to my grave.”

Truthfully, the pill might be a little more difficult to swallow a second time for Serratore and his team. However, Serratore certainly has plenty to brag about after Saturday’s loss.

His club got off to the ugliest of starts, allowing Miami to get on the scoreboard just 19 seconds into the game.

Said Serratore, “My game plan was to get off to a great start. That went out the window pretty much right away. We had to go to Plan B.”

They also had to battle an officiating crew that, putting it mildly had an “off-day,” with the Falcons the victim of numerous questionable calls and non-calls.

Still, the Falcons never quit and, in fact outplayed the RedHawks for much of the second period, during which Derrick Burnett and Josh Print each buried hard-working blue-collar goals to give the Falcons the lead heading to the third.

It even seemed like destiny was on Air Force’s side, as the RedHawks leading scorer Ryan Jones missed a wide-open net in the middle frame and then Volkening somehow made an incredible stick save later in the frame that gave the Falcons the momentum in the game.

Once again, it simply wasn’t meant to be.

If you look for silver linings, as it is almost critical that a coach must do after a game like this, there were plenty.

Besides just the gusty effort that put the Falcons in a position to win the game, Saturday’s game also saw the return of Air Force standout senior Eric Ehn. A Hobey Baker finalist a year ago, Ehn broke a bone in his shin on January 19 and had what many thought was season-ending surgery three days later.

The ability of Air Force to win the Atlantic Hockey championship and advance to the NCAA tournament gave Ehn just enough recovery time, meaning he could suit up for one final game.

“For me, it was pretty magical,” said Ehn. “Not just that I had the chance to play, but for my team to go out and win the Atlantic Hockey championship. I was so proud of them that I could go out on the ice one more time with them.”

Ehn and his six fellow seniors have now played that final game, possibly the final game they’ll all play, as each will now become officers in the U.S. Air Force. The class may not have an NCAA tournament win on their resume, but they certainly had plenty to brag about when they get older.

“I’m so proud of our players,” said Serratore. “They put us on the map. The Air Force Academy, most people didn’t even know we were a Division I program. These players validated a lot of things winning back-to-back Atlantic Hockey championships.

“Once is luck, twice is skill. We’re not a one-hit wonder. We’re not a one-man band.”

Yes, the Falcons are on the map, and though he may worry about getting back to the NCAA tournament, Serratore should feel confident that this program can and will get back.

As they say, third time’s a charm.

Thanks For Playing

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In the first round of last year’s NCAA tournament, so goes the prevailing wisdom, Michigan’s T.J. Hensick slammed the nail in the coffin on his Hobey Baker chances.

In the first round of this year’s tournament, his former linemate, Kevin Porter, slammed the nail in the coffin on everyone else’s chances.

In case anyone had any remaining doubts about the Wolverine senior, he scored four of Michigan’s five goals in a 5-1 win over Niagara, as Michigan snapped a three-game losing streak in the tournament and advanced to Saturday’s East Regional final against Clarkson.

He also made comedians out of his head coach, Red Berenson, and his classmate, Chad Kolarik, although the latter didn’t need much help.

“I guess Kevin Porter’s not in a slump anymore,” Berenson mused. Funny, but Kolarik won the impromptu contest when he said, “About time he matched me,” a reference to his four-goal effort against Lake Superior in February.

“He’s the best player in the nation,” Kolarik said, “and this should solidify his spot for Hobey. We’ve been praising him all year, and I’m his campaign manager.”

 The campaign appears to be working, as chants of “HOB-EY BAK-ER,” separated by the ubiquitous five-clap pattern, rained down from the Maize-clad students after each of Porter’s four goals.  It was a bit different from the last time I watched Porter in person (against Boston University, back in October, when Porter was just having a really nice start to the season), but in Porter’s mind, the biggest difference is that each goal brought Michigan closer to the Frozen Four.

“I try not to think about it,” Porter said of the chants linking him to college hockey’s top individual honor. “It’s nice, but we’re here to win a national championship. It’s about our team. It’s not about one person. I wouldn’t be anywhere near where I am right now without [Kolarik and Max Pacioretty] or the rest of the team.”

When he’s not getting laughs while talking about his classmate and linemate, Kolarik – who reminded everyone that he had a pretty good case as a Hobey finalist himself with five assists (bringing his season totals to 25 assists and 53 points) – echoed Porter’s sentiments.

“We’re all about the team right now,” Kolarik said. “It’s team time right now. ‘Ports’ will eventually get his when we get to the Frozen Four.”

Clarkson, of course, figures to have something to say about whether the Wolverines will indeed make it to Denver, and the Golden Knights had success containing another Hobey finalist on Friday, holding St. Cloud’s Ryan Lasch without a shot on goal in their 2-1 win over the Huskies. However, as fine as season as Lasch has had, stopping him and stopping Porter are two very different propositions.

“I don’t know what to do to stop that line for Michigan,” Niagara head coach Dave Burkholder said of Porter’s line with Kolarik and Pacioretty. “Those guys are going to be on TV for a long, long time. I don’t know how you stop them. We certainly didn’t have the answer tonight.”

Saturday night, we’ll learn if Clarkson has the answer that can get them past Porter, Kolarik and company. However, when it comes to the question of who will hoist the Hobey two weeks from tonight, that question was answered a long time ago.

Tonight, we got a reminder.

Golden Effort Is Right On Time

By Elliot Olshansky
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If Clarkson had to pick one weekend this month to be at the Times Union Center, this certainly would have been it.

That said, however, the Golden Knights were conspicuous by their absence last weekend, when the ECAC Hockey championship was played in this building, and that absence stayed with the conference’s regular-season champions as they prepared for this weekend’s East Regional.

The Golden Knights arrived in Albany with the bitter taste of defeat lingering in their mouths, and they proceeded to emphatically spit it out on St. Cloud State, advancing to the regional final with a 2-1 win over the Huskies.

“In my eyes, if we didn’t win this game, the season was a disappointment,” goaltender David Leggio said. “We were motivated.

“We had to watch the ECAC championships in this arena last week, and we came to the arena every day ready to work. You can’t control whether you win or not, but you can control your effort, and it was definitely unbelievable tonight.”

To be sure, Leggio and the team in front of him delivered a winning effort, but to call the Golden Knights’ effort “unbelievable” may be stretching things a bit. After all, Roll believed all along that his team would show up ready to work just as hard as they did.

“To be honest, nothing surprised me,” Roll said. “These guys, I think one of their aspirations and their goals all year was to get to this point, to compete for a national championship. We’ve got a great group of seniors, and just a great group of guys.”

In all fairness, one might have expected the Golden Knights to come in rusty, given their light schedule in recent weeks. Friday’s tilt against the Huskies was only the fourth game in the month of March for Clarkson.

Following the regular-season finale against Quinnipiac on March 1, the Golden Knights had a bye week before the ECAC Hockey quarterfinals, then fell to Colgate in a three-game series. Such a sporadic schedule can take a toll on a team’s physical preparation, but the fifth-year head coach was not concerned about his team’s level of readiness.

“It’s funny,” Roll said, “but coming to the rink tonight, I really felt good about where we were at. We were hungry.”

Those feelings were justified, as Clarkson outshot the Huskies, 40-25, including a 14-5 advantage in the second period. In addition, the Knights held St. Cloud scoreless on the power play, and generally kept the Huskies from doing the things they wanted to do.

“You’ve got to give it to Clarkson,” St. Cloud head coach Bob Motzko said. “I thought they played a great game tactically, and they took the middle of the ice away. We just couldn’t get on track.”

St. Cloud’s difficulties were not reflected on the scoreboard, however, at least not at first. The Huskies held the Golden Knights scoreless in the first period, and took the game’s first lead at 4:08 of the second period on a Garrett Raboin wrist shot. Sophomore goaltender Jase Weslosky was outstanding, keeping the Huskies in contention throughout the contest.

“I should mention our goaltender was outstanding tonight,” Motzko said. “The big question mark for us coming into the season was the two-time All-American we lost [Bobby Goepfert]. It was an unbelievable performance by [Weslosky] tonight, and it sure is a bright spot in the future for us.”

In the end, though, Clarkson’s drive paid off. The Golden Knights tied the game at 14:15 of the second period when David Cayer crashed the net to convert on a Bryan Rufenach rebound, then took the lead 4:58 into the final frame when Shea Guthrie battled past a St. Cloud defender to put a backhand shot past Weslosky for the go-ahead goal.

“He’s a right-handed shot,” Weslosky said of Guthrie, “so I expected him to go to his backhand — which he did — but just before he shot, our defenseman got a stick on his stick, and I kind of thought he wasn’t going to be able got get a shot off. He got a really nice backhand shot off and went top shelf.”

From there, it was a matter of shutting down the Huskies, and the veteran Clarkson team stepped up and did the job. Of the 19 players who took the ice for the Golden Knights on Friday, 12 were juniors or seniors, and they were able to hold off a St. Cloud team defined by the youth of its top stars: sophomores Andreas Nodl and Ryan Lasch and freshman Garrett Roe, who were held to a total of six shots for the game (none for Lasch, a Hobey Baker finalist).

“Clarkson’s seniority really came out tonight,” Weslosky said. “You could tell that they wanted it bad.”

The Golden Knights will want a win just as badly on Saturday night, when they return to the Times-Union Center looking for their first trip to the Frozen Four since 1991.

“We know we’re going to be facing a really good team,” Guthrie said. “We can’t lose our focus, and we have to be ready to play.”

If Roll knows his team, the Golden Knights won’t disappoint on either count.

“I’ve been on teams where they got a second chance and they weren’t excited about it,” Roll said. “They weren’t motivated enough. This group, I can’t say that about. They were ready to go each and every day in practice. I just knew we were going to play well tonight. Whether we won or not, I obviously wasn’t sure, but I was really confident coming into this game that we were going to play the way we were capable [of playing].”

In the NCAA tournament, a win is never a sure thing. However, whether or not the Golden Knights’ play will be worthy of victory, one can be sure that their effort will be.

Assessing The Hobey Hopefuls

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It is that time of year. Time to decide who wins the Hobey Baker Memorial Award. The voting members will convene next week for a conference call to discuss the 10 candidates.

Like last season, here is a comprehensive review of all 10. The Hobey Baker committee establishes certain criteria but the diverse group that votes see many other positives and negatives of each candidate based on the hockey experience each member brings to the table. Also, not every member has seen every player because of geography.

You, the fans of this great game, can use this analysis to debate who wins this award. Do goalies get fairly evaluated versus scorers? Do defensemen really get a fair shake? Is there merit to choosing a senior just because he is a senior? T.J. Hensick had a great year last year and so did David Brown, but Ryan Duncan was better even though he was a sophomore. It is laid out here for you to evaluate and decide.

The interesting exercise here is to see if you think you know who really had the best season. Review all the candidates and then crunch numbers and evaluate unbiasedly to see if the person you thought was your winner still is after careful evaluation. “Fan” is short for “fanatic,” so take your allegiance out of it and prove that college hockey fans understand how to evaluate quality as opposed to just cheering for your team. It would be very easy to say Nathan Gerbe is a good ol’ eastern boy, so I’m picking him. Not the way it works in big-boy land so be honest with yourself.

So outside of the committee criteria, here is a look at each player’s on-ice performance regarding some criteria used by scouts and coaches to evaluate players. They include (for skaters) road points, points in rivalry games, points against ranked opponents or in tough road buildings, multiple-point games, multiple-goal games, point streaks, games in which points were registered and playoff performance. For goalies the number of wins, who they beat, and other like categories will be examined similar to the criteria for skaters.

Another criterion is the level of competition. Its fair to say the WCHA, with six teams in the field of 16 (and one could argue Minnesota State belonged in there somewhere) might get weighed a little heavier than Atlantic Hockey. The CCHA was a demanding conference this season, also.

So while very impressed with Simon Lambert’s season, can you equate his performance game-by-game with that of Gerbe? I’m not making judgments, I’m just pointing out how strength of schedule and depth of the team factor in a comparison of individual accomplishments. Then again, Gerbe is surrounded by high-end players, a lot of whom will be professionals. Lambert isn’t, so he probably is responsible for a little more of his own success than Gerbe might be? Fair or unfair?

Last year these criteria helped crown Ryan Duncan with the Hobey Baker Memorial Award. Who does it lend a hand to this year? These are my own unofficial criteria and do not necessarily reflect the sentiments of the entire committee. Have fun with your evaluation and try to put your fandom aside. That way you’ll really come out with a true winner.

Nathan Gerbe, Junior Forward, Boston College (39 GP, 28-29–57)

Gerbe and the Eagles finished fourth in Hockey East and then took beat both top-seeded UNH and second-seeded Vermont to win the Hockey East championship. They enter the Worcester regional this weekend as the No. 2 seed and will face the Minnesota Golden Gophers.

Nathan Gerbe has taken over the national scoring lead (photo: Melissa Wade).

Nathan Gerbe has taken over the national scoring lead (photo: Melissa Wade).

Gerbe passed Michigan’s Kevin Porter last weekend to claim the top spot in the nation in scoring. He had three assists in BC’s remarkable triple-overtime come-from-behind win against UNH and a goal and an assist in the championship win against Vermont. He led Hockey East in scoring and goals, was tied for second in power-play points with 9-13–22 and those nine PPGs were tied for first in the conference. He led Hockey East with 3-1–4 shorthanded and tied for second with four game-winners. Nationally, he narrowly edged out Ryan Cruthers with a 1.46 points-per-game average. A draft choice of the Buffalo Sabres, he has played in two consecutive NCAA title games, losing to Wisconsin and Michigan State.

Stats Analysis: He registered points in 26 of 39 games this season and on 17 occasions he hit the multi-point plateau. On the subject of multi-point games, here’s a good one; he finished the season with a streak of five multi-point games which include playoff games against Providence (two), UNH, and Vermont. In that stretch he had 11 points.

During one stretch during the season he went on a nine-game point streak in which eight games were multi-pointers, and he racked up an incredible 27 points in those nine games for a 3 points-per-game average. In that span he scored in every game, and had a hat trick against Boston University and a four goal game at Harvard (who were the ECAC playoff runner ups).

Everyone in Hockey East considers BC a rival, but we’ll list BU, Harvard, Northeastern, UNH, Maine, and Vermont as rivals for BC and in 20 games against those teams he had 27 points, which is good. BC’s No. 1 rival is BU and his line against the Terriers was 6-3–9 in four games. In 16 games away from Conte Forum Gerbe posted 13 goals and 14 assists, just under two points per on the road.

He went scoreless in two big early-season tilts against Michigan in Minnesota and home versus North Dakota (the game was called after two periods for bad ice). He also was blanked in a two-game weekend against UNH but managed five points in two games at home against Vermont — but was shut out up there. However, he showed up in the playoffs with nine points in four games and that counts big-time.

Ryan Jones, Senior Forward, Miami (40 GP, 30-17–47)

Jones and the RedHawks finished second in the CCHA to Michigan but did spend a chunk of time as the No. 1 team in the nation. They swept Bowling Green, beat Notre Dame, and lost to Michigan in the CCHA playoffs. They’ll head to Worcester as the No. 1 seed and play Air Force in the opening round.

Jones had a great season and finishes his NCAA career as a premier power forward. Despite the loss of longtime linemate Nathan Davis for parts of the season, Davis continued to roll. Motivated by a young girl with cancer, he has grown his hair long and is having it cut at season’s end for the Locks for Love foundation.

He has never missed a game, is a four-time all-CCHA selection and was First Team all-CCHA this year. In the CCHA Championships at Joe Louis Arena, Jones was on the ice for the game-tying goal against Notre Dame with four seconds to play and helped create traffic in front of Jordan Pearce on the goal. He also helped create the game-winner, on which he assisted in OT. He had nine shots and was plus-2 in two games at the Joe with one assist.

Jones finished second to Michigan’s Kevin Porter in CCHA scoring and sits tied for seventh nationally with BC’s Joe Whitney, but his 30 goals lead both Porter and Gerbe for the top spot overall. Of his totals, 11-4–15 came on the power play giving him 25 points at even strength in a good defensive conference. He had seven game-winning goals.

Stats Analysis: Jones had points in 26 games overall and on the road his line read 13-8–22 in 22 games away from Steve Cady arena. He didn’t have a long point streak but he did have streaks of four games with points on five occasions. His best rip was 6-4–10 over one span in games at Michigan State, two at home vs Canisius, and one vs Alaska.

He had a seven points in four games later in the season starting at Alaska, including two home games against No. 1 Michigan, and a hat trick at Ferris. The hat trick was his third of the season which included a four-goal game at Northern Michigan. Miami is another team that is used as a measuring stick in the CCHA, so road and rivalry games are tough. The Ohio schools (BG and OSU) and Michigan fall into the rivalry category and in those games he went 4-2 in nine games.

The big games in the CCHA for Miami were games against the other members of the “Big Four” (Michigan, MSU, Notre Dame) and in those contests he posted 3-1–4 in eight games. Now remember Miami has pretty balanced scoring so low totals in these last two areas aren’t as alarming as one might perceive. He had five multi-goal games and 12 multi-point games. He’s had three points in four games in the playoffs as Miami has gone 3-1. The only game the RedHawks lost is the one in which he was shut out, a 2-1 loss in the CCHA title game to Michigan.

Lee Jubinville, Junior Forward, Princeton (33 GP, 12-26–38)

Jubinville and the Tigers finished second in ECAC Hockey and beat Yale two games to one in a best-of-three quarterfinal matchup. They then beat Colgate and Harvard in the ECAC final four to advance to the Madison regional as a No. 4 where they’ll play No. 1 North Dakota.

Jubinville, who plays home games in Hobey Baker Rink at the same school Baker attended, was the ECAC Player of the Year, a first-team all-star, and the Ivy League Player of the Year. He led the team with a plus-10 rating.

Stats Analysis: He had points in 23 of 33 games and announced early in the season that he was here to play by starting off with seven points in the first three games at Yale, at Cornell, and at Colgate, three tough buildings. Later in the season he hit a groove, registering eight points in a four-game scoring streak, and after being blanked at RPI, he went on a nine-game point streak, adding 13 more points to his total. In that span he had four multi-point games.

Away from Baker Rink he went 5-15–20 in 17 games. In this conference, weekends against Cornell/Colgate and Harvard/Dartmouth are good barometers of your success; throw in the Clarkson/St. Lawrence duo and Jubinville did well against those upper-echelon teams.

Simon Lambert, Senior Forward, RIT (37 GP, 21-30–51)

Lambert’s Tigers finished second to Army in Atlantic Hockey by two points this season. They were eliminated in the AHA playoffs by eventual playoff champion Air Force after knocking out Holy Cross. He had a pair of three-assist games against Holy Cross but was shut out by the Falcons.

Lambert is fourth in the nation in scoring but Chad Kolarik, Joe Whitney and Ryan Jones are candidates to pass him during the regionals depending on their team success. The team captain, Lambert is a two-time AHA first-team selection.

Stats Analysis: Points in 28 of 37 games this season, and away from Rochester, he posted a line of 8-13–21 in 18 games and in one stretch had points in seven of 10 consecutive road games. He had 16 multi-point games and four multi-goal games. He ended the season with an 11-game point streak that saw him put up 22 points.

Jean-Philippe Lamoureux, Senior Goalie, North Dakota (39 GP, 25-10-4, 1.65 GAA, .904 sv%)

To say Lamoureux is on fire would be the ultimate understatement and it’s a very realistic possibility he could win four more to end his career. Going into this weekend, Lamoureux leads the nation in goals against average (1.65) and is tied for second nationally in save percentage (.934) while playing all but one game (against Bemidji State on Feb. 24) against what is rated the toughest schedule in the nation by both the PairWise RPI and KRACH systems.

He started quickly and is finishing even better. Lamoureux started by shutting out the defending champs from Michigan State, then came east and blanked BC and Northeastern on back-to-back nights in Boston. He has 55 consecutive games and this season his goals against and save percentage are what NCAA goaltending legends are made of. Those four shutouts in his first five games are a WCHA record that might never be broken. He was named to the WCHA second team.

Lamoureux led the Fighting Sioux to a 26-10-4 record and a second-place finish in the WCHA, four points behind Colorado College. Lamoureux won the WCHA goaltending title this season with a 1.74 goals against average in league play, just ahead of Colorado College’s Richard Bachman. The Sioux enter the Madison regional as the No. 1 seed and will play the No. 4 seed, Guy Gadowsky’s ECAC Hockey champs from Princeton.

Stats Analysis: In 39 games, he has given up one goal on 16 occasions, including two at Denver, UNH at home, two at Minnesota, one at Duluth and one at home to St. Cloud, and three overall to Michigan Tech. Seven occasions saw two goals, including at St. Cloud, home against St. Cloud, and playoff games at the Xcel Center against CC and Denver. Only three occasions saw four or more — UNH was one and Denver was another. The Gophers were the third.

He does benefit from a good defensive team and has only needed to make over 30 saves on five occasions, but Lamoureux gets tested and responds. He was 11-5-2 on the road and road wins include games at Wisconsin, Denver, Minnesota State and St. Cloud. Toss in Northeastern also. He has put together win streaks of eight and five games this season. When looking at rivalry games, Minnesota is the biggest rival to North Dakota and Lamoureux gave up six goals in a split in Minny.

He also split at Wisconsin, Denver, and St. Cloud. Six teams in the 26-team tourney show how good the WCHA is, and how hard it is to win there which needs to be factored in here. Lamoureux’s workload also is impressive, as he knew he couldn’t have a night off.

Ryan Lasch, Sophomore Forward, St. Cloud State (39 GP, 25-28–53)

Lasch was one of three Huskies to lead the WCHA in scoring and he was the kingpin with 53 points, trailing only Porter and Gerbe nationally. His Huskies finished 19-15-5 overall and tied Minnesota State for fourth place in the WCHA. He is the lone sophomore in the running, but as we well know, a sophomore won it last year so nothing is impossible.

Ryan Lasch led St. Cloud State's one-two-three scoring punch in the WCHA (photo: Jason Waldowski).

Ryan Lasch led St. Cloud State’s one-two-three scoring punch in the WCHA (photo: Jason Waldowski).

Lasch is an undrafted NHL free agent who should garner some attention as his career continues and he further cements himself as a big-time scorer at this level. He has 13 power-play goals and five game-winners this season. The Huskies were an opening-game K.O. by Minnesota at the WCHA Final Five, but head to Albany, N.Y., as the No. 2 seed and will play ECAC Hockey’s regular-season champ from Clarkson.

Stats Analysis: He might have been the nation’s most consistent scorer with points in 34 of 39 games this season, and 16 of those were of the multi-point variety. In 19 games on the road he had 10 goals and 12 assists for 22 points including big series at Tech (three goals), Colorado College (2-1–3), and Wisconsin (1-2–3). As mentioned, consistency was a staple of his game as he had consecutive game scoring streaks of 10 and 11, and is currently on a nine-game rip in which he has amassed 12 points.

Those other streaks were impressive as well. The 10-gamer included seven multi-point games (four on the road) and the 11 games saw him rack up a pair of multi-goal games and a hat trick against Harvard. St. Cloud could call any game in Minnesota a rivalry game, especially the Gophers. In 10 games against teams in the State of Hockey, Lasch went 3-7–10, which is solid. He certainly showed up against the big boys as he put up 5-3–8 against CC and NoDak but was shut out by Denver in St. Cloud. St. Cloud is 2-1 in the postseason, and he had goals in both wins over Wisconsin and a pair of assists in the loss to Minnesota.

Jeff Lerg, Junior Goaltender, Michigan State (39 GP, 23-11-5, 2.23 GAA, .925 sv%, 4 SO)

Is there an award Lerg hasn’t won yet this season, or at least been nominated? He’s already bagged the Michigan’s Best Award, an honor that he now shares with Brendan Shanahan, Steve Yzerman, Tom Izzo, Grant Hill, Jim Leyland and Barry Sanders. Lerg led the league in shutouts, wins, and save percentage and was voted the league’s top scholar-athlete as well as a CCHA first-team all-star.

He spent so much time on stage at the CCHA awards banquet you’d have thought he was one of the hosts. He’ll be in New York in early April as a finalist for the Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States. Imagine adding a Hobey to that season. The Spartans finished third in the CCHA but were beaten by upstart Northern Michigan at home in the CCHA’s second round.

Overall on the season, he owns a .925 save percentage (11th nationally), 2.23 goals against average (17th), and 23-11-5 record (.654, seventh) He ranks first in the nation in minutes played (2345:01), and sixth in percentage of team minutes played (96.1 percent). Lerg is first among all Division I goaltenders in saves (1,072) and faces an average of 27.5 shots per game, the third-most of any CCHA netminder and 13th nationally. Only two goalies ranked in the top 15 in saves per game play for teams that are better than .500 (Lerg and Kevin Regan of Hockey East champion New Hampshire).

Against the other top three teams in the CCHA (Miami, Michigan, Notre Dame), he owns a 1.84 GAA and .943 save percentage, with a shutout at No. 1 Michigan on Jan. 25. Those three rank first, second, and 21st nationally in team offense. Against the CCHA’s top 15 overall scorers (excluding the three skaters who play for MSU), Lerg has allowed just seven goals and 14 assists for 21 points in a combined 28 games. He did not allow a goal to any of the conference’s top four goal-scorers (Porter, Jones, Whitmore and Chad Kolarik of Michigan).

The Spartans enter the tournament in the Colorado Springs regional as the No. 3 seed and will play host CC in the semifinals. Lerg comes in as the defending national champion goalie and is the only goalie in the league to play in every CCHA contest of the season. He is a six-time CCHA Goaltender of the Week, the most weekly awards of any netminder in the conference

Stats Analysis: In 39 games, he’s allowed one goal against eight times, and two on 11 occasions, so that’s just about half a season with two or less allowed and the CCHA has some scoring in it. Since Jan. 1, he owns a 1.91 goals against average and .937 save percentage, with four shutouts. Three of his four shutouts have come on the road — at Ohio State (Jan. 19), at No. 1 Michigan (Jan. 25), and Bowling Green (March 1). In CCHA contests, he ranked first in minutes played (1666:59), save percentage (.935) saves (786), shutouts (four) and goaltender victories (19); second in winning percentage (.714); third in goals against average (1.98).

Impressive outings also include two goals allowed in a home-and-home with Notre Dame in which MSU went 1-0-1. He went 10-6-1 on the road, and allowed six goals in a three game series loss to Northern Michigan. Three times he strung together three-game win streaks and he also had four- and seven-gamers. Michigan is MSU’s undoubted rival and in three of four against the hated Wolverines he was great; in the last game at the Joe he looked average. He was 2-1-1 vs Michigan, 0-2 vs Miami, and 1-0-1 vs Notre Dame. Out of conference he had losses to North Dakota, Providence and Michigan Tech while posting home ties with Minnesota and Wisconsin in the College Hockey Showcase. He beat Colgate twice.

T.J. Oshie, Junior Forward, North Dakota (39 GP, 18-23–41)

It was his liney who won the award this year and now it’s Oshie’s turn. There might not be a more engaging kid on the list than Oshie, who is as comfortable on camera or in a press conference as he is splitting defensemen or making three moves in the crease to score a goal. He finished fifth in scoring in the WCHA, led the Sioux in scoring and was a league first-team selection.

He’s a first-round draft choice of the St. Louis Blues and many felt he’d stay in STL after the Sioux were eliminated by Boston College last season, but he returned for his junior year along with several underclassmen at NoDak in a pledge they made to each other. He was also named to the WCHA Final Five All-Tournament team.

He leads the team in goals (18), assists (23) and points (41 points) while playing against the most difficult schedule in the nation. NoDak spent some time at No. 1 this season and finished third in the WCHA. The Sioux were beaten by Denver in the postseason tourney and head to the Madison regional for a date with No. 4 seed Princeton.

Stats Analysis: Oshie had points in 24 games this season and away from The Ralph he went 7-6–13 in 17 games including a hat trick at Michigan Tech. He also had 14 multi-point games and two multi-goal games. He had two good point-scoring streaks of eight and five games. We have established NoDak’s chief rival as Minnesota, and in games versus the Gophers he had a goal and an assist in a two-game home set Minny but was blanked at Minny.

Against conference leader CC, Denver, and the two just behind them in Minnesota State and St. Cloud, he posted a line of 3-9–12 in 12 games. UND is 22-2-0 this season in games in which Oshie has a point. He has five GWG this season. Oshie was the Oct. 30 WCHA Offensive Player of the Week after scoring a hat trick in a win at Michigan Tech on Oct. 27, and had a career-long eight-game point-scoring streak from Dec. 29 to Jan. 26 with four goals and seven assists in the streak. He finished fourth in the WCHA in scoring with 29 points in league games (12g, 17a) and a 1.07 points-per-game average.

Kevin Porter, Senior Forward, Michigan (40 GP, 28-28–56)

There are just so many places you can start when it comes to Kevin Porter. He decided to pass up a pro contract to return for his senior season and he went from a great player to an elite one in the process. More than that, he developed into perhaps the best captain Michigan has ever had and that is saying something.

Porter’s value on-ice is matched if not surpassed off-ice by the way he and Chad Kolarik took a young team of freshmen and returning but somewhat shell-shocked juniors and made them into a unified group with no agendas and only one goal: a national title. That has to count for something.

Porter enters the regionals with Michigan as a No. 1 seed in Albany; the Wolverines play Niagara in the opening round. Porter comes in off a busy night at the CCHA awards banquet where he was named the CCHA Player of the Year in addition to being a CCHA first-team all-star and leading the league in scoring. He was also a CCHA Best Defensive Forward Finalist.

Overall on a national scale, he is second in points (56) and fourth in points per game (1.40), tied for second in goals (28) and seventh in goals per game (0.70), tied for 10th in assists (28) and 20th in assists per game (0.74), and third in power-play goals (14). He captured the CCHA scoring title with a 22-20–42 line in 28 games, and was third in the conference in goals, tied for second in assists (20), second in power-play goals (11), and second in plus/minus (plus-23).

Porter has set career highs in goals (28) and power-play goals (14) and is the first Wolverine to reach 25 goals since Jeff Tambellini in 2002-03. Even more impressive, with 20 goals in 21 games, he became the fastest Wolverine to score 20 goals since 1993-94 when Mike Knuble achieved the feat in 19 games

Stats Analysis: He has points in 31 of 38 games, with point streaks of eight and nine games. He had a career-best tying 17 multi-point games, including five multi-goal games and five multi-assist games. Porter earned 9-9–18 in 15 games against ranked opponents and notched 17-12–29 in 21 road/neutral site games.

He has been assessed just 18 penalty minutes despite a hard-hitting style, and earned a plus rating in 23 of 40 games while going even in 14 others. In rivalry games, Porter has amassed eight points in nine games against Miami, Michigan State, and Notre Dame and went 3-3–6 in two games in the College Hockey Showcase against Wisconsin and Minnesota. He had one stretch where he had four straight multi-point games, registering 12 points in that span. In the playoffs through four games, he had a goal and an assist vs UNO in game one, and has been scoreless the past three games, all Michigan wins. UM is 19-1-2 when Porter scores a goal, 24-4-3 when he tallies a point.

Kevin Regan, Senior Goaltender, New Hampshire (31 GP, 23-7-1, 2.11 GAA, .933 sv%, 3 SO)

Truth be told, this could be my sentimental pick but this is about facts and not sentiment so he’ll be judged on his season and not because he won the Waterloo Blackhawks a Clark Cup five years ago. However, Regan is a unique story in that this has been his best performance since maybe his freshman year and many, myself included, feel it’s because he’s the man in net for UNH, he knows it, and therefore he’s established a groove and is dialed in.

It’s his team and that has enabled him to hit the next level and push himself out of his comfort zone. — Regan was selected unanimously as Hockey East’s Player of the Year, named an All-Hockey East First-Team honoree, was Hockey East Goalie of the Month in February, split Hockey East Player of the Week honors Feb. 25, and took home Hockey East Defensive Player of the Week honors seven times this season — most recently March 24 when he shared the award after setting a Hockey East semifinal record for saves by stopping a career-high 62 shots in a triple-overtime loss to Boston College on March 21.

At 23-7-1, Regan is the first goaltender in UNH history to post back-to-back 20-win seasons. His .933 save percentage is the second-best single-season mark in school history, trailing only his own .935 effort from last season. Regan’s 23 wins and 2.12 goals-against-average rank him fourth on UNH’s single-season lists in those categories. Regan has won 13 of his last 15 games, including an unbeaten month of February when he was 7-0-1.

The 18 wins and .940 save percentage are the second-best marks in a single Hockey East season, and he just won the Walter Brown Award, given to the best American-born player playing in New England. UNH, a No. 1 seed, was the regular-season champ in Hockey East and heads to Colorado Springs for a date with No. 4 Notre Dame.

Stats Analysis: Start here: he went 8-2 against the second- through fourth-place teams in Hockey East (BU, BC, Vermont). In a weekend series against then-national No. 5 UMass, he gave up five goals total in a home-and-home sweep that basically ended the Minutemen’s season. He had eight games with one goal allowed, and another eight allowing only two, shut out BC at Conte Forum and his 62 saves, including 21 in OT against BC in the Hockey East playoffs, were quite a statement to how good a season he has had.

Out of conference he has a win vs CC and a split at North Dakota. Against Hockey East opponents, he posted an 18-4-1 record to go along with a 1.83 GAA and a .940 save percentage. In his last 18 games versus Hockey East foes, Regan has compiled a 16-1-1 record with a 1.55 GAA, .952 save percentage and three shutouts. In the conference, Regan ranks at the top of all the major goaltending categories both overall and in Hockey East play. Regan is first in GAA, save percentage, wins, shutouts (three, all in HEA) and winning percentage (.758/.804 HEA). Nationally, Regan stands with the elite as he ranks third in save percentage, third in winning percentage and 11th in GAA.

Playing Favorites

By Elliot Olshansky
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Throughout Michigan’s remarkable season, much has been made of the fact that Kevin Porter and Chad Kolarik are the only seniors in Red Berenson’s lineup.

As such, they’re also the only Wolverines who were wearing Maize and Blue the last time the Wolverines were the clear favorite in an NCAA tournament game.

For those scoring at home, that would be 2005, when the Wolverines beat Wisconsin by a 4-1 margin in the semifinals of the Midwest Regional, played a two-hour drive from Yost Ice Arena at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids. Every other game the Wolverines have played in the tournament since then — the next day’s regional final against Colorado College and two first-round dates with North Dakota — was expected to be a battle, at best.

“We were the favorites for sure,” Kolarik said of Friday’s game against Niagara. “They were the [15]-seed, and we were the No. 1 seed. We heard it all week. We were supposed to win. We were supposed to blow them out, but we had to take care of our own business.”

Prohibitive favorite Michigan pulled away from Niagara Friday to earn a spot in the East Regional final (photo: Melissa Wade).

Prohibitive favorite Michigan pulled away from Niagara Friday to earn a spot in the East Regional final (photo: Melissa Wade).

So, how did the Wolverines’ leaders decide to handle the difference in external expectations?

Act like there was’t one.

“We told them to stay positive on the bench,” Kolarik said, “and just have fun. We’ve been having fun all year. It doesn’t matter if it’s the NCAA tournament or the first game of the year. Just have fun and relax.”

Whether the Wolverines were able to relax is debatable, but the No. 1 team in the land was certainly having fun by the end, as Kolarik assisted on all five Michigan goals — four by Porter and one by Max Pacioretty — as Michigan cruised to a 5-1 win over Niagara.

“This team’s been amazing,” Berenson said. “We’ve had good teams that disappointed in big games, and this team has just found a way to impress in big games.”

Of course, the Purple Eagles have a history of impressing in the NCAA tournament in their own right, having upset New Hampshire in 2000, but Kolarik and Porter didn’t need to think back quite that far to recall a purple-clad team pulling a shocker in the tournament. The Wolverines were waiting to take the ice in 2006 when Holy Cross upended Minnesota in Grand Forks, and that memory did figure into the seniors’ message to their teammates.

“‘Ports’ and I had seen it before,” Kolarik said. “We told the guys that anything could happen. We needed to just come out strong.”

The Wolverines did that, outshooting the Purple Eagles 11-4 in the first period, but goaltender Juliano Pagliero was equal to the task, stopping every shot he saw and leaving the score tied at the first intermission.

The scoreless tie wasn’t exactly a problem — Michigan came into the tournament 7-1-1 when tied after 20 minutes — but the Wolverine leaders made sure there was no cause for concern.

“We told them they needed to stay calm and stay focused,” Kolarik said. “We didn’t have a bad period, but we definitely wanted to get a couple of quick goals on them. The longer they stayed in the game and it was 0-0, the more confidence they were going to gain.”

“That’s how upsets happen,” Kolarik said. “If Niagara stays in that game longer and longer, they get confidence, just like Holy Cross did against Minnesota. You get one bounce and the game’s over.”

The Wolverines made sure that bounces weren’t necessary, as they took the lead 55 seconds into the middle frame on Pacioretty’s one-timer on a Kolarik feed, stretched it to 2-0 less than nine minutes later when Porter went five-hole on Kolarik.

Porter would add a rebound goal, a one-timer of his own and an empty-netter in the third — becoming the first player to score four goals in an NCAA tournament game since 1990 — but with Michigan outshooting the Purple Eagles 30-9 after two periods, the outcome was never in much doubt once the Wolverines got a lead.

“They’re young, and they’re loose,” Berenson said. “We’re trying to keep them focused, and we’re all on the right page. That doesn’t mean we’re going to win anything, but they’ve won everything they’ve set out in their minds to win this year: the College Hockey Showcase, the GLI, first place in our league, the CCHA championship.”

Next up: Saturday’s East Regional final against Clarkson, the first game between the teams since a 1962 NCAA semifinal game in Utica that saw the Golden Knights beat Berenson and the Wolverines, 5-4.

“That was the last time I played,” Berenson said. “I don’t remember a lot about it. I remember that I was supposed to do the scoring, and I don’t know if I scored in that game.”

For the time being, though, the 24th-year head coach is more concerned with getting to the 2008 semifinals than rehashing the 1962 semis.

“We still have a lot to prove in this tournament,” Berenson said. “This is one game, and now we’ll see how we match up tomorrow night, but we’re glad we’re here, we’re glad we got that first game behind us, and we’ll see how we do tomorrow.”

If one thing can be gleaned from Saturday’s game, though, it’s that the Wolverines are perfectly comfortable playing as favorites.

York Not Worried About a Milestone

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Saturday night could be a milestone night for BC head coach Jerry York. Not only does his team have the chance to advance to the regional final, York is going after career win number 800.

That, though, only crosses the coaches mind when his wife reminds him.

“My wife kids me about it once in a while, saying ‘why didn’t you reach it yet?'” said York.

This weekend, though, York won’t even let his mind wander to the 800 win topic.

“I’ve always thought that you concentrate on what’s important and what’s important is to advance,” said York.”

Relying on the Work Horse

There’s no doubt that BC goaltender John Muse has become the ultimate work horse for the Eagles this season, having played every single minute of every single game (save time spent when pulled for an extra attacker).

York, on Friday was asked if at any point in the season Muse has come to him looking for a little bit of time off, which led to York’s tongue and cheek response.

“He’s never expressed that [he needs time off],” said York. “But then again, I turn away any time I see him coming.”

Adams Make a Different Type of Commitment

Eagles forward Joe Adams, who plays the role of a 13th forward for BC, had made a commitment for his post-Boston College career, and it’s one that doesn’t involve hockey whatsoever.

“We’re very proud that Joe Adams has accepted a position with the Peace Corps,” said York.

The Wayzata, Minn., native will spend the next two years working for the Peace Corps in Suriname, South America.

“I had to look it up,” joked York when asked where Suriname is located.

Third Time a Charm to Face Gophers

This weekend marks the third time this season that the Eagles and the Gophers will play in the same tournament. Ironically, though, it will be the first time that the two clubs meet. BC lost to Michigan in the opening game of the Ice Breaker tournament to end up in the consolation game while Minnesota faced the Wolverines in the championship game. And in December, BC did its job to get to the final of the Dodge Holiday Classic, but Minnesota that evening was upset by RIT in its semifinal pushing them to the consolation matchup.

Stirring Up Memories for the Gophers

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When the Minnesota Golden Gophers take to the ice on Saturday evening to face Boston College in the opening round of the NCAA tournament, there will be a couple of logos on the boards that may stir up some bad memories – that of the Holy Cross Crusaders

This weekend’s Northeast Regional is hosted by Holy Cross, the team that beat the Minnesota two years ago in what is considered the greatest upset in NCAA tournament history. If Minnesota coach Don Lucia had any hope that the memory of that game wouldn’t be invoked, he certainly realized that wouldn’t be the case early on.

For starters, Holy Cross coach Paul Pearl is Minnesota’s host for the weekend, though Lucia said that he hoped to use that to his advantage.

“I called [Pearl] and said that I hope we’ll have all of the Holy Cross fans on our side this weekend,” said Lucia.

He did go on, though, to say that the loss in 2006, though tough to swallow was good for the game.

“The reality is that game, though it was disappointing for us, was great for college hockey,” said Lucia. “These teams, whether from the Atlantic or the CHA, they have to win their tournament to get here, so they’re on the top of their cycle.

“That team that comes out of these leagues is a good team. What you see if that there’s more parity to college hockey than there was five years ago. There’s more good teams than there was ten years ago, which is good for college hockey.”

Knowing the Power of Gerbe

Lucia knows that one player he’ll have to shut down on the BC front is Nathan Gerbe. The Hobey Baker finalist is, in Lucia’s words, “the type of player you want to pay to watch.

“He’s just a dynamic player. He’s a difference maker. He’s a game breaker.

“I wish he was on our team.”

Though admitting that the Eagles have plenty of offensive weapons, Lucia feels that shutting down Gerbe is of utmost importance to his team’s overall success on Saturday.

“We can’t let him get two or three points on the night or it’s going to be awfully difficult for us.”

Lucia on Pohl

Lucia discussed the injury to Tom Pohl that happened two weekend ago during the team’s game three quarterfinal victory over MSU-Mankato. Pohl, as most know by now, was checked into the boards and suffered a major head injury that led to the need for emergency, life-saving surgery for the senior.

“Here you are in game three and the loser may not make the NCAA tournament,” said Lucia, “and midway through the second period a guy gets seriously injured. And it’s kind of like this series, which was a spectacular series with two overtime games at that point in time, everything kind of goes on hold for 15 minutes.

“It happened right in front of our bench and we knew how serious it was, though we didn’t know it was life-threatening.”

The Gophers, of course, went on to win that night in double overtime and put together back-to-back wins in the WCHA Final Five to get into the NCAA Tournament. Lucia said that the resiliency that the club showed that night and throughout the season when difficult situations have arisen has made the Gophers stronger.

“With this group, it’s been one thing after another and they keep getting up off the mat,” said Lucia. “They’ve been through a lot and they’ve found a way to get to this point.”

Locks of Love for Miami’s Jones

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It’s not hard in general to notice Miami’s Ryan Jones on the ice. The Hobey Baker finalist is possibly the RedHawks most dominant player having scored 48 points in 40 games this season.

If for some reason his play doesn’t identify him on Saturday, just look for his hair.

The senior has what most would call flowing locks, draping well pas his shoulders. When asked about his hair, though, Jones has a great story to tell behind it.

Jones is growing his hair to donate it to Locks of Love, an organization that collects hair to create wigs to give to young cancer patients who lose their hair during chemotherapy treatements. Recently, Jones met 13-year old Korinne Croghan, who has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer and her story inspired him to grow his hair long enough to donate it.

Jones says that his hair has more than reached the required length and that as soon as his team’s playoff run ends, he’ll have the scissors ready to cut it.

“The minute we’re done I’ll be cutting it, even thought Barry Melrose wants me to keep growing it,” said Jones of the ESPN hockey analyst – who happens to be covering this regional tournament for ESPNU – who sports long flowing hair as well. “He’s just mad because mine looks better than his.

Focused from Day One

Miami head coach Enrico Blasi said on Friday that he was proud of his team’s focus since the beginning of the season that has helped to earn his club the number one seed in the region.

There was plenty of reason to focus for the RedHawks this year, particularly once three key players – Jones, Nathan Davis and goaltender Jeff Zatkoff all decided to turn down the NHL last summer in favor of returning for a senior season.

“It shows the type of commitment those guys have for Miami University,” said Blasi when asked about the trio’s decision to return. “Each of them agonized of the fact of leaving their team. It wasn’t about the money, it wasn’t about playing in the National Hockey League. It was about having to leave the team.”

Jones was the final player to make the decision to come back, and Blasi said when he did decide, it gave the RedHawks an added boost.

“Once Ryan decided to come back, I can tell you that the confidence for our team has been at a whole new level,” said Blasi. “Everything that has been done since that point on has been done with a purpose.”

Blasi also hopes that these players returning for their senior year will send a message to others in the college hockey world.

“It’s shows and example to the rest of our team and hopefully college hockey as well,” said Blasi. “It’s okay to play your senior year and have a fun time doing it. The NHL and pro hockey will always be there. You can only have your college days once.”

Fun in the Sun

Enrico Blasi was asked during Friday’s press conference how often his team – the Miami University RedHawks – is confused with the University of Miami Hurricanes. Blasi answer was quick and simple.

“Wait, we’re not from Florida?”

He did say that the success of his club has helped get the Miami University name known in the college hockey and sports world and said that is a credit to the teams in the recent past.

Miami used to be know as Miami (Ohio), but dropped the Ohio reference in recent years.

Air Force’s Serratore keeps the crowd laughing

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Air Force head coach Frank Serratore has never been what one would call “shy” and, in fact, has no problem keeping a room laughing with commentary and story telling. Serratore kicked off the Northeast Regional in Worcester on Friday with a solid dose of ethnic humor.

Of Italian decent, Serratore noted that he’s not the only “paisano” who will be behind the bench in Worcester this weekend. Minnesota’s Don Lucia and Miami’s Enrico Blasi also posses Italian surnames. Said Serratore, “The last time there were this many high-ranking Italians in one place, J. Edgar Hoover was there.”

He also didn’t spare commentary from the one non-Italian coach at the regional, Irish-American Jerry York, head coach at Boston College.

“You have Jerry York out here taking on the Sopranos,” said Serratore.

He also wondered why the NCAA selection committee didn’t put New Hampshire, with Dick Umile as head coach and Marty Scarano its athletic director, in Worcester as well.

“If we had Umile and Scarano here, the FBI would have all the tickets.”

Bada Bing!

Ehn to Play

Air Force senior center Eric Ehn, a 2007 All-American and one of the three finalists for last year’s Hobey Baker, will be in the lineup on Saturday. Ehn was injured on January 19 versus Colorado College when he fractured his left fibula and had what at the time was thought to be season ending surgery on January 22.

Serratore said that he met with Ehn and the trainers after Friday’s practice and decided at that time that he’ll suit up against Miami.

“We didn’t ask him if he wanted to play, I asked him what are you going to be able to do for us tomorrow,” said Serratore. “Basically, I said ‘I dont expect you to single-handedly lead us to the promised land. I want to know are you going to be better than our 12th forward.”

Phillipich Gets the Lemon

Air Force junior Mike Phillipich will be dressed in yellow for the opening practice of 2008-09, the penalty for losing the team’s showdown at the end of practice on Friday.

The Falcons finish the final practice before each weekend with a penalty shot competition and the final player held scoreless becomes the team’s lemon. As the lemon, the player wear a yellow helmet and yellow socks for each practice (which certainly standout against the Air Force blue). The only way to shed the bright color is to score in the team’s next showdown, which unless Air Force does the unthinkable and advances to the Frozen Four as the tournament’s lowest seed, means Phillipich will begin next season wearing yellow.

When asked what happens if a senior becomes the lemon at the final practice of the year, Air Force sports information director Dave Toller said, “They become lemons for life.”

Local Alums

The Falcons will definitely have three passionate fans in the stands on Saturday afternoon, as a trio of last year’s Air Force seniors are now stationed at Hanscom Air Force Base, located less than an hour from Worcester.

Andrew Ramsey, Peter Foster and Ben Worker – all members of the 2007 Air Force team that came within a half-dozen minutes of upsetting Minnesota in last year’s NCAA tournament – are all stationed at the base and will be part of an alumni reception that’s being organized before the game.

Serratore noted that the academy has a large contingent of alums spread throughout the country.

“When you’re the Air Force Academy, you’re never really the road team,” said Serratore.

A Balanced Attack

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Coming into the NCAA tournament, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish had struggled offensively. Since losing top scorer Erik Condra in the third game of the CCHA first-round playoffs against Ferris State, the Fighting Irish had only mustered one goal in each game of the CCHA final rounds.

In fact, their offensive malaise extended beyond that. Since scoring three goals in a 5-3 loss to Ferris State on February 8, the Irish had scored more than two goals only twice in 12 games, and had been held to only one goal or less in six of those games.

However, with Condra out for the season, few people gave the Fighting Irish much off a chance against the high-flying New Hampshire Wildcats.

With the Fighting Irish trailing 2-1 late in the first period, things didn’t look good for head coach Jeff Jackson’s club. However, on a power play, Kyle Lawson fired a shot over UNH goaltender Kevin Regan’s left shoulder at 17:25, giving the Irish some confidence.

“That’s where our team was before Erik got hurt,” said Jackson. “Really that has nothing to do with it. Erik was a tremendous player in all aspects of the game for us, but other guys have had to elevate their games in certain situations to help cover for him. I think when we were firing on all cylinders in the first half of the year, we had the same thing.

“We had nine guys that all had double-digit points and something happened with our confidence in the second half of the season that hurt us, but there’s been signs that we’ve started to shake out of it and the timing couldn’t be better for us to be more productive offensively.”

In fact, it was playing all 20 minutes of each period that helped the Irish to their stunning 7-3 victory over UNH.

Captain Mark Van Guilder assisted on three of Notre Dame's seven goals (photo: Candace Horgan).

Captain Mark Van Guilder assisted on three of Notre Dame’s seven goals (photo: Candace Horgan).

At the 2:39 mark of the second, Christian Hanson fired it past Regan. Leading 4-3 going into the third, Ryan Thang scored at the 23-second mark to give the Irish the two-goal cushion again.

“I think coming into the game, we wanted to get off to a good start,” said Notre Dame captain Mark Van Guilder. “I think it was huge for our power play to come back and get some goals. I thought they played really well in the first period, so our power play coming back and responding was huge.”

“It’s kind of nice to have a two-goal cushion, but kind of in my mind, I play like we’re tied or one goal down,” said Fighting Irish goaltender Jordan Pearce, who finished with 32 saves. “That way, I keep focused. As of late, in the third period we’ve been down or tied, so it’s nice to have a two-goal lead, but you can’t really dwell on it.”

In all, six different Notre Dame players scored.

“We’re trying to build a tradition at Notre Dame,” said Jackson. “We want to be like Colorado College, we want to be like UNH, we want to be like Michigan and Minnesota, that are in the tournament every year and have a chance to win.”

With the win, Jackson’s club took a huge step in that direction.

Tourney Thoughts

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There are some intriguing matchups in the regionals of the 2008 NCAA tournament, and none more than a first-round matchup between Minnesota and Boston College in Worcester, Mass.

BC and Minnesota have had similar seasons for different reasons. The Gophers lost two-thirds of their top line when Ryan Stoa was lost for the season with an injury in the first weekend and Kyle Okposo finally got what he wanted by turning pro at midseason in what might be the most poorly-handled NHL signing in recent history.

There is much more to this story for those who followed it, but we’ll leave it that the Gophers, who allegedly can’t develop players, must have done some job in the second half because they were supposedly dead in the water on New Year’s Day and enter the tourney, like BC, as almost a Cinderella story.

No one will buy that BC is coming in under the radar, but the Eagles haven’t had one of those seasons that Jerry York has been accustomed to on the Heights. They have had losing streaks, suspended two players for the season during the opening weekend at the Ice Breaker, and struggled to find consistency. They finished fourth in Hockey East. Yes, fourth. The Gophers finished seventh in the WCHA, though anyone out west will tell you it’s tough just to finish in the top 10 out there (that’s a joke). They came in 15 points behind CC.

WCHA Final Five MVP Alex Kangas gives Minnesota its best chance in net (photo: Jason Waldowski).

WCHA Final Five MVP Alex Kangas gives Minnesota its best chance in net (photo: Jason Waldowski).

The Gophers weren’t picked by their own media to beat Minnesota State in the opening round but after losing a 1-0 double-overtime game to the Purple Bull in game one, they rebounded with a pair of OT wins in games two and three to win the series. Then they knocked out St. Cloud and Colorado College and barely lost to a very good Denver team in the WCHA final. This team is hot, well-coached, and on a mission. Could you imagine the Gophers in the Frozen Four and winning it, in Denver?

Before anyone gets too carried away and anoints the Gophers national champs, they have to go through always-tough and perennial Frozen Four contender Boston College.

Their power play has been an issue, and according to assistant coach Mike Guentzel, the PP has almost been their undoing. Can anyone remember the last time Minnesota worried about its power play, that famed group that once boasted Phil Kessel, Ryan Potulny, Danny Irmen, Chris Harrington and Alex Goligoski on one unit? The Gophers are scoring-challenged but the energy they used to get from a great power play, as noted by Guentzel, comes now from the stellar play in goal. Alex Kangas has been the savior.

Here’s a stat that bears out Kangas’ dominance, and why the Gophers have survived. Only national-title contenders Michigan and North Dakota have spent less time trailing in games this season than the Golden Gophers, and that is an incredible stat.

Think of the shutdown teams in college hockey. Vermont, Michigan State, Notre Dame, Cornell. Think of high-powered offensive teams that score a lot that probably didn’t spend time behind due to their offense. UNH, BC, CC, Denver, Princeton, St. Cloud, Miami. Nope, Minnesota was third on the list regarding fewest time behind in games. That says a lot about its goaltending.

None of those teams trailed for less time than Minnesota and that can be traced to Kangas. Not playing from behind makes you a better team because you play more of the game and season with confidence. It’s an incredible accomplishment by Minnesota.

“We’ve never had a goalie here that had over a .930 save percentage and under a 2.00 goals against,” Guentzel said, almost in amazement, on Wednesday morning. Laughing, he said, “We expected him to be good. We told him to stop what he should and steal a few. This is major theft, the saves he’s making.”

The Eagles, who have lost the last two NCAA title games to Wisconsin and Michigan State, also seemed to be wandering through a lost season. However, once BC gets doubted on a local or national level, watch out. The Eagles lost a late-season game to Northeastern, finished fourth in Hockey East, and then went on a roll. They knocked out Providence in the opening round in Hockey East and then dispatched regular-season champ UNH in a triple-OT semifinal thriller. In that game, they were down 4-1 in period two but the vaunted BC power play did its job.

Both teams are led by goalies in their first year of full-time stardom. Kangas rescued the Gophers from disaster when he took the reins from Jeff Frazee. Is there a cooler customer than Kangas? Put it in perspective. The Gophers were struggling, nothing was going right, and this rookie who was supposed to back up Frazee all of a sudden becomes the No. 1 goalie for the most-watched program in college hockey.

If nothing else, Minnesota has found its goalie of the future. How he plays against BC will alert the Gopher faithful to how quickly that future might arrive because assuming Miami wins its opener, Kangas can stare down two of the most complete and offensively-gifted teams in the NCAA with a chance to beat both. Even if he loses the Gophers are good in goal for three more years.

For BC, John Muse became the starter by default when all world NCAA goalie Cory Schneider left after his junior season to turn pro with the Vancouver Canucks. Muse has gone wire-to-wire and silenced just about everyone who said BC is in trouble because they have a freshman goalie. From day one at the Ice Breaker against Michigan (which has something of a similar situation with Billy Sauer’s silencing of several critics), Muse has performed.

As detailed by captain Mike Brennan, Muse carries a chip on his shoulder and when doubted, takes the challenge head-on and usually wins. Certainly he did this season.

The Hollywood ending has Minnesota winning this regional. The smart “money” has Miami winning it because they are probably the best of the four teams there in terms of depth, pieces in the right place, and have stars in Ryan Jones, Alec Martinez, Nathan Davis, and Mitch Ganzak, and goalie Jeff Zatkoff. Miami might be the deepest team overall in the NCAA and is very well-coached. The CCHA makes you grit and grind every night and find ways to get shots through and score, and Miami has done that. The RedHawks have responded to adversity.

Boston College winning it on “home ice” is also a nice ending, and only hunches can even begin to predict what happens in Worcester. I’m thinking Boston College sneaks through if for no other reason than they have done it before and know how to win at this time of year. They have unfinished business in Denver but could have to go through big rivals UNH and North Dakota to finish it.

The most interesting regional overall is probably Colorado Springs. UNH did itself no favors in losing to BC in the Hockey East semifinals because they wound up the fourth No. 1 seed and lost a chance to play closer to home.

I hate doing this again, and I don’t want to get off on a rant here but hey, NCAA committee — how big a draw attendance-wise will UNH be in Colorado as opposed to bringing 5,000 or so fans to Albany or Worcester?

You say that’s not our issue, Colorado College will pack the place and the building will look full on TV. I do respect the integrity of the brackets issue also, so don’t get me wrong. But UNH would pack Albany more so than any of the teams there, despite Clarkson and Niagara being there. And among those two teams versus UNH, the Wildcats would have had the best chance of playing in the final if they were in that regional.

Michigan-St. Cloud is a tough sell in upstate New York despite Michigan being a “national” team. Put them anywhere and they’ll sell tickets but they won’t sell as many in Albany as UNH probably would have.

I like Boston College in Worcester, and Wisconsin guarantees attendance in Madison; attendance gives the casual fan tuning in the idea that people are passionate for our game. The good of the industry outweighs the personal outcry of one of its members that they might, as a higher seed, play Bucky in a Badger home game. No, George Gwozdecky, Dave Hakstol and Guy Gadowsky didn’t say that nor were they asked. They are all way too classy to even entertain that thought publicly.

I asked five coaches if they agreed with that statement and got a unanimous “the good of the industry outweighs the good of any of its programs.” On that note, On Wisconsin to its home dressing room at Kohl for a date with Denver. By the way, poor Pioneers. Once again as a higher seed they’ll play a game in the lower seed’s building. It happened in the early 2000’s when they were the No. 1 seed overall and had to play Michigan in a regional at Yost and lost.

OK, rant over.

The Madison regional is a tossup. NoDak isn’t looking past Princeton by any means. Princeton will be a tough out, but NoDak is another team that is on a mission and I have a tough time seeing the Fighting Sioux stumble because of the way they are constructed, coached, and the depth they have in the lineup. Denver is real good, and the Badgers at home against familiar opponents might have an edge. One thing to remember is that Denver plays great at Kohl center. Any team could win here but North Dakota is my pick.

Back out west, you have UNH and CC, who rely on high-octane offenses, and two CCHA teams in defending NCAA champion Michigan State and a slightly-struggling Notre Dame team that is better-known nationally for defense. ND lost two close games at the Joe in the CCHA championship but played Miami brilliantly and had a 1-0 lead until being tied in the final seconds. The Irish lost in OT. Then they lost a game they feel they should have won when they dropped the consolation game to Northern Michigan, which actually might have helped their PairWise status.

Like Notre Dame, Michigan State can play a shutdown-type game almost to perfection. Jeff Lerg, who could be the best goalie in the country on any night, has another ‘tender of his stature in his regional in Kevin Regan of UNH, a fellow Hobey Baker finalist. Spartan head coach Rick Comley, a two-time national champion, knows he has a good core of players who returned from last year’s title team, but also knows his kids have been distracted by pro offers at season’s end.

Still, MSU can play with anyone but has the unfortunate problem of playing in a home game for CC. The game, on perhaps the only NCAA rink bigger than New Hampshire’s, might give the depth-challenged Spartys a problem. However, MSU is battle-tested and for what that is worth at this time of the season, it gives the champs better than a puncher’s chance to beat CC.

CC and UNH can run-and-gun and if there is one thing UNH can be thankful for, it’s that it gets to play the games on the type of sheet it’s used to. UNH played a series last year at CC and did well, so the Wildcats have no fear of the World Arena sheet. UNH probably has enough to get past Notre Dame, as their top line of Dries, Fornataro and Radja has seen defensive stalwarts like Brock Sheehan and Teddy Ruth in Hockey East and guys like Mike Brennan, Tim Filangieri, and Carl Sneep of BC.

Notre Dame looks like it really misses Eric Condra, out for the season with an injury. Reading the tea leaves says that the CCHA teams might struggle here due to being offensively-challenged. The most dynamic player here might be MSU’s Justin Abdelkader or Bryan Lerg, but this is a tourney that features some firepower on all four rosters, and ND’s Ryan Thang has this tendency to score big goals.

Most seem to feel UNH wins this regional. CC is at home and has a great team, but UNH is on “home ice” in a way, and has a great team. ND can drive anyone insane with a stifling style and great goaltending. MSU has two very good lines, four good D and an all-universe goalie. Tough call. Flipping a four-headed coin, it drops and says Dick Umile’s Wildcats move 90 miles north to Denver.

That leaves Albany and I say this with no disrespect to the Huskies, Knights and Purple Eagles, but if Michigan doesn’t win this regional there needs to be an investigation. The Michigan coaching staff and its two senior leaders in Hobey Baker finalist Kevin Porter and Chad Kolarik have taken a team that many felt would finish fourth in the CCHA and won both the regular-season and playoff titles.

The guidance of Red Berenson, Billy Powers, Mel Pearson and volunteer goalie guru Josh Blackburn have taken this young team and made stars out of unlikely players. As Red has said since training camp, this is the most they have taught in practice in many years and what a difference this veteran staff made.

Billy Sauer is now a bona fide Division I goalie. Mark Mitera is as good a defenseman as there is in college hockey. Porter and Kolarik, who returned for their senior years, have been brilliant on and off the ice and Porter has managed to take a team plagued by cliques the past two seasons and made them one team — and that wasn’t easy. Rookies like Aaron Palushaj, Matt Rust, and Ontario paisan Louie Caporusso have been brilliant. Carl Hagelin has also been terrific and they have gotten solid play from their entire defensive corps.

Juniors Travis Turnbull and Tim Miller have been great as role players, and there’s not much chance of any of that changing. The Wolverines escaped a tough battle with Northern Michigan at the Joe in winning 6-4 in the CCHA semifinals. The game featured four Michigan goals that deflected off Northern players, and one empty-netter. The next night they were brilliant in shutting down Miami, an elite team against which they now have two wins and a tie this season.

However, to say Michigan has been less than impressive in recent regional play would be an understatement, so they arrive in the Capital District with a lot to prove after a magical regular- and CCHA postseason.

Michigan, UNH, NoDak, Boston College. Let the weekend begin.

2008 Midwest Regional Preview

By Candace Horgan, Theresa Spisak, Brian Sullivan and Scott Brown
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The WCHA — er, Midwest Regional commences Saturday in Madison, Wis., and the most notable storyline in the days leading up to the games themselves has been the presence of the host among the teams competing there.

In a twist which had some muttering darkly about conspiracy theories, Wisconsin became the first sub-.500 team in recent memory to reach the NCAA tournament. The Badgers not only made the field, they did so as a No. 3 seed per the PairWise Rankings, leading to an intraconference game against Denver, the newly-crowned WCHA tournament champion.

The game being where it is, the Badgers and Pioneers get the marquee late assignment, meaning the first contest of the regional will see North Dakota and Princeton face off. The Tigers are in the NCAAs for just the second time in school history, and are rewarded with a stiff test against a team that features two Hobey Baker finalists.

The Fighting Sioux are the favorites to advance by seed, but lost to Denver in the WCHA semifinals. Should the regional final pit the same two teams, it will be interesting to see how the wheels spin the second time around. In any case, the Midwest champ will round out the Frozen Four Sunday evening.

North Dakota vs. Princeton
Saturday, 2 p.m. CT, Kohl Center, Madison, Wis.

North Dakota Fighting Sioux
Record: 26-10-4, 18-7-3 WCHA (second)
Seed: No. 3 overall, No. 1 Midwest
How in: At-large
2007 NCAA tournament: Lost in national semifinal

Even in years when it seems the Fighting Sioux start out struggling, they somehow always make it into the national tournament. Head coach Dave Hakstol knows how to get his team to the big dance and this year, thanks to finding some winning ways in the second half of the season, is no different.

T.J. Oshie is one of North Dakota's two Hobey Baker finalists (photo: Melissa Wade).

T.J. Oshie is one of North Dakota’s two Hobey Baker finalists (photo: Melissa Wade).

Early on, the Sioux seemed to be plagued by inconsistency, splitting almost every weekend, though it was a predictable inconsistency — on the road, lose Friday, win Saturday; at home, win Friday and lose Saturday.

It wasn’t until a home series against Michigan Tech in mid-January when the Sioux finally figured out a way to make the bounces go their way and win both nights of a weekend, going on a school-record 17-game unbeaten streak (14-0-3) to end the regular season and threaten for a share of the MacNaughton Cup.

The Sioux saw Michigan Tech again in the first round of the WCHA playoffs, needing three games to advance to St. Paul, where they were unable to grab momentum on numerous occasions against Denver and ended up losing, 3-1.

However, UND came back with a needed 4-2 win against Colorado College in a meaningful third-place game to snag the last No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. Moreover, it was a game in which the Sioux put in a full 60 minutes of hockey.

“It’s not so much about the win,” said Hakstol. “It’s about performance. You have to be playing well going into the national tournament; you want to go into it on a good note and that comes down to performance. We were playing against Colorado College; they’re a very good team and on any given night, you might play well and not come out with a win. But the win was important; our performance from simply our standpoint was more important.”

The Sioux’s top players turned in good performances in the win, with Hobey Baker candidates Jean-Philippe Lamoureux (1.65 GAA, .934 sv%) and T.J. Oshie (18-23–41) leading the way.

“[Oshie]’s like any good athlete,” said Hakstol after the game. “He takes responsibility for the team’s performance.”

Oshie is officially banged up with a lower-body injury, but you’d never be able to tell with the way he plays. Even injured, he’s one more cog in a potent Sioux lineup that includes the likes of forwards Ryan Duncan (36 points), last year’s Hobey Baker winner, and Chris VandeVelde (32 points) as well as defensemen Chay Genoway (26 points), Taylor Chorney and Robbie Bina (each with 24 points).

Combine the offensive and defensive power with the holder of the league’s goaltending crown, and you’ve got yourself a good hockey team — one that is more than able to make it to its fourth Frozen Four in as many years.

However, Hakstol isn’t thinking about playing in Denver in a few weeks. Instead, he’s focused on one game and one game only — against Princeton.

“I’m not really worried about anything but one game Saturday afternoon and that’s what our team is worried about,” he said. “It’s a series of one-game shots. You start looking past one game, you’re going to get yourself in a lot of trouble.

“We’re having a very good week in practice, this team is preparing itself well; I like the two or three days of practice that we’ve had so really, we want to feel good going into Saturday’s game and there’s not a lot of concerns past that.”

Just excited to be in the tournament, Hakstol and his squad will take it one game at a time — a smart strategy that may just vault his squad to Denver.

Princeton Tigers
Record: 21-13-0, 14-8-0 ECAC Hockey (second)
Seed: No. 14 overall, No. 4 Midwest
How in: ECAC Hockey tournament champion
2007 NCAA tournament: none

Looking up at the quartet of Guy Gadowsky, Landis Stankievech, Zane Kalemba and Mike Moore on the interview stage after last Saturday’s ECAC Hockey championship game, this correspondent’s first impression was,

Boy, are these guys happy.

Like the Cheshire cat, the grin just seemed to spread from the coach’s right ear to somewhere out on South Pearl Street. And for good reason; the Garden State Ivy had just claimed its first league tourney title since 1998, making it only the second ever for the storied program from Hobey Baker Rink. Kalemba may well have won the trophy for his team, earning Most Outstanding Player honors in stopping 61 of 62 shots in the weekend wins over Colgate and popularly-favored Harvard.

“I’ve never seen a performance like that before,” said Gadowsky, the Princeton bench boss in his fourth year on the job.

But pearly whites notwithstanding, don’t confuse Princeton with a team that’s just happy to be playing at all. This cat’s got claws, too.

The Tigers rolled up second place in ECAC Hockey for their best finish ever, and their fourth straight year of improvement under Gadowsky’s tutelage. Lee Jubinville (12-26–38), Brett Wilson (15-20–35) and Cam MacIntyre (12-18–30) each buried a dozen goals or better in the reduced Ivy schedule (a 29-game cap in the regular season). Senior defenseman and captain Mike Moore added 17 assists, but also leads with an ultimate blend of character and skill on the rear.

Gadowsky has frequently praised him for his leadership and work ethic, saying “there’s not a defenseman in the league I’d rather have than Mike Moore. He’s a great leader and a great player.”

The blueliner has been especially valuable given the youth around him: Moore is the only upperclassman defender — not senior, but upperclassman — on the Princeton roster. But by the end of the season, Moore felt that maybe roles had been evened, if not switched outright.

“At the start of the season, we had a good weekend, but then kind of faltered a bit,” he recalled. “But that was good for us. We learned to pull the same way … we started playing Princeton hockey. It became awesome to see; everyone’s leading out there.

“They’re leading me as much as I’m leading them,” he summed.

At the very back, the numbers for Kalemba (19-10-0, 2.36 GAA, .918 sv%, five shutouts) don’t begin to reflect the composure of the sophomore netminder. Pitching three shutouts in this year’s playoffs earned him a prestigious spot in the record books, as no one in ECAC history had it done before. The trio also put him even with the most career playoff shutouts, now shared by Kalemba, David McKee (formerly of Cornell), Bud Fisher at Quinnipiac, and David Leggio at Clarkson.

“He wins. He finds a way to win,” said Gadowsky, plainly and simply. “He plays his best when it’s a tight, one-goal game … pressure just doesn’t get to him,” he said, speaking of his ‘keeper with Gerry Cheevers-like praise.

Kalemba allowed just five goals in his last five games, including the three shutouts. He’s also only surrendered eight goals in six games, finishing five of those six with 90 percent save rates or better.

The Tigers are a slap-happy team, living on fast rushes and tons — tons — of shot attempts. The power play is basic: gain the zone, shoot the puck, dig for rebounds. It is tempting to call it an offense-or-nothing team, but that does a grave injustice to the evolution of both the defensive unit and Kalemba.

“They’re a good skating team, that forces you into a lot of turnovers,” assessed Harvard head coach Ted Donato of Princeton after the title game. “They have a lot of difference-makers … and an X-factor in Kalemba; he’s certainly on a roll.”

He pretty well summed it up.

Denver vs. Wisconsin
Saturday, 5:30 p.m. CT, Kohl Center, Madison, Wis.

Denver Pioneers
Record: 26-13-1, 16-11-1 WCHA (third)
Seed: No. 7 overall, No. 2 Midwest
How in: WCHA tournament champion
2007 NCAA tournament: none

At the start of the WCHA playoffs, few prognosticators would have picked the Denver Pioneers to win the Broadmoor Trophy. The Pioneers had struggled in the second half of the season, and entered the playoffs on a three-game losing streak, having been convincingly swept by archrival Colorado College.

Peter Mannino helped Denver win a national title as a freshman in 2005 (photo: Jason Waldowski).

Peter Mannino helped Denver win a national title as a freshman in 2005 (photo: Jason Waldowski).

However, the Pioneers swept Minnesota Duluth in the first round, then continued their winning ways at the Xcel Center, where they have a six-game winning streak in the WCHA Final Five.

Now, at the start of the NCAA tournament, the Pioneers are hoping to keep another streak alive. Denver, which didn’t qualify for the tournament the last two seasons, currently has an eight-game unbeaten streak in the NCAA tournament.

The Pioneers’ first-round opponent is Wisconsin, an irony considering that it was Wisconsin’s 7-2 pounding of Denver on January 12 following the controversial bad call the night before in Denver’s 3-2 win that started a mid-season slide, a slide the team feels has made them stronger.

“We went through a real rough spell there, and it can’t but help you, I think,” said Pioneers’ assistant captain Tyler Ruegsegger. “We came out of it, and it brought us closer together as a team. We’ve seen some things now, some adversity and stuff, that will make us stronger people and a stronger team.”

Echoes captain Andrew Thomas, “I mean, we went through some adversity. It’s funny, because you look at that and that kind of judges when you hit your peak. We’re at the point where we’ve gone through our injuries, our sicknesses, our departures.”

If the Pioneers are to progress far in the tournament, senior goaltender Peter Mannino will need to continue to show the brilliance he displayed at the Xcel Center. Like his team, Mannino struggled a bit down the stretch, and was even pulled in his final regular-season game.

“I think after the CC series, we had a good week of practice, a good couple meetings, knowing that it’s over,” said Mannino. “The regular season, we weren’t content or overly happy. We finished third place, which is an average year for us, and we knew that at that point, it was over, the season was over, let’s put it behind us, and that’s kind of our mindset right now. The Final Five is over, we’ve got a new series of games now.”

Denver is led by underclassmen, including 13 freshmen. Early departures of players like Matt Carle and Paul Stastny from Denver’s last championship team have forced the young players to lead.

Tyler Bozak finished first on the team in scoring, and Anthony Maiani, who stands only 5-foot-7, led the team with four game-winning goals, including a huge one that he scored unassisted in the waning minutes of the Pioneers’ semifinal game against North Dakota in the Final Five.

“I think one of the great things about playing in this league is you have an opportunity, especially the younger guys, you have an opportunity to experience what it’s like to play in front of large crowds and pretty hostile environments pretty much every second weekend, or every weekend that you travel . . . and so I think that prepares you for the playoffs,” said Pioneers’ coach George Gwozdecky.

Of course, freshmen have played a key role in prior championship seasons. Three years ago, Mannino backstopped Denver to its second national championship as a freshman. For Mannino and his classmates, the return to the NCAA tournament is something they are excited about.

“Especially getting there and winning it the first year and then missing out the last two years, it was very disappointing and frustrating,” Mannino said. “It’s an honor, making the NCAA tournament, and now we want to do something with it, give it our best effort.”

Wisconsin Badgers
Record: 15-16-7, 11-12-5 WCHA (sixth)
Seed: No. 12 overall, No. 3 Midwest
How in: At-large
2007 NCAA tournament: none

For coach Mike Eaves and his Wisconsin Badgers, the weekend of the Final Five required a lot of waiting. Against long odds, the right results came up and the Badgers, who finished the season with a losing record, qualified for the NCAA tournament.

“Last week, we actually, on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, we kind of mapped out what needed to happen, so the boys would have an understanding of what needed to happen,” said Eaves. “The tumblers kind of fell together, and here we are, we’re getting ready to play in the national tournament.”

“It was a long weekend for us, kind of sitting around seeing what happened with other teams,” said Badgers’ captain Davis Drewiske. “The only thing I can tell you is, for every guy in the locker room is we feel we have a second chance here, second life, and we’re trying to take advantage of it.”

The Badgers are an enigma. The team has, at times, played excellent hockey. They split their series with both other WCHA teams in the Midwest regional, but suffered some poor losses to teams like Ohio State.

In addition, the Badgers have only played four games over the last month, and were swept by St. Cloud in the first round of the WCHA tournament. Obviously, for a team that only a week ago looked to be done for the season, the inactivity presents a challenge.

“That’s a tricky situation, a tricky riddle to solve,” said Eaves of coming back prepared. “We had a week off before we played our opening round of the playoffs up in St. Cloud, and we thought we had prepared pretty well, and we went up there and we were rusty.

“What we are trying to do is re-evaluate what we did in that week off, and hopefully we’re doing some more intelligent and prudent things this week that will help us not have that rust, because we can’t afford to have rust Saturday night.”

The Badgers are the third-youngest team in the tournament. Freshman phenom Kyle Turris led the team in scoring with 33 points, and if the Badgers are to avoid another early exit, he is one of the players who needs to produce.

Some fans might feel that facing Denver is almost poetic; after all, it was a botched call on a last-second goal against Denver on January 11 that almost cost Wisconsin its spot in the tournament.

“There’s a little bit of irony there I guess, but I think that it helps,” said Drewiske. “It’s a team we’ve seen before, we know what to expect, we know they have great goaltending, and we know they play hard. I think it’s a good thing for us to be playing a hockey that we’re a little more familiar with, and here at home.

For seniors like Drewiske, who are returning to the NCAA tournament for the first time since they won it in 2006, the opportunity to play host in their final year is something they treasure.

“It’s what we talked about all year,” said Drewiske. “We just want to play at home in the NCAA tournament, and we have a chance to be where we want to be. It may not have happened the way we expected it to, but we have a great chance. We understand that we can beat anybody, and anybody can beat us.”

A Stab At The Logic

By
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The second-to-last college hockey weekend of the season is upon us, but for the Hobey Baker finalists who are still playing, this is it: time to put up or shut up.

Oh, the heck with it: Kevin Porter won the award months ago, and everyone else is playing for second…and third.

And of course, among the people playing for second and third is one T.J. Oshie. I expressed surprise at the North Dakota forward earning a finalist spot in light of his problems with the law (he’s been arrested just once, but I think this is a fair way to account for the other incident), but I acknowledged there are very good reasons for Oshie to be a finalist. Still, the logic of Michigan’s T.J. Hensick talking his way out of a spot in the Hobey Hat Trick last year while Oshie (and, to a lesser extent, BC’s Nathan Gerbe) made the top three this year is a bit tough to figure.

That said, though, I think I’ve got it.

The offenses perpetrated by Oshie and Gerbe this year deprived their respective teams of their services for one game apiece, for games relatively early in the season. Both teams lost, but as we can see heading into this weekend, they’ve survived. Hensick, by contrast, left Michigan without the nation’s top scorer in the crucial moments of an NCAA tournament game, and while Hensick’s presence would probably not have been enough to get the Wolverines past North Dakota in that wild West shootout in Denver (it was wild, and it was in the West region…it works), it weakened what opportunity they did have.

Of course, if that’s the reasoning, then it means that character only becomes a disqualifying factor for the Hobey when it affects the team’s chance of winning. Now, that doesn’t strike me as being all that similar to what’s written in the selection criteria for the award, but it is a formula that allows for l’affaire Hensicklast year and Oshie getting a finalist spot this year (yes, and Gerbe too).

Now, that’s all a rehash of what’s happened before now, and there’s no reason to dwell on the past right now, as the NCAA tournament is just about upon us. So, what, if anything, does all of this mean for the games ahead?

If you think that Porter is going to go the way of his former linemate this weekend, think again. Porter is a much different player and a different person, and the captain who led Michigan so far past expectations this season isn’t about to jeopardize his team’s NCAA title chances like that. However, for the guys playing for second and third, it’s something to keep an eye on.

I have written in the past that Porter will, in all likelihood, be joined by some combination of Gerbe, North Dakota’s Jean-Philippe Lamoureux and Miami’s Ryan Jones, although if Michigan State can find its way from Colorado Springs to Denver, I wouldn’t write Jeff Lerg off, either. Now, neither Lamoureux nor Lerg is a likely candidate for an ill-advised penalty (really, how many goaltender penalties do you see in college hockey?), but both Gerbe and Jones have spent quite a bit of time in the sin bin this season (65 and 79 minutes, respectively, according to both schools’ official athletic sites). Both players are extremely competitive – it’s a big part of why they’re the great players they are – but that competitive energy can have negative consequences when it boils over, and if that happens in a crucial situation this weekend, it could make the difference when it comes time to decide who gets to sit next to Porter in Denver two weeks from tomorrow.

Of course, there’s also the fact that Gerbe and Jones could very well meet this Sunday in the final of the Northeast Regional. Could a spot in the Hat Trick be up for grabs if BC and Miami are playing for a Frozen Four berth? I wouldn’t rule it out.

Naturally, though, all this talk is secondary, as the primary concern this weekend is who’s going to Denver. Still, this is something else to think about.

Permanent Press

By Mike Scandura
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Boston College freshman goalie John Muse is similar to a baseball pitcher who has the option of starting or relieving.

Some pitchers prefer to relieve because they can work multiple times during a week whereas starters are off four days between outings.

Muse, admittedly, can’t get enough action, but even he was surprised at the amount of time he spent between the pipes this season, especially because last year at this time he was wrapping his senior season at Noble and Greenough School (where he earned Goaltender of the Year honors from U.S. Hockey Report).

“Coming into the season I had big expectations,” said Muse, who went into preseason practice battling sophomore Alex Kremer and freshman Andrew Margolin for the starting job. “I’m a competitive kid. I wanted to win that starting job and play in every game.

John Muse has been a fixture in net for Boston College this season (photo: Melissa Wade).

John Muse has been a fixture in net for Boston College this season (photo: Melissa Wade).

“Realistically, I felt I could win the starting job but I didn’t expect to play every minute of every game. That was a pleasant surprise for me.”

Indeed.

Then again, Muse’s craving for minutes didn’t develop overnight. It was the reason why he changed positions during his youth hockey days.

“Like any other kid when you start playing hockey, everyone gets a shot at goalie,” said Muse. “For a while I played goal and forward, probably through Squirts. I actually ended up liking playing goalie and had more fun than playing forward.

“When I was a kid everyone wanted to play forward and score all the goals. I saw where I would play a couple of minutes and sit on the bench. Being a goalie you’re on the ice all the time and are always part of the game.”

Entering this weekend’s Northeast Regional at Worcester, Mass., Muse has played 2,472 minutes and 55 seconds, which leads all Division I goalies. The only time he wasn’t in goal amounted to 8 minutes and 32 seconds when coach Jerry York pulled him late in games for an extra skater.

“All” Muse has done as a rookie is post a 21-11-8 record, 13th in the nation in winning percentage; a 2.26 goals-against average; and a .919 save percentage (the latter two stats each rank 20th in the nation, which isn’t too shabby considering Muse is still a teenager).

Oh, and in the Hockey East tournament, he blanked Vermont, 4-0 — only the second shutout in tournament finals history.

Other than that …

Yes, there is something else. Muse replaced one of the best goalies in Boston College history in Cory Schneider (who turned pro after last season and signed with Vancouver).

That’s the same Cory Schneider who holds BC’s all-time shutout record and the single-season saves record (he broke it two years ago and emulated that feat last year) and who was in goal for each of the last two NCAA championship games.

“Even before I got here I got the ‘You’re going to replace Cory Schneider’ even from my friends,” admitted Muse. “I listened to it and thought about it. I knew I wasn’t going to come in and be Cory Schneider right away. The last two years he led the team to the NCAA title game. That alone says how good he is.

“I knew if I worked hard I would do well. I worked as hard as I can and think I’ve done well.”

How true. Otherwise, why would York have given such a callow goalie so much playing time? Because Muse worked on both the physical and mental aspects of his position.

“I think I’ve had to work on rebound control,” he said. “But every new goalie coming into a faster league has to work on that. I didn’t see shots as fast as the ones I’m seeing now

“My coaches also stress mental toughness. Obviously, there are going to be ups and downs for any goalie. But I don’t forget it entirely. There’s a part of it you have to remember so you don’t make the same mistake again. I’m pretty good at remembering what not to do and not remembering the entire thing.”

Otherwise Muse might be a basket case.

Muse and the Eagles also possess another quality that can’t be purchased at your neighborhood hockey equipment shop — a quality that’s a major reason why they not only won the Hockey East tournament but also earned the No. 2 seed for the Northeast Regional.

“Every team has its bumps in the road,” said Muse. “The thing we’ve stressed this year has been optimism. Everybody’s been optimistic this season even when we’ve had rough patches. Without that we’d still be struggling.

“Our team chaplain (Father Tony Penna) stressed it a lot. We take what he tells us pretty seriously. As soon as he brought up the optimism thing, we jumped on it and have taken it with us throughout the year.”

Who knows? Maybe it’ll even take Muse and the Eagles to a third consecutive Frozen Four.

Back From The Brink

By Patrick C. Miller
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At a time of the season when senior leadership becomes a prized commodity, North Dakota coach Dave Hakstol is thankful that two of his four seniors are still playing hockey.

Fighting Sioux defenseman Robbie Bina and forward Rylan Kaip each suffered injuries during their college hockey careers that left them questioning whether they’d ever again play the game they love. Hakstol says nobody can put a value on what they bring to the team.

“They’re both just such character guys,” he notes. “The best measure is the respect a player has within his own locker room and from his opponents. In both cases, they’re very well-respected by their peers.

UND seniors Rylan Kaip, left, and Robbie Bina recovered from potentially career-ending injuries (photo: Patrick C. Miller).

UND seniors Rylan Kaip, left, and Robbie Bina recovered from potentially career-ending injuries (photo: Patrick C. Miller).

“They go about their business in a very workmanlike way,” he says. “They go out and play hard. They’re both very tough competitors. They play it straight up and nose-to-nose.”

Bina’s injury, a broken neck, occurred March 18, 2005, during the WCHA Final Five in St. Paul. The incident generated widespread attention and caused the NCAA to reevaluate its hitting-from-behind rule, making it a point of emphasis.

In contrast, Kaip suffered a head injury in October 2004 during preseason practice. It wasn’t until late December that he was diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome, which MayoClinic.com describes as “a complex disorder in which concussion symptoms — such as headaches and dizziness — last for weeks and sometimes months after the impact that caused the concussion.”

In one day, Kaip — a Radville, Sask., native and Atlanta Thrashers draft choice — went from being a promising freshman forward playing a regular shift on UND’s third line to having his first season abruptly end and his hockey career cast in doubt.

Recalling the injury, Kaip says, “I went in for some stitches and took a couple days off because I might have gotten a concussion. I started playing again, and by the time December rolled around, the symptoms got to where I just couldn’t handle it any more.

“I was kind of playing in a fog and forgetting drills halfway through. My memory was shot and I was having headaches. It wasn’t a fun time at that point. It was December where it turned the switch and I couldn’t play.”

Kaip not only couldn’t play hockey, but he also discovered that he couldn’t practice or participate in any physical activity without getting migraine headaches. As the Sioux stormed through the NCAA regionals and into the 2005 NCAA Frozen Four championship game against Denver, all he could do was watch.

“It was kind of frustrating,” Kaip recalls. “It’s not like a broken leg where you have some sort of timeline and you’re able to check the progress. I had lots of teammate support, which made it a lot easier. Our team was going into the stretch run and I was able to enjoy the success of the team.”

Eventually, time and inactivity healed Kaip’s head injury

“If I would have kept getting little bumps in practice, it probably never would have healed,” he says. “That probably would have been it for hockey.

“I was able to stay away from hockey and that was probably the best decision,” Kaip recounts. “I just waited it out for four or five months and then I was able to play.”

Coming back to hockey after months of inactivity proved challenging.

“To come in the next year as a sophomore, I almost felt like I was a freshman again,” Kaip says. “I had to prove myself and earn ice time, which everyone has to do. It was difficult, but my teammates and the coaches made it easier.”

Today, Kaip wears a special helmet and makes certain his mouth guard is in while playing. He has been symptom-free since his return to the ice.

Not known as a scorer, he has a reputation as a tough, physical defensive forward and plays on UND’s second line with center Chris VandeVelde and forward Matt Watkins. More importantly, his teammates consider him their leader. They voted him assistant captain his junior year and captain this season.

“He’s not a guy that gets a lot of the spotlight,” Hakstol says of Kaip. “He was an overwhelming choice for captain this year. That’s the best compliment you can pay to a player. They know what he does day in and day out. They understand his commitment as a player and his commitment to team success.”

While Kaip’s injury and recovery occurred in relative obscurity, the public nature of Bina’s injury during the 2005 WCHA Final Five focused a great deal of attention on him that he didn’t particularly relish. Since his comeback, Bina has said little publicly about the incident.

Hakstol says Bina’s injury wasn’t only potentially career-ending, but it was also life-threatening. During a four-hour operation at Regions Medical Center in St. Paul, Dr. Daryll Dykes performed the surgery on Bina’s shattered C-7 vertebra. The entire vertebra was removed and the C-6 vertebra was fused to the T-1 vertebra.

Although he was forced to sit out the entire next season as a medical redshirt, the outcome for Bina seemed nearly miraculous.

“It was pretty much not too long after my surgery that the doctor told me that as long as everything healed up nicely, I’d be ready to go again in another year or so,” Bina recalls.

After most of a season spent practicing with the team wearing a “no hit” jersey, Bina returned to the ice Oct. 1, 2006, for an exhibition game at Ralph Engelstad Arena against the University of Manitoba. As the last player introduced, the hometown favorite received a thunderous standing ovation from Sioux fans.

“I was real excited to be able to get back out there and thankful that it wasn’t a career-ending thing,” Bina says. “Just being able to get back out there was great.”

As if getting Bina back wasn’t enough, his level of play during his junior season exceeded all expectations. He made good use of his year off from hockey.

“I think maybe it helped a little bit by being up in the stands during the games,” he explains. “You could watch the games closer and watch things develop better. I used that to my advantage when I finally got to play. I was able to watch things flow through and remember how it was when I was watching from up top and seeing how plays were developing.”

In his first two seasons, Bina recorded one goal and 16 assists. His first season back from a potentially career-ending injury, he scored 10 goals and had 22 assists. His 170-foot shorthanded goal against Minnesota became a YouTube.com favorite and ESPN SportsCenter’s No. 1 play of the day. He was also named to the 2007 NCAA West Regional All-Tournament Team.

This season, Bina has two goals and 22 assists. He was named to the All-WCHA Third Team last week.

One person who isn’t surprised by Bina’s success is Hakstol. He got what he expected when he recruited the undersized defenseman from the USHL.

“Every time we went to watch him, he was always the guy who made the right play,” Hakstol recalls. “There was nothing flashy about his game. It’s like it is now, only he’s become better.

“Maybe there weren’t high expectations for him. He’s out to prove to himself and people around him that he’s a good hockey player. He’s very quietly turned himself into one of the top defensemen in the country,” the Sioux coach says.

As UND heads to Madison for the NCAA Midwest Regional against Princeton on Saturday, both players are grateful for the opportunity to be part of another Sioux playoff run.

Bina says he’ll never forget the support he received from friends, family, the Grand Forks community and Sioux fans during his recovery.

“The support they showed every day at the rink and cheering for you, that’s just the experience that you want to be back for,” he says. “It’s part of the reason we want to play, just to have their support. It’s the excitement that they bring to the arena.”

For Kaip, struggling with the uncertainty of a recovering from a serious head injury was a life-enriching experience.

“The whole Sioux team and all the coaches were just like one big family,” he says. “To know that they’re there through the good and the bad is something special. I know that I’ll probably keep in touch with all these guys forever.”

2008 West Regional Preview

By Paula C. Weston, Dave Hendrickson, Theresa Spisak and Scott Brown
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As it did last year, the West Regional looks to house the toughest quarter of the NCAA bracket. Two regular-season conference champions (one of them the host team), the defending NCAA titlists and a dangerous No. 4 seed make for what should be a highly-entertaining and potentially unpredictable weekend of hockey.

The nominal top seed is New Hampshire, but host Colorado College can reasonably be deemed the co-favorite — if not more — in this ultra-competitive regional.

Both UNH and CC will be looking for redemption after losing in last weekend’s conference tournaments after coming in as top seeds, but the experience was worse for CC, which lost twice at the WCHA Final Five, including Saturday to North Dakota in a game which settled the race for the final No. 1 seed in the NCAA tourney.

The underdog role suits Notre Dame, which plays New Hampshire in the semifinals Friday, just fine. The Fighting Irish reached the NCAA tournament by the narrowest of margins after a two-loss weekend in Detroit, but are in the nationals for the second straight year nonetheless.

And then there’s third-seeded Michigan State, which finds itself in a situation similar to last year: not even favored in its first game of the tournament, especially with a true road game this time around.

We all remember how 2006-07 ended, of course.

New Hampshire vs. Notre Dame
Friday, 4:30 p.m. MT, World Arena, Colorado Springs, Colo.

New Hampshire Wildcats
Record: 25-9-3, 19-5-3 Hockey East (first)
Seed: No. 4 overall, No. 1 West
How in: At-large
2007 NCAA tournament: Lost in regional semifinal

With the top two overall seeds, Michigan and Miami, being sent to regions where they wouldn’t have to face a team playing on its home ice (Wisconsin and Colorado College), UNH drew that unenviable lot. Making matters worse, the devoted Wildcat faithful now must travel to the single most distant venue.

Matt Fornataro leads New Hampshire in scoring this season (photo: Melissa Wade).

Matt Fornataro leads New Hampshire in scoring this season (photo: Melissa Wade).

“It is what it is,” UNH coach Dick Umile says. “We’re the number-one seed and that’s where we’re going. You can’t waste any energy on it. Obviously the tough part is that we’ve got a great following and there’s going to be a good portion of our fans that won’t be able to travel out to Colorado Springs. But that being said, we’re excited to be heading out there.”

On the plus side, the Wildcats will be playing on an Olympic sheet, making them feel at least a bit at home. They also experienced the facility first-hand last season in the front-end of a two-year, four-game home-and-home series with Colorado College.

“If we were someone that didn’t play on that size sheet it could be a concern,” Umile says. “Obviously that’s not the case for us and we’re familiar with the arena.”

UNH will be looking to regain the momentum it carried into the Hockey East semifinals, where it lost to Boston College in triple overtime. Prior to that, the Wildcats had dropped only a single league game since early December.

“The loss was a missed opportunity,” Umile says. “It’s over. It’s done with. Now it’s all about playing good hockey, getting some bounces and staying healthy.”

Those watching UNH for the first time this year will see Hockey East’s top defensive club, led by the league’s unanimous Player of the Year, goaltender Kevin Regan.

“He’s broken all kinds of records here at UNH and we’ve had a tradition of great goaltenders,” Umile says. “There’s no question that he’s the backbone of our team defense.”

Seniors Brad Flaishans and Craig Switzer lead a veteran group of blueliners.

“Five of our six defensemen were back from the previous year so it’s an experienced group,” Umile says. “Our whole team is committed to playing defense when we don’t have the puck.”

Up front, Matt Fornataro (18-28–46) and Mike Radja (19-24–43) join with Danny Dries to form an imposing first line, but there’s not much of a dropoff when number-two NHL draft pick James vanRiemsdyk, Jerry Pollastrone and Bobby Butler take the ice.

“We’ve developed a good lineup as far as spreading the scoring out,” Umile says. “Our first line has proven all season that they’re very skilled, they can score goals and they can create offense. Their line has been fairly consistent all season. Our second line has goalscorers, too, so there’s some good balance in those two lines.

“Our third line is a great forechecking line. They’re not the finishers that our other lines might be, but they generate a lot of scoring chances just with their forechecking and cycling. Even our fourth line is a very, very skilled group.

“That gives us four lines that can create offense, that can score goals, but know that they need to play defensively first.”

Arguably, UNH’s matchup with Notre Dame pits two terrific defensive clubs with the Wildcats’ scoring prowess the expected difference.

“[Notre Dame coach] Jeff Jackson’s teams can slow offenses down,” Umile says. “That’s always been the case. Jeff is one of the great college coaches. Defense and penalty kill are his fortes.

“They play off the puck defensively extremely well. They may not generate the shots that some of the other teams do, but their style of play is very disciplined, very controlled. You’re going to have to win some one-on-one battles if you’re going to be successful against Notre Dame.”

Notre Dame Fighting Irish
Record: 24-15-4, 15-9-4 CCHA (fourth)
Seed: No. 13 overall, No. 4 West
How in: At-large
2007 NCAA tournament: Lost in regional final

After losing a pair of 2-1 games in last weekend’s CCHA tournament, at least one thing became clear to Notre Dame head coach Jeff Jackson: “We’re going to have to find a way to score more than a goal.”

Jackson is taking his Fighting Irish to the NCAA tournament for the second year in a row in just his third year as head coach in South Bend, Ind., but what a different a year makes. Last year, the Irish took everyone by surprise by capturing both the CCHA regular-season and tournament championships with 32 wins overall, 21 in the CCHA. The Irish were the No. 1 seed in the 2007 Midwest Regional, losing that portion of the bracket to eventual national champion Michigan State.

This year, Notre Dame needed three games to finish off Ferris State in the second round of CCHA playoff action and have just four wins since Feb. 1 (4-6-3). And the games have gone as the scoring as gone; in that 13-game span, the Irish have scored just 25 goals, a total that includes a six-goal output in their second playoff game against Ferris State. During that span, Notre Dame has averaged 1.92 goals per game, and has been outscored by opponents 28-25.

ND’s top five returning scorers combined for 83 goals last season. This year, the same five have 57 between them. While the Irish have picked up scoring from freshman Ben Ryan (10-14–24) and junior Christian Hanson (10-8–18), the Irish offense hasn’t been the same since midseason, a shift in dynamics that Jackson said is “a number of things.”

“We were scoring close to four goals a game. We were in the top five in the country at Christmastime,” said Jackson. Then we had the schedule with some of the top teams in the country.”

The Irish went 1-5-1 in the first six games of the second half, with a split against resurgent Northern Michigan, a loss and a tie against Michigan State and two losses to Michigan. The Friday losses to MSU and UM were, according to Jackson, “heartbreaking.”

After tying the Spartans 1-1 in the second period Jan. 11, the Irish gave up the game-winning goal at 18:03 in the third in the 3-1 loss; after leading the Wolverines 2-0 going into the second Jan. 18, the Irish gave up two second-period goals and the game-winner in the 3-2 decision with just 21 seconds left in regulation.

“I think we lost our confidence,” said Jackson. “I’ve never seen a team go cold all like that at the same time.”

Adding to the offensive misery for ND is the loss for the season of junior Erik Condra (15-23–38), the Irish’s leading scorer.

If the Irish are to survive this bracket, they’ll do so on the defensive end. Notre Dame has the fourth-best defense in the country, giving up just 2.05 goals per game, and junior Jordan Pearce (.917 SV%, 1.94 GAA) looked phenomenal in Detroit.

“He’s like a freshman,” said Jackson of Pearce, who spent last year backing up Hobey Baker nominee David Brown. “It’s his first full year. He’s probably the reason, in the second half, why we did get into the tournament. He was under a lot of pressure — every time he gave up a goal, he knew we could lose the game because we weren’t scoring.”

Jackson said that the Irish are “just fortunate” to be heading to the tournament. “We go into it a little different than we were a year ago. I don’t mind being the underdog.

“I think that last year we anticipated and were expected to be in the tournament. This year we had to claw our way in. It’s the first time in our program’s history that we’ve gone back-to-back.”

As for the field the Irish are facing, Jackson said it’s “challenging,” but added, “The tournament we were just in had some pretty good teams, too.”

Colorado College vs. Michigan State
Friday, 8 p.m. MT, World Arena, Colorado Springs, Colo.

Colorado College Tigers
Record: 28-11-1, 21-6-1 WCHA (first)
Seed: No. 5 overall, No. 2 West
How in: At-large
2007 NCAA tournament: none

In a season when the WCHA was hard to predict, when teams went on hot and cold streaks, there were still a few constants and one was the Colorado College Tigers — they would win, especially at home.

The Tigers went 18-2 at home, including winning 14 straight at the World Arena before falling to St. Cloud State in early February. They were also consistent, getting a point every weekend save one — an early nonconference tilt at New Hampshire — a consistency that helped them earn the MacNaughton Cup as the league’s regular-season champions.

However, the Tigers have started to catch the inconsistency bug of late, struggling in their sweep of Alaska Anchorage to make the Final Five. Then, once in St. Paul, CC lost twice, failing once again to capture a Broadmoor Trophy and seeing their No. 1 seed for the NCAAs — once seemingly a lock — slip away.

“Our play has been a little inconsistent since we won up in Denver,” admitted head coach Scott Owens. “We won, we beat Denver 3-1, we swept Alaska Anchorage, but there were little pieces of inconsistency in those games. When we played North Dakota [and] Minnesota, the inconsistencies really came out.

“I think our guys are dialed in and ready to go. I think everybody knows what’s at stake and it’s a situation that hopefully we will be more consistent, that we’ll be prepared and ready to go.”

When consistent, the Tigers can be deadly. In early February, Owens put junior Chad Rau (28-14–42) on a line with sophomores Bill Sweatt (10-17–27) and Mike Testwuide (11-10–21) with great dividends. Rau has been the biggest beneficiary of the move, continuing to quietly make his mark as one of the great players in the WCHA.

“I think in some ways [Rau] gets overlooked a little bit. He’s our catalyst offensively and special teams and scoring,” said Owens, before backtracking a tad. “I don’t mean overlook — he was a first-team all-WCHA player, but people forget about what a fantastic year he’s had.”

Second to Rau on the score sheet and possibly one of the best defensemen in the country is Jack Hillen with 37 points (6g, 31a). However, if a team can get past Hillen, it then has to contend with the WCHA Rookie and Player of the Year in Richard Bachman (1.82 GAA, .933 sv%), who won the starting job from junior Drew O’Connell early in the season.

“The minutes he’s played and the results he’s had; he’s one of the youngest guys on our team but I don’t really consider him a freshman at this point,” said Owens. “I think he plays like an upperclassman anyway, but in particular the second half of the year.”

Now that Bachman’s been on the big stage — and performed admirably in his team’s losses — he his teammates now get to shine back at home, where Owens hopes his team will find its footing once again.

“It’s good to get back in our familiar surroundings, get back at the World Arena, the size sheet that we’ve had some success at,” said Owens. “We hadn’t been to St. Paul in a few years and I think it was a great learning experience even though we could not have success, but I think it’s good now to be back home and get ready for the regionals.”

The Tigers come back to the Springs riding a two-game losing streak, their second-longest of the season, but aren’t worried about the lack of momentum — even if Michigan State is also riding in on a similar skid.

“We’d had a pretty good run here, up until this weekend in St. Paul,” said Owens. “I don’t think it really hurts us, our confidence; I think it’ll get everybody’s attention and it may not be a bad thing.”

If it does grab the Tigers’ collective attention, they may get the chance to play near home once again up I-25 in Denver.

Michigan State Spartans
Record: 24-11-5, 19-6-3 CCHA (third)
Seed: No. 9 overall, No. 3 West
How in: At-large
2007 NCAA tournament: National champions

Last year, Michigan State finished fourth in the CCHA but first in the nation. This year, the Spartans were third in conference play, but sat out the league’s championship tournament in Detroit for the first time in 17 years, having lost a best-of-3 quarterfinal series to Northern Michigan on their own turf after securing a bye week for the first round of the playoffs.

Can Jeff Lerg backstop Michigan State into the Frozen Four once again? (photo: Ray Bartnikowski)

Can Jeff Lerg backstop Michigan State into the Frozen Four once again? (photo: Ray Bartnikowski)

“It was really hard, especially since we knew we were in the [NCAA] tournament,” said head coach Rick Comley, who watched last week’s tournament from the seats in Joe Louis Arena. “That was our second weekend in three off.”

Comley said that the Spartans knew why they were watching from East Lansing instead of dressing in Detroit. “Northern played great. We didn’t sit out with a bad taste in our mouth.”

But they did sit out, and that, said Comley, could be a problem. “It hurts. We tried all week to get it back. It was a struggle after the one week off. We never quite got it back. This week it’s been a struggle again. There’s a game sharpness that comes with playing. That’s why we play all season long, for that game sharpness and to prepare for the [NCAA] tournament.”

The defending national champs began the season on a low note, with a 6-0 loss to North Dakota in the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame game, but followed that with a decisive eight-game win streak … before running into four games against three ranked teams — Miami, Minnesota, Wisconsin — a stretch through which they went 0-2-2.

That beginning was perhaps indicative of how this MSU team would fare for the rest of the season. Entering this weekend’s regional, the Spartans are 3-4-4 against participants in this 16-team field, with a 0-1-2 record against WCHA teams in the tourney. And in the CCHA playoffs, the Spartans faced a Northern Michigan team that had swept them on the road just weeks before and which finished up its season with two fewer CCHA wins than had MSU in the second half.

In the West regional, the Spartans “have a tough draw,” said Comley. “We play a very, very good team, on its home ice, on an Olympic sheet. We’re all thrilled to go [but] certainly there would be better places for us.”

The Spartans are 10th-best nationally in three categories coning into the tournament, offense (3.27 goals per game), power play (20.8 percent) and penalty kill (86.7 percent), and are 12th-best defensively (2.35 goals per game).

“I think this team’s had to deal all year with expectations this season,” said Comley. “The bottom line is that our team has not been as good as last year. We still won 24 games. It just never came together in the ways that I hoped it would.”

MSU is backstopped by a Hobey Baker finalist, junior Jeff Lerg (2.23 GAA, .925 SV%), who has proved himself a playoff goaltender with a 1.50 goals-against average and .950 save percentage in six NCAA tournament games in the past two years.

Even with Lerg in net, it’s defense that could be MSU’s downfall, said Comley. The Spartans do have six players with goal totals in the double digits, and are led offensively by junior Tim Kennedy (19-21–40), senior Bryan Lerg (20-18–38) and junior Justin Abdelkader (18-19–37), one of the best agitators in the game.

No one expected MSU to emerge from its regional last year, said Comley, so the Spartans are in familiar territory heading to Colorado.

“Last year’s last year,” said Comley. “This year’s this year. Both are great stories.”

New Hampshire’s Regan Wins Walter Brown Award

USCHO Staff Report
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New Hampshire goaltender Kevin Regan was named the 56th recipient of the Walter Brown Award, presented annually to the best American-born college hockey player in New England. The President of the Gridiron Club of Greater Boston, Al Robichaud, made the announcement Thursday evening.

New Hampshire goalie and Hobey Baker finalist Kevin Regan adds the Walter Brown Award to a slew of Wildcat and Hockey East records (photo: Melissa Wade.)

New Hampshire goalie and Hobey Baker finalist Kevin Regan adds the Walter Brown Award to a slew of Wildcat and Hockey East records (photo: Melissa Wade.)

Regan was named one of 15 semifinalists in February, marking the second-straight season he was selected as a semifinalist. After being named a finalist, the senior assistant captain then beat out the other two finalists — Boston College’s Nathan Gerbe and Boston University’s Bryan Ewing — to win the award. Regan is the sixth Wildcat to earn the award, joining Bob Miller (1977), Ralph Cox (1979), Ty Conklin (2001), Mike Ayers (2003) and Steve Saviano (2004).

Regan is one of 10 finalists for the Hobey Baker Memorial Award. Among his Hockey East honors include his unanimous selection as Hockey East’s Player of the Year, All-Hockey East First Team goalie, and Hockey East Goalie of the Month in February. Regan was named Hockey East Defensive Player of the Week seven times this season.

At 23-7-1, Regan is the first goaltender in UNH history to post back-to-back 20-win seasons. His .933 save percentage is the second best single-season mark in school history, trailing only his own .935 effort from last season. Regan’s 23 wins and 2.12 goals-against-average rank him fourth on UNH’s single-season lists in those respective categories. Regan has won 13 of his last 15 games, including an unbeaten month of February when he was 7-0-1.

Against Hockey East opponents, Regan posted an 18-4-1 record to go along with a 1.83 GAA and a .940 save percentage. The 18 wins and .940 save percentage are the second-best marks in a single Hockey East season. In his last 18 games versus Hockey East foes, Regan has compiled a 16-1-1 record with a 1.55 GAA, .952 save percentage and three shutouts.

In the conference, Regan ranks at the top of all the major goaltending categories both overall and in Hockey East play. Regan is first in GAA, save percentage, wins, shutouts (3/3 HE) and winning percentage (.758/.804 HE). Nationally, Regan ranks third in save percentage, third in winning percentage and 11th in GAA.

Regan holds most of the goaltending lists in UNH’s record book, including wins (70), saves (3,208), save percentage (.929), games played (111) and minutes (6539:46). With a 2.25 career GAA, Regan currently sits second behind Ty Conklin’s 2.18 GAA.

Regan also holds some Hockey East records. His .932 save percentage is the best all-time, while his 50 wins place him second and are just two shy of the record. Regan owns the fourth-best GAA (2.08) in Hockey East play all-time, and has the fifth-highest winning percentage at .726.

2008 Northeast Regional Preview

By Paula C. Weston, Dave Hendrickson, Chris Lerch, Theresa Spisak and Scott Brown
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Deja vu? It’s an eclectic but familiar cast of characters at this year’s Northeast Regional, where top-seeded Miami heads up an unpredictable group of teams.

The RedHawks — who boast the nation’s top scoring offense and its second-ranked defense — draw Atlantic Hockey champion Air Force, which carries a nation-best nine-game unbeaten streak, in the regional semifinal.

Miami may be heavy favorites, but the Falcons aren’t exactly intimidated after scaring the daylights out of then-No. 1 seed Minnesota at last year’s West Regional before the Gophers prevailed.

Interestingly, the regional’s other semifinal features two teams recently remembered not for playing each other, but for games against their Northeast counterparts. The Minnesota Golden Gophers, they of the aforementioned near-upset last year against AFA, play Boston College, which has faced Miami in each of the last two NCAA tournaments, winning both times.

Depending upon who wins Saturday, fascinating rematch possibilities appear. There’s the chance of Minnesota-Air Force again, this time in the regional final, or Miami-BC for the third straight year, or some other combination, with the winner advancing to the Frozen Four two weeks from now in Denver.

Miami vs. Air Force
Saturday, 4 p.m. ET, DCU Center, Worcester, Mass.

Miami RedHawks
Record: 32-7-1, 21-6-1 CCHA (second)
Seed: No. 2 overall, No. 1 East
How in: At-large
2007 NCAA tournament: Lost in regional final

The RedHawks are making their third consecutive NCAA tournament appearance and their fifth overall, their fourth under ninth-year head coach Enrico Blasi. Last year, Miami traveled to Manchester, N.H., where the RedHawks beat New Hampshire 2-1 before losing 4-0 to Boston College. In 2006, the RedHawks went to Worcester, where they lost 5-0 to BC.

“I think we should open up a satellite campus site out East,” joked Blasi about heading to New England again this year.

Ryan Jones heads up the top-ranked Miami attack (photo: Melissa Wade).

Ryan Jones heads up the top-ranked Miami attack (photo: Melissa Wade).

Miami is 1-4 all-time in NCAA tournament play, having taken that lone win last year against host UNH, an experience that Blasi said better prepared his returning RedHawk squad not just for this year’s NCAA tournament, but for a highly-competitive regular season through which the team was often ranked No. 1.

“I think winning a game in the tournament against a hostile crowd and a great UNH team obviously helped us this year,” said Blasi. “It gave us an opportunity to establish what we needed to do going into this weekend.”

The RedHawks are the No. 2 seed overall in the tournament after losing their bid for a CCHA championship title to the No. 1 seed Michigan Wolverines. Miami played a cautious semifinal game against Notre Dame last weekend before a looser display against the Wolverines, but each contest had something glaring in common; the RedHawks failed to score until the final minute of each game.

In the 2-1 overtime win over the Irish, defenseman Mitch Ganzak scored the equalizer at 19:56 in the third, while fellow blueliner Alec Martinez scored at 19:21 in the 2-1 loss to Michigan the following night — and both goals were scored with Jeff Zatkoff pulled from the net in favor of the extra attacker.

This is some concern for a team with the top scoring offense in the nation, averaging just over four goals per game. Martinez also had the overtime game-winner against ND, so the RedHawks netted just three goals in two games in the CCHA tournament, and all three by two defenders.

“When our defensemen are scoring,” said Blasi after the title game, “that means our forwards are going to the net and causing a lot of traffic, and that’s a good sign, something we pride ourselves in. Our guys had chances, whether it be not executing or a little bit of poise, I don’t know exactly what was the case, but we definitely had our chances.”

The RedHawk offense is led by Ryan Jones (30-17–47), who is a threat from anywhere on the ice, and in any situation. Jones is a superb agitator, the kind of player who can take an opponent off his game just by being in the right place at the right time.

Jones is tied for second in the country in goals per game (0.75), tied for first in the country in game-winning goals (seven), and has 11 power-play tallies to his credit. Along with Justin Mercier (24-15–39), Jones is part of the second-best one-two punch in the country; the pair has 54 goals between them, second only to Michigan’s Kevin Porter and Chad Kolarik (56).

Two freshman standouts, Carter Camper (14-24–38) and Tommy Wingels (14-14–28), have 28 goals between them; junior Brian Kaufman (12-24–36) is the fifth RedHawk with 10 or more goals.

While Miami gets offense from all four of its classes and any line it plays, the RedHawks are also solid defensively and in net. The RedHawks are second in the country defensively, giving up just 1.80 goals per game — and they gave up just three last weekend in two contests, as many as they scored.

And Zatkoff, a junior, (1.67 GAA, 9.24 SV%) is arguably the best goaltender in the country, second in goals-against average and first in save percentage nationally. Because of Zatkoff and the stingy Miami defense, the RedHawks lead the nation in penalty killing (89.6 percent).

So what does Miami have to do to escape the East Regional? “I think we need to bury some of our chances,” said Blasi. “I think we played very well defensively last weekend. We didn’t give up much.”

Air Force Falcons
Record: 21-11-6, 14-9-5 Atlantic Hockey (third)
Seed: No. 16 overall, No. 4 Northeast
How in: Atlantic Hockey tournament champion
2007 NCAA tournament: Lost in regional semifinal

The Air Force Falcons have played two seasons in Atlantic Hockey, and won the playoff title each time. In 2007, Air Force finished fifth in the league but was elevated to the fourth seed in the playoffs due to regular season champions RIT being ineligible for the postseason. The Falcons upset Sacred Heart and Army on the way to the title and their first-ever NCAA berth.

This season, the Falcons entered the Atlantic Hockey tournament as the third seed, and in front of a league-record 3,900 partisan fans in Rochester, N.Y., soundly defeated second-seeded RIT 5-0, and then outlasted fifth-seeded Mercyhurst 5-4 in double overtime to claim the title.

“There’s no question, winning this year validated what we accomplished last year,” said Air Force coach Frank Serratore. “You don’t win a 10-team league twice in a row without doing things right and being the real deal. Last year there might have been an asterisk because RIT finished first and couldn’t play in the playoffs. But this year we left no doubt.”

There was some doubt concerning how the Falcons would cope with the loss of senior Eric Ehn, a Hobey Hat Trick finalist last season. Ehn went into the boards hard in game on Jan. 19 against Colorado College, fracturing his fibula and tearing ligaments in his ankle. Ehn has not played since.

“People were saying ‘Your plane just got shot down'”, said Serratore. “And we struggled for a couple of games. When you lose as player like Eric Ehn your culture changes. Your go-to guy is no longer there.”

The Falcons, fresh off a big 5-2 win over Denver the night before, lost that game 2-1 to Colorado College and then lost a pair of games to archrival Army, also by 2-1 scores.

But players like Brent Olson (38 points), Jeff Hajner (37 points), Matt Fairchild (28 Points) and Josh Frider (27 points) stepped up to fill the scoring void. Olson, who did not play the second half of last season due to academic ineligibility, has seven points in four postseason games and was named the Most Outstanding Player of the Atlantic Hockey tournament. Frider had the tying and game-winning goals against Mercyhurst in the championship game.

“From there the team seemed to get their legs under them and get on a roll, a better roll that we were on with Eric in the lineup,” said Serratore. “We’re 9-1-2 in our last 12 games. We’re not a one-hit wonder. Not a one-man band.”

Ehn, who began skating two weeks ago, is listed as a “game-day decision.”

“We’re hoping,” said Serratore. “Eric’s going to have to be close enough where he’s going to be able to contribute. We’re not asking him to lead us to the promised land … but to be effective as a two-way player.”

Last season, Serratore used four goalies before finally settling on Andrew Volkening for the AHA title game and the Falcons’ NCAA game against Minnesota, which they led in the third period before eventually falling to the Gophers, 4-3. This season, Volkening has played every minute of the team’s last 21 games, posting a 2.08 GAA (10th in the nation) and a school-record .912 save percentage.

Junior Greg Flynn (31 points) leads a defense that’s limiting teams to only 24 shots a game. The Falcons’ aggressive team defense will need to be on top of its game against Miami, which boasts the top-rated offense in the nation. But Serratore says the experience his team gamed against Minnesota last season will help.

“Playing Goliath last year and giving them more than a run for their money, that’s helping us right now,” said Serratore. “Miami, they’ve won 30-plus games in a big-time league but they’re not better than Minnesota was last year. If we’re hitting on all cylinders and doing all the little things well that we can do in a game, we can put ourselves the in same position that we were in last year.

“But we’re not going to sneak up on anyone. You look back over the last three years at what the Atlantic Hockey representative has done in the tournament … I can tell you, [Miami head coach] Rico Blasi isn’t going us to let his players take us for granted.”

Boston College vs. Minnesota
Saturday, 7:30 p.m. ET, DCU Center, Worcester, Mass.

Boston College Eagles
Record: 21-11-8, 11-9-7 Hockey East (fourth)
Seed: No. 6 overall, No. 2 Northeast
How in: Hockey East tournament champion
2007 NCAA tournament: NCAA runner-up

Much like they did two years ago before advancing to the national championship game, the Eagles stumbled in the last few games of the regular season before righting the ship in the playoffs. They dispatched Providence in the quarterfinals by identical 5-1 scores and shut out Vermont, 4-0, in the title game. Arguably, though, the triple-overtime semifinal win over a New Hampshire team that had won the regular season going away was even more impressive.

Nathan Gerbe is the nation's top scorer (photo: Melissa Wade).

Nathan Gerbe is the nation’s top scorer (photo: Melissa Wade).

Can there be any doubt the Eagles are peaking at the right time?

“It’s been an interesting year,” York says. “We had two stretches where we were winless in five games, one earlier and one later. The feeling amongst ourselves even during those stretches was that we were still a good team.

“We use that expression, ‘sawing wood.’ We just kept on sawing wood and working at it, but never once did we have the internal strife that sometimes comes with losses like that. That made me feel good about our club, and then we just hit our stride.”

Boston College ranks first among Hockey East teams in overall scoring and tied for first (with New Hampshire) in team defense.

“We’ve been pretty diligent in trying to get better in all three zones,” York says. “Sometimes good defense is your forecheck not getting caught or outnumbered coming back down the ice.

“There has to be a balance, we feel, with your offense and defense. We’re not ready to sell the whole store just to score a goal because if you don’t score, they’re right back in your face and you can be outnumbered. So we’re trying to be conscious of defense in all three zones but in particular in our own end.

“[Freshman goaltender] Johnny Muse has been a backbone for us. We might not have the all-league type guys on defense, but certainly Mike Brennan and Timmy Filangieri have emerged as shutdown-type defensemen. The rapid improvement of Carl Sneep as the year progressed has given us a bona fide league all-star maybe not this year but certainly down the road.”

Hobey Baker finalist Nathan Gerbe leads the nation in scoring with 28 goals and 29 assists. He’s a threat to score even strength, on the power play or shorthanded. He lines up with Ben Smith (21-22–43) and Brian Gibbons (13-16–29). The scoring doesn’t stop there, though, as Joe Whitney (8-39–47) and Benn Ferriero (16-22–38) can attest.

“We’re almost scoring by committee after Nathan,” York says. “The rest of the guys are all capable of scoring goals. We have a lot of them in that seven-to-10 goal area so we might not have the offensive magic that we’ve had in the past, but I think we’ve got a whole group of players that can score goals.”

The Eagles’ playoff experience tops the list of intangibles. They’ve played in four straight Hockey East championship games, winning three of them, and two straight national title contests.

“Without any question, that’s a big component of our recent success in the post season,” York says. “We have a lot of players that return every year who have been through the hype and the importance of late-season games. That has been able to carry over to the incoming freshmen.

“There’s a regular-season game and then there’s a tournament game in March. There’s a completely different feel from the locker room to the fans in the stands. The whole surroundings of the game is different. I think it helps to have been there before.”

In the first round, BC will be facing another tournament-tested team in Minnesota. The two traditional powerhouses share many traits: freshmen goaltenders, team speed, toughness, and even maroon and gold uniforms.

“They skate extremely well,” York says. “They make plays, they’re creative as a team and now they’re getting outstanding goaltending from the young freshman [Alex] Kangas. It’s a team that has a chance to win a national title this year, no question. They’ve won a couple this decade, so we’ve got a dangerous opponent for sure.”

Minnesota Golden Gophers
Record: 19-16-9, 9-12-7 WCHA (seventh)
Seed: No. 11 overall, No. 3 Northeast
How in: At-large
2007 NCAA tournament: Lost in regional final

Despite losing a lot on the back line at the beginning of the year, everyone thought the Gophers wouldn’t rebuild; they’d just reload, like usual.

Instead, the Gophers stumbled. They won their early nonconference games before struggling against the meat of the WCHA, failing to make the title game in their own holiday tournament.

The Gophers struggled to score goals, lost players early to injury and early departure, had their worst power play in years and struggled to find consistency in net — heck, the coaching staff used a senior walk-on who had never seen ice time to start a nonconference game against Wayne State.

The Gophers scored 10 goals that weekend, the most all season. Though it didn’t start a late-season push, Minnesota learned to love and hate overtime, gaining a tie in all but one of its series in the second half of the season but going 0-5-9 in the extra frame.

But then something happened, and the Gophers started winning. They rallied from a double-overtime loss on the road against Minnesota State in the first round of the WCHA playoffs, winning one game in single and the other in double-overtime, to make it back to the Xcel Energy Center for the Final Five.

Once there, they almost needed overtime to beat St. Cloud, used it to beat CC and came close to needing it in a loss to Denver in the championship game — understandable, when you consider they played the equivalent of seven and a half hockey games in nine days.

In short, the once-powerful Gophers have turned into the Cinderella underdogs, if you can believe it.

“We understand that we’re playing BC, who’s just been terrific in the NCAAs the last 10 years. They’ve been in the national championship game the last two years and we’re playing in their backyard — how difficult it’s going to be,” said head coach Don Lucia. “But we’ve relished the underdog role the last month of the season and we’ll wear it again this weekend.”

That’s right, the Gophers are happy to be underdogs. Lucia would prefer that his team score a few more goals — they’re 43rd in the nation in scoring offense with 2.43 goals per game — but he realizes his team is now a grinding one, and may have some difficulty against the Eagles, who have the fourth-highest scoring offense in the nation.

“We’re not going to go out and outscore BC,” said Lucia. “We have to find a way to get to three [goals], I’m sure — we’re not going to win 2-1.”

In other words, the Gophers will hope to get offense from various sources who can step up — like Mike Carman, Tony Lucia, Mike Howe and Mike Hoeffel have so far (none has 20 points). In fact, this year’s Gophers squad doesn’t have a 40-point scorer — something you’d have to go back at least 10 years to find. As a result, Lucia’s squad needs to work the basics to success.

“I think specialty teams are going to be huge [like] our penalty kill, because BC’s got a very good power play,” Lucia added. “We’re going to have to play smart, we’re going to have to be good positionally and our goaltender is going to have to continue to play how he’s played.”

That goaltender, of course, is freshman Alex Kangas (1.92 GAA, .932 sv%) who stepped up to take the starting role in January and hasn’t looked back, improving as the season has gone on and excelling in the playoffs.

“No goaltender probably in our league faced more playoff pressure than he did because of the fine line we have with winning and losing,” explained Lucia, “knowing that you can’t give up more than one or two goals if we’re going to have a chance to win.”

Rookie Watch

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Heroes come from unlikely places in the postseason. As Denver head coach George Gwozdecky noted earlier this week, college hockey keeps getting younger so that underclassmen step to the forefront more so than ever.

With that in mind, here are some first-year players who could play a big role in their regional as we present the rookie watch for the weekend.

The Madison regional is obvious as all eyes will be on an NHL star of the future in Wisconsin’s Kyle Turris. Depending on who you believe, you’d better watch him closely because this might be his last game or two in the NCAA.

There are also high-profile and talented freshmen on the roster at North Dakota, and Gwozdecky is simply amazed at how his first-year players have been thrust into such prominent roles. Other than former Hobey Baker winner Matt Carle, that is somewhat different from his title teams earlier in the decade. Remember that six-on-three Denver killed off in the last 94 seconds of its national-title win against Maine? Carle was the only freshman on the ice for Denver.

It goes without saying that Colorado College netminder Richard Bachman will be a rookie to watch this weekend (photo: Melissa Wade).

It goes without saying that Colorado College netminder Richard Bachman will be a rookie to watch this weekend (photo: Melissa Wade).

Flying under the radar will be Princeton forward Taylor Fedun. The youngster hails from his coach’s hometown of Edmonton, Alb., and has been a great contributor to the Tigers’ success. He has great vision, makes a crisp first pass and possesses an excellent one-timer. This right-handed shot plays in all situations during games and has displayed a proficiency at handling odd-man rushes against. A gritty and hard-nosed player, the engineering student has shown himself to be smart on and off the ice.

In the Springs, several solid freshmen will hit the ice and many of them will be wearing the white and blue of the New Hampshire Wildcats. James VanRiemsdyk has had an unassuming but solid freshman year and has done a great job deflecting his status as an NHL superstar in waiting to being just one of the boys in Durham. Danny Dries and Phil DeSimone have also impressed the fans of Hockey East. Dries was moved into VanRiemsdyk’s spot as the left wing on the top line with Mike Radja and Matt Fornataro and has been simply brilliant.

However, Colorado College also boasts a few good ones — look no further than the kid in goal. Where did Richard Bachman come from? He’s a Denver-area kid who was about fourth or fifth on CC’s list of goalies, and when he was available in the recruiting process, CC grabbed him very much under the radar. Head coach Scott Owens, a former star goaltender himself, knows quality goalies and has a few good ones at CC. He didn’t disappoint his fan base on this one as Bachman has carried CC all season. Forward Steve Schultz was having a good debut until a season-ending injury a month ago.

Then there’s Notre Dame, and where would you like to start here? Take your pick before I do from Ryan Guentzel, Calle Ridderwall, Ben Ryan, Ian Cole, and Teddy Ruth. Ryan is playing as well as he has all season, Ridderwall is coming into his own on a game-by-game basis and Guentzel has shown flashes of being a very good Division I player with his work ethic and hard-nosed play. Ian Cole is a factor on a shift-by-shift basis but Teddy Ruth has demonstrated that he is the next big and bruising yet mobile defenseman in the CCHA.

The freshman I’m picking, though, is Michigan State defenseman Jeff Petry. The son of former Tigers pitcher Dan Petry, Jeff arrived in East Lansing and quickly earned a prominent role on the blue line of the defending national champs. Mobile, hostile, and agile — the three components of a good defenseman — Petry has them all along with a great shot and above-average hockey sense and anticipation.

Eastbound towards Worcester, there are a ton of good ones and you can’t start anywhere but the goaltending matchup in game one between Minnesota’s Alex Kangas and BC’s John Muse. Both of these talented kids have been backbones of their teams. Derrick Burnett of Air Force has also opened eyes in his first year of college hockey, but Miami has a few that you need to watch.

Carter Camper has been lights-out as a freshman for the deep and talented RedHawks but I’m highlighting a sentimental favorite here, and that’s center Pat Cannone. Cannone played Junior B for me on Long Island and when he was being recruited by Division I schools, the things that I told coaches about him were that he might have been the smartest player I have ever coached either in the pro ranks or in the junior ranks. Cannone sees the game unbelievably well; options that wouldn’t be noticed by some players appear as obvious choices to him.

The other aspect of Cannone is his passing. I’m convinced you could put him in a pitch-black arena with one other player on the ice and he’d deliver the puck tape-to-tape on his forehand or his backhand. The knock on Cannone as a kid was his conditioning, but that is now a moot point as he has shown that his work ethic on- and off-ice is what future pro players are made of.

That season in junior B, he broke his hand and missed about six weeks. With a cast on one hand and a stick in the other, Cannone never missed a practice and never bailed out of hard skating at the end of it. That earned my respect.

The Capital District of the Empire State is the last stop on the tour and that’s where nearly the entire Michigan team could fall under the rookie watch. Stop me if you’ve heard me on this before, but this might be the most impressive collection of star and role-playing rookies ever put on one team.

They dot the first through fourth lines, play a role on the back line, and have made Michigan a national-title contender as opposed to a team in a rebuilding year. The kids on this team have made Kevin Porter and Chad Kolarik’s decisions to come back as seniors brilliant ones. Those two leaders made the kids better players and the kids supported both seniors in stellar seasons which should be capped by Porter winning the Hobey Baker in two weeks.

Michigan’s season-opening win against Boston College at the Ice Breaker was scored by a rookie, Louie Caporusso, on a shot that deflected like a pinball before going in off a BC skate. It started there, as coach Red Berenson noted in his CCHA Coach of the Year acceptance speech, and hasn’t stopped for this dynamic freshman class.

The class includes Aaron Palushaj, Matt Rust, Carl Hagelin, Max Pacioretty, Ben Winnett, Scooter Vaughn, Tristin Llewellyn, and Chad Langlais and a pair of goalies who’ll have to wait out Billy Sauer’s senior season until they can shine in Bryan Hogan and Shawn Hunwick.

Pacioretty, like Dries at UNH and Cannone an Miami, has played a first-line role with two established stars as he rides shotgun on the left side of Porter and Kolarik. Caporusso has a great knack for being open and available for grade-A chances, a lot of which seem to go in at clutch times. He’s a star in the making.

Hagelin has as much speed as anyone who ever skated for the Maize and Blue and is a dynamic offensive player. Langlais is slowly becoming the offensive defenseman Michigan needs to replace what Jack Johnson took with him to Los Angeles. Winnett, Vaughn and LLewelyn have played solid supporting roles.

Matt Rust has drifted just south of the publicity line at times this season and that can be traced to the fact that he is a solid player who does his job well but isn’t flashy. Tough and tenacious, Rust is looking forward to Albany because, as he says, “I didn’t have a ton of playoff success in junior.”

Palushaj might be the one to keep an eye on here. His ability to either get pucks to the net himself or be by the net when pucks arrive is a gift. Big, strong, and not afraid to get his nose dirty, Palushaj brings an Eric Nystrom-type intensity to the Wolverine offense. Soft-spoken off the ice, he is a player who can’t be missed on it and should play a huge role in the Albany regional.

Palushaj was a member of the Des Moines Buccaneers Clark Cup team a couple of years ago, and was a supporting-role guy then like he is now. He was the go-to guy a year later, so he has big-game experience and isn’t intimidated by the national stage he is about to enter.

Lastly, and totally off-topic, was there a better player than this season among defensemen than Alaska’s Tyler Eckford? If he played out east he’d have been a Hobey Baker finalist.

2008 East Regional Preview

By Paula C. Weston, Matt Mackinder, Brian Sullivan, Theresa Spisak and Scott Brown
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Can Michigan be stopped?

The Wolverines come into the NCAA tournament on a mini-roll after having won their last four in a row, including a nailbiter last Saturday to claim the CCHA tournament title and the overall top seed in the NCAAs.

The unanimous No. 1 in the season’s final USCHO.com/CSTV poll is the undisputed favorite in the East Regional as well, but Michigan’s semifinal opponent, Niagara, will be playing within driving distance of its campus and is motivated to represent the CHA well as that league faces challenges for next season.

The other game at the Times Union Center Friday pits two teams not particularly happy with their recent performances in St. Cloud State and Clarkson.

Both should be well-rested, as the Huskies lost in the play-in game at the WCHA Final Five last Thursday while the Golden Knights got the weekend off after being upset in the ECAC Hockey quarterfinals. Both are also battling history, with SCSU never having won an NCAA tournament game and Clarkson none since 1996.

The winners of Friday’s semifinals will meet Saturday to decide the first berth in the Frozen Four. Will it be Michigan? Or can one of the other contenders raise its play and stop the Wolverines’ momentum?

Michigan vs. Niagara
Friday, 7:30 p.m. ET, Times Union Center, Albany, N.Y.

Michigan Wolverines
Record: 31-5-4, 20-4-4 CCHA (first)
Seed: No. 1 overall, No. 1 East
How in: CCHA tournament champion
2007 NCAA tournament: Lost in regional semifinal

The Michigan Wolverines captured the CCHA’s automatic NCAA tournament bid with their eighth Mason Cup and their first since 2005, but they certainly didn’t need the hardware to secure an invitation. The only thing uncertain about last Saturday’s conference title game was who would emerge the No. 1 overall seed, Michigan or the Miami RedHawks.

Kevin Porter is a Hobey Baker finalist, but the biggest difference for this year's Wolverines might be an improved Billy Sauer (photo: Melissa Wade).

Kevin Porter is a Hobey Baker finalist, but the biggest difference for this year’s Wolverines might be an improved Billy Sauer (photo: Melissa Wade).

“It was a good weekend for us,” said UM head coach Red Berenson. “It was good hockey for the league, too. We had a great crowd.”

That is the understated perspective of a man whose team is traveling to an NCAA-best 18th consecutive tournament, a man who for only the second time in his career became this year’s CCHA Coach of the Year.

But this year is perhaps a little sweeter for the Wolverines, who were picked fourth in both the CCHA coaches and media preseason polls, owing to the youth of their squad and the past inconsistencies of junior goaltender Billy Sauer.

And that may be the reason why Berenson himself jumped into the air behind the bench when the buzzer sounded on Michigan’s 2-1 win over Miami last Saturday, exhibiting a rare, ear-to-ear postgame grin — one that was, of course, gone by the time the press conference began. Berenson is, if anything, all business.

When asked what his team needs to improve upon going into this tournament, after winning both CCHA titles, losing fewer games than anyone in the country and amassing the nation’s best win percentage, Berenson said, “I can give you a laundry list.”

“We’re not as good in certain areas as we were a couple of months ago,” Berenson continued. “Let’s face it; Billy Sauer kept us in the game at the end on Friday. He didn’t have much work early in the game. Then against Miami, he was the difference again. We were being outplayed and outshot.”

Sauer, a weakness for the Wolverines a year ago, has emerged as the most improved player in the league. His 1.97 goals-against average is seventh-best in the nation, and his save percentage of .924 is 11th-best. Last year, Sauer’s 3.03 GAA was 52nd-best in the nation, his .896 save percentage 51st.

In Friday’s 6-4 CCHA semifinal win over Northern Michigan, Sauer was spectacular at the end of the third period, when the Wildcats — the underdog workhorses of the tournament — threw everything they had at him. In Saturday’s 2-1 win over Miami, Sauer kept Miami’s top offense off the board until the 19:21 mark in regulation.

“It’s good to know that he can be a difference-maker,” said Berenson. “At this time of year, goaltending is the difference.”

A year ago, it was a high-powered offense that kept the Wolverines competitive; this season, Michigan combines the nation’s second-best offense (3.98 goals per game) with the fifth-best defense (2.08 GPG), adds solid goaltending and sprinkles in something intangible — youthful enthusiasm. UM routinely dresses nine freshmen, two of whom — forward Matt Rust (11-10–21) and defensemen Scooter Vaughn (0-4–4) — played with broken bones last weekend.

Berenson said he won’t know until the tournament is over how his NCAA newcomers will respond, but he managed to sound both practical and optimistic when discussing the freshmen. “In every situation we’ve put them in, they’ve done well, whether it’s the GLI or the Ice Breaker. Then when we faced Minnesota and Wisconsin in the [College Hockey] Showcase, they played well. Then last weekend.

“I don’t think it’s going to faze them.”

Although the Wolverines are young, UM’s veterans have shown real leadership this season. Senior captain Kevin Porter (28-28–56), this year’s CCHA Player of the Year, is fourth nationally in points per game (1.40), seventh in goals per game (0.70) and third in power-play goals (14). He and classmate Chad Kolarik (28-20–48) have combined for 56 goals, more than any other duo in the country. All told, Michigan has seven players with 10 or more markers.

If the Wolverines have one weakness, it’s special teams. UM is 13th nationally on the power play (.204), 14th on the penalty kill (.862). Berenson said two more areas need improvement going into the regionals. “I think our D-zone coverage can be better, our forechecking can be better.”

As for the trip to Albany, said Berenson, “I think it’s a good draw. I don’t know that there’s a bad draw. If you’re going to play in the tournament, you have to prove it on the ice.”

Niagara Purple Eagles
Record: 22-10-4, 12-6-2 CHA (second)
Seed: No. 15 overall, No. 4 East
How in: CHA tournament champion
2007 NCAA tournament: none

Niagara is going into Friday’s night’s East Regional against top-ranked Michigan knowing that it’s the underdog, and is not expected to do much versus the Wolverines.

But the Purple Eagles still intend to show up in Albany, N.Y., about five hours east of the NU campus, and do what got them a College Hockey America title and an NCAA berth.

“We had a spirited week of practice and it’s nice to finally be here,” Niagara head coach Dave Burkholder said. “This is just another work week for us.”

Winning the CHA tournament and getting to the NCAA dance was extra-special for the Purple Eagles as it meant every senior class has won a championship. NU also made the NCAA tournament in 2000 and 2004. This year’s team is one Burkholder said can hold its own with any team in the country.

“We’ve had a terrific season,” said Burkholder. “We were 10-4-1 and nationally ranked at the Christmas break, but then came back and lost four of five, including two at Cornell. Aside from that little lull, we finished strong. Right now, we’re focused on working hard for Friday night.”

Juliano Pagliero will get the nod in net for Niagara, as he has for much of the season. CHA tournament MVP Ted Cook, with a goal in six straight games, is also ready for Michigan.

“‘Pags’ has been a pillar for us,” noted Burkholder. “We’ll need him to bring his ‘A’ game. Cook has been a different player in practice this week. He’s been scoring goals like crazy and finishing all the drills. He’s on a roll.”

Senior co-captain Matt Caruana has seen his share of ups and downs with Niagara, but doesn’t hesitate when asked to describe this year’s squad compared to other years.

“The guys are so close on and off the ice and this is by far the deepest team I’ve ever been on in my four years here,” Caruana said. “Maybe in other years we had two lines, but this year we roll four lines and lately, our third line has been our best line.

“We’re going into this game with Michigan with no intimidation, no pressure. The first 10 minutes will be important and if we can weather the storm for those first few minutes and keep them off the scoreboard, we should be all right.”

Burkholder also said that Caruana and fellow captain Vince Rocco put the pressure on themselves to get to regionals.

“Winning the [CHA] tournament at home, they both took it personally to lead this team there,” said Burkholder. “Now they’ve done that and the burden is off. They’ve prepared this team for the next step.”

“We’re treating this just like any other road game,” added Caruana. “The older guys are getting the younger guys ready to go. We’ve watched video of Michigan and we don’t want any five-on-fours against us. I think special teams will be big in this game.”

This will be just the fifth meeting between NU and Michigan over the years, and the Wolverines hold a 3-1-0 advantage over the Purple Eagles after their last win in Nov. 2003. Hobey Baker hopeful Kevin Porter captains Michigan and even though he went pointless last weekend during the CCHA championship, Niagara cannot afford to give him any room.

“I think containing Kevin Porter has been an issue for every team that’s played Michigan,” said Burkholder. “You can’t game plan for him. When we have the puck, we need to take care of it. Michigan was ranked No. 1 for more weeks than any other team, so that tells you something. They’re the fastest team in the nation in transition and have a lot of talent.

“We just need the Niagara team to show up [Friday] night.”

St. Cloud State vs. Clarkson
Friday, 4 p.m. ET, Times Union Center, Albany, N.Y.

St. Cloud State Huskies
Record: 19-15-5, 12-12-4 WCHA (fifth)
Seed: No. 8 overall, No. 2 East
How in: At-large
2007 NCAA tournament: Lost in regional semifinal

The Huskies have been an enigma for most of the season, doing well statistically but struggling to gain wins. St. Cloud went through a particularly rough stretch in the first half of the season, going on a six-game skid in late November and early December, losing each game by one goal.

Aaron Brocklehurst is St. Cloud State's top-scoring blueliner (photo: Jason Waldowski).

Aaron Brocklehurst is St. Cloud State’s top-scoring blueliner (photo: Jason Waldowski).

SCSU broke the snide against Colorado College, winning 4-2, but couldn’t gain momentum over the holidays and went on another winless slide (0-2-1) to end January.

February would bring better things, however, as the Huskies went 6-2-2 to end the regular season and swept Wisconsin to get to the Final Five, losing to what probably should have been a tired Minnesota squad in the play-in game.

Head coach Bob Motzko said it looked like his team had “stage-itis” in the first period, something he knows they’ll have to combat in Albany.

“For one, we’ve played in it a year ago for most of our guys in the same type of situation,” said Motzko,” so we’ve got that to lean back on. And two, the fact that we just lived through it last weekend, we weren’t happy with it, so we’re excited we get another chance at it right now. We get to play again … we get a chance to redeem ourselves, too.”

Play again they will, hoping to lose the stigma of “one-and-done,” as the Huskies have never won an NCAA tournament game. However, tell Motzko that and he thinks it’s part bluster.

“Our group is, we’ve been going at it together for three years and we’re 0-1 in the NCAAs and some of the losses for our program — I’m sure the same for Clarkson — the kids were 10 years old, so some of the hype that comes back on the losing record doesn’t really pertain to these teams,” he said.

“I think the fact that both of us lost a year ago, that will sting for both teams. I think the fact that we’ve played each other four times the last two years, there’s a familiarity right now so there’s no unknown and I think that’s going to set it up to be a good hockey game,” Motzko continued. “I think it sets up that whoever plays the best is going to have a chance to win.

If the Huskies are going to have success, it’ll be offensively, as they have the league’s leading scorer in sophomore Ryan Lasch (25-28–53) as well as his teammates sophomore Andreas Nodl and freshman Garrett Roe (each 18-26–44). And, while it’s always hard to replace an All-American in goal, sophomore Jase Weslosky has performed admirably down the stretch, compiling a 2.12 goals against average and .931 saves percentage for the season.

While some other teams have been turning to their role players to step up, Motzko knows he’ll need his stars to shine if his team wants a spot in that elusive regional final game.

“Your best players have to be your best at the end of the year — there’s no question. I don’t care what team you are in the NCAA tournament,” he said. “Obviously you have to have good goaltending to win in the playoffs, but our top players who we’ve relied on either offensively or defensively are going to have to perform. I don’t think you can dodge that bullet. I don’t think any team can dodge that bullet.”

For any team coming into a regional, the Frozen Four is the ultimate goal. As for the Huskies? As long as they can dodge the semifinal bullet that is Clarkson, anything after that will be just gravy.

Clarkson Golden Knights
Record: 21-12-4, 15-4-3 ECAC Hockey (first)
Seed: No. 10 overall, No. 3 East
How in: At-large
2007 NCAA tournament: Lost in regional semifinal

The Golden Knights are hoping to reverse their 2006-07 postseason fortunes after a rude interruption of plans in ’08.

The Knights had their smooth-running season thrown completely off the track in the league quarterfinals, as eighth-seeded Colgate took down the regular-season champs on their home ice. This came only two weeks after Clarkson had successfully defended its right to the Cleary Cup against hard-charging Princeton in one of the best games of the year.

“It took a few days to get over not making it to Albany [for the league championship],” said head coach George Roll. “We gave them three or four days off, told them to stay away from the rink” after the series loss.

Last year, the Green and Gold took home the Whitelaw Cup as league tournament champs, but were promptly bounced from the NCAA tournament by fourth-seeded Massachusetts 1-0 in overtime. It was a disaster for the Knights, who entered the game as the Rochester regional’s top seed and a true offensive powerhouse.

“Last year, it all happened so quick,” said Roll. “It all went so well [last year]. This year, there’s a little bit more adversity.”

“This year has a completely different feel. We’re getting a second chance … there’s a hungrier edge to it,” he said.

The Knights never faced much of a struggle on their trip to the top this year, only losing consecutive games twice (once in the regular season, and to Colgate in the quarters), while stringing together two four-game winning streaks and a five-game unbeaten string. The Knights even played St. Cloud State back in December, splitting a weekend in the North Country 1-4 and 3-2. This year’s deuce followed up last year’s pair at St. Cloud, wherein the Huskies swept their ECAC visitors by an 11-2 aggregate.

“There’s some familiarity there,” said Roll, who compared this game to last year’s, when the Minutemen and Golden Knights had squared off in an early-season tilt that preceded their NCAA matchup.

“The biggest thing is their power play,” he said of SCSU’s strong points. “They move the puck very well. We’ve got to stay disciplined … we’ve done a better job of that this year.”

While the early departure from the ECAC Hockey scene may have bruised their collective ego, at least the Knights had a chance to heal from their more tangible aches and pains. Roll predicts a healthy roster, but a more top-heavy lineup against the WCHA interloper.

“We’ll shorten the bench a little bit more, especially on the back end,” he said, preferring to roll three lines up front instead of going four-deep.

The Knights have a tough task ahead of them, and having only won a single NCAA game in the last 17 years (beating Western Michigan 6-1 — in Albany — in 1996) doesn’t ease the pressure any. They last appeared in the Frozen Four back in 1991, falling to Boston University in St. Paul, Minn.

In order to beat the Huskies, Clarkson will have to play from the goal out, protecting a perfectly legitimate David Leggio (21-11-4, 2.24 GAA, .918 sv%, five shutouts) — and doubtlessly hoping he can protect them once or twice — before attacking with quick passes and opportunistic sprints from the wings. Leading scorers Matt Beca (10-24–34), Steve Zalewski (21-12–33), Chris D’Alvise (12-17–29) and Nick Dodge (12-14–26) will need to carry that load.

Don’t be fooled by their league or their last two games; the Golden Knights know how to win … the only difference this weekend is the size of the stage.

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