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This Week in the NCHA/MCHA

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There is no doubt many of us are working to drop some of the weight we put on over the holidays. The same can be said for the NCHA and MCHA teams as they gear up for the second half of the season. In fact, many have already gotten action in since we last visited, and we already have a little bit of a shakeup in the USCHO.com Division III poll

St. Norbert, following a perfect December, has tightened its vice grip on the top ranking, earning all but one of the first place votes. River Falls remains in the No. 6 position while Stout dropped one spot to land at No. 8. Riding a four game losing streak, MSOE is no longer in the ‘others receiving votes’ category, leaving Adrian as the lone MCHA team to be receiving votes.

This weekend brings the MCHA resuming conference action, while the NCHA will finish off its dismantling of the MIAC in Interlock play.

Jonesin’

As if holding the all-time Division III records for career shutouts and longest shutout streak (among others) wasn’t enough, St. Norbert senior goaltender Kyle Jones now owns perhaps the most prestigious goaltending record in college hockey.

St. Norbert goaltender Kyle Jones' 73rd win gave him the most wins by a goaltender in Division III history.

St. Norbert goaltender Kyle Jones’ 73rd win gave him the most wins by a goaltender in Division III history.

Jones garnered his 73rd career win on December 29, surpassing Plattsburgh State’s Rick Strack for the all-time D-III lead, as the Green Knights defeated Curry 5-2 in the opening round of the Pathfinder Bank Oswego Hockey Classic in Oswego,N.Y.

Though Jones did not see action in the contest., the Green Knights went on to defeat Amherst 3-1 in the championship game.

After his 17th career shutout last weekend against MSOE, Jones is now holds a ludicrous career record of 74-10-6, one that will likely only improve as the season progresses.

Holiday Travels

The Green Knights weren’t the only NCHA team to head east over break, as Lake Forest and St. Scholastica made trips of their own.

The Foresters hit the road to partake in the Middlebury Hockey Classic in Middlebury, VT. Hockey aside, Forester head coach Tony Fritz views tournaments like these as a great experience for anyone involved.

“Things went extremely well,” said Fritz. “It was a tough trip. We flew into Manchester, bussed over to Middlebury. Buses, planes, the whole deal: it went extremely well. They are incredibly good hosts and nothing could have been better.

“It’s a great experience, especially going to a facility like (Middlebury’s). The people are phenomenal, they are such great hosts. The list goes on and on, I just love the way they do things.”

As far as the hockey goes, the Foresters picked up their second win of the season by downing Skidmore 6-3 in their opener. The Foresters picked up goals from five different players and the six goals marked a season high.

Lake Forest jumped out to an early 2-0 lead on goals from Peter Morrison and Dave Ridos and would never look back. They would carry a 5-3 lead into the final period where a Justin Taylor with less than eight minutes to play would ice things for the Foresters.

“We played well — I think that’s the best we played this year. I think their goalie had an off night which helps, because normally he plays extremely well.”

With their tickets punched to the finals, the Foresters would get none other than host Middlebury, the defending national runner-up.

Though the Foresters would drop the contest, 3-1, they didn’t go down without a fight.

An unassisted goal by Petter Andersson would stake the Foresters to a 1-0 lead they would carry into the final stanza, but the large Middlebury ice sheet and the speed and skill of Middlebury finally won out in the end, notching three final period tallies.

“The difference between the two nights is on Friday when we had chances we buried them, and on Saturday — when we had them — we didn’t. Particularly when it was 2-1 and we had a breakaway and hit the crossbar. That was huge. That could have been a 2-2 game with eight minutes to go but it wasn’t to be.”

Despite the loss to Middlebury, Lake Forest was very pleased with its play in the tournament, and hopes it will carry over into the final half of the season.

“It was great to get into the final and really get into a game with them and go toe-to-toe with them on their ice,” said Fritz. “It was good for us. It was good for our confidence and for our guys to realize they were capable of playing this way. So we felt good about that, it was a good trip for us.”

St. Scholastica didn’t head quite as far east as Lake Forest did, but still hit the road to participate in the Cardinal Classic in Plattsburgh, NY.

Like Fritz, St. Scholastica head coach Mark Wick thought it was a great experience to play teams from the East Region.

“It was a good experience like that to go into an environment like that and perform,” said Wick. “We were in a rink that isn’t the most fan friendly to the opposing team. We were on the road and they have a great crowd and it was a good experience for us.”

Wick noted the importance of cross-regional match-ups when it comes NCAA selection time, and also pointed out a specific desire to take on Plattsburgh.

“I wanted to go out there because I wanted to play Plattsburgh,” he said. “I know [Plattsburgh coach] Bob [Emery] and I wanted to play them because if you talk about the top teams in the East I think there name is going to come up quite often along with a handful of other teams, which is why that semifinal game is was so important for us.”

If the Saints were to take on the Cardinals, they first had to win said opener and that they did, scoring a 3-1 win over Trinity behind goals from Matt Stengl, Trevor Geiger and Joey Martini.

The Saints scored twice in the final period to get the win, appearing to rectify some of the third period struggles that plagued them earlier in the season.

“We’ve talked about that over the break,” said Wick. “You know, we have 10 blemishes and I think in eight of them we were tied in the third period.”

He continued, “We have to put things away when we have the chance, so on Friday night we were tied in the third period and were able to pull it off so that was nice.”

The win set up the desired showdown with third-ranked Plattsburgh in the finals, but the Cardinals would break a 2-2 third period tie with just over eight minutes to go, holding on for a 3-2 win.

“Again, we were tied in the third period and Saturday and just weren’t able to pull it out. We played well, but we do have to find a way to win those games,” said Wick.

“I thought it was a great championship game,” said Wick. “It was back and forth; we played great on the penalty kill, blocked a lot of shots and took a lot of passing lanes away.”

Though Wick was ultimately pleased with the Saints’ performance, he can’t help think about what might have been.

“We did have our chances,” he said. “Jordan Chong had a four-on-four breakaway, Martini had one and then we hit a couple of posts when we pulled the goaltender we hit a couple of posts. Both teams had a lot of chances and they just put one more away than us.”

Overall, the NCHA must be quite pleased with the play of its teams out East this year. With St. Norbert winning in Oswego and St. Scholastica and Lake Forest each picking up a win before taking a pair of national powers to a brink, the NCHA looks to be as strong as ever and is certainly in good hands.

On the Inside Rail

In the MCHA preview I stated, “If one is looking for a dark horse in the MCHA, they need look no further than Marian.”

Thus far, the Sabres haven’t looked like much of a dark horse, but rather clear post-time odds-on favorites.

The Sabres are 8-5 overall, with all five losses coming against very good teams (Bethel twice, Adrian, Stout and River Falls). More importantly, Marian finds itself at 7-1 in the MCHA right now, good enough for a first place tie with Adrian.

“We thought we might be here in conference play,” said head coach Jasen Wise. “We had some good leadership coming back, guys with a lot of experience and we really liked our freshman class.”

At the risk of editorializing, one thing I think has contributed to Marian’s success this season is an abundance of speed on this year’s rendition that I didn’t necessarily notice last year. Add that to the fact Marian plays its home games on an Olympic size ice sheet and they have all the makings of a formidable foe.

“Speed is something we put an emphasis now,” said Wise. “With this years recruiting class I wanted to get faster. That was the number one question I asked coaches when I was out recruiting: ‘can they skate?’ And then all of my returning playing dedicated themselves in the weight room especially in terms of trying to get faster.”

Continuing, he noted “[t]hat’s what we are going to continue to do in trying to build a team that can succeed on the big sheet of ice. Obviously if you have speed on the big sheet you should have it on the smaller sheet.”

The speed is paying dividends as the Sabres rank second in the MCHA, scoring 4.46 goals per game. Even more notable is the 4.87 goals per game they are scoring at home.

Thus far sophomore Nick Cinquegrani has paced the Sabre attack with 17 points on eight goals and nine assists, and he is followed by senior Carl Bresser who has fifteen points on nine goals and six assists.

Captain James Goodfellow and the Marian Sabres find themselves tied atop the MCHA standings half way through the season.

Captain James Goodfellow and the Marian Sabres find themselves tied atop the MCHA standings half way through the season.

The aforementioned freshman class has also performed up to expectations with Wise singling out forwards Brendan Hull and Todd Collins as well as defenseman Brandon Blair. Hull and Collins each have 14 points on the season while Collins has added seven in ten games.

“I’m very happy with the class,” he said. “Number one we added good character kids who work just as hard on the ice as off it. I think we’ve also added some physical nature to our play as well. Kids like Randy Wills and Mitch Bye who play hard, finish their checks and can take the body.”

Somewhat interestingly, the Sabres have utilized a three goalie rotation thus far, with freshman Ira Greenberg, sophomore Cullen Caldwell and junior Jason Jadczak all seeing action in five games this year.

Jadczak has posted the best numbers and has been playing well as of late, leading Wise to suspect they may have found a, you guessed it, horse to ride down the homestretch.

“We’re trying to find a go-to guy,” he said. “We’re looking for a guy to step up. [Jadczak] has taken the ball and is running with it. He’s started the last four games and he’s playing real well.”

Though the Sabres are off to a strong start, particularly in MCHA play, their toughest stretch of schedule looms on the horizon, beginning this week with MSOE and next week as they hit the road to take on Finlandia.

“These games are extremely important because Adrian has swept MSOE, Finlandia and Lawrence,” said Wise. “It we want to keep pace with Adrian we have to do what they do, starting Friday night.”

Marian was only 0-2-2 against MSOE last season, which has Wise focusing on one game at a time.

“We can’t look ahead to Saturday’s game against MSOE or next week against Finlandia, Wise said. “We are very familiar with MSOE, we know the systems they run. We have been very focused on them with our preparation, we just have to do what we’ve been doing, use our speed on the big sheet and hopefully score more goals than they do.”

This Week in D-III Women’s Hockey: Jan. 10, 2008

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Division-III women’s hockey was back in full force this past week with most of the teams returning to action to kick off the 2008 portions of their schedules. Some of the highlights of the first week of hockey in the new year were Bowdoin turning things around and getting their first win of the season against a strong St. Thomas team. The Polar Bears also beat previously seventh-ranked Manhattanville 3-2 giving Bowdoin two strong wins to build off for the remainder of the season.

Elmira won the St. Michael’s Holiday tournament in Burlington, Vt., shutting out Norwich 4-0 in their first game, and then beating Colby 7-4 behind a hat trick by sophomore forward Lauryn DePaul.

Trinity continued their outstanding and unprecedented start by beating Oswego 5-1 in the semi-finals of the Codfish Bowl and then taking down host UMass-Boston 1-0 in the championship game.

Top-ranked Plattsburgh went across the border to Montreal, Quebec and represented the United States at the prestigious Theresa Humes Tournament, featuring many of the top CIS Canadian colleges. Plattsburgh went 2-1 at the tournament, losing their first game to Ottawa 3-2 and then coming back to beat Moncton 4-2 and Guelph 3-0 for a fifth-place finish. The Cardinals went to this same tournament in 2004-2005 and came back winless, so going 2-1 has to be encouraging for the defending NCAA champions.

Panthers Dominate ECAC West/NESCAC Face-Off

In what I’ve unofficially dubbed the ECAC West/NESCAC Face-Off (In hopes the match-ups will continue next season), Middlebury flexed their muscles in a surprising way.

How many people would have taken the bet that Anna McNally and AnneMarie Cellino would be shutout in both of their games last weekend and the Panthers would still win both of them against Utica and RIT?

I, like probably all of you, are saying no way!

Well, they did.

Middlebury shutout fifth-ranked RIT 3-0 on Saturday and then capped off the weekend downing Utica 4-2 on Sunday after the Pioneers the previous night had upset fourth-ranked Amherst 2-1 in overtime.

“They (Cellino and McNally) are two pretty special players,” said Middlebury head coach Bill Mandigo. “However, we have a lot of good players and you saw that last weekend. It’s a testament to the rest of our team that when the opportunity arises, anyone on our team can step up and help us win.”

Junior Erika Nakamura (Boston, Mass.,) and freshmen Nora Bergman (Concord, Mass.,) teamed to lead the Panther offense against RIT each chipping in and goal and an assist. Freshmen Julia Ireland (Greenwich, Conn.,) added the third Middlebury goal to round out the scoring against the Tigers.

Against Utica, three Panthers scored their first goals of the season and another scored her second. Andrea Buono (Ashburnham, Mass.,) Heather McCormack (Rowley, Mass.,) and Margaret MacDonald (Judique, N.S.) were the first time goal scorers and Tania Kenny chipped in her second goal of the season to round out Middlebury’s scoring.

Mandigo said they talked all week about how they wanted to approach the RIT and Utica games just like every other game throughout the season and not worry about the possible NCAA implications the games could have.

“All games are important,” Mandigo said. “We play each game one at a time and we just wanted to focus on playing 60 minutes of hockey each night and get better each period. Our goal since day one of the season has been to get better as the year progresses and play each team individually.”

Middlebury 7-1-1 on the season and ranked third in the last USCHO.com Women’s D-III poll will host one of their NESCAC arch-rivals in the Bowdoin Polar Bears. While the Polar Bears are just 2-4-1 on the season, as mentioned before, they are coming off a strong week beating Manhattanville and St. Thomas as well as playing undefeated St. Anselm to a close 2-0 result.

“They are on a little bit of a roll and playing well right now,” Mandigo said. “They work hard and are a very well coached team with former Canadian Olympic player Stacy Wilson. I’m expecting to see a good game with a lot of up and down action which is typical of all Middlebury/Bowdoin games and the type of play you see in NESCAC women’s hockey.”

Former Championship Acquaintances Renew Rivalry

This week’s game of the week features the two programs that played in the first two NCAA sanctioned tournaments in Elmira and Manhattanville. Elmira got the better of Manhattanville in both of those championship games claiming their first two NCAA titles in the first two years of the program’s history. All the players and all coaches that participated in those two championship games are now gone but the rivalry still lives on as the two teams will collide in Purchase, N.Y. on Saturday.

While I hate to keep beating a dead horse and the coaches continue to downplay the significance of these types of games in all the top team’s season (as they should), game like this are critical come NCAA tournament selection time.

“One of the things that has happened the past few years is the value of every game against a team with a winning record has been raised,” said Elmira head coach Paul Nemetz-Carlson. “Manhattanville is a team that has been consistently ranked over the years and it’s a great game that gives us a chance to ourselves in a better position for the NCAA tournament.”

Manhattanville head coach Lauren McAuliffe echoed Nemetz-Carlson’s statements about the importance of Saturday’s game.

“Elmira is definitely one of the biggest games of our season,” McAuliffe said. “We’re very excited about the chance to be able to prove ourselves against a national power.”

Nemetz-Carlson acknowledged the fact that Manhattanville’s unusual rink size will probably play a factor in the game and the Soaring Eagles will be changing up their game plan a bit to adjust to the 208×77-foot playing area.

“I’m expecting Manhattanville to be well prepared and use the advantages of their unusually small and narrow rink,” Nemetz-Carlson said. “They’ll take advantage of the mistakes we make and we’re going to be have to be disciplined in our own end. We’re going to be a little bit less aggressive defensively and take away their speed advantage and back check hard to try and slow them down in the neutral zone.”

McAuliffe commented that preparing for Elmira is a challenge because of their unique blend of size and speed.

“Elmira has both big and quick kids and usually they are well disciplined,” McAuliffe said. “They’re fast and we’re going to try and one up that.
We’re going to have to play our own style and not get caught up playing theirs. We need to stay out of the box and get our power play clicking while playing the game we are capable of playing.”

Both teams have a marquee win to date so far this year as Elmira has beaten RIT and Manhattanville has given Plattsburgh their lone loss, but they could both certainly use some more statement wins and this is a game that both could claim as a marquee win if they take it.

This Week in the WCHA: Jan. 10, 2008

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Doth the new year kill the column jinx? After I talk about possible troubles concerning the Gophers and the Tigers, both teams swept their weekend series.

After talking with Coach Scott Owens last week, I felt the Tigers might be okay, but held off judgment until the weekend series, where they went ahead and swept the Badgers — screwing with my predictions.

As for the Gophers, I’m not going to say they have turned it around just yet — not to disrespect Wayne State, but they’re not the WCHA. Still, Don Lucia’s squad accomplished a few of the goals we discussed last week — the team scored one more goal a game (in fact, five each night), didn’t really allow a soft goal (well, at least on Friday — caught that one on TV) and scored both power play AND short-handed goals.

In other words, things are looking up at the U, if only for a weekend.

Red Baron Pizza WCHA Players of the Week

Red Baron WCHA Offensive Player of the Week: Ryan Duncan, UND.
Why: Had two goals and two assists in the Fighting Sioux’s road split at St. Cloud State, as well as had 10 total shots and was a +2.
Also Nominated: Chad Rau, CC; Peter Rouleau, MTU; Evan Kaufmann, UM.

Red Baron WCHA Defensive Player of the Week: Richard Bachman, CC.
Why: Helped CC to its first two-game conference road sweep of Wisconsin since 1995-96, had five shut-out periods and stopped 43 of 44 shots on goal.
Also Nominated: Brent Solei, UM; Joe Finley, UND.

Red Baron WCHA Rookie of the Week: Deron Cousens, MTU.
Why: The defenseman had three assists and was a +4 in the Huskies’ sweep of Mercyhurst.
Also Nominated: Aaron Marvin, SCSU.

Battle of the BCHL Superstars

This week’s series between Wisconsin and Denver features the two players who battled it out all season last year for the British Columbia Hockey League’s scoring crown — the Badgers’ Kyle Turris (66-55–121 for Burnaby) and the Pioneers’ Tyler Bozak (45-83–128 for Victoria), the eventual victor.

That’s all well and good, but how are the two doing this year?

In the battle of WCHA rookies, St. Cloud State’s Garrett Roe (United States Hockey League product, 11-17–28) is leading the pack. After that, however, we have Bozak (10-11–21) and Turris (7-12–19).

The Badger is better overall per game (1.17 points per game, good for 3rd nationally), yet he has played in four fewer games, thanks to the Wisconsin’s schedule and his time at the World Junior Championships. The Pioneer, on the other hand, is averaging just 1.05 points per game.

However, keep this in mind: Turris scored 12 of his 19 points in the first four games of the season and hasn’t had a multi-point game since Robert Morris on Oct. 20. . Bozak, meanwhile, got off to a slower start, but in general, has been a little more consistent.

If you look at the stat lines per game, Turris has, in 16 games, gone five games without a point and has had three multi-point games. Bozak, in 20 games, has had six games without a point but five multi-point games. Bozak arguably has more offensive talent surrounding him while Turris is leading his team in points.

“I wanted to beat him more than anything [last year] and I’m sure he wanted the same thing,” said Bozak, when asked about their rivalry last year. “I know he’ll be coming in wanting to outplay me this weekend like every time we played last year.

“I’m sure he’s going to come in and it’s going to be a good battle for us and more, so I hope our team gets the win and we get the sweep.”

While I couldn’t get a hold of Turris to get his thoughts, thanks to his different travel schedule resulting from World Juniors, I’m sure he feels similarly.

Random Notes (and Commentary!) From Around the League

UAA: The Seawolves will gain a new player for the second half of the season — Jeff Carlson. The defenseman spent last year with the NAHL’s Southern Minnesota Express, establishing him as the Express’s top-scoring defenseman (15-24–39).

DU: The Pioneers have started the “Mannino for Hobey” campaign to promote senior netminder Peter Mannino. Mannino is a legit candidate this year, but we’ll see if Damien over at LetsGoDU (http://letsgodu.blogspot.com) can provide backing like they did with Danny King (http://letsgodu.blogspot.com/2006/02/danny-king-receives-national-props.html) two years ago …

UM: While watching Friday’s tilt between the Gophers and Wayne State on TV, I learned that forward Evan Kaufmann got engaged over New Year’s, so congrats to him. More congratulations, however, deserve to be given to senior goaltender Brent Solei. Solei, a walk-on who had never appeared in a collegiate game until this point, turned away 28 shots to help the Gophers to their 5-1 victory, earning a well-deserved standing ovation for his debut.

Now the question is, will we start seeing a “Solei for Hobey” campaign around the Web/blogosphere as a result?

MSU-M: You may have noticed (and I almost didn’t) that the Mavericks are ranked in the poll here at USCHO.com. Their No. 20 ranking is the first time Minnesota State has cracked the poll since the 2002-03 season. They’ve been in the “receiving votes” category before, however.

Which really, I find funny that even though the Best Conference in College Hockey is having a relatively down year (comparatively), nine of the 10 teams are ranked.

UW: Congratulations should also be in order for Badger Kyle Turris who will be bringing back a gold medal from the IIHF World Junior Championships as he joins his teammates in Denver later Thursday evening. Turris was the only collegian on the roster, scored six points in the tournament (4G, 2A), including assisting on the game-tying goal against Sweden in the final.

Reader Mailbag

One week until the contest — be excited. Get your fingers warmed up — that’s all I’m going to say.

I also got an e-mail late last week from DU Fan Forum poster A Shot and a Goal, where he brought up the point where being one of the top four teams in the PairWise rankings to gain a #1 seed, winning the conference post-season tournament or winning the regular season title is, in his words, “CRAP.”

He backs up his words by using the example of Michigan State last year — fourth in the CCHA, third in the CCHA tournament, never better than tied for eighth in the PWR and wasn’t a number one seed. Therefore, he’d like me to stress that what is important is how well a team plays during the NCAA tournament — not before.

In some respects, I do agree — once you’re in the tournament, anything can happen. Still, I would also argue that all that other stuff — PWR, conference tournaments, etc. do matter, just for the sole reason that in many cases, you need to have a high enough PWR to even make it into the tournament. Teams such as Holy Cross and Air Force, given their conference(s), will probably only get into the tournament as a result of an auto-bid by winning their conference tournament. Air Force won their tournament last year, but finished fourth in Atlantic Hockey.

But, once these teams get into the tournament? Anything can happen — just ask the Gophers.

Match-Ups By the Numbers

For just the second time all year, all 10 WCHA squads face-off against each other. Here is how they break down in their simplest form:

Alaska-Anchorage at No. 4 Colorado College
Overall Records: UAA 6-7-5 (2-7-3 WCHA); CC 14-6-0 (13-3-0 WCHA).
Head-to-Head: CC leads the all-time series, 43-11-3.
Top Scorers: UAA Kevin Clark (7-10–17); CC Chad Rau (14-9–23).
Goaltenders: UAA Jon Olthius (17 GP, 5-7-5, 2.96 GAA, .884 SV%); CC Richard Bachman (16 GP, 13-3-0, 1.63 GAA, .941 SV%).

No. 20 Minnesota State at No. 19 Minnesota-Duluth
Overall Records: MSU-M 9-7-3 (3-6-3 WCHA); tUMD 7-7-4 (5-6-3 WCHA).
Head-to-Head: MSU-M leads the all-time series, 12-11-4.
Top Scorers: MSU-M Trevor Bruess (4-10–14); tUMD Nick Kemp (6-6–12), Josh Meyers (4-8–12).
Goaltenders: MSU-M Mike Zacharias (16 GP, 8-4-3, 1.83 GAA, .932 SV%); tUMD Alex Stalock (18 GP, 7-7-4, 2.43 GAA, .909 SV%).

No. 17 Wisconsin at No. 3 Denver
Overall Records: UW 8-9-3 (4-7-1 WCHA); DU 16-4-0 (11-3-0 WCHA).
Head-to-Head: UW leads the all-time series, 69-49-9.
Top Scorers: UW Ben Street (8-11–19), Kyle Turris (7-11–19); DU Brock Trotter (12-15–27).
Goaltenders: UW Shane Connelly (17 GP, 7-9-1, 2.64 GAA, .909 SV %); DU Peter Mannino (20 GP, 16-4-, 1.77 GAA, .934 SV%).

No. 14 St. Cloud State and No. 15 Minnesota Home and Home
Overall Records: SCSU 10-10-2 (5-8-1 WCHA); UM 11-9-2 (5-7 WCHA).
Head-to-Head: UM leads the all-time series, 40-22-11.
Top Scorers: SCSU Ryan Lasch (17-15–22); UM Blake Wheeler (11-9–20).
Goaltenders: SCSU Jase Weslosky (16 GP, 7-8, 2.27 GAA, .924 SV%); UM Jeff Frazee (13 GP, 6-7, 2.93 GAA, .891 SV%).

No. 18 Michigan Tech at No. 8 North Dakota
Overall Records: MTU 9-9-2 (5-6-1 WCHA); UND 10-8-1 (7-7 WCHA).
Head-to-Head: UND leads the all-time series, 129-88-8.
Top Scorers: MTU Tyler Shelast (11-5–16); UND Ryan Duncan (9-11–20).
Goaltenders: MTU Michael-Lee Teslak (11 GP, 4-4-2, 1.72 GAA, .934 SV%); UND Jean-Philippe Lamoureux (19 GP, 10-8-1, 1.95 GAA, .929 SV%).

Disappointing End for the U.S.

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I’m sure that I’m not the only college hockey fan who was totally bummed to see the US drop their semifinal game against Canada and their bronze medal tilt versus Russia last week. Maybe I was fooled by the U.S.’s solid 4-0-0 record in pool play, but for some reason I really thought this might be the team that took home gold.

I do believe that the tough break for the Americans came in the pairings for the semifinals. After Canada dropped its first game in forever during pool play, the team from the North ended up aligned in the same bracket as the U.S. I almost feel like the Canadian domination of the U.S. in the World Juniors is similar to the spell that Boston University has over Northeastern in the Beanpot. No matter how many times you play, no matter what the strength of this year’s team, it seems near impossible for the U.S. to get past Canada in the medal round.

There were plenty of accolades to hand out to the Americans, most notably to New Hampshire’s James vanRiemsdyk, who finished the tournament as the leading scorer with 11 points (I thought that he was robbed of Best Forward recognition by the IIHF, but such things happen when your team doesn’t medal).

Still, all the positive statistics in the world can’t replace the disappointment that the U.S. and its fans face as yet another year without a WJC medal passes. Sounding like the true Red Sox circa 2003 fan that I once was, “Wait ’til next year.”

Backing Into the #1 Spot

Back in December, while Michigan sat idle, Miami leapfrogged the Wolverines for the top spot in the USCHO.com poll. So it seems rather fitting that once again, as Michigan took the weekend off last week, that a Miami loss to Bowling Green on Friday sent the Wolverines back into the #1 slot, in a four-way split of the first-place votes. Michigan finished 60 points ahead of #2 Miami and took home the lion’s share of the #1 votes on the ballots (38). But Miami, Denver and Colorado College all split the remaining 12 first-place votes. Not exactly the excitement of the New Hampshire primary, but interesting to know that picking a number one for the 50 poll voters in anything but a slam dunk.

Race Heating Up in Atlantic

There wasn’t a lot of hockey to chose from near my house in Boston last weekend, so I headed west on the Mass Turnpike to see Holy Cross battle RIT. It was a walk-in-the-park victory for RIT, 5-1 on the scorecard. And it gave me the notion that the battle for the top spot in Atlantic Hockey should be a good one down the stretch.

RIT, despite a slow start, has a talented squad. I was really impressed by the team’s overall speed despite the fact that they’re both strong and physical. It won’t be a cakewalk to the top for the defending regular season champs (who a year ago couldn’t go to the AHA tournament as a team transitioning to NCAA Division I). Air Force, RIT’s opponent on the road this weekend, and Sacred Heart (and possibly Army) will all be in the fight to the end.

Why do I mention all this is a national blog? Well, for one, AHA is part of the national picture. But moreover, a lot of us fail to keep our eyes on all of the leagues sometimes and thus miss some great standings battles come seasons end. In the words of many great coaches, keep your head on a swivel.

Games to Watch

Some big games/series to watch throughout college hockey this weekend:

Wisconsin at Denver (Fri. and Sat): The Badgers need to get themselves out of a tailspin, and there’s no better way to do it than by beating one of the top teams in the country. Denver, though, likely has different ideas of how things will play out.

Notre Dame vs. Michigan State (Fri. at MSU, Sat at ND): While Michigan and Miami are off battling for the nation’s #1 spot, Michigan State and Notre Dame are both hoping to be more than also rans. This weekend’s series, a rare CCHA home-and-home, could be telling as to whether one of these teams should pull a Joe Biden (or do you prefer Chris Dodd?) ;)

Massachusetts vs. New Hampshire (Fri. at UMass, Sat at UNH): UMass has never been ranked #5 in the country in program history. They’ve held the spot for two straight weeks and now have the chance to validate the ranking when they face #8 UNH, currently tied for first in Hockey East, in a home-and-home sereis that will have impact in both the league and national rankings.

RIT at Air Force (Fri. and Sat.): See above. Enough said.

Clarkson at Harvard (Sat.): Clarkson is coming off a huge win, while Harvard is trying to right the ship after extending its winless skid to seven last weekend. Still, the two are tied for first in the ECAC (with Princeton, entering the weekend), though Clarkson holds the edge on the Crimson with three games in hand.

Robert Morris at Niagara (Fri. and Sat.): in a five-team league, standings watching can often be the same as watching paint dry. But with Robert Morris and Niagara, both tied for second place with nine points, this battle could have some meaning down the road. If you happen to go to either game and they’re boring, take solace on the fact that a short drive can get you really good buffalo wings after the game.

Tuesday Morning Quarterback: January 8

By Jim Connelly and Theresa Spisak
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Jim Connelly: Happy New Year, everyone. We’re back with another installment of TMQ and I’m once again joined by the lovely Theresa Spisak. Theresa, a lot has happened in the last couple of weeks, including Michigan rising back to the top of the USCHO.com poll. The Wolverines seem to be playing well having taken home the GLI Championship a couple of weekends ago. The one thing while watching that tournament that struck me was the play of goaltender Billy Sauer. Not sure how much you’ve seen of him but he certainly seems to be the real deal. Now the question is whether the team in front of him follows that “real deal” moniker. Your thoughts?

Theresa Spisak: Hey Jim, Happy New Year to everyone too. I actually haven’t gotten the chance to watch Michigan yet this year – last time I saw the Wolverines was at the West Regional last year. That being said, I do think that at least a few of the players in front of him are the real deal. Senior forward Kevin Porter is near the top of the point leaders and he’s got a good supporting cast with players such as Chad Kolarik and freshmen Carl Hagelin, returning from World Juniors with a silver medal. That being said, it has been proven that the Wolverines can be beaten (and Michigan Tech nearly did so at the GLI). They also haven’t played Miami or Michigan State yet, the other two teams that share the top of the CCHA standings yet.

Jim: You make a good point that the Wolverines haven’t had to face the meat of the CCHA lineup just yet, so maybe we should hold judgment until after these powers play (Michigan vs. Michigan State at the end of the month and Michigan vs. Miami in early February). On another note, things looks quite gloom and doom for some of the schools out East before the break. But Hockey East and the ECAC made an impressive run through the holiday tournaments. There’s still a little bit of culture shock in Hockey East as Massachusetts and Northeastern rank ahead of the rest of the league in the USCHO.com poll. But the fact that both leagues seem to be performing well of late certainly makes this East Coast-based writer feel a little better.

Theresa: In terms of the two Eastern leagues you mention, I think that Hockey East in general is the stronger conference … as it typically is. Northeastern and Massachusetts, as you say, both had impressive showings in their holiday tournaments, as did Mass.-Lowell. However, New Hampshire and Boston College also show signs of possible second-half runs. In terms of the ECAC, Clarkson will probably stay up top, but if you look at the standings, a number of other teams could make a surge at the end of the season – part of what makes the second half of the year so fun. I know I’m looking forward to what will most likely be a wild and crazy finish to the WCHA.

Jim: I agree about Clarkson. They did a nice job of really slowing a team that was on a massive roll in Boston College Saturday night. Quinnipiac also has played well of late, but watching them on TV Friday night against Harvard, they didn’t show me anything that made me say “wow”. It could’ve been an off night, certainly, and I try not to judge a team based on one TV game. Moving away from the East, I have to ask what your take was on the anemic showing for the WCHA in the holiday tournaments. Seriously, the league hosts the majority of the holiday activity in their backyards, but Denver was the only team to come out on top (and they did so by beating Sacred Heart and Dartmouth, not exactly a powerhouse road to the title). What gives?

Theresa: In general, the WCHA is having a down year, with the exception of the two Colorado-based teams. The vast majority of the league, at face value, looks to be mired in mediocrity. Luckily for the member teams, pretty much everyone is still ranked and a Team Under Consideration as of now, which will help things out later in the season. That being said, a few WCHA teams did well in their tournaments besides Denver. It took the Wolverines two overtimes to finally defeat Michigan Tech, a middle-of-the-pack WCHA squad, and it took Massachusetts overtime to beat a depleted Colorado College team. North Dakota split with New Hampshire which might not seem impressive, but it holds true with the Sioux’s pattern of splits all year. The Badgers only came in third in their tournament, but they were a shootout away from being in the final. Therefore, while only one WCHA team came out victorious, several others came extremely close.

Jim: Wow, I feel like I’m talking with Scott Brown with all of the “WCHA was this close” excuses. But you’re a rookie, so I won’t pick on you too hard. Onto another topic. The U.S. dominated the round-robin play at last week’s World Junior Championship but when the chips were on the table, they laid a goose egg against Canada and Russia and failed to medal. Am I the only American hockey fan frustrated with the U.S.’s inability to win when it counts in this tournament?

Theresa: What can I say, I drank the league Kool-Aid. As for the World Juniors, it’s weird to see the U-20 team that’s picked for the event continually fail to medal – even losing to Belarus back in 2004, if memory serves correctly (she remembers correctly. It was a 5-3 loss to Belarus at the 2005 U-20 Championships held in Grand Forks and Thief River Falls. It was Belarus’ only win of Pool play. — ed.) – when the U-18 team continually brings home either the gold or silver medal – and has for the last four years. How can the talent level be that much different up one level? I think that confusing fact might be one reason why people are so frustrated, especially given that the team played well this year up until when it mattered.

Jim: I agree that the U.S. collapse in World Juniors is somewhat befuddling based on the success of the under-18 team in recent years. Obviously, the U.S. had an above average squad, marching through the qualifying round with a perfect record and having New Hampshire James vanRiemsdyk at the top of the overall scoring list for the tournament. But when it comes to the medal round, you have to wonder does Canada have some sort of BU-Beanpotesque spell on the rest of the tournament field. It may be a somber note, but with that we’ll wrap things up for another week.

Michigan Moves Up

USCHO Staff Report
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The top 20 teams are still the top 20 teams, but there’s a lot of movement in this week’s poll.

Miami’s road split with Bowling Green was enough for the RedHawks to fall from grace and to vault the Michigan Wolverines into the top spot in the USCHO.com/CSTV Division I men’s poll, released Monday.

Three of the top five teams in the country were idle last weekend, including the Wolverines, who received an overwhelming number of first-place votes (38). Miami dropped to No. 2 with six votes.

Also idle were No. 3 Denver and No. 5 Massachusetts. The Pioneers held their position and received five first-place votes in spite of No. 4 Colorado College’s decisive sweep of Wisconsin in Madison, a two-game set in which the Tigers allowed just one goal. The Tigers earned one first-place vote.

Also holding steady at No. 6 is Notre Dame, who split two low-scoring games in Marquette against unranked Northern Michigan.

The remaining four top-10 teams are the same from a week ago, but two have moved. With a 7-3 win over Maine in Orono, Northeastern jumped from No. 9 to No. 6. New Hampshire slipped one position to a tie for No. 8 with North Dakota. UNH beat Merrimack but lost to St. Lawrence last weekend; the Sioux, who split with St. Cloud State, don’t move.

Michigan State took three road points from Lake Superior State to remain in No. 10.

Clarkson and Boston College switched places from a week ago after the top team in the ECAC beat the third-place Hockey East team in a single game in Potsdam, N.Y., 4-2, giving the Golden Knights the No. 11 slot and the Eagles No. 12.

Wisconsin’s losses to CC helped several teams move up in this week’s rankings. The No. 13 slot now belongs to Mass.-Lowell, who also saw no action last weekend. St. Cloud State moves up a spot to No. 14 and Minnesota does likewise to No. 15. The Golden Gophers swept Wayne State in nonconference play in Mariucci Arena.

No. 16 Quinnipiac also leapfrogged over Wisconsin after tying Harvard and defeating Dartmouth. The Badgers drop to No. 17.

No. 18 Michigan Tech, No. 19 Minnesota-Duluth and No. 20 Minnesota State claim the last three places. The Huskies climbed two spots after sweeping Mercyhurst on the road, the Bulldogs dropped two after splitting with Bemidji State at home and the Mavericks, idle last week, dropped a spot.

St. Norbert Solidifies its Spot as Nation’s Best

By Nicholas Jon Wood
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Perfection. It’s aspired for in politics and has been temporarily reached in professional football. In hockey, though, it’s altogether more difficult to achieve as grit, passion, and something as simple as a wayward bounce of the puck could mean defeat. And while there remains two undefeated — though not unblemished — schools left in Division III hockey, another has taken an ironclad grip over both the D-III electorate and its constituent members.

By winning its last five contests by a combined margin of 22-6 — upping its wining streak to seven and are now unbeaten in their last 12 — the St. Norbert Green Knights garnered 19 of the 20 first place votes, remaining number one in the country. The Elmira Eagles, 9-0-2 on the season, remain second and earned the other lone tally as the nation’s top team.

Teams three through six — Plattsburgh, St. Thomas, Manhattanville, and UW-River Falls — all remain unchanged while Southern Maine (the other undefeated at 9-0-1) and UW-Stout flip-flopped by virtue of the former’s wins over Plymouth State and Colby and the latter’s 5-1 exhibition loss to S. Alberta IT.

Positions nine through 11 were similarly scrambled with both Hobart and Norwich ascending a spot and Babson falling two spots from ninth.

Despite a Jan. 5 Oswego victory over New England College, 4-3, both they, Middlebury, and Bowdoin — at 12, 13, 14, and 15 — all remained perched atop the same branch as they did when we last glimpsed them in 2007.

For the third consecutive poll the top 15 teams remain unchanged.

US Finishes Fourth At World Junior Championships

USCHO Staff Report
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The U.S. National Junior Team finished fourth in the 2008 International Ice Hockey Federation World Junior Championship after a 4-2 loss to Russia today in the bronze medal game of the event.

“It was disappointing to finish the way we did after such a good start in this tournament,” said U.S. Head Coach John Hynes. “We lacked the intensity we needed today.”

Russia jumped out to a 3-0 lead after the opening period. Alexei Cherepanov put home a backhanded shot in front at 3:59 for the game’s opening goal. With Russia on the power play, a shot from the center point by Evgeni Kurbatov deflected off the skate of U.S. defenseman Chris Summers (Michigan) and past netminder Jeremy Smith (Plymouth (OHL)) at 11:04. A cross-crease feed by Cherepanov found Nikita Filatov at 16:57 for the final tally of the period.

Filatov put home a rebound on the power play past U.S. netminder Joe Palmer (Ohio State) 1:30 into the second stanza to increase Russia’s lead to 4-0. Team USA got on the board at 10:47 when Rhett Rakhshani (Denver) maneuvered in front after a feed from Kyle Okposo (St. Paul, Minn.) and beat Sergei Bobrovsky high to the glove side. Russia had a 4-1 lead after 40 minutes.

Jordan Schroeder (U.S. National Under-18 Team) had a terrific chance from between the circles for Team USA five minutes into the period, but Bobrovsky was up to the challenge. Schroeder, however, did score at 13:39 from the high slot through traffic with the United States on a five-on-three power play. Bobby Sanguinetti (Brampton (OHL)) drew the lone assist on the play. Team USA continued to put pressure on down the stretch, but could get no closer.

Smith had five saves in the first period for Team USA, while Palmer played the final two periods and had 16 stops. Sergei Bobrovsky made 19 saves for Russia.

NOTES: The United States finished fourth in the World Junior Championship, with four wins and two losses in its six games … Team USA’s Player of the Game was Bobby Sanguinetti … James vanRiemsdyk (New Hampshire), Chris Summers (Michigan) and Colin Wilson (Boston University) were named Team USA’s best three players of the tournament … The United States has played for either the gold or bronze medal in the World Junior Championship for a U.S.-record six straight years … James vanRiemsdyk finished as Team USA’s leading point getter with 5-6–11. He scored a goal in five of Team USA’s six games … Colin Wilson was Team USA’s top goal scorer with six, including a natural hat trick in the preliminary round against Finland … Jordan Schroeder (U.S. National Under-18 Team) had seven assists to pace Team USA … The 2009 World Junior Championship will be played in Ottawa, Ontario. The United States will host the event in 2011 at a site-to-be-determined.

US To Face Russia In Bronze Medal Game After Loss To Canada

USCHO Staff Report
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The U.S. National Junior Team will play for the bronze medal in the 2008 International Ice Hockey Federation World Junior Championship against Russia after a 4-1 loss to Canada in the semifinals of the tournament.

“Canada played a great game,” said U.S. Head Coach John Hynes. “Our guys will refocus and be ready to play tomorrow. We have a chance to win back-to-back medals in this tournament for the first time in the history of our country.”

Canada took the lead at 2:46 of the second period when Shawn Matthias scored from just outside the crease after an end-wall feed from Matthew Halischuk. Then at 10:00, Karl Alzner fired one home from the top of the left circle on the power play. Team USA had a 13-to-6 shots on goal advantage in the period with Max Pacioretty’s (Michigan) rebound chance in front 11 minutes into the stanza among them. Team USA’s penalty-killing unit foiled :41 of a two-man Canada advantage late in the period to keep the game within reach after 40 minutes.

With goals by Gillies and Brad Marchand at 7:04 and 7:24, Canada took control of the game. James vanRiemsdyk (New Hampshire) banged one in from the right of Canada netminder Steve Mason at 13:26 to account for the lone U.S. goal of the contest. Mike Carman (Minnesota) gained an assist on the play.

Smith had 20 saves for Team USA, while Mason made 33 stops for Canada.

This Week in D-III Women’s Hockey: Jan. 3, 2008

By
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NESCAC/ECAC West Face-Off

This weekend, RIT and Utica will kick-off the 2008 portions of their seasons on the road against some very stiff competition.

The teams? Oh, you know, just two of last year’s Frozen Four competitors in Amherst and Middlebury.

Saturday, the fourth-ranked Amherst Lady Jeffs will host the Utica Pioneers and third-ranked Middlebury Panthers will host fifth-ranked RIT Tigers. On Sunday, the NESCAC hosts will switch ECAC West opponents to round out an important weekend of hockey in the New England region with major NCAA tournament implications.

“On the whole I am excited about the weekend,” said Utica head coach Dave Clausen. “The combination of good players and great coaching make Amherst and Middlebury two of the best teams in the country.”

Indeed, Amherst and Middlebury do present enormous obstacles in the paths of Utica and RIT. Amherst is 5-1-2 on the season and Middlebury comes in an equally impressive 5-1-1 so far. Both team’s losses were at the hands of top-ranked Plattsburgh. They also have tied each other in their lone meeting so far this season.

RIT, Amherst, and Middlebury arguably have the most to play for as all three are in prime position for NCAA tournament spots. However, Clausen is confident that his extremely young Utica team could make some noise this weekend.

“We’re trying to get better every day,” Clausen said. “We not only have 16 young players this year, but many of them are playing key roles in our success. We haven’t played many teams, minus Adrian, that are close to nationally ranked teams so this is an excellent chance for us to evaluate where we are with the nation’s best.”

The Pioneers will first take on Krystyn Elek and Amherst on Saturday for the first time since Utica handed Amherst their lone loss in a 21 game span last season that lasted from mid-December all the way ’til mid-January when Plattsburgh was finally able to knock off the Lady Jeffs in the national semifinals.

“Amherst is a big and strong team with a great goaltender,” Clausen said. “We’re going to have to get traffic in front of Elek and keep her from seeing the puck.”

The next night, Utica will have to shift gears and play on Middlebury’s huge Olympic-sized sheet of ice as well as deal with the nation’s top scoring duo of AnnMarie Cellino and Anna McNally.

“We’re going to have to take care of our responsibilities in the defensive end,” Clausen said. “We’re going to try and get the right people on the ice as much as we can to match up with Cellino and McNally, but being on the road it will be harder as Middlebury gets the last line change.”

Utica has had an up and down season so far this year but one thing that has been consistent in their wins is contributions from every line.

“In every game we’ve won this year, we’ve had at least one player score from all four lines,” Clausen said. “Everybody has to come and work hard because we don’t really have that one player that can take over a game like Plattsburgh does with Danielle Blanchard and Elmira has with Kayla Coady.

“We’re still young and learning how to win at this level and our players are realizing that you can’t go into an away arena and not be ready to go or you’ll get beat. This wasn’t the case a few years ago as you could get up for a handful of big games against the top ranked teams and then breeze through the rest of your schedule.”

For Coach Clausen and Utica, the time is now for them to step up and prove they can hang with the nation’s best as eight of their next 11 games are against ranked opponents.

“This next stretch of games will give us a chance to see where we’re at,” Clausen said. “The teams we’ll play over the next month will expose our weaknesses and then we’ll get a chance to work on those weaknesses to be at our best at the end of the year and hopefully playing in our league playoffs.”

Utica’s ECAC West travel partner, the RIT Tigers also come into this weekend on a little bit of a skid. After starting the season a perfect 7-0-0. The Tigers split an ECAC West conference series with Elmira and then they dropped two close games on the road at Division-I Robert Morris.

However, the good news for the Tigers is their record is 8-1-0 in the eyes of the NCAA tournament committee, as their games against Robert Morris won’t count come selection time. This weekend’s games against Middlebury and Amherst present RIT with an extraordinary opportunity to gain an inside track an NCAA tournament bid.

RIT head coach Scott McDonald is weary of the challenge and NCAA impact that awaits his Tigers this weekend in New England.

“Both Amherst and Middlebury beat us last year,” McDonald said. “These are two teams that we’re going to have to beat in order to be in the thick of things come March.”

McDonald is planning to take a similar approach Utica’s Clausen will be using against Middlebury’s Cellino and McNally.

“We’re going to need to play really smart defensive hockey and we can’t be leaning towards too much offense while they’re on the ice,” McDonald said. “They’re dangerous players and they have the numbers to back it up.”

The next night, RIT will take on Amherst for the first time since the Lady Jeffs upset the Tigers 2-1 at home last year in the NCAA Quarterfinals.

“We don’t really hold a vengeance against Amherst as that was last year and we’re both different teams this year,” McDonald said. “They are a top team for a reason and we’re going to come in to play and compete and not worry about what happened last year.”

If you’re a RIT or Utica fan and disappointed that you won’t be traveling to the New England region this weekend, don’t worry, there is still hope for you.
Coach McDonald is optimistic at the fact that these match-ups will come to New York next year with Amherst and Middlebury returning the trip to the upstate region in 2009.

If you’re looking for a cheat sheet on games you need to watch out for in the second half of the season, here’s 10 match-ups that are going to have major implications on who is going to be playing in the NCAA tournament come March.

  • January 5th RIT @ Middlebury
  • January 6th RIT @ Amherst
  • January 12th Elmira @ Manhattanville/ February 8th Manhattanville @ Elmira
  • January 18th Amherst @ Elmira
  • January 18th/19th RIT @ Plattsburgh (2)
  • January 25th/26th St. Thomas vs. Gustavus Adolphus (2)
  • February 5th Gustavus Adolphus @ Stevens Point
  • February 12th Middlebury @ Plattsburgh
  • February 16th/17th Elmira @ Plattsburgh
  • February 16th Amherst @ Middlebury

If you’re keeping score that means Elmira and Plattsburgh have the toughest roads to the tournament:

  • Elmira — 5
  • Plattsburgh — 5
  • RIT — 4
  • Amherst — 3
  • Gustavus Adolphus — 3
  • Middlebury — 3
  • Manhattanville — 2
  • Stevens Point — 1

This Week in Hockey East: Jan. 3, 2008

By Senior Writer
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Lightning Strikes For UMass

Several Hockey East teams are having a little happier new year than they might otherwise in the wake of last weekend’s holiday tournaments. Seven of the league’s teams competed in six different tournaments. When the ice chips had settled, Hockey East teams emerged with four championships.

Unexpectedly, Boston College didn’t have to play Minnesota and instead beat Air Force and RIT for the Dodge Holiday Classic crown. Northeastern also avoided a host team in Wisconsin, winning a pair of one-goal games against Bowling Green and Colgate to claim the Badger Showdown. UMass-Lowell beat Cornell — always jinxed in Florida — as well as league foe Maine to win the Florida College Clasic.

But the biggest winner of the weekend had to be UMass, which topped two top-10 teams in Notre Dame and Colorado College to win the Lightning Classic Championship in Tampa. Better still, the wins vaulted the Minutemen to their highest spot ever in the USCHO/CSTV poll, No. 5. I caught up with UMass coach Don “Toot” Cahoon on the phone on Monday, still enjoying the warm weather in Florida. “It was a good weekend for us—obviously a difficult one but a good one nonetheless,” Cahoon said.

I told Cahoon that I saw some online articles in Colorado newspapers in which Colorado College players were bitter about their defeat, feeling that they had let one get away.

“Maybe they did, I don’t know,” Cahoon replied. “Certainly the first period was their period, and they had the two-goal lead. But I think our guys competed pretty well in the second period to get back in the game.

“Clearly it was anybody’s game from that point on. You look at the shots and the power-play opportunities, and both teams had chances to break it open or take control.”

These college hockey holiday tournaments are always a curious phenomenon. All nonconference games are important when it comes to making the national tournament, and the league got a much-needed boost after generally mediocre results in nonleague play earlier this season. But how meaningful, really, is it to win one of these midseason tournaments?

“Well, it was something we hadn’t done,” Cahoon reflected. “So the first thing is try to learn how to win and the second phase is to learn how to deal with winning.

“It’s part of the growth and development and emergence of a program. So you take it piece by piece, but you hopefully get to the point where you’ve got to learn to handle success and learn that every game is a separate challenge. Every team we play against presents a lot of problems and is capable of beating us, so we have to work at it on a day-to-day basis. It’s important of you want to be amongst the better teams.”

Even though star goaltender Jon Quick signed with the Los Angeles Kings after last season — much earlier than expected — UMass still has exceeded the expectations of most everyone this season, including Cahoon, to some degree.

“We didn’t know going in what the deal would be with us between the pipes,” Cahoon said. “We weren’t sure where we stood with our goaltending. We thought we had a couple of athletes in [sophomore Dan] Myers and [freshman Paul] Dainton who would be creditable, but you have no idea how they’re going to respond to the test of playing at this level game in and game out. That piece of it needed to be addressed.”

Before too long, it became evident that the goaltending would not be a problem after all. “Getting off to a solid start told us that maybe we have enough pieces to be competitive on a day-to-day, game-to-game basis. I don’t know if there was any expectation besides trying to solve the dilemma of losing Jon Quick so early in his career and fill that void.

“We had a lot of players coming back from last year’s team, and we felt we had some nice pieces to the puzzle. But the glue had to be the goaltending. The expectation was very limited until we understood that piece to the puzzle.”

Another key to the team’s great start has been the quick emergence of freshman forward James Marcou, already the team’s leading scorer with 4-14-18 in the team’s first 17 games. But if having a freshman top the scoresheet has raised the eyebrows of Hockey East fans, it has not been a shock to Cahoon.

“I don’t think that James has surprised me at all,” Cahoon said. “He’s been committed to this program for a long time; I’ve been a big believer in James Marcou. I’ve watched him play for a long time and seen him make players around him better for a lot of years.

“The question with James Marcou is that he’s not a big body; he’s actually a tiny body. But he’s a pure hockey player. He has gifts that you cannot teach. That’s what makes him so productive and such an important piece to our team. I’m not surprised by it all. I’m delighted by his success, but I’m not surprised by it.”

So how much will the Minutemen continue to delight and surprise their followers? Stay tuned. Cahoon said that he still views preseason favorites Boston College and UNH as the most “dynamic” teams in the league, and — as I’ll discuss a little later in this column — this year’s race is extremely difficult to handicap. “My games against any team are a day-to-day process. It’s very hard to predict how things are going to play out.”

True enough, but wins against two of the nation’s best squads are a statement that this team has a great chance to get to the national tournament and do some damage.

Tough Sledding For Huskies

Northeastern won its holiday tournament the hard way. The Huskies trailed Bowling Green 3-0 more than halfway through the semifinal game before rallying with four goals in under 16 minutes to get through to the championship contest. Then they were outshot 27-19 by Colgate before eking out a 2-1 win when Ryan Ginand scored with just 1:22 left in regulation.

Not exactly a dominating weekend, but the bottom line is that really good teams often find a way to win when they face a deficit early on or when they get outshot. Now 9-4-2, tied for first in Hockey East early in 200 and No. 9 in the USCHO/CSTV poll, I don’t think anyone can argue that Northeastern is anything other than a really good team.

Husky coach Greg Cronin was scouting the Merrimack-BU game on Sunday night, so I caught up with him between periods.

“It’s funny,” Cronin said of his team’s tight games in the Badger Classic. “My first year we had a lot of one-goal games, and we didn’t win a lot of them, clearly. Last year, the second half of the year we started winning some close games, and we built some confidence, particularly when it’s late in the third period and you’re trying to preserve a one-goal lead. And I think we’ve been in a lot of those types of games the first half of the year.”

Given how Cronin downplayed the polls as a “superficial pat in the back” when I interviewed him several weeks ago, I was interested in how he would respond to the same question I asked Cahoon about how meaningful it is to win a holiday tournament.

“It was great,” Cronin said, though his tone of voice indicated something closer to a verbal shrug than of great excitement. “I don’t place that much credibility in it; I don’t get too excited about it. It was really interesting. When the tournament was over, guys weren’t that giddy or happy about it.

“It’s kind of a funny dynamic in college, having these college tournaments. I was in the pros for seven years, and you don’t even think about a holiday tournament. But I think it’s good for them to win something, particularly when you go into the Beanpot, which is the tournament of all tournaments. It gives you a little bit of a comfort level with the tournament format, winning a championship. So I think it was a good experience for us.”

Cronin agreed with the notion that winning the tournament was more of a means to a greater end rather than an end in itself. “Our challenge as a program is to continue to get better,” he said. “We’ve only got one senior, a lot of our offense comes from freshmen and sophomores. Joe Vitale’s having a terrific year. We’ve only had two years to recruit, so all of our recruits are in that freshman or sophomore class. We’re just trying to continue to develop those guys.

“Anytime — and we used to talk about this in the American Hockey League — you get guys developing in a winning environment, it accelerates the development curve because you get guys going to the rink excited and they’re actually trying to play for something. I think it gives you a little more focus and a lot more enthusiasm.”

Sophomore goalie Brad Thiessen continues to be a stalwart between the pipes for the Huskies. So far Thiessen has a .916 save percentage and a 2.35 goals-against average. NU is capable of beating anyone in the country with him in the net. As far as the skaters go, junior Vitale has a team-leading 14 points in 15 games, but Cronin had an interesting take on his offense while watching the Terriers and Warriors.

“I was looking at BU’s point totals and Merrimack’s point totals, and they’ve got some guys in double digits. We don’t really have that; we kind of have scoring by committee. We’re not a high-scoring team; we get scoring from all of our lines. Vitale had a splash with four points against BC, but we have a workmanlike, blue-collar identity, and we all pitch in scoring.”

Best Race Ever?

Now we begin the heaviest part of the Hockey East schedule, and from top to bottom it certainly has all the potential to be the best league race ever. Take Vermont, for example. Sure, they’re tied for eighth right now with just eight points, but they also have played just eight games — fewer than anyone else in the league. If they were to win even two of the four games in hand they have against Lowell, they would be tied with the River Hawks and on the bubble for home ice.

Amazingly, just one point separates the top five teams. Right now only Merrimack would have to be considered an improbable home-ice team, as they have just seven points and have played more league games than anyone except Lowell. Providence, BU, Vermont and Maine are not in home-ice position now, but any of them could get hot enough to end up in the top four.

Perhaps the strongest statement I can make is that it looks to be a near-lock that we will have the most competitive eight teams in the Hockey East quarterfinals this year. Whoever is playing at home will be favored, but any of the five through eight seeds will not be an incredible longshot to get to the Garden.

“I think it’s going to prove to be that way,” Cahoon said of the idea of the best league race ever. “Every team literally has a chance to beat the other team, every game out. So the team that is able to consistently perform at the highest level, get that kind of goaltending and team defense night in and night out, those are the teams that are going to be the most difficult down the stretch. But I think we’re going to wound each other along the way. I don’t see anybody escaping the competitiveness of this league.”

NU is on top for the moment but has no illusions about the challenge of staying there. “A lot of people get all excited about first place in Hockey East, but it’s so early, and our margin of error is so slim,” Cronin said of his team’s chances in the race. “If you look at our record, it looks nice from the outside, but if you look deeply the scores are all 5-4, 3-2, 2-1. One of the things we’re going to have to learn to do is get more offense out of our power play.”

BU head coach Jack Parker conceded that seeing some teams other than the usual suspects at or near the top of the standings was healthy for the league. “I like it better when we’re in the top two or three, but I imagine it’s better for the league when Merrimack sweeps Maine,” Parker said. “We went down and beat Providence 5-1 and since then they’ve played extremely well. They outshot Michigan the other night by a mile, got 40-something shots against them. So they’re playing well, and that’s good for our league no matter which way we look at it now.”

Parker marveled at how much good just the one win against Merrimack did on Sunday. “Win a game in this league and you’re four points out of first place; that’s amazing. We were in ninth place, and now we’re four points out of first. We’ll see what happens.”

Warrior Woes

Merrimack started the year 3-0 and was an impressive 6-4-1 after an historic sweep of Maine back on Nov. 16 and 17, but the Warriors have not won a game since. They are now 0-4-1 in their last five games. But don’t talk to coach Mark Dennehy about a winless streak, as I found out when I brought it up at Sunday’s post-game press conference.

“It’s a great town and a great time to be a hockey coach and a coach in general with the likes of [New England Patriots coach] Bill Belichick in town,” Dennehy said. “We’ve got five one-game losing streaks. You’re only as good as your next game. You can’t carry any of that stuff. I’ve got guys who will forget the score tomorrow.

“Our biggest issue in terms of believability is you look at games in which we score first, and we’ve got 20 guys on our bench who believe, ‘Hey, this is our night.’ We’ve got to get better at when the games turns in a direction that we’re not comfortable with, having the wherewithal to stop that ball from rolling down the hill. You’ve got to stop it first; you’re not going to be able to push it up until you stop it. And we haven’t got to that point yet with our team.”

I thought that the Warriors came out looking pretty good on Sunday. Rob Ricci hit a post early on that could’ve changed the complexion of the game, and BU didn’t muster a shot for the first several minutes. Unfortunately for Merrimack, though, the Terriers proceeded to score on three of their first four shots of the game. Dennehy disagreed with my assessment of his team’s confidence early on, feeling that his team was awed by BU’s arena and banners. And he refused to throw goalie Patrick Watson under the bus despite his woeful save percentage in the game.

“I don’t blame Patrick Watson for those goals, but I think he needs to be more aggressive as well,” said Dennehy. “On those goals, he was pretty deep in his crease. You want to get beat…hey, listen, I grew up in Dorchester, and you’ve got to throw the first punch. That’s the way it works. You don’t wait for them to throw it.”

We’ll see how Merrimack responds to this latest one-game losing streak. It won’t get any easier as they host UNH this weekend. “Our guys have to go home and lick their wounds and understand that they’ve got to elevate their game.”

World Junior Wows

Congratulations to Team USA for its showing thus far at the IIHF World Junior Championship tournament in the Czech Republic. The team completed an impressive 4-0 showing in the first round to win Group B and clinch a spot in the semifinal. BU freshman Colin Wilson has been the goal-scoring star, leading all skaters with six goals thus far including a natural hat trick in his last game. UNH frosh James Van Riemsdyk is the top point scorer of the tournament with a remarkable 4-6–10 total in just four games. Add in the fact that BU defensman Brian Strait is the captain of the Team USA, and you have a great showing from a small Hockey East contingent this year.

“Strait’s the captain of the team, and they’re happy with how he’s playing,” Parker said on Sunday night. “The team’s doing well. They’ve got a bye into the semifinals now, so it doesn’t matter what happens to them [in the last preliminary round game on Monday, which the US won]. [BU alum and US coach] Johnny Hynes is doing a good job with them; he picked a nice team. You know that they’re going to have a good team because this group of guys in this age group won the 18-year-old championship, and now they’ve got a chance to do it again at the Under-20s.

“So it’s a pretty good deal for everybody. It will be interesting to see how they finish up. I know that Wilson and Strait will come back to us as better players.

“Some coaches get upset about missing guys when they’re playing games. I also say you can take as many guys as you want from us — and we’ll probably lose a lot more next year, maybe as many as four — but those guys always come back as better players. They only miss three or four games and when they come back, they come back more confident. They feel better about themselves and how they match up against real good players. I’ve never had a guy come back and not play better when he came back. We’re happy for them, but we know we’ll get them even better when they get back here.”

Hopefully the Hockey East trio will bring home the gold.

Trivia Contest

Dave Hendrickson decided to give our readers a holiday break from the trivia question, so it’s high time that we offer you a really interesting challenge to start off the New Year. I call this one “A Short Answer Question.” Come up with a full starting lineup of Hockey East men’s players — a goalie, two defensemen, and three forwards — that would comprise the shortest players at their positions in Hockey East history.

Two rules:

  • The player needed to play for a Hockey East team when it actually was in Hockey East. So even if a midget played for Vermont back in the Catamounts’ ECAC days, that would not count. Nor would a vertically-challenged Eagle from the 1970s.
  • In terms of judging the actual height of players, we will have to defer to www.hockeydb.com, that most impressive of databases. I can assure you that you will find height figures there that you KNOW to be wrong. There are many guys listed at heights that at best represent their heights with skates on and at worst are outright lies. There are some guys I looked up on the database who are listed as 5’10”, and, believe me, if they are 5’10” than I must be Yao Ming. There are guys listed on hockeydb.com who are now showing up as taller than they were listed at in college. I am skeptical about puberty going into one’s mid-twenties and suspect that some guys wanted their height listed differently when they were trying to show their credentials to pro teams. However, we need to go by one source, so that’s what we’ll have to accept.

I think you’ll find that there are several waterbug forwards who come to mind, but D-men and goalies will present a more significant challenge. Without putting in too much effort, the best I was able to do was a lineup of six players that totalled 33 feet, seven inches — an average height of just over 5’7″ — so you’ll have to match or beat that to get this one correct.

Given that he always makes jokes about his height at his own expense, it goes without saying that Lowell coach Blaise MacDonald is on the short list to run this team.

E-mail me at [email protected] with your answer (sorry that the e-mail link was not working for much of Friday). The winner will be notified by Monday night; if you haven’t heard by then you either had the wrong answer or someone else beat you to it.

And Finally, Not That It Has Anything To Do With Anything, But…

My wife took the kids to the BU-Merrimack game on Sunday night. My son, Timmy, is eight and still learning about college hockey. After arriving at the game, he asked my wife if the game was the Jackpot. My wife was confused until she realized that he was talking about the Beanpot, which is obviously a far cry from a BU-Merrimack game in front of a Christmas Break-depleted crowd at Agganis Arena.

Though the more I thought about, Jack Parker’s record in the Beanpot has meant that it has been a Jackpot more often than not over his long coaching career.

While working on today’s column, I greatly enjoyed watching the outdoor NHL game between Pittsburgh and Buffalo, especially with a long list of Hockey East alums in action. Congrats to Penguin goalie Ty Conklin, who was the unquestionable No. 1 star of the game. The former Wildcat stood tall with 36 saves in front of an intimidating crowd of over 70,000. It was a great event…so how about a Hockey East game or holiday tournament at Fenway Park?

Thanks to Keith Lavon.

This Week in the CCHA: Jan. 3, 2008

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The Good

Congratulations Ferris State, Miami and Michigan for midseason championship titles!

And thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

The CCHA had much on the line at midseason, even if no one wanted to admit it. Many people still think that Michigan State somehow stole the national championship from far superior competitors; these same people have been poo-pooing Miami’s and Michigan’s national rankings all season.

That the league didn’t dominate the holiday tournaments is a disappointment only to the delusional; that the CCHA won two tournaments it absolutely should have won — and picked up another along the way — can reaffirm our collective belief in hockey, Mom and pumpkin pie.

While the Nos. 1 and 2 teams in the country are always heavy favorites in any field, the unranked CCHA team that captured holiday honors should not be overlooked, and nor should anyone be surprised by Ferris State’s competitive drive at midseason. This is the second holiday tournament in four years that these seniors have captured, the last one being the 2004-05 Badger Showdown. And that tournament was the second consecutive Badger Showdown that the Bulldogs won.

Since then, even though FSU hasn’t had a midseason title, the Bulldogs have been fine CCHA representatives come holiday time. Last year, the Bulldogs tied Massachusetts and then “won” a shootout before losing to Minnesota in the Dodge Holiday Classic. In 2005-06, FSU tied Boston College in the first round of the Denver Cup but “lost” the game in the shootout, then beat Denver in the consolation game.

For big schools with big names, such tourney victories are often expected and sometimes even taken for granted. For Ferris State, there’s a lot of pride on the line when the Bulldogs play nonleague opponents.

“It really is something we emphasize,” said FSU head coach Bob Daniels. “We like to think we represent the league well.”

This year, Ferris State is the UConn Hockey Classic champion, having beaten Brown, 2-1, before dominating host Connecticut, 5-0.

“We had a good game with Brown,” said Daniels. “It could have gone either way. We got good, timely goaltending. Pat Nagle played solid in net. I’d like to see us find a way to score more consistently.”

In the 5-0 win, said Daniels, “We played one of our better games of the year. We were really on task.”

Nagle (2.09 GAA, .918 SV%) was the goalie of record for the Brown win, while Mitch O’Keefe (1.80 GAA, .938 SV%) registered the win over UConn.

The Bulldogs received scoring from some unlikely sources in both games. Freshman Mike Fillinger, this week’s CCHA Rookie of the Week, earned his first collegiate points — the game-winning goal over Brown and an assist against UConn — in his ninth and 10th games of the season. Sophomore Blair Riley earned his first career hat trick in the 5-0 win over Connecticut, a feat that equaled the number of goals he’d scored the entire first half of the season.

“He came to us as a goal scorer,” said Daniels of Riley. “I’ve always wondered why he hasn’t scored more. He gets shots and has a good release.

“We got some good play out of some freshmen. Mike Fillinger really had a good tournament.”

Other freshmen scorers included Mike Embach with an assist in each game and Justin Menke with two helpers against UConn.

“We played well,” said Daniels. “We’re excited about that and hoping about better things to come this season. Come off of Christmas Break, you never know what you’re going to have. For the most part, we were able to get a lot of guys in. It was a good experience.”

So the trip East, said Daniels, was a good one in more ways than one. “It was a very well run tournament. Bruce Marshall, the head coach of UConn, he does a tremendous, tremendous job. In the future, we’d go back in a heartbeat. Really run first class, they think of all the little details.”

After beating Providence, 6-0, the No. 2 Michigan Wolverines had a tough time getting past Michigan Tech to secure their first Great Lakes Invitational title since 1996. Junior goaltender Billy Sauer (1.80 GAA, .930 SV%) shut out consecutive opponents with 87 saves to be named the GLI MVP and become this week’s CCHA Goaltender of the Week.

“It may not be the toughest game I’ve played in,” said Sauer after the 1-0, double-overtime win, “but it may be the most important. Every save was crucial. You make one mistake and your team is going home.

“Tonight was so emotional because it was such a long game. I didn’t think it was ever going to end.”

It ended thanks to Travis Turnbull, who scored from Scooter Vaughan and Brandon Naurato 2:32 into the second overtime.

After the game, the GLI banner was raised to the rafters in Joe Louis Arena with Michigan’s name attached, something that will hang there until next year’s Invitational.

“Obviously, it feels good for Michigan to see that banner go up with its name on it,” said Michigan head coach Red Berenson. “It’s been a long time coming.”

Berenson acknowledged Michigan Tech’s frustration. That host team hasn’t won a GLI since 1980.

In Columbus, sophomore Gary Steffes was the hero. At 18:22 in the third period of the title game of the Ohio Hockey Classic, Steffes cored a fluky goal that hit a couple of players in front of the Buckeye net and looped up and over OSU goaltender Dustin Carlson to give the RedHawks a 3-2 lead and eventual win.

“If you ask Gary Steffes, he shot it right in,” joked Miami head coach Enrico Blasi after the win.

It was the third year straight that the RedHawks and Buckeyes met in the title game, and just like the two previous championship matches, this one didn’t disappoint. The teams exchanged goals to make this one 2-2 until the near end. Last year, the Buckeyes won 5-3 with an empty-net goal in a game made even more interesting by Justin Mercier’s score for the RedHawks at 18:47 in the third to pull Miami to within one.

Two years ago, Miami and OSU tied, 1-1, and the RedHawks won the title in the post-tie shootout.

Miami senior defenseman Mitch Ganzak said that his team always looks forward to a match with the Buckeyes, whom the RedHawks face four times in regular-season play. “We know them pretty well. It’s always a good game.”

OSU freshman forward Kyle Reed, who had a goal in the title game and in the Buckeyes’ 4-2 win over Harvard earning him a spot on the all-tourney team, said that he and the many other OSU freshmen received some sound advice from seniors, who told the rookies to “go out there and play hard.” Reed also said, “They [told] us freshmen to keep our heads up.”

Blasi also complimented the organizers on the tournament (technically a “classic”) that had to be moved this season from Nationwide Arena to the Schottenstein Center. And he said that the title game was as good a college hockey game as you could see — and he was right.

Congratulations to the Bulldogs, the RedHawks and the Wolverines on their midseason hardware.

And Happy New Year to us all.

The Bad

While it’s nice that three CCHA teams prevailed at holiday tournament time, the overall performance of the CCHA in nonconference play last weekend left at least a little to be desired.

On Friday, Dec. 27, the only CCHA team to win a game was Michigan, who beat Providence 6-0. Alaska, Bowling Green, Michigan State, Nebraska-Omaha and Northern Michigan all fell. That’s CCHA 1, Everyone Else 5.

Saturday was a little better. The CCHA went 5-4-1 against nonconference teams, with Miami needing overtime to beat St. Cloud State, and Michigan needing two overtimes to beat Michigan Tech.

So that’s CCHA 6, Everyone Else 9, and one draw.

On Sunday, Dec. 29, the Ivy Leagues finished off UNO, Ferris State pounded Connecticut, Notre Dame squeaked by Rensselaer (an empty-netter made it 3-1), Western tied Holy Cross and Miami beat Ohio State for the Ohio Hockey Classic, which is a wash for the CCHA.

At midseason, the CCHA went 8-10-2 against nonconference opponents.

The Aesthetically Challenged

Michigan State went 0-2-0 in the Great Lakes Invitational, and it took Michigan 82:32 to score a goal on Michigan Tech.

I’m not in any way knocking Michigan Tech, which is a program on the rise. Jamie Russell is a terrific coach, and junior goaltender Rob Nolan had a terrific weekend, allowing just two goals on 76 shots in his two games played. What a shame there isn’t a spot on the all-tourney roster for two goaltenders.

But Michigan — even without the four players the Wolverines are missing because of the IIHF World Junior Championship — is one of the best offensive teams in the country.

So whither Michigan State, the team that gave all of the CCHA hope for a brighter future by capturing the 2007 national championship? Hmm?

“We are very disappointed in ourselves,” said senior captain Bryan Lerg.

MSU, the defending GLI champs, lost 4-1 to Michigan Tech in the opening game and 5-3 to Providence in the consolation game. Against Tech, the Spartans gave up an empty-net goal at 19:14 in the third and then another goal at 19:33, with Jeff Lerg in net.

Against Providence, the Spartans were up 2-1 early in the third before allowing three unanswered goals within a 10-minute span.

“We need to get back on track, and show that we’re a winning team, and play as a team,” said Bryan Lerg. “There are no excuses for us losing these two games.”

And Rick Comley, quoted in the Lansing State-Journal, said “the whole game” was the reason the Spartans lost to Providence.

OHC Observations

I had begun this column with a really long rant about game management at Value City Arena and Ohio State’s seeming lack of commitment to men’s ice hockey, but I wrote so much that I realized two things: 1) I need to take a step back and edit it; 2) It’s an entirely separate article.

But I do have some observations about the Ohio Hockey Classic.

The first thing that struck me about the OHC — aside from the abysmal attendance for the St. Cloud-Miami game and the really late starts the first night — was how good a team St. Cloud State is.

SCSU is fast and well coached, and skipper Bob Motzko said that the Huskies played well but couldn’t maintain through 60 minutes against the RedHawks. That third-period swan dive, said Motzko, was a signature of his young, hard-working and talented team in the first half of the season.

Ryan Lasch impressed us all with a hat trick against Harvard, even with the third goal coming as an empty-netter, and I thought that SCSU defenseman John Swanson was dominant on both sides of the puck. Swanson had a goal and an assist on the weekend, and both he and Lasch were named to the all-tournament team.

Harvard didn’t impress me much, and that’s probably okay since Harvard head coach Ted Donato seemed less than impressed with everything about the tourney (technically another “classic”). The Crimson began each game with three penalties in quick succession, and although Donato didn’t complain about the officiating, he did say that being so penalized was “a bit of a new position” for Harvard.

Crimson goaltender Kyle Richter came into the weekend with the fourth-best save percentage in the nation and dropped to 12th after the two games. It’s probably unfair to judge the entire team on this two-game performance, but I definitely thought they were the fourth-best team in the field.

Donato also groused — mildly — about the working conditions, and I can’t blame him a bit. The teams had to practice at the old OSU Ice Arena, which has great ice but is not the game surface by any means. And the late start Saturday (9:05 p.m.) was nothing anyone wanted.

Miami, of course, is amazing. When people ask if they’re the best team I’ve seen play this season, I say, “Yes!” I haven’t seen every team in the country play, but the RedHawks are for real.

The team that surprised me the most was Ohio State. Not only did the Buckeyes play well in back-to-back games, but they also played with joy and verve if not something less than poetry. They were good and competitive, which was a nice change of pace.

My favorite moment of the whole weekend was OSU goaltender Dustin Carlson’s post-game declaration after beating Harvard Saturday. “I love winning,” said Carlson, in for starer Joseph Palmer who’s with Team USA in Europe. It was Carlson’s first collegiate win.

I love winning, said in much the same way that one might say, “I love chocolate,” when in Belgium, or, “I love driving,” in a Porsche 911 Turbo on the Autobahn.

(I have to be careful about how I write about Carlson. He’s the first OSU goaltender the local press has been allowed to interview post-game since the middle of Dave Caruso’s senior season. I’m not kidding.)

I was disappointed with the first-day crowds, but the 4,000 or so fans for the title match — most of whom the RedHawks brought with them, it seemed — were lively and treated to a good game. The game management at the Schott is so awful that…no, I have to stop. Another time.

This classic would be even better with Bowling Green in attendance yearly, as they were last year. All three Ohio D-I teams in the same midseason tournament, annually, would be a thing of beauty.

And it’s a treat to see great nonconference teams in December in a town that lives for Buckeye football.

A Sad End for 2007

Like many people, I’m still trying to wrap my brain around certain events that ended the 2007 calendar year.

I’m saddened more than I can say by the loss in early December of Jon Barkan, who was a bigger friend to college hockey than most people know. His steadfast devotion to the sport we know and love — all of his work behind the scenes through the 1990s to bring everyone involved with D-I men’s ice hockey together — is a body of stealthy work that is to be admired.

I had known Jon for 12 years, and only through college hockey. We weren’t friends and I’m not even sure we liked each other very much, but I knew from personal experience that he was the kind of guy I could rely on in a pinch.

In 1998, I made a fool of myself in a very public way at the infamous Barkan Bash. The Barkan Bash — probably to be known here after as the Barkan Memorial Bash — was a party that Jon threw every year at the Frozen Four for nearly everyone involved with the sport.

At this particular Barkan Bash, in Boston, after considerable libation, I cried. A lot. I was and remain mortified by my own behavior. The next day, Jon took me aside and said, “Never again,” meaning that I should keep myself together in public. He was absolutely right, of course, and I apologized immediately.

What Jon didn’t know the night of his bash was that my marriage was ending that very weekend in Boston. And he was the first in the college hockey community to contact me when he found out, asking if I was going to be okay, whether I needed anything, and offering a shoulder if I needed it. He also said, “Now I understand,” and that was the end of that.

I’ll miss him. He was close to many people I care about, and his loss will be felt keenly for a long time.

Then there was the tragic loss of Andrew Jackson, the 18-year-old Purdue club hockey freshman who lost his life Dec. 1 when the van he was riding in rolled over on icy roads in Wingate, Ind., en route to a hockey game in Danville, Ill. Jackson was a native of Chanhassan, Minn., majoring in engineering at Purdue.

A kid full of promise, and now a family and many teammates who will never be the same.

It is one of my biggest fears, that I’ll get a call telling me that a bus full of kids and coaches and staff from a school I cover — or any of us covers — has skidded off the road in bad weather. Many teams and even whole leagues do not understand the amount of bus time CCHA teams log. FSU head coach Bob Daniels was telling me today that he and the Bulldogs bused out to Omaha for their series against UNO. The Buckeyes take two days to bus to Marquette, Mich. Teams routinely bus upwards of six hours for weekend series.

I’m not much of a praying woman, but Jackson’s death has me saying a few every week.

And then there was the unthinkable, the Westroads Mall shooting in Omaha. Sure, Omaha’s a big city, but that had to have touched the lives of everyone who read about it, and especially the folks who live in that CCHA city.

Such terrible news to end a year. But here’s one little thing that helps.

Miami assistant coach Jeff Blashill and his wife, Erica, welcomed their first daughter, Josephine, on Nov. 29. When I saw Jeff at the OHC, he was beaming…and very tired.

Happy New Year to us all, indeed.

First Semester D-III Women’s Wrapup

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As the days now accumulate in 2008 and a second chance and fresh start arrives for some of the D-III teams, lets take a look back at the 2007 portion of this season and relive some of the memories from a great semester of women’s hockey.

The season started out innocently enough with traditional powers Plattsburgh, Elmira, Middlebury, Gustavus Adolphus and Stevens Point getting off to good starts along with some new faces in Adrian and Trinity. Amherst and RIT set out to prove they weren’t one-year wonders and have backed it up so far with 5-1-2 and 8-3-0 records respectively (two of RIT’s losses came to D-I Robert Morris).

One team missing from the discussion of top teams so far is Bowdoin. If you would have bet me that Bowdoin would be winless at Christmas time I would have thrown everything, including the kitchen sink into that bet confident there’d be no chance at all it could happen. Surely, a team that has won at least 17 games the past 6 seasons and made the NCAA tournament 4 straight times from 2002-2005 couldn’t be winless the whole first half, could it?

Well, I’d be out of a house and the kitchen sink, because it has.

The Polar Bears are 0-3-1 currently with losses coming to Amherst, RIT, and Conn. College. (Bowdoin tied Colby.) The bad news for head coach Stacy Wilson and her Polar Bears is the schedule doesn’t get any easier at the start of 2008. Bowdoin opened with MIAC power St. Thomas on Wednesday Jan. 2 (a 4-0 win for the Bears) and then faces St. Anselm and Manhattanville this weekend. If that wasn’t enough, the Polar Bears follow that up having to go on the road to Middlebury and Williams the next weekend.

Arguably the biggest news story of the first half of the season came when Manhattanville snapped Plattsburgh’s D-III NCAA record 35-game unbeaten streak with a 4-3 win over the Cardinals on November 24.

Plattsburgh had been rolling along at a perfect 6-0 following their unbeaten NCAA Championship season the previous spring. The Cardinals had just won the Panther-Cardinal Classic defeating Williams and Middlebury on the Panther’s home ice. Plattsburgh had also surprisingly never lost to Manhattanville holding a 6-0-3 record against the Valiants. However, led by senior forward Amanda Nonis’ hat trick, Manhattanville defied all odds and shocked the nation and the hockey world bringing college hockey’s longest active win streak to a screeching halt.

Western Sleeper?

Pop Quiz.

How many D-III teams have a better record than St. Thomas?

I bet many of you were thinking at least 10 team’s records had to be better than the Tommies, right?

Wrong. The Tommies are 8-1-0 on the season so far and right on the heels of MIAC juggernaut Gustavus Adolphus. I ranked St. Thomas in my preseason top-10 rankings and so far they haven’t disappointed. Last year, the Tommies were extremely young, having 12 freshmen playing regularly in their starting line-up as well as their top goalie being a freshman and they still produced a 15-12 record.

“I think the biggest reason for our team’s success so far has been our maturity from having so many of our impact players being freshmen last year and now sophomores,” said St. Thomas head coach Tom Palkowski.

With such a young team, Palkowski has counted heavily on the leadership of his top two scorers and captains, Jackie Carroll and Ashley Reinhardt. Carroll, a junior from St. Paul, Minn., has six goals and 11 assists so far for 17 points. Not to be outdone, Reinhardt, a senior from Eagan, Minn., has five goals and 12 assists for 17 points.

“Ashley Rheinhardt, Jackie Carroll, and our goaltender Lauren Bradel have been a big reason for our success so far and will be if we are going to have more in the future,” Palkowski said.

Bradel, a sophomore from Bemidji, Minn., has stepped up enormously for the Tommies getting most of the minutes this year after splitting with Katie Jetland last year. She leads the country in goals against average with a 0.57 average as well as save percentage with an unheard of mark of .977.

The Tommies great start will be tested early in 2008 as they head east over winter break and take on Bowdoin, Colby, and Southern Maine in a span of 4 days. They then return to the west for a big game against NCHA foe, Wisconsin-River Falls. St. Thomas closes out January with their biggest pair of games on the schedule, the home and home series with their top MIAC title challenger, the Gustavus Adolphus Golden Gusties.

“We’ve been playing pretty consistent hockey so far and we’re going to have to keep that up with the meat of our schedule coming up,” Palkowski said. “Anything can happen when you’re playing two games in two nights. Last year, that’s what typically plagued us playing really well the first night and then marginal the next.”

St. Thomas has yet to see their results translate to votes in the USCHO.com Poll. However, they certainly have the schedule of games in January to state their claim in the poll as well as get their name in the discussion among the elite western powers of Stevens Point, Superior, and Gustavus Adolphus.

Mid-Season Awards

It’s time to give out some awards and some extra Christmas presents to a few individuals who are certainly deserving, after the first half of the season they have all had.

Eastern MVP — Danielle Blanchard, Plattsburgh

Blanchard, a junior forward from Newmarket, Ont., leads the country with 16 goals and 8 assists for 24 points. She led Plattsburgh to the Panther-Cardinal Classic Tournament title scoring all 5 goals the Cardinals scored in the tournament. She has also tallied three game winning goals, five power-play goals, and four short-handed goals leading the top-ranked Cardinals to an 11-1 record at the break.

Western MVP — Nicole Grossman, Stevens Point

Grossman, a junior forward from Lindstrom, Minn., leads the Pointers with nine goals and six assists for 15 points in nine games. Grossman has been a big reason why Stevens Point is the lone remaining unbeaten team in D-III women’s hockey at 9-0-0. She has also chipped in three game winning goals and three power-play goals.

Eastern Rookie — Anna McNally, Middlebury

McNally, a freshmen forward from St. Paul, Minn., has been everything head coach Bill Mandigo could have hoped for so far in her young Panther career. McNally’s 10 goals rank her second in the country behind only Danielle Blanchard. She also has chipped in seven assists for 17 total points on the season in just seven games. McNally and teammate AnnMarie Cellino have combined to form the nation’s top 1-2 scoring punch so far and have led the Panthers to a 5-1-1 record.

Western Rookie — Stacey Kempson, Adrian

Kempson, a freshmen forward from Windsor, Ont., has been the leader of perhaps D-III’s biggest surprise story this year with the 9-3 record Adrian accomplished in the 1st half of the season. Kempson has seven goals and 11 assists for 18 points. She also has two power play goals and one game winner for the Bulldogs.

Eastern Goalie — Isabel Iwachiw, Trinity

Iwachiw, a sophomore goalie from New York, N.Y., has been giving Eastern teams headaches all season trying to solve her. Iwachiw’s performance between the pipes have Trinity off to their best start in school history at 5-1-1 and currently ranked 10th in the country. Iwachiw has a 0.99 goals against average and the nation’s third best save percentage at .959. She also has posted two shutouts on the season

Western Goalie — d’Andra Phillips, Stevens Point

Phllips, a sophomore goalie from Swartz Creek, MI., has backstopped the Pointers to a perfect record through the first half of the season. She has picked up big wins against Gustavus Adolphus, River Falls, and Superior. She is 5-0-0 on the season with a 0.86 goals against average and a .960 save percentage. This was the toughest decision for me as Lauren Bradel was certainly deserving as well but I gave the edge to Phillips because she has faced better competition.

Eastern Coach — Andrew McPhee, Trinity

McPhee has coached the Bantams to their best start in school history and a top 10 ranking during the first half of the season. Trinity won just 8 games last year and has yet to win 10 games in a season in program history. McPhee looks to have the Bantams well on their way to surpassing that mark this year.

Western Coach — Chandy Kaip, Adrian

Kaip, has led her first year Bulldogs to a 9-3 record at the break as well as some big wins against Neumann, Utica, and Superior. Adrian, like Trinity was ranked for the first time in program history earlier this year at number 10. Adrian has a very favorable schedule in the second half of the season with their biggest tests coming against River Falls and Stevens Point. Other than those four games, the Bulldogs should cruise if they keep up the play they have shown in the first half.

Check back next week for first column about 2008 as I’ll preview the second half of the season as well as list some things and teams to watch out for. Hope everyone is having a safe and happy holiday season and eagerly awaiting the drop of the puck again next week!

For now, throw Slap Shot or Miracle in to help get you through the hockey drought till after New Year’s. If you don’t know what either those movies are, please go rent them and watch.

This Week in the CHA: Jan. 3, 2008

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Make that two former CHA skaters to don NHL colors.

On Dec. 26, the Columbus Blue Jackets added ex-Bemidji State forward Andrew Murray to the roster on emergency recall from the Syracuse Crunch, Columbus’ American Hockey League affiliate, and Murray made his NHL debut the next night, finishing minus-1 with 12 shifts in a 4-3 loss at Nashville.

MURRAY

MURRAY

He scored his first NHL goal two games later, Jan. 2, in a 2-1 loss in Anaheim. Sergei Fedorov drew the lone assist. Jean-Sebastien Giguere gave up the goal and told reporters after the game it was a “lucky bounce.”

Not too shabby for an afterthought in the 2001 NHL Entry Draft to be mentioned in the same breath with those two NHL superstars and Stanley Cup winners.

Murray spent four seasons with the Beavers from 2001-2005 and then 2.5 seasons with Syracuse. He captained BSU during his senior year and was the first NHL draft pick to join the BSU program since the Beavers made the leap to NCAA Division I competition in 1999. Murray is also the first four-year CHA player to crack an NHL lineup.

Niagara’s Matt Ryan skated for the Los Angeles Kings in a handful of games two seasons ago as the first former CHA player to wind up in the NHL.

Murray assembled a remarkable resume during his four years at Bemidji State, culminating with College Hockey America Player of the Year and Student-Athlete of the Year awards after his senior campaign. He became the first player in league history to sweep both awards in the same year.

“I just focused on winning a championship at the level I was at,” Murray said in the Columbus Dispatch. “I never lost hope [of making it to the NHL], no.”

Murray was an eighth-round pick of the Blue Jackets back in 2001 and taken with the 242nd overall selection. He was the only Manitoba Junior Hockey League player to be selected in 2001 and one of just four players from Manitoba (Selkirk) overall.

The 26-year-old Murray has registered 36 goals and 66 points with 150 penalty minutes in 183 career AHL games with the Crunch.

Murray found out late Wednesday (Dec. 26) that the Jackets had recalled him and winger Joakim Lindstrom after putting veterans Michael Peca and Manny Malhotra on injured reserve.

“My girlfriend was picking me up at the rink, so she’s the first person I told,” Murray continued. “And then I called my parents. My sister [Lauren] is expecting a child. She was due [that Wednesday]. They were thinking it was her calling to say she was in labor. This is a big time for the family.”

On Dec. 29, Murray again played for Columbus and earned his first two penalty minutes on a hooking call early in the third period. He ended up with eight shifts as the Blue Jackets beat the Carolina Hurricanes, 4-1, and played on an energy line with rookie Jared Boll and veteran Jody Shelley while wearing No. 51.

Back when Murray first signed with Columbus in 2005, BSU head coach Tom Serratore forecast Murray making the jump to “The Show.”

“I may never coach another Andrew Murray,” Serratore said at the time. “These guys don’t come along often. He was the total package — size, skill, determination, the ideal student and the ideal person. He’s everything you want in a player. That’s obviously part of the reason he’ll continue to grow as a player. I believe he’ll play in the NHL some day.”

“I wouldn’t be in this position if it wasn’t for all the help I received from numerous people at BSU,” Murray added. “I can’t thank them enough. I improved as a hockey player and a person. I’m glad to have been a part of the program and say I’m an alumnus of BSU.”

Ironically, the first player Columbus signed back in 2000 was another CHA player in Niagara goalie and current Purple Eagles assistant coach Greg Gardner.

NU Makes Local Recruits Official

Niagara announced a portion its 2008-09 recruiting class, including two Buffalo-area natives, over the holidays.

Brian Dowd, a forward from Williamsville skating with the USHL’s Chicago Steel, attended Bishop Timon-St. Jude High School.

“I have watched Brian in midgets, high school, Junior A and USA Festival Games the past five years and he has consistently been one of the top forwards in North America,” said NU associate coach Jerry Forton. “I expect him to have an immediate impact at the Division I level next year.”

Forward Dan Baco, a St. Joe’s Collegiate graduate and Buffalo native, is currently in his third year with the Lincoln Stars of the USHL. Prior to the Stars, he played one season with the Buffalo Lightning (now the Buffalo Jr. Sabres) in the Ontario Provincial Junior Hockey League. While skating with the Lightning, his linemates were current Niagara forwards Kyle Rogers and Chris Moran.

“Dan is a great player and an even better person,” said Purps’ head coach Dave Burkholder. “His speed is a dimension that will allow him to play and contribute right away.”

Colonials Take Three Points In Huntsville

In Huntsville for a rare Monday-Tuesday series Dec. 17-18, Robert Morris won the first game before a late charge from UAH gave the home team a tie in the second.

RMU took a 7-1 decision in the first game as David Boguslawski scored a pair and Nathan Longpre, Sean Berkstresser, Jason Towsley, Andrew Bonello and Chris Margott added singles.

Christian Boucher picked up the win in net for the Colonials with a 22-save performance.

Matt Sweazey scored the lone goal for Alabama-Huntsville. Blake MacNicol started in goal and made eight saves on 11 shots for the loss before Cameron Talbot took over and finished up with 20 saves.

Tuesday night, Joe Federoff scored with 21 seconds to go in the third period to give UAH a dramatic 4-4 tie.

Freshman Neil Ruffini scored his first NCAA goal and also added an assist for the Chargers. Josh Murray and Matt Baxter also tallied for UAH, who got 29 saves out of MacNicol. Baxter’s goal was also his first at the collegiate level and his assist on Ruffini’s snipe was his first NCAA point.

Ryan Cruthers scored twice for the Colonials and also had a helper. Jeff Gilbert and Kyle Burton also lit the lamp for RMU.

Boucher made 24 stops for Robert Morris.

Purple Eagles Sweep Aside Wayne State…

Niagara continued its recent dominance of Wayne State with a two-game sweep Dec. 14-15 on Monteagle Ridge, winning 4-2 on Friday and 2-1 on Saturday.

Friday night, freshmen David Ross and Derek Foam popped their first collegiate goals for Niagara and Les Reaney and co-captain Vince Rocco recorded the others. Niagara goaltender Juliano Pagliero stopped 27 shots.

Wayne State goaltender Brett Bothwell made 23 saves and the Warriors got third-period power-play goals 23 seconds apart from Matt Krug and Stavros Paskaris.

Dan Sullivan had two assists for the Purps.

“[Sullivan] has been great on for the team,” said Burkholder. “He knows his limits, he knows his role on the team [and] he is a warrior. It is good to get him on the score sheet, and get him some recognition.”

Saturday night, Ted Cook scored both of Niagara’s power-play goals and Tyler Gotto assisted on both.

Earning the win in net was Niagara goaltender Adam Avramenko, who stopped 20 shots. Avramenko’s shutout was busted when a Jon Grabarek shot found the back of the net at 19:43 of the third period.

WSU goalie Kyle Funkenhauser kicked out 20 shots with 17 of those in the first two periods.

“There are probably only eight or nine teams in the country with 10 wins at the semester break,” Burkholder said. “Of course, there are still areas to improve on, but it will make for an exciting second half of the season.”

…But Stumble Against Canisius

Rocco tallied his first career hat trick scoring all three of Niagara’s goals, but the Purple Eagles fell to Canisius in a 4-3 decision at Buffalo State Ice Arena in front of an announced 1,711 fans Sunday night.

Cook’s assist on Rocco’s second goal was his 100th career point and co-captain Matt Caruana assisted on all three goals.

“I felt it tonight,” said Rocco. “Too bad it was all for nothing. We got that one in the third period, but just the last five or six minutes we couldn’t fire it up.”

Rocco is one of only two active Purple Eagles with hat tricks in their career. Reaney scored three goals in Niagara’s victory over Air Force on Jan. 14, 2006.

“We played pretty well tonight,” Burkholder said. “Foam and Ross played very well for us as freshmen [and] obviously, Rocco played very good. Overall, we had a good game with a lot of guys who played very well.”

Pagliero played for the first and second periods stopping 19 shots before Avramenko entered the game for the third period and made seven saves.

BSU Swept By Minnesota State

Bemidji State hosted Minnesota State for two Dec. 14-15, but went into the holiday break with two defeats.

The first night, the Beavers scored two goals in the third period, but it wasn’t enough as the Mavericks held on for a 4-3 win. Tyler Scofield, Matt Read and Matt Pope scored for BSU and Matt Climie and Matt Dalton combined for 17 saves. Climie allowed all four goals in the game’s first 23:04.

Graham McManamin registered two assists for BSU.

On Saturday night, goalie Orlando Alamano made 27 saves, but took the hard-luck loss as Bemidji State was blanked, 1-0, for the first time since Mar. 25, 2006.

With the victory, Minnesota State not only swept BSU at home for just the second time since the beginning of the 2001-2002 campaign, but it also closed the gap in an all-time series to 44-31-13.

More Commitments For BSU, RMU

Bemidji State and Robert Morris have both reportedly received verbal commitments for next season.

Forward Ben Kinne, a 19-year-old St. Paul native, has given the nod to the Beavers. He’s currently with the USHL’s Sioux City Musketeers after a year in the North American Hockey League last season with the Santa Fe (since relocated to Topeka) Roadrunners. Kinne played high school hockey in Minnesota for Cretin-Derham Hall.

Kinne is one of three Muskies in double-digit goals with 10. He has 18 total points and is also plus-10.

The Colonials will bring forward Cody Crichton into the fold after three seasons in the OPJHL with the Brampton Capitals. Crichton, also 19, had 31 goals and 100 penalty minutes last year. This season, Crichton is an alternate captain for the Capitals, leads the team in scoring and is tied for sixth in OPJHL scoring with 18 goals and 57 points through 36 games.

CHA Update: Still Nothing

CHA commissioner Bob Peters still has no update on the future of the CHA as the calendar flips to 2008.

This Week in the WCHA: Jan. 3, 2008

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Look, I’m back. I’ll make this short and say my holiday was good and I hope yours was too.

Of course, you all got the gift of not having to read me for about a month, so you know.

Red Baron Pizza WCHA Players of the Week

Red Baron WCHA Offensive Player of the Week: Brock Trotter, DU.
Why: Earned MVP honors in the Denver Cup, helping his Pioneers to victory by scoring two goals and assisting on four others.
Also Nominated: Paul Crowder, UAA; Jimmy Kilpatrick, CC; Tyler Shelast, MTU; Jason Wiley, MSU-M; Ryan Lasch, SCSU; Ben Street, UW.

Red Baron WCHA Defensive Player of the Week: Rob Nolan, MTU.
Why: Helped the Huskies to a second place finish in the Great Lakes Invitational, stopping 74 of 76 shots on goal and recording seven shut-out periods.
Also Nominated: Jon Olthuis, UAA; Nate Prosser, CC; Chris Butler, DU; Nick Canzanello, MSU-M; John Swanson, SCSU.

Red Baron WCHA Rookie of the Week: Tyler Bozak, DU.
Why: Scored four points (1-3–4) to help his Pioneers capture the Wells Fargo Denver Cup championship.
Also Nominated: Craig Parkinson, UAA; Stephen Schultz, CC; Andrew Sackrison, MSU-M; Dan Dunn, SCSU.

Keeping Up With the Pros – Monthly Drive-By

Yes, this is a monthly feature. It just seems like you last got it because, well, you did. Just the casualties of taking a monthly hiatus…

NHL: Dany Heatley, UW (23-30–53, t-4th overall)
AHL: Gabe Gauthier, DU (13-25–38, t-6th overall)
ECHL: Aaron Slattengren, CC (21-12–33, t-13th overall)
IHL: Tab Lardner, MTU (20-16–36, 3rd overall)
CHL: Alex Leavitt, UW (16-31–47, t-1st overall)

Euro Trip Update

Along with the holiday tournaments that took place, some of you may have been keeping up with the WCHA players participating in the IIHF World Junior Championships going on in Liberec and Pardubice, Czech Republic. Soon-to-be-former Gopher Kyle Okposo is leading the WCHAers on Team USA with five points (good enough for fourth on the team).

Meanwhile, Wisconsin’s Kyle Turris is tied for first in scoring on the Canadian squad with six points. The two teams meet tomorrow in the semi-finals.

Silver-Lined Drama in Colorado Springs…

While it could be argued that the conference is having a bit of a down year with the exception of a few teams, it looks like even the top teams in the conference aren’t trouble-free.

It came down recently that Colorado College will be without two of its players for the rest of the regular season and one until next year. Senior forward Derek Patrosso was suspended until March 12 and junior forward Cody Lampl until January 2009 for violations of the school’s student conduct code.

Given that the Tigers have been one of the more successful teams in the WCHA this year, what does this mean for them? According to CC coach Scott Owens, not much.

“Both [players] are going to be missed as teammates and friends,” he said. “It’s going to affect our depth at forward a little bit, but if we’re deep at any place, it’s at the forward position with 16 forwards.

“With Billy [Sweatt] in the World Juniors and a couple injuries recently, we got through probably as thin as we’re going to be all year this last weekend,” Owens elaborated, talking about his team’s second-place finish in the Lightning Classic in Tampa.

“It affects our quality depth a little bit, but we’re deep. I’m not saying it isn’t going to affect us, but I feel comfortable with what we have and adjustments that we can make that we’ll be fine.”

“Just some other people have got to pick up the slack,” he added matter-of-factly.

…and Even More in Dinkytown

There is also the matter of the Minnesota Golden Gophers, who have been struggling this year as it is. It came out that sophomore forward Kyle Okposo will be bolting for the NHL as soon as the World Junior Championships are over.

I’m sure most of you have already read all the dirty little details that have been written thus far, with New York Islanders’ GM Garth Snow basically trashing the Gophers and their player development. Seeing players jump for the professional ranks isn’t a new story, but jumping midway through the season is.

While Minnesota head coach Don Lucia still handles the situation with class, he does say that even though losing Okposo hurts, the team can find a silver lining in that they get forward Mike Carman back after the World Junior Championships.

“Obviously getting Carman back, [Cade] Fairchild and [Ryan] Flynn back is going to help us as we get back over Christmas,” said Lucia. “Obviously we need a center and Mike’s a true centerman. I think that’s going to help, brings a little different dimension.

“[Carman’s] extremely fast, he’s aggressive on the forecheck and he plays an in-your-face style of game so, I mean, I think he’s going to have a real positive impact on our team for the second half of the season.”

Still, Lucia admits that the Gopher woes run deep.

“Obviously one guy’s not going to lead anybody to the promised land; I think it’s more the whole team has to elevate and play a little bit better,” he said. “Power play has to start to score some goals. We just need to be able to score one more goal a game and…we’ve had on occasion the soft goal and if we can eliminate that from the defensive standpoint, I think that then we’re going to be able to make some headway.

“But, I think the same time, we all know how difficult it is in the WCHA every week and who you’re playing,” Lucia stated. “We’ve dug ourselves a hole in the first half being 5-7 and we’ll see if we have the ability to climb out of it in the second half.”

Reader Mailbag

In two weeks I’ll debut my little contest for you guys. Be excited, because it’s going to be good.

In the meantime, though, thanks for all the comments on the message board, hateful and all. Thanks also to all of you who defend this dreck. Trust me, it’s appreciated.

Match-Ups By the Numbers

Not everyone plays this weekend. There are two WCHA series, and three nonconference sets. Here are the numbers:

No. 8 North Dakota at No. 15 St. Cloud State
Overall Records: UND 9-7-1 (6-6 WCHA); SCSU 9-9-2 (4-7-1 WCHA).
Head-to-Head: UND leads the overall series, 46-25-8.
Top Scorers: UND, T.J. Oshie (9-7–16), Ryan Duncan (7-9–16), Robbie Bina (1-15–16); SCSU, Ryan Lasch (15-15–30).
Goaltenders: UND, Jean-Philippe Lamoureux (17 games played, 9-7-1, 1.88 GAA, .932 SV %); SCSU, Jase Weslosky (15 games played, 7-9, 2.16 GAA, .928 SV %).

No. 4 Colorado College at No. 13 Wisconsin
Overall Records: CC 12-6 (11-3 WCHA); UW 8-7-3 (4-5-1 WCHA).
Head-to-Head: UW leads the overall series, 104-54-8.
Top Scorers: CC, Chad Rau (12-9–21); UW, Ben Street (8-11–19), Kyle Turris (7-12–19).
Goaltenders: CC, Richard Bachman (14 games played, 11-3-0, 1.79 GAA, .936 SV %). UW, Shane Connelly (15 games played, 7-7-1, 2.72 GAA, .905 SV%).

Wayne State at No. 16 Minnesota
Overall Records: WSU 3-13-2 (1-5 CHA); UM 9-9-2 (5-7 WCHA).
Head-to-Head: UM leads the overall series 2-0.
Top Scorers: WSU, Jeff Caister (1-11–12); UM, Blake Wheeler (9-9–18).
Goaltenders: WSU, Kyle Funkenhauser (11 games played, 1-7-2, 2.87 GAA, .895 SV %); UM, Jeff Frazee (13 games played, 6-7, 2.93 GAA, .891 SV %).

No. 20 Michigan Tech at Mercyhurst
Overall Records: MTU 7-9-2 (5-6-1 WCHA); MC 5-11-2 (5-5-2 AHA).
Head-to-Head: The overall series is tied, 1-1.
Top Scorers: MTU, Tyler Shelast (9-4–13); MC, Ben Cottreau (5-10–15).
Goaltenders: MTU, Michael-Lee Teslak (11 games played, 4-4-2, 1.72 GAA, .934 SV %); MC, Ryan Lundin (9 games played, 4-4-1, 2.62 GAA, .927 SV %), Ryan Zapolski (9 games played, 1-7-1, 4.20 GAA, .894 SV %).

Bemidji State and No. 16 Minnesota-Duluth Home and Home
Overall Records: BSU 8-8-2 (6-2-2 CHA); tUMD 6-6-4 (5-6-3 WCHA).
Head-to-Head: tUMD leads the overall series, 15-6.
Top Scorers: BSU, Matt Read (5-8–13); tUMD, Matt McKnight (4-7–11), Jason Garrison (4-7–11), Josh Meyers (4-7–11).
Goaltenders: BSU, Matt Climie (13 games played, 7-3-2, 1.73 GAA, .926 SV %); tUMD, Alex Stalock (16 games played, 6-6-4, 2.42 GAA, .910 SV %).

Maybe I Should Have Saved this for Mid-February…

I had the chance to go to the Michigan Tech-Northern Michigan home-and-home series a few weeks ago which was an amazing experience. Granted, I have seen better hockey and been in better places. (Sorry guys. The people were great, but the drive to the U.P. leaves much to be desired.)

However, I ended up making the drive up there with two Gopher fans and a Sioux fan as a bunch of us “invaded” the U.P., which brings me to my point — if you have the opportunity, grab some crazed college hockey fan friends, hop in the car,and head to a hockey game you care nothing about. It’ll be an experience for a lifetime that you’ll never forget.

We may (well, you readers…I’m fair and balanced over here…at least try to be) hate our rival, but our rival’s fans can be cool people. This is why I love college hockey — the sport is such a small fraternity that even though we may disagree at times (and you guys seem to disagree with me a lot), we’re basically all fans of the same great thing…

…and that’s enough sap from me for this week. Sorry about that, guys (and girls).

This Week in D-I Women’s Hockey: Jan. 3, 2008

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Hockey, perhaps more than any other sport, has always been a family affair.

For as long as dads have been constructing backyard rinks, and moms have been trudging through the frozen tundra to haul carloads of kids to 4 a.m. practices, hockey has been a centerpiece of the family experience.

Through the ages, sibling rivalries have been played out inside the boards — makeshift and otherwise — on sheets from Inuvik to Indiana, and from Novosibirsk to Nova Scotia.

Back in the day, those civil wars were almost exclusively fraternal ones, with the girls shunted off to the side.

But no longer.

Now the rally cry seems to be “the family that plays together, stays together”.

That means the whole family.

Even as the best of the girls have found their way into Division-I programs, while their brothers make it in the NHL.

Or so it’s been for the Stuart clan. And for the Moulsons, too.

Cristin Stuart is a senior defenseman for Boston College, while her brother Mark, the former Colorado College standout, patrols the blueline for the Boston Bruins.

Both learned the game alongside older brothers Mike and Colin (both of them forwards with NHL time under their belts), while growing up in Rochester, Minn.

Cristin said that growing up in such an athletic family, there hardly any chance that she wouldn’t pick up the game.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I started off as a figure skater, when I was really young, and right away switched to hockey skates. I don’t think I could have gotten out of it if I’d really wanted to.”

Not that her brothers would have let her. After all, they needed a target to shoot at.

And guess who got drafted.

Yep. “Little Cris”.

“My dad used to build a rink in the backyard when we were really young,” she said. “That helped us a lot. I originally used to be the goalie. The dummy. They would dress me up in all that equipment and shoot on me. Street hockey was kind of theirs and I was just a toy.”

But the game became hers, too, and while they happen to share the same city, they also share an immense sense of pride in each other.

“She’s done great,” said Mark. “She’s really improved. I haven’t had a chance to see her play yet this year, but I saw her a bunch last year, but she’s improved, and I’m really proud of her. Not only is she doing great in hockey, but she’s an excellent student as well. I’m proud of her in both of those.”

As younger sibs naturally emulate their older ones, Cristin said she found elements of Mark’s rugged play creeping into her own game.

“I have heard that I play like my brother,” she said. “Or that we skate the same. But he’s a great role model. I definitely model myself after him. I try to play my defensive game the same way he does. I don’t get to get away with as much as he does.”

Shannon Moulson is a senior rearguard for Niagara University, her talents no doubt honed by the one-on-ones she had with brother Matt, a winger who has split time between Los Angeles and Manchester.

Those standoffs enabled Matt, who played at Cornell before turning pro two year ago, to develop a “book” on his younger sister.

“She’s dirty,” he said, with a big laugh. “She’s a dirty player. Every time we’d do one on ones, she had this huge stick and always poke checked me. She’s a pretty smart player. She’s always had a phenomenal shot. My dad always used to say it was harder than my brother and I. But she’s always had a good shot, and a good head for the game. I don’t know how I’d play against her. I’d probably just skate around her.”

Maybe it was in trying to elude Shannon that Matt developed his superb quickness, a tool that has taken him from being unknown and undrafted to rising NHL prospect.

Or maybe it was his work ethic.

Either way, Shannon has been watching. And learning.

“I tell this to everyone,” she said. “My brother is one of my biggest inspirations in hockey. To watch him grow from someone that no one even knew to where is now, makes me want to be a better player. To work my butt off. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone work as hard as he has. I use that (as motivation) because I don’t want to let him down by not being who I can be on the ice. I think about that.”

The two, along with younger brother Chris, staged many royal battles while growing up outside Toronto. And not just on the ice.

“We have a little different family than normal,” said Matt. “We’re pretty close, but to the outsider, it probably seems like we fight a lot. I think that’s the intensity that we have. Even our euchre games get broken up. But we’re very close and supportive.”

That sense of support was never stronger than last Nov. 1. It was Matt’s 24th birthday, and, oh by the way, he was making his NHL debut with the L.A. Kings.

Matt capped the momentous day by scoring a goal, the first of what should be many.

“He did get called up on his birthday,” Shannon said. “We were playing phone tag. He finally got a hold of me and he said, ‘thanks for the ‘Happy Birthday and by the way, I’m playing in the NHL.’ We were all excited. That’s his dream. Hopefully one day, I’ll be able to live up to that.”

Of course, hockey blood doesn’t just run from brother to sister. It also flows to daughter, as in the case of Clarkson center Jess Cloutier, whose dad is former NHL goalie Jacques Cloutier.

Jacques has served the Colorado Avalanche as assistant coach for the past 11 seasons, and it was only natural that Jess picked up the game from her father.

“My dad has helped me a lot,“ said Jess. “He’s really inspired me. He never pushed me or anything like that. But he always believed in me, which got me this far.”

What she didn’t pick up however, was dad’s old blocker and facemask. Her mother Lynn saw to that.

“Actually I was a goalie at first,” Jess said. “But my mom said it’s enough to have one goalie in the family.”

Ah, family. It’s a wonderful thing.

This Week in the ECAC Northeast

By Paul C. Altmeyer Jr.
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Penman Looking to Write Up Stellar Season

When heading into the holiday break last year, Southern New Hampshire University had six wins and four losses. This year, the Penmen celebrated Christmas sitting atop the Northeast 10 with a record of 6-1-1, and as 2007 turned into 2008, they were 7-2-1.

Rookie coach Ken Hutchins was asked the reason for the great start, and he was quick to give credit to Rene LeClerc, who retired last spring after eight years behind SNHU’s bench.

“I think our greatest strength can be attributed to the transition from Rene LeClerc to myself. It was real easy, and we never broke any momentum.”

Hutchins, who served as an assistant to LeClerc for many years, offered some other thoughts on his squad:

“Our team is becoming more accountable for our actions, on and off the ice. We work on team fundamentals in practices, and with the weights off the ice. They were evaluated over the summer, and will be evaluated again after the break. The guys are also developing on and off the ice, and growing closer.”

An alumnus of SNHU, and a four year member of the hockey team (which was called New Hampshire College at the time), Hutchins realizes things are about to get harder.

“We’re off to a great start, but we have a tough schedule coming up. We’ve got Curry, Fitchburg, UMass Dartmouth, and St. Anselm’s,” Hutchins noted. “These are all top teams that we haven’t faced yet. We have a very tough conference schedule in January and February.”

One key to the early success of the Penmen so far has to be their depth, something their coach is quick to point out.

“We’ve got three goalies, seven defensemen, and five lines playing out of six. Our depth is our biggest strength right now. We feel confident as a coaching staff to dress any player.”

One player who has contributed mightily both on and off the ice is senior forward and captain Brandon Hammermeister. He currently leads the team in scoring with eight goals and 11 assists, but it’s not just the statistics the impress Hutchins.

“Hammer represents our team. He’s the one who has brought everyone together, and gotten them to rally for a common cause.”

Hammermeister, who hails from Calgary, Alberta, also led the team in scoring the last two years, and he’s got two sophomore line-mates this year who are complementing him quite well this campaign.

“John Frey and Ryan DiBartolomeo have both improved and raised their game from last year,” observed Hutchins.

Both players came up huge in the Penmen’s 4-3 OT victory over Suffolk to seal a third place finish in the Codfish Bowl late last month, each notching a goal and an assist, with Frey getting the game winner 2:15 into the extra period.

Also up front, SNHU has been getting offense from a pair of freshmen. Troy Marbury is averaging nearly a point per game, with three goals and five assists in nine games. Ed Montgomery has five goals and two assists in as many games. Both already have a game winner on their résumé as well.

On the blueline, Hutchins offered these thoughts:

“Senior Josh Goodman has been a nice player back there, as well as Kent Honeyman, who’s played every game. David Carroll is developing into a nice player ad maybe a future captain.”

In goal, Hutchins has had the luxury of having three goalies, and he’s comfortable with all of them. Junior Matt Courchesne has a perfect record so far, sporting a 4-0-0 mark. He has been pushed by sophomore Shane Brooks, who is 2-1-1, and by freshman Todd Rowley (1-1). Hutchins feels that Courchesne and Brooks will probably log most of the minutes when play resumes again on Jan. 12 at Franklin Pierce.

Overall, it’s been a good first half for the first year coach, who offered a couple of more thoughts.

“We seem to be killing penalties quite well,” Hutchins said. “We sometimes take aggressive penalties, but we kill them off. We’ve been scoring a lot of goals, there are six lines we carry, and I feel comfortable putting in any of them.”

To illustrate his point, one only has to look at the ECAC NE stats sheet to see that SNHU is the most penalized team (37.1 PIM) per game, which is more than five and a half minutes more per game than the next highest team. Their penalty killing is ranked second overall, just behind Nichols. SNHU all leads all seventeen teams with 4.70 goals per game.

After a two week respite from game action concludes, the Penmen play four times in eight days. In addition to the game at Franklin Pierce, they play home games against Becker on Jan. 15 and host Curry on Jan. 17 before traveling to Fitchburg State two days hence.

Keeping It Going

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At the start of the 2007-2008 season, the Boston College Eagles’ women’s hockey team faced a lot of questions and a lot of challenges. Last season featured moments that almost made the season like Charles Dickens’ famous opening line about the best and worst of times from “A Tale of Two Cities.”

Last season saw the Eagles, led by freshman forward Kelli Stack and freshman goaltender Molly Schaus, have their best season in the program’s history. The Eagles defended their Beanpot title, winning their first-round game against Harvard 4-3 in triple overtime, and advanced to the NCAA tournament for the first time in their history, beating Dartmouth 3-2 in double overtime in the quarterfinals to advance to the Frozen Four, where they lost to Minnesota-Duluth 4-3 in double overtime.

Everything looked to be in place for future success. However, just six weeks after their Frozen Four appearance, coach Tom Mutch resigned amid rumors of indiscretions. After a search, assistant coach and three-time Olympian Katie King was named head coach, and King brought in former Olympic teammate Courtney Kennedy as her assistant.

At the start of the season, King looked to bring the team back together and focus on playing to get back to the NCAA tournament.

“When the kids got back on campus, we just tried to focus on the season,” said King. “Everything that happened in the past was done, and that goes back to the Frozen Four. I remember last year when we were going to the Frozen Four, everybody was saying it’s great to get there and hard to get back, and I think all of us, not necessarily just our kids, thought we could ride those coattails a little bit, but no one is being surprised by Boston College anymore. They know that we’re a pretty good team and they’re coming out, they’re trying to get us. We can’t rely on last year.”

This is a sentiment that Stack, who is currently tied for the team lead in points with Deborah Spillane, enthusiastically agrees with.

“We just tried to get back to the basics and respect everybody and trust everybody on the ice and off the ice,” said Stack. “I think we just need to take a step back and not be so focused on what we did last year, because I think a lot of us are thinking, well, we were so good last year, it’s just going to happen for us again this year, but everybody’s gotten better, they’ve gotten new freshman, so all the teams we were close to beating last year have gotten that much better, so we just need to go back to playing our game and just know that we can score when we have to, we can defend when we have to, and hopefully we can get out of this slump we’re in and have a better second half of the season to get back to the Frozen Four.”

Stack, who grew up in Ohio, was recruited by several schools, but ultimately narrowed it down to Boston College and Wisconsin. She chose BC in part because she liked the smaller campus.

“I chose BC because I liked the location of Boston, and it’s a big sports town and I like sports a lot. It was smaller than Wisconsin; Wisconsin has a ton of kids and a really big campus and it’s very spread out. BC is all in one area and you can walk through the whole thing; you don’t need a car to live there, so I really liked that too.”

Stack was one of the players who had a huge impact on the Eagles last season. She led the team in points, with 54, and had assists on the game-winning goals against Harvard in the Beanpot and Dartmouth in the NCAA tournament.

Stack found the transition to NCAA hockey was most difficult with strength and defense. “In 19-and-under, nobody worked out or anything, but when you get to college everybody’s in the weight room all the time and everybody’s really strong, so probably I was pretty weak when I came into college, so I’ve had to work pretty hard to get stronger.

“I think the defensive part is one of the things I’ve had to work on the most when I got to college. That’s one of the things I focus on a lot in practice with Coach King and Coach Kennedy. When I came in, obviously a lot of players just come in offensive minded, not that they don’t care about the ‘D’ zone, but it’s not one of their major concerns, and it’s not what got most people to college if they were playing forward. Like I said, I work really hard in practice on the ‘D’ zone; I work on keeping my feet moving and always having the girl’s stick in the air and being real strong on my stick and not letting them get to the net.”

So far, this season has seen some ups and downs for the Eagles, who have been in and out of the top 10 of the USCHO.com poll all season. They have had some good wins, including a tie and win against Hockey East rival Connecticut, but ended their first half on a down note, losing to Boston University and Northeastern.

Ultimately, those games are ones that King feels are learning experiences for her team, and will hopefully make them stronger in the second half.

“I think they surprised us a little bit,” said King of BU and Northeastern. “It’s like I told our kids, you give a team, any team, a period or ten minutes of a game, you know, that’s where you might lose it, so we just have to try and focus on that and right now we’re focusing on new lines and trying to put another win in our column.”

Stack spent much of the first half of the season on a line with Spillane and Meghan Fardelmann, a line that was very effective for the Eagles. Stack feels that three work well together because of their desire to win.

“Kelli is such a dynamic player and kind of reads where her teammates are going to go and reads the play so well,” said King. “Deb has such a great hockey mentality where she’s kind of similar to Kelli but I think that they read well off each other and then Fardelmann just kind of goes 110% all the time; she just doesn’t stop and they know she’s going to go to the net and they know she’s going to keep digging in the corners and kind of be that power forward type.”

“I would say that we don’t care who gets the point or who gets the goal, we just want to win,” commented Stack. “We know that, like if I give a pass to Deb or Meghan I know that they’ll give it right back to me. I think it’s a lot of unselfish play with our line, and a lot of hard work.”

However, King is looking at breaking up the line in the second half of the season to generate a more balanced offensive attack.

“I think in this game, you need more than one line,” said King. “Kelli and Allie (Thunstrom) played together in the last game against Northeastern and I think they played really well together. Allie’s in a little bit of a slump, but she’s had a great attitude and she’s trying to pull herself out of it, and we’ll do what we can to help her pull out of it. Becky (Zavisza) as well; she’s been in a little bit of a slump for her, but she works extremely hard and those are generally our goal scorers. They say themselves that they are struggling and we’re trying to work through that and get them out of that and hopefully we can get a couple lines going.”

One thing King has been happy with is the play of goaltender Schaus, who finished her freshman year 20-10-2 and played for the U.S. U-22 team this summer with Stack, Fardelmann and defenseman Maggie Taverna.

“Well, I think Molly’s great,” said King. “She’s got a tremendous amount of pressure on her this year. I don’t think she realizes how much of a leader she is on our team, but kids look to her more than she even knows. I think she’s trying to take that role and see what she can do with it, but we’re also trying to work with her on moving pucks on the goal line, and she’s one of the best athletes on our team. She’s a great skater, she can handle the puck great; she could probably play forward, but we’re not going to let her do that (laughs). She’s done a great job for us again, and she’s facing a lot of shots and sometimes she’s left out to dry and she’ll make an unbelievable save. I can’t say enough about Molly.”

Stack, Fardelmann and Schaus were also invited with 53 other players to the USA Hockey Annual Women’s Holiday Camp in Lake Placid, held in the last week of December, something Stack was excited about.

While the team has been somewhat inconsistent, Stack feels that King has transitioned very well into the head coaching position, and is a valuable resource for the players.

“She knows the game very well, and she was an Olympian and same with Coach Kennedy; she was too,” said Stack. “I think their relationship, they’re such good friends, it makes it a lot easier on us being able to talk to them and go to them if we need anything. I think seeing her as an assistant coach and seeing her as a head coach, it’s kind of cool to see the change she’s made. She didn’t really speak up a lot last year, but now everything’s coming from her. She’s got a really tough job, trying to take us back to the Frozen Four. She’s got a lot of expectations too, and I think she’s doing a great job so far.”

“Coaching in general is kind of, I’d say a little bit eye-opening,” said King. “You think about so many different things that I think as a player you don’t necessarily have to think about, or maybe you should but you don’t. Obviously it’s a little different being the head coach; it’s a little more pressure. You feel the losses a little more, and the wins a little more, but it’s been great so far and hopefully we can step it up in the second half.

While the Eagles are hoping to get back to the NCAA tournament, they know they have a difficult road ahead. In the second half, they start with two games against St. Lawrence and Minnesota sandwiched around a game with Harvard.

Stack for one is confident that if the team can get back to concentrating on consistent play, good things will happen.

“I think that we need to work together as a team and just start over with a 0-0-0 record in the second half of the season, because we have some really tough games, so it’s going to pretty tough for us, so I think if we can just start over fresh and work together as a team, we shouldn’t’ have a problem. I think we have to play with more confidence, because we know we’re a skilled team. We have to go into every game and just play BC hockey, and that should take us as far as we want to go.”

King is looking forward to the second half as well, and has great confidence in the ability of her team to compete.

“I’m sure that we’ll make it exciting,” she laughs. “That’s the thing about our kids; they come ready to play and ready to go and ready to work hard, and that’s what I like about our team; I never to tell them to go hard, or go harder. They go pretty hard all the time. We just have to continue to compete for three periods and I think we can hold our own against any team in the country.”

This Week in Atlantic Hockey: Jan. 3, 2008

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Postcard from Mariucci

I had the trip from hell getting back from Minnesota on Monday/Tuesday — I imagine that the eighth level of Hades must be very similar to O’Hare Airport at 1:00 a.m. Not a cool way to spend New Year’s Eve. But it was worth it. I saw some wonderful hockey. A major upset, a near upset, a shootout and a couple of great individual performances.

In a nutshell, here’s what I learned after seeing all four games of the Dodge Holiday Classic:

RIT and Air Force can be very good and, on any given day, beat just about any team in the nation…except maybe Boston College.

Minnesota, shorthanded due to three players at the IIHF World Juniors tournament and the sudden departure of Kyle Okposo (also at that tournament, but not coming back), still dressed 10 NHL draft picks and unachieved in front of its home crowd, failing to win this tournament for the first time in nine years. The Gophers played better on Sunday than they did on Saturday, but they’re still not playing up to their potential, especially in the third period, where they continue to struggle.

Boston College is on fire.

BC junior Nate Gerbe is good at hockey.

The Tiger’s 4-3 victory over Minnesota is the biggest win for the program since moving to Division I three years ago. RIT fell behind 1-0 after the first period, but opened a 2-1 lead early in the second. After that, each time the Gophers would tie, RIT would answer and re-take the lead, closing with Matt Smith’s game-winner, his second goal of the contest, off a deflection from a shot from Dan Ringwald at 9:00 of the third period.

The Tigers had to withstand a furious comeback attempt by the Gophers, including weathering 1:47 of five-on-three with under five minutes to play. RIT goaltender Louis Menard was brilliant down the stretch, stopping all ten Minnesota shots in the third.

“A real big win for our program,” RIT coach Wayne Wilson said. “We’re still trying to build, and we understand that they’re shorthanded here, but any time you get to just play Minnesota, it’s Minnesota, so it’s good for us.

“We had the goalie make some saves and got some bounces.”

On the winning goal, Ringwald was on the ice because Justin Hofstetter had gone to the bench after breaking his stick. Ringwald come off the bench, barely kept the puck in at the blue line and took a slapper that went off Smith’s leg and in for the winning goal.

“Yeah, we work on that broken-stick play a lot in practice,” Wilson deadpanned. “It usually doesn’t turn out as well.”

“It’s an insult to them to say we overlooked them,” said Minnesota coach Don Lucia. “In college hockey, there has been a huge compression from the top to the bottom. They have 25 players with junior experience that know how to play the game.”

In the other semifinal, Air Force got behind early to BC and never recovered, losing 8-2.

“We haven’t been beaten like that for a long time,” said Air Force coach Frank Serratore after the game. “We’re not a very good team right now. We haven’t been playing well for a while, but we’ve been getting away with stuff.

“I’ve been telling these guys we’ve got a lot of holes in our game. Today we got exposed. We’ve got to get better. The only good thing was that it wasn’t on TV.”

Serratore was in much better spirits the next night after a 2-2 tie with Minnesota that saw the Falcons score an extra-attacker goal by Brent Olson, his second of the game, with 62 ticks left on the clock. After a five-minute scoreless overtime, the Gophers won the ensuing shootout 2-0, finally giving the home crowd something to cheer about, but the game goes into the books as a tie.

“It was a good tie,” said Serratore. “Any time you score in the last minute it’s a good tie. I thought we played much better. We had great chances in overtime.”

“It’s a good tie and a bad tie for us,” said Lucia, whose team is now 1-2-1 all-time against Atlantic Hockey squads. “I thought we played well, better than last night.”

“It starts with goaltending, and [Andrew] Volkening was much better tonight,” said Serratore of the sophomore, who was pulled after giving up three goals on 11 shots in the BC game.

RIT came crashing back to earth in the championship game, losing to BC 6-0. It was a 1-0 game going into the third, but Gerbe scored a big goal and the Eagles rolled from there.

“They’re a really good team,” RIT coach Wayne Wilson said. “We needed a goal early to get some excitement on our bench but couldn’t capitalize on our chances.”

Despite beating both Atlantic Hockey teams by six goals, Boston College coach Jerry York had good things to say.

“This is the first time we’ve played two teams from the Atlantic Hockey League back-to-back,” said York. “I was really impressed with the quality of play. If you look at it you see a 6-0 game, but it was anything but that.”

In the battle of Hobey candidates, Gerbe was clearly the winner, picking up seven points on the weekend. He’s now got 19 points in his last five games. Air Force’s Eric Ehn was held off the score sheet.

Weekly Awards

Player of the Week for December 31, 2007:

Josh Heidinger — Canisius.

The local product had a goal and two assists to lead Canisius to a 4-3 win over rival Niagara.

Goaltender of the Week for December 31, 2007:

Adam Roy — Holy Cross

The freshman stopped 36 of 37 shots to help his team to a 1-1 tie against host Vermont in the Catamount Cup tournament.

Rookie of the Week for December 31, 2007:

Everett Sheen — Holy Cross

Sheen wins the award for the third time this season. He was responsible for both Crusader goals last weekend as they played to a pair of 1-1 ties against Vermont and Western Michigan. His goal against the Broncos came shorthanded with 2:01 left in regulation.

Monthly Awards

Player of the Month for December:

Josh Heidinger — Canisius.

Heidinger had two goals and three assists last month, helping the Griffins to a 1-1-2 record.

Also nominated: Dain Prewitt (Bentley), Eric Boisvert (Sacred Heart).

Goaltender of the Month for December:

Ian Dams — Holy Cross

The sophomore had a 1.23 GAA and a .953 save percentage over the month, playing in overtime ties with Merrimack and Western Michigan.

Also nominated: Joe Calvi (Bentley), Andrew Loewen (Canisius), Matt Lundin (Mercyhurst).

Rookie of the Month for December:

Everett Sheen — Holy Cross

Sheen had five of the Crusaders’ seven goals scored in December. His 10 goals are first in the conference for rookies and second in the nation.

Also nominated: Vincent Scarsella (Canisius), Mike Gurtler (Mercyhurst).

Tourneys — Ties, Triumphs and Tribulations

Air Force and RIT weren’t the only AHA teams involved in tournaments last week. Here’s a summary of the rest of the action:

Connecticut finished second in its own tournament for the third year in a row, defeating Army 4-1 in the first semifinal (which doubled as a conference game) before falling to Ferris State, 5-0, in the title game. Against Army, sophomore goaltender Beau Erickson was outstanding, stopping 30-of-31 shots as the Black Knights outshot the Huskies 31-15. Army tied Brown 1-1 in the consolation game as sophomore Joe Spracklen made his college debut in net for the Black Knights, stopping 20 shots.

Holy Cross allowed just two goals in the Catamount Cup tournament at Vermont…and ended up finishing fourth. The Crusaders tied both games: 1-1 with the host Catamounts and 1-1 again versus Western Michigan in the consolation. Holy Cross lost both shootouts. Freshman Evertt Sheen scored both goals for Holy Cross, and Adam Roy (36 saves) and Ian Dams (28 saves) split time in net. The Crusaders have now tied four times in a row and in five of their last six games (1-0-5).

Sacred Heart also finished fourth in a tournament but in the typical way, by dropping a pair of games at the Denver Cup. In the battle of Pioneers, the ones from Denver triumphed, 5-0, in the semifinals and Sacred Heart dropped the consolation game to Northern Michigan, 5-2, despite 39 saves from Oliver St. Onge. The (Sacred Heart) Pioneers hope to change their fortune with some home cooking as they host Air Force this weekend in only their fifth and sixth home games of the season to date.

While not a tournament, Canisius played a huge game against local rival Niagara, coming out on top, 4-3, in the annual “Battle of the Bridge” contest (there are actually two bridges between the schools, but I’m nitpicking). Josh Heidinger led the way with two goals and an assist. A record 1,711 fans saw the game at Buffalo State, breaking the old record by almost 500. Canisius has averaged 1,337 fans this season, over twice what the Griffs drew last year. Hopefully, fans will follow them to their alternate home rink in Amherst, where Canisius will play its next four games.

This Week in ECAC Hockey: Jan. 3, 2008

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First and foremost, happy new year! Now let’s hope we never hear any of this crap ever again.
Gag.

Speaking of Gags…

It has always been asserted, with all justification, that the best way to improve the league’s standing on the national stage is to win the big games.

And by “big games,” we mean nonconference games. Tournaments. And, of course, NCAA tournament games. There is little point in beating RPI points out of league opponents; they tend to even out over the course of the season by such mechanisms as the “common opponents” factor. The real boosts come through stealing points from other leagues.

So how is ECAC Hockey stacking up so far?

Not so good.

Eight teams participated in NCAA-sanctioned winter tournaments last month (not including Union’s games against Canadian opponents in the Pete Kelly Tournament), but only three made it to their tourney’s respective championships.

Ignoring the Cornell-Clarkson consolation game in the Florida College Classic, the league finished 4-9-1 in the midseason tourneys, with only one champion — Quinnipiac, defeating host Vermont in the Catamount Cup.

Despite holding a winning record against the other leagues until mid-December, the ECAC has since seen its overall score drop to 30-37-8 against non-conference foes…including a 13-31-0 record against the WCHA, CCHA and Hockey East.

With the meat of the league schedule coming up, only Colgate, Quinnipiac, Dartmouth and Yale have winning non-con records. These teams will likely see an extra shot to their PairWise Rankings by the end of the season, while perhaps a program of equal standing in the league fixtures might be left behind.

It’s Our Differences That Make Us Special

The ECAC has some unique conditions that set it apart from other major sports conferences, and these affect all aspects of athletic competition. But don’t make the mistake of calling these situations “limitations”…because by many standards, they’re anything but.

Plain and simple, the Ivies mark the greatest deviation from the NCAA norm. They cap their regular seasons at 29 games, they start later in the fall, they don’t offer athletic scholarships (nor does Union, for that matter), and their standards for admission are understandably higher than many other schools’.

However, how much does this really hamper the Ivy League programs, and how much does it handicap the rest of the league in turn?

“I don’t think [the lack of scholarship players] has hindered them at all,” said league commissioner Steve Hagwell of the Ivy teams. He pointed to past St. Lawrence teams and the current RIT program for examples of success-sans-scholarships (before the Saints began offering them, of course).

That said, sure, maybe some of the top recruits won’t qualify as Ivy or ECAC material scholastically. But while the perspective has been murky of late, it is important to remember that these are students first, and athletes second.

“What the ECAC — as a league, and not just hockey — is better at than probably any other league is combining the student with the athlete,” said Rensselaer head coach Seth Appert. With such strong academic reputations among these institutions, it is truly the well-rounded individual who can lace up in this league.

Appert also belittled the idea that fewer games in a season automatically handicapped a team.

“Sometimes the Ivies can start later and fresher,” he said, catching opponents before the bumps and bruises begin to set in for the winter.

Likewise, their 29-game cap allows for seven non-conference matchups. While teams like Quinnipiac, Clarkson or Colgate might play a dozen such contests in a season, the cap isn’t as large a detriment as it may seem.

“The CCHA and Hockey East play 28- and 27-game league schedules, which leaves them with six [or seven] non-league slots,” said Hagwell — the same allowed for Harvard, Dartmouth or Princeton.

To be sure, Cornell and Harvard haven’t exactly been falling behind the pack in the last few years, despite their Ivy status.

Overall though, the success of the league and each of the programs comprising it is in the hands of the institutions and the coaches.

“We’ve gotta win nonconference games,” said Hagwell…and everyone agrees with that.

Deep and Dangerous

The Bobcats reeled off five wins in a row to straddle the break, and won on the strength of solid team defense and surprising depth.

“As well as we played in those five games, [what is more notable] is how many players we’ve had out,” said coach Rand Pecknold.

“We beat Vermont with four players out,” he said, including captain Jaime Bates and assistant captain Matt Sorteberg.

“The team defense really goes back to the injuries,” said Pecknold. “Guys have been rising to the occasion” to make the most of their minutes, he said.
Senior Dan Travis potted a pair against UVM, and Brandon Wong showed a consistently higher level of play than he did earlier this year.

“I think my veteran guys have definitely turned the corner,” the coach said. “Our special teams have been really good,” he added.

Citing a grittiness to his charges, the veteran coach is pleased with the extra efforts he is seeing from his maturing team.

Over the quintet of Ws, Quinnipiac surrendered only seven goals and got outstanding goaltending from a reinvigorated Bud Fisher and from senior Peter Vetri, who is no longer with the program. In his final year of collegiate eligibility following a transfer from UMass-Lowell, Vetri was dismissed from the team for failure to fulfill academic obligations. Freshman Pat McGann steps in as the second-stringer.

For this weekend’s games against Harvard and Dartmouth, the ‘Cats are again likely to be without the services of Sorteberg, Bates, Mark Nelson and Jake Bauer. Even third-string goaltender Dan Cullen is out of action this weekend, according to Pecknold.

“It’s like a walking M.A.S.H. unit,” he joked.

The Mighty Not Falling

Well, not for Rensselaer, they’re not.

The Engineers were put to the test with four straight games against top-flight opposition: two games hosting top-ranked Miami, a game against fourth-ranked Colorado College and another tilt against sixth-ranked Notre Dame.

Unfortunately for Appert and the ‘Tute, it was four times up and four times down.

“I’m disappointed we didn’t have more success of course,” the coach said. “But I was really pleased with our game against Notre Dame.”

Playing the late game against CC in the first round of the Lightning Classic in Tampa, RPI took off to a 2-0 lead with a pair of second-period goals. However, the Tigers stormed back with three in the third, including the game-winning power-play goal with only seven ticks left ’til the buzzer.

Appert said that it would’ve been easy to play a tired, dispirited game against the Irish, who had just stung RPI at the end of November. Instead, the Engineers hung tough, and a 2-1 first-period deficit stuck fast for the final 40 minutes of play, other than an empty-netter with 29 seconds left.

Going further back, the deuce against Miami was enjoyable for Appert in principle, if not outcome.
“Miami is the premier team we’ve played this year,” said the coach. “They’re the nastiest team we’ve played…a great combination of skill, physicality and a little bit of nastiness.”

Appert said he missed the two-game sets against one opponent that he used to get out in the WCHA.
“I like the animosity you can get in those Saturday games,” after already playing a team the previous night. “I think in our league it might be easier to sweep [a weekend],” he continued. “It’s more difficult to beat a team two nights in a row.”

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St. Cloud State captain Luedtke earns $7,500 NCHC postgraduate scholarship on way to dental school

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