Maine assistant Matt Thomas consoles Matt Yeats (photo: Jason Waldowski)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Whitehead was quick to point out that Metcalf was speaking from frustration, and that he himself didn’t blame the loss on officiating. “They won because they found a way to win. They battled back. Our hats are off to them, because it was a great comeback.”<\/p>\n
For the Black Bears, who were playing as much for the memory of coach Shawn Walsh, who died of cancer last September as much as for anything else, this loss was particularly emotional.<\/p>\n
“I’m proud of our players, proud of my fellow coaches, and everyone associated with our program,” said Whitehead. “The support we received this year — from everyone connected to it, all the people in the state of Maine — was just unbelievable.”<\/p>\n
For Hauser — often blamed by Minnesota fans when the Gophers came up short in the past — being named to the all-tournament team and winning the national championship in his final game as a Golden Gopher was response enough to his critics.<\/p>\n
“Sometimes when you look at the goaltender as the one person who has to play well,” said Hauser, “I think it’s bogus. If the goaltender was the best player on the team, and he was supposed to carry the team all the way through the playoffs, Ryan Miller would have two national titles, Wade Dubielewicz … would be playing in the final four, Patrick Roy would have had 50 Stanley Cup rings.<\/p>\n
“I can only do my job. I can’t take it any farther than that. I just have to trust everyone else and I hope they trust me back there. That’s the only thing you can do.”<\/p>\n
Hauser finished the game with 42 saves, and a total of 69 in two Frozen Four games.<\/p>\n
“He silenced all critics,” said Pohl, “and what better way to ride off into the sunset?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the end, it was the kid from North Dakota who ended 22 years of Minnesota’s unrequited pursuit of postseason happiness. At 16:58 in overtime, in St. Paul, in front of a partisan crowd of 19,324 fans, Grant Potulny capitalized on a power play to deliver the 2002 NCAA championship to the Minnesota faithful. Matt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":22374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3400"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3400"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}