Weekly countdown
Did you ever want to be a disc jockey? It always seemed like a pretty sweet gig to me, sit around and play music, something I usually do for free anyway. Once a week you do a song countdown, where you relate an interesting anecdote about the song or artist. I can do that.
“Without You”
David Guetta may be able to achieve success with Usher, but Boston University would rather have Canadian sensation Marie-Philip Poulin. The Olympic star rejoined BU a week ago after appearing in only two games in the first half of the season. Once again, she suffered an injury in her second game back. Without her, the Terriers were swept on home ice by Maine by 3-2 and 5-2 scores. BU drops to 11-11-1 on the season and falls behind the Black Bears in the Hockey East standings.
“The Comeback”
Weekly countdowns always have a few digressions for songs not currently on the charts. Speaking of foreign-born hockey players, we’ve seen a number over the years from Sweden, and that’s the country that brought us the Shout Out Louds. The first cut off of their debut release was titled, “The Comeback,” something that Harvard really needed after falling behind Rensselaer 3-0 on Saturday. The Crimson rallied with five goals over the game’s final 24 minutes, including a hat trick by sophomore Gina McDonald. That’s something to shout out loud about.
“You’ve Got a Friend”
Neither James Taylor nor Carole King is that relatable to young people today. One of those young people is St. Cloud State goaltender Julie Friend. Her numbers don’t jump off the page: an .894 save percentage, yielding an average of 3.33 goals per game, and a record of 5-5. Okay, maybe that last number is noteworthy, given her team has a record of 5-17-2. The freshman from Minnetonka, Minn., appears to have solidified the position and helped the Huskies start the long climb up from the bottom. After sweeping the Mavericks in Mankato over the weekend, SCSU is riding a three-game winning streak and has escaped the WCHA basement for the first time in two seasons. As a reward, Friend and the Huskies get to face the top four teams in the league over the next four series.
“It Ain’t Me, Babe”
Bob Dylan is from Minnesota, as are the Gophers, the team that displaced Wisconsin from the top spot in the polls last week for the first time all season. The voters showed a difference of opinion in that regard, as the first-place votes were divided between Cornell and those two WCHA teams. Minnesota sent a clear message to the voters on Friday night, flopping in Duluth by a 4-2 score in its first game at the top, just as it did when the Gophers last scaled to such great heights a couple of years ago. Having shed the weight of those expectations, the Gophers felt secure enough on Saturday to post a 3-0 win.
“Good Feeling”
Dartmouth doesn’t have any players from Flo Rida, but it likely has a few good feelings, not having lost since November. The Big Green started last week by defeating Providence 3-2 at Fenway, then kept rolling with home wins over RPI and Union to push the 2012 record to 5-0-1 and edge into the eighth spot in the PWR.
“Lights”
Ellie Goulding wasn’t at the Ralph Engelstad Arena this weekend, and at one point on Sunday, neither were the lights. A power outage early in the second period added an extra intermission to the second game of the series between Wisconsin and North Dakota. The nation’s point leader, Brianna Decker, had been excused from the contest by that point with a major and a game misconduct for a check from behind on UND’s Jocelyne Lamoureux. Twice the hosts came from two goals down to tie, the final goal to make it 4-4 coming off the stick of Andrea Dalen with 32 seconds left and an extra attacker on the ice. The game had a little of everything, and a lot of some things, including 92 shots on goal and 55 penalty minutes. When Jorid Dagfinrud stopped Carolyne Prévost, who’d scored a hat trick in regulation, in the fourth round of a shootout, UND had a shootout victory, its best result ever versus Mark Johnson. The game was in sharp contrast to Saturday’s series opener, when the Badgers won 8-2 and turned out the lights all on their own.
“You Da One”
So will the Badgers win and tie at UND be enough to move them back atop the polls? Depends on how the pollsters view Cornell’s week. The Big Red defeated Colgate, 3-0, Quinnipiac, 4-1, and Princeton, 1-0. What’s better, three solid wins over middle-of-the-pack teams, or a blowout and a tie at a contender? No word yet on how Rihanna would vote.
