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Tambellini Earns Team Canada Invite

USCHO Staff Report
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Michigan sophomore forward Jeff Tambellini is the lone NCAA representative at the Team Canada World Junior Selection Camp, being held in Kitchener, Ont., Dec. 11-15.

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The invite will keep Tambellini away from the Wolverines’ games on Dec. 12-13 at Nebraska-Omaha. If he makes the team, he will also miss the Great Lakes Invitational. This year’s World Junior Championships are being held Dec. 26, 2003 — Jan. 6, 2004 in Helsinki and Hameenlinna, Finland. Michigan goaltender Al Montoya will participate in the championships for Team USA.

Last year, Cornell goalie Dave LeNeveu was the NCAA’s lone representative on Team Canada, though he eventually lost the No. 1 job to Marc-Andre Fleury, the eventual first overall pick in last June’s NHL Draft.

Tambellini was a first-round pick in June’s draft as well. This season, he has nine goals and 12 points in 14 games. Last season, Tambellini picked up 26 goals and 45 points in 43 games while being named CCHA Rookie of the Year.

2003 Early Signing Period Concludes

USCHO Staff Report
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The National Letter of Intent early signing period concluded on Nov. 19. Players who sign a National Letter of Intent are committed to attend that school for at least one year.

Click for an up to date list of what was announced by the schools.

This Week in the ECAC: Nov. 27, 2003

By Juan Martinez
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What a week.

No sooner had we returned from a weekend road trip of hockey that we found ourselves back at the rink two days later as Harvard and Boston University squared off. Back on the road the next day, it was time for Thanksgiving. This year, it included friends, family and more food than we’ve seen since … well … last Thanksgiving.

Now, as we launch into our holiday-shortened weekly column, we are about seven hours away from hopping back in the car and returning to New England for two more hockey games.

And as we wait and see if the holiday tryptophan will have any long-lasting effects on the ice (or in the press box), the state of the ECAC has changed dramatically in the week that was, as has the league’s role in the national landscape.

We love weeks like this.

Dartmouth (4-1-3, 3-0-3 ECAC) suffered its first loss of the season Tuesday at No. 2 Boston College, but maintains its undefeated, first-place position in the league standings and entered the national polls this week at No. 11. One point behind the Big Green is No. 15 Brown (4-1-1, 4-1-0), which continues to show it will be challenging for the top spot well into March. The only other team undefeated in league play, No. 13 Cornell (3-2-3, 3-0-1) follows in third place with surprising Princeton (3-6-0, 3-4-0) in fourth, and then a pair of four-way ties.

We’ll get to Princeton’s success in a second, but first …

Rensselaer

Rensselaer (6-3-2, 2-1-1), in a tie for fifth, made some major noise last weekend when it swept No. 5 St. Cloud State at home in a pair of one-goal games. The surprising victories boosted the Engineers’ current steak of success to 3-0-1 in the last four games and 6-1-2 in their last nine. What’s more, in Troy, Rensselaer is now 4-0-2, outscoring opponents by a whopping 23-9.

All this from a team not expected to challenge for home ice in the ECAC. Again, one of the tantalizing 12-league squads is proving critics wrong. Stop us if you’ve seen this script before.

“You’re only as good as the leadership in your locker room,” explained head coach Dan Fridgen about the Engineers’ driving force — its senior class. “We didn’t get much respect from the college community in the beginning of the year and they’re out to rectify that.”

Sounds like they’ve made it a central point of motivation.

“I’m not sure that it is motivation,” said Fridgen in disagreement. “They have a lot of pride. It’s more important what we think of ourselves and not what others think of us. But, they want to make sure their senior year is a good one. They have a tremendous work ethic and are very committed to each other.”

After starting the season with two losses, the Engineers have been on a quiet roll until alerting the nation to their recent success with the wins over the Huskies.

“St. Cloud is a very good team with good speed,” said Fridgen. “They received good goaltending on both nights, but we played equally as well.”

Especially between the pipes, where senior Nathan Marsters, winner of back-to-back ECAC Goaltender of the Week awards, has been phenomenal of late. He’s currently 6-1-1 and 3-0-1 in his last four outings with a 1.22 goals against average (GAA) and .960 save percentage over that span.

“He’s been really steady for us,” Fridgen said about his netminder. “He’s playing with a lot of confidence and doing what he needs to do.”

In addition to Marsters, the coach points to the effectiveness of his defensive unit as one of the keys to the turnaround.

“The experience is helping. We’re a year older. The defense as a whole has been real consistent. They are clearing rebounds and the forwards are coming back and playing solid defensively. They guys are also getting more offensive. There’s good chemistry.”

Up front, the Engineers are getting a strong effort from sophomore Kevin Croxton, who leads the team with eight assists and 12 points. Senior Ben Barr is tied with his classmate, defenseman Scott Basiuk, with eight points each.

According to Fridgen, senior Conrad Barnes (2-4-6) has been a central key to the Engineers’ recent success, despite not registering as often on the scoreboard.

“He’s playing real well for us,” said Fridgen. “He’s done a great job on both sides of the puck, but he’s just not receiving the numbers that reflect the opportunities he’s had.”

Despite Rensselaer’s performance and their 4-0-0 mark in one-goal games, the team’s head coach knows that there’s one area in particular that needs improvement.

“We’ve been inconsistent on special teams,” explained Fridgen. “Some weekends it is good and at one point we were doing a fine job on the penalty kill. But it is cyclical. You never really know what you are going to get.

“We react to how other teams are playing. Some teams are more aggressive on the kill and some move the puck very well on the power play.”

Rensselaer will be put to the test again this weekend with games against streaking Massachusetts-Lowell (6-4-3, 4-3-1 Hockey East) and No. 4 New Hampshire (8-3-1, 5-2-1 HEA), which was just upset by Lowell.

An Orange and Black Surprise

With the Tigers’ win over Yale (2-7-0, 2-5-0) on Tuesday, Princeton jumped into fourth place in the ECAC and announced to the league that wins will not come easy for opponents. The victory this week was the third of the season in league play for the Tigers, surpassing their win total of all of last season.

Led by Len Quesnelle, Princeton has played its opponents tough in nearly every contest thus far. They are making more of an impact this season in large part because of the emergence of netminder Eric Leroux, who began the year with stellar performances in St. Cloud. Thus far, Leroux has a 3-6-0 mark with a 3.22 GAA and .906 save percentage overall.

Offensively, the Tigers haven’t exactly scored in bunches, with senior defenseman Steve Slaton leading the team with two goals and five points. While Princeton is getting a balanced contribution from all lines, including juniors Mike Patton (2-2-4) and Neil Stevenson-Moore (1- 3-4), it is sure to improve offensively when senior Chris Owen rediscovers his magic touch. A sniper on left wing, he scored a team-high 17 goals last season, but has yet to register a point in the 2003-04 campaign.

Princeton has won three of its last five games as it heads on a four-game road trip, including a stretch of six of seven away from Hobey Baker Rink. The Tigers are 1-3-0 on the road thus far.

In Case You Missed It

The injury bug continues to plague St. Lawrence (3-8-3, 2-3-0). Defenseman Matt Macdonald returned against Clarkson for the first time since Nov. 7, but fellow blueliners Jim Hakewill and Simon Watson remain out of the lineup.

Hakewill’s injury came two weeks ago against Cornell, while Watson went down in practice prior to the Clarkson game. To make matters worse, redshirt sophomore John Wires left the team after the Colgate-Cornell weekend. As a result, the Saints skate into New England without three defensemen and will likely go with just five in each game, as they did in Potsdam.

Princeton freshman Colin Koch, a native of Vermont, made his collegiate debut last weekend against the Catamounts (0-10-2, 0-6-0). Originally a member of the Tigers’ Class of 2006, he deferred a year to complete rehabilitation on an injury.

In his debut, Koch scored on his first shot in his first shift at the college level. Not too shabby. Oh, and his father, Randy, not only played for UVM, but is a member of the Vermont Athletics Hall of Fame.

Now that’s kismet.

Providence was looking to capture its third straight Mayor’s Cup. Brown was hoping to bring the trophy back to its side of the city. Fate — there she goes again — had something else in mind.

The teams skated to a 1-1 tie on Tuesday, leaving city bragging rights on hold for another year. It was just the second tie in the history of the yearly battle. The two clubs first played in 1927, when the Bears beat the Friars 3-1.

Since the annual game became known as the Mayor’s Cup in 1986, Providence holds 10-6-2 lead in the series. In 1987, the game was canceled when the Brown Zamboni stalled between periods and melted a hole in the ice.

This year’s game was even more special for Bears sophomore Joe Bauer, who played against his father’s alma mater for the first time in his collegiate career.

What’s On Tap

Brown plays host to Clarkson on Friday, the Knights’ first road game since mid-October, trailing in the all-time series 9-47-6. Clarkson (5-3-3, 2-2-1) has not won in Providence since 2001. The Bears trail St. Lawrence all-time 17-30-6, but coach Roger Grillo has a 7-3-2 record over the Saints in his Brown career.

The Bears lead the nation in team defense, allowing only one goal against per game, while boasting the second largest scoring margin in the country (2.40). The penalty killing leads the nation at 94.4% and the power play is clicking at a 28.6% rate, second-best in the country. New weapon, rookie Brian Ihnacak, leads the nation in points per game among all freshmen at 1.40.

The North Country duo also pay a visit to Harvard (3-2-1, 2-2-1), with the Saints skating into the Bright Hockey Center on Black Friday. The Crimson lead the all-time series 37-30-4, including a current five-game unbeaten streak, but are only 3-3-1 against St. Lawrence in their last seven match-ups at home.

Against Clarkson, Harvard trails the all-time series 39-40-8, but holds a 2-0-1 edge over the Knights in recent games. Clarkson has a six-game unbeaten streak at the Bright Center. The Knights’ Mac Faulkner is tied for the ECAC lead with 15 overall points, equaling his season total from a year ago.

Princeton and Yale go at it again, four days after the Tigers’ 3-0 over the Elis, in the only other league contest this weekend. The Bulldogs, who host Princeton, lead the series 113-94-9, but saw their three-game winning streak over the Tigers snapped on Tuesday. The odd fact of the night reveals that Princeton is 0-4-0 on Saturdays, allowing 5.25 goals per game. Yale, meanwhile, has allowed 37.4 shots per game, while only registering 23.9 per contest. The sophomore class for the Elis leads the team in scoring with 11 goals and 12 assists.

Rensselaer travels to Lowell for Friday’s match-up with an 8-8-1 all-time record in the series. Mass-Lowell defeated the Engineers 8-4 last season in Troy and are 2-6-8 in their last eight games against the River Hawks. Rensselaer trails the all-time series against UNH 19-22-0, but posted a 6-0 victory in the Engineers’ last trip to New Hampshire in 1999.

Colgate (4-4-2, 2-2-0) travels out to Western Michigan (6-7-2, 3-5-1) for a two-game set against the Broncos. WMU leads the series 5-2-0 and is 2-0-0 at home against the Raiders. Colgate, however, was victorious in the teams’ last meeting in 1996. The Raiders’ Jon Smyth has seven points in his last three games and leads the team with seven goals. Colgate is 4-1-0 when scoring first.

Cornell hits the ice just once in a Saturday affair in Lynah Rink against Mercyhurst (5-4-0, 3-2-0 Atlantic Hockey). It is the first-ever meeting between the two teams. Sophomore Matt Moulson is tied for the team lead with 15 points and tied for second in the ECAC in overall scoring. He also leads the nation with a 1.88 points per game average. Senior captain Ryan Vesce is second in the ECAC with four power play goals. The Big Red, who lead the ECAC in goals per game (3.50), are 3-0-0 when leading after the first period.

Dartmouth’s lone game this weekend is a Saturday visit to Walter Brown Arena to faceoff against Boston University (3-4-3, 2-3-2 Hockey East). The Terriers lead the all-time series 42-29-1 with the last Big Green win coming on Jan. 6, 1982 in Hanover. Dartmouth’s Dan Yacey had allowed only six goals on the season until allowing seven last weekend. Offensively, after scoring just three power play goals this season, the Big Green went an unimaginable 8-for-10 with the man-advantage against Princeton and Yale.

This Week In Hockey East: Nov. 27, 2003

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River Hawks On a Roll

In last week’s column, yours truly commented about the UMass-Lowell and Boston University series by saying, “BU is a lot better than its 3-2-2 record and Lowell isn’t as good as its 4-4-2.”

Would you believe… a typo? I meant it the other way around?

No, I didn’t think so.

“Isn’t as good as its 4-4-2.”

At the time, that seemed accurate. The River Hawks’ four wins had come against Niagara (6-5-0), Northeastern (0-8-2) and Bentley (1-9-2) and one of the ties had been with Canisius (1-7-5). Not exactly the iron of college hockey.

In short, Lowell looked pretty close to what was expected of it in the preseason, namely an extremely young team that was a year or maybe two away from making a mark in Hockey East. Chris Davidson had been a major surprise in goal and Ben Walter was scoring goals like there was no tomorrow, but this would still be a team that would finish somewhere in the sixth-to-eighth place region in the standings. And it would be a big longshot in a weekend series against BU followed by a Tuesday evening clash at New Hampshire.

(By comparison, BU’s two losses to that point had been at Maine and to UNH so there was every reason to believe that the Terriers would once again be one of the nation’s better teams. More on that next week…)

When asked what his hopes had been going into that three-game gauntlet, UML coach Blaise MacDonald says, “To survive.”

Which is more than just another of the quipster’s best lines.

“Honestly, I think fear is a great motivator,” he says. “If you have the proper approach when you play great teams, it’s going to make you better. You may not come out with the win, but if you can take something from that experience it will make you better if you have the right attitude. We have a great group of young men that have that type of an attitude.

“I was just hoping for their spirit and confidence not to be shattered and then we’d take some good experiences out of it.”

Instead of their spirit and confidence getting shattered, MacDonald may now need to deal with a team turned egomaniacal after taking a stunning five of six points. The River Hawks marched into Walter Brown Arena and defeated BU, 3-1, tied the Terriers 3-3 in the back end of the home-and-home series and then stunned fourth-ranked UNH, 5-4, at the Whittemore Center.

“They say any time you get points in Hockey East it’s a good thing, but being able to get them against such good teams [makes it really special],” MacDonald says. “Three of our last five Hockey East games have been against teams in the top five of the country. All of our last five league games have been against top 10 teams.

“And only one of them has been at home; four have been on the road. That’s a great accomplishment for a team with the makeup [of youth] we have. It gives us a level of accomplishment and a sense of confidence.”

You don’t take five-of-six points like Lowell did without a total team effort, but the obvious individual heroes begin with Davidson stopping 56 BU shots to earn the Hockey East Defensive Player of the Week Award and then adding another 16 against UNH. And Elias Godoy will similarly be a strong contender for next week’s league honors after his hat trick and assist downed the Wildcats.

“You have to start with your goaltender,” MacDonald says. “He’s given us a level of calmness in all of our games. With that, you can build out. I think our special teams are much improved and in particular our penalty killing. That was a key to a lot of our victories. [Assistant coaches] Kenny Rausch, Bob Ware and Chris MacKenzie have done a great job with the special teams.

“Then when you look at individuals, guys like Andrew Martin, Elias Godoy and Ben Walter have been catalysts on the offensive end. And Matt Collar has been a Rock of Gibraltar on defense. That core of players has really been a key to our success.”

With a 6-4-2 record and some impressive feathers in the River Hawk caps, it’s only natural to wonder if the bar of expectations has been raised. How good can this young team be?

“I know this is coach-talk, but we’re still taking it one day at a time here,” MacDonald says. “For most of these Hockey East games that we’ve played, we’ve dressed 17 freshmen and sophomores. So we can’t afford to handicap even how we’re going to get out of bed tomorrow. That approach is giving us a chance at success.

“Our quote for practice today is, ‘If what you did yesterday looks big to you, you haven’t done anything today.’ That’s an appropriate quote to use for today’s practice, but it’s really an appropriate quote for our team. Coming into the season I was [thinking], ‘Okay in the second semester we’ll have [goaltender transfer] John Yaros, who will be eligible and our team will be more mature so that will help. But I never imagined that we would have already achieved our win total from last year.”

UMass Is For Real

Going into last weekend, Massachusetts had played only one nationally ranked opponent, Boston College, and had lost that one, 4-1. So questions remained as to just how good the Minutemen were. A record of 8-2-0 was impressive, but just how impressive?

The first significant step had been to win their season’s series with Providence, a team that has been in and out of the rankings.

“Everybody looks at the big four as being Maine, New Hampshire, BU and BC,” coach Don “Toot” Cahoon said after taking two-of-three from the Friars. “Then there are five very respectable programs and to begin to challenge the big four you have to get to the top of those five. So it’s nice to know that this series is out of the way and if we see Providence again we know it will be for something even more significant.”

Last weekend was the next step to take as UMass hosted Maine. A loss might well mean that the Minutemen were the class of the “Other Five,” but at this point were still “Not Ready For Prime Time Players.”

In that 1-1 tie, UMass again displayed the team defense that has been such a critical part of its success. So far, the Minutemen rank third in Hockey East, allowing just 2.25 goals per game. And at least in recent critical games, they’ve shown particular defensive strength in the third period, holding both Providence and Maine to just six shots in the third period (and none in overtime to the Black Bears). Having watched the PC game live, the six shots were actually an inaccurate measure of UMass’ defensive prowess. There really were no quality opportunities allowed.

Combined with the progress of goaltender Gabe Winer, who held off Maine early, UMass looks like the real deal.

As defensemen Thomas Pock noted after the PC win, “If we shut them out and give them as few shots as possible, we [know] that Gabe [is] going to be there for the rest of them.”

An Impressive Freshman Class

UNH’s freshman class had itself quite a weekend in its home-and-home series with Northeastern. The rookies scored all three goals in a 3-2 win at Matthews Arena and then added another three back home at the Whittemore Center one night later in a 5-2 win. Daniel Winnik and Brett Hemingway scored in both games while Jacob Micflikier and Dan Travis tallied on the road and at home, respectively. Hemingway added a third goal on Tuesday against Lowell.

All this for a program which such depth that historically it’s been very difficult for freshmen to get much playing time. Yet collectively this freshman class already has scored 15 times, led by Micflikier’s eight.

“They’re talented kids and I think the [assistant] coaches did a great job [recruiting them],” coach Dick Umile says. “People will see what they’re capable of doing. We could be a pretty good team by the end of the season with them coming along.

“They do good things. They have good vision out there. They handle the puck well and shoot the puck. We’re really happy with our younger players and we’ve been using a lot of them.”

Winnik adds, “We seem to be producing a lot. Flick [Micflikier], of course, is producing more than others. He’s having a great season so far. It was just a matter of time before the rest of us started chiming in on the goals.”

Keeping The Faith

Northeastern may be 0-8-2, but you wouldn’t know it from the comments of NU coach Bruce Crowder.

“As strange as it sounds, we’re a good hockey team,” he says. “It’s not showing up in the wins column, but I like this team. I like their youth. I like their skating ability. We just have to score more goals and keep getting the goaltending that we’ve gotten over the last two or three games from Keni [Gibson].”

Despite the mounting losses, he sees a continued positive attitude among the Huskies.

“They’ve been great,” he says. “They’ve been fantastic. The work ethic has been good. Right now, they’re obviously down and disappointed, but their work ethic — the off-ice [commitment] and all that stuff — has been fantastic. We have to continue as coaches to find ways to put more offense up.”

Umile agrees with Crowder’s assessment.

“They’re a good team,” Umile said on Saturday after his team defeated the Huskies. “I feel for Bruce. His team is well-coached, they work hard and they’re going to win some hockey games. I hope they win lots of games after tonight. And they will.”

Ratings Talk

Could Hockey East be any better placed in the current poll? Three of the four top teams are from the league and four of the top seven!

(“The Top 15 As I See It” returns next week. It’s a long, boring story. Yes, even longer and more boring than my usual stories.)

A few readers wondered what hallucinogens I’d been ingesting when I picked St. Cloud a week ago as my number one team. Did I really think the Huskies were the strongest team in the country? Of course, virtually every sarcastic remark was made after their double dip to Rensselaer. (Trashtalking Rule Number One: if you think I’ve dissed your team or propped up its rival, you have to state your case before the games. Having 20-20 hindsight and a buck-fifty gets you a cup of coffee. No more.)

The truth is that I had my doubts about St. Cloud. But my top 15 isn’t based on which teams I expect to play for a national championship this year. Otherwise, I’d just put Boston College first followed by North Dakota and New Hampshire and be done with it. Instead, I contend that rankings should be based on performance and St. Cloud and Colorado College were the only non-Ivies with only a single loss. St. Cloud’s schedule had been soft until the previous weekend, but the Huskies won me over with a split at North Dakota. That legitimized their 8-1-1 record.

And if you’re wondering why I had dropped North Dakota down to third despite the split, it’s because it was then mid-November and the Sioux had yet to hop on a bus or plane for even a single road trip. Yes, nine games into the season and every last one had been in the comfy confines of The Ralph. So there had to be some discounting of their 7-2-0 record.

Now that St. Cloud has taken the pratfall, however, their performance warrants much less lofty treatment.

Stunning Statistics

Brown goaltender Yann Danis has a 0.82 GAA and a .971 save percentage. .971!

Division III independent Castleton State must not only try to be competitive in this its inaugural season, but plays 13 of its 19 games on the road.

Wesleyan goaltender Jim Panczykowski leads D-III goaltenders with a .966 save percentage. (Hey, you had to know you were going to get some good Cardinals talk with my son on the team…)

Quotes Of Note

  • From CSTV’s Dave Starman: in light of Mike Ayers’ four consecutive shutouts over the Terriers, BU coach Jack Parker was asked what he was suggesting to his players. “Get him to graduate.”
  • Parker, on what would have happened in the Terriers’ loss to Lowell if they had played as hard and well in the second period as in the first: “If it was raining in here I’d be wet.”
  • Making note of his team’s extreme youth, Blaise MacDonald said, “We’re the only Division I team with Similac as our team sponsor.”
  • From Scott Weighart’s game recap: after contact from a BU player, UML goalie Chris Davidson went down hard and stared up at the ceiling. Afterward, someone asked him if he was hurt. “Not at all,” Davidson said. “I was trying to get a penalty.” When someone noted that he did seem to recover rapidly, he added, “I got up quick because there was too much water; I was getting soaked.”
  • NU coach Bruce Crowder was none too happy with the officiating after his team lost to UNH, 3-2. Hockey East coaches, however, can’t explicitly voice their complaints so sometimes subtlety is required. After the game, Crowder said, “I’ve got a sore throat. That’s my general comment.” A reporter then asked, “Was that there before the game started?” Crowder replied, “No, I felt fine.”

    Well Wishes And Congrats

    Congratulations to Blaise MacDonald and his wife Carol on the birth of their daughter, Carly Christine.

    Best wishes to BU athletic trainer Larry Venis, who is still recovering from the scary results of being hit with a puck in the Terriers’ game at Merrimack two weeks ago. LINK: http://www.uscho.com/news/2003/11/21_007344.php

    And our thoughts are all with Colorado College assistant coach Norm Bazin, whose severe injuries in a car accident while on a recruiting trip have left him (as of this writing) in critical condition in the intensive care ward of a Washington hospital. Bazin played for Lowell from 1990-94 and I always loved the way the Tully Forum announcer pronounced his last name to rhyme with paisan. So here’s a wish for Bazin and his family: Hey, paisan, get safely out of that intensive care unit and be able to enjoy the birth of your first child in February.

    Press Box Nonsense

    At the UNH-Maine game a few weeks back, the Whittemore Center public address announcer informed the crowd in the second period that if the Wildcats scored again there would be a small fries from McDonald’s for everyone in the arena.

    Press box wags being what they are, the silly speculation began.

    One small fries for the entire crowd? How small would you have to slice each fry to split it evenly? Would there be a miracle of Biblical proportions? Would all our columns next week be titled, “The Feeding of the 6,501?”

    When UNH did score, the PA announcer informed the fans to bring their tickets to the designated golden arches. To which the press box skinflints replied, “You have to have a ticket?”

    Okay, maybe you had to be there.

    Correction

    I did err last week when I wrote that Lowell Assistant Director of Athletic Media Relations Dan Fisher is as nice of a guy as he is a horrible poker player. In truth, neither Ghandi, Mother Theresa nor Florence Nightingale was that nice.

    Trivia Contest

    Before getting to this week’s business, here’s a note on Scott Kaplan’s cheer of “Hey BU, This Our House! Go Hawks!” If it looked like it was missing a word, you were right. “This Our House” should seemingly be “This Is Our House.” In fact, my ever diligent editor corrected the “mistake” which then had to be reintroduced into the column because it had been intentional.

    You see, a while back a Lowell fan had prepared a sign for a BU series on which he’d intended to write “This Is Our House.” Somehow, however, he left out the word “is”. (My guess is that there was too much Jack Daniel’s in the marinade for the tailgating steak tips. In the words of Homer Simpson, “Mmm, good.”) Undeterred, the fan flashed the sign “This Our House” much to the merriment of all. Scott paid tribute to that piece of Lowell-BU heritage.

    Onward…

    Last week’s question asked in what way Maine’s schedule this season is unprecedented. As a hint I added that the answer went beyond playing an individual team or league for the first time.

    The answer is that the Black Bears’ first eight Hockey East games are against eight different opponents. In every other year, the league schedule has included at least one two-game series before Maine had faced the entire Hockey East lineup (for obvious geographic reasons). First to answer was Greg Leclair, whose cheer is:

    “Fill the steins to dear old Maine!”

    This week’s question pays tribute to Norm Bazin, hoping that his emergence from his hospital bed will match his senior year emergence at Lowell. The question is how many goals did Bazin score in his freshman, sophomore and junior years combined and how did that compare to his senior year performance? Email my trivia account with your answers. The winner will be notified by Tuesday; 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…

    I’d been like a little kid waiting for Christmas. On the day itself, I couldn’t think straight. I was totally useless at work. Even more so, that is, than usual.

    I was a basket case. My son, Ryan, was going to play his first college hockey game.

    When my wife and I walked up to the ticket window, the guy looked at us rather strangely. Did we know the game wouldn’t start for another hour and a half? Yes, we knew. We needed warmups to begin and the sooner the better. For days, the first words out of our mouths each morning would be, “T-minus five days and counting….” and then “T-minus four days and counting…” and then “T-minus three days and counting….” ”

    As luck would have it, Wesleyan was playing at Salem State so even though it was a road game, it was right in our back yard. By the time the game started, the collection of his 50 or so fans included: aunts, uncles, cousins, a grandmother, his girlfriend and her friends, his high school team (Pingree), his high school coach, Buddy Taft, and various other high school officials and parents of high school friends.

    When he stepped onto the ice for his first shift, it was a very emotional moment. Ryan had been one of those kids who couldn’t get enough of the sport, grabbing almost every possible power-skating opportunity and other such things to make himself better. There would be the occasional parent who would look at his Metro Hockey League road games to Springfield — a two-plus hour ride — and wonder, “You think he’s going to be in the NHL?”

    No, he wasn’t going to play in the NHL. But that love for the game and that work ethic helped him get into one of the elite schools in the country, one of the “Little Ivies.” And it had him on one of the top three lines and the penalty-killing unit on a team with seven senior forwards.

    So this was a fulfillment of a dream. And when your kid’s dreams come true, it doesn’t get much better than that.

    Wesleyan actually had Salem State — a “team receiving votes” in the D-III poll — on the run, leading them 2-1 in the third period before the Vikings came back to win it. But the Cardinals rebounded with 3-0 wins on Saturday over Southern Maine and on Monday over Nichols to get the season started on a positive note. And Ryan got his first point with a nice pass to the low slot which Pat Butsch converted.

    So this proud father is sitting back on this holiday with so very much to be thankful for.

    • This Week in Women’s Hockey: Nov. 27, 2003

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    The last time Dartmouth and Minnesota-Duluth dropped the puck, over 4,800 packed the Duluth Entertainment and Convention Center to see UMD begin its run for a third straight Frozen Four title. The intensity of the building that night was unprecedented for a women’s college game, and it set the stage for a grander atmosphere in the championship game two days later.

    The No. 2 Big Green and the No. 4 Bulldogs face off Friday and Saturday nights in a rematch of UMD’s 5-2 NCAA semifinal victory last March. The stakes are nowhere near as high this time in Duluth’s first-ever appearance at Thompson Arena, and 1,000 fans will be tough to come by during a Thanksgiving weekend. But if any Eastern venue can bring a good crowd at this time of year, it’s Thompson, which drew more than 900 for games against Vermont and Yale, and a season-high crowd of 1,367 against Princeton.

    An additional carrot for the Dartmouth faithful is that the home team is favored, unlike last season when UMD defeated the Big Green three times. There are plenty of reasons for the Bulldogs not to win this weekend — in particular, their injuries, their recent sparse playing schedule and their disjointed practice schedule. Yet despite that, no one in green is about to look past the three-time defending NCAA champs.

    UMD-Dartmouth isn’t the only matchup between nationally ranked teams in New Hampshire this weekend. No. 3 Harvard visits No. 8 UNH on Sunday in what was the best show in women’s hockey four years ago, though this matchup has been one-sided lately with Harvard winning 10 straight meetings dating back to the 1998-99 season. Other rivalries such as Princeton-Yale and Brown-Providence provide intrigue.

    The schedule outside of Hanover does have plenty to offer, but leave no doubt that UMD-Dartmouth is the most notable women’s hockey matchup of this young season.

    Wanted: Anyone Who Can Skate

    A couple weeks ago, the UMD injury report was already looking pretty bad.

    Now it’s worse.

    "It’s not that it’s new to us, just that this is actually the worst it’s ever been."

    — UMD coach Shannon Miller, on the Bulldogs’ injury woes.

    Duluth is missing two of its forwards for months, and another can skate but can’t do much else. The specialty teams have not practiced together this month prior to Monday. The Bulldogs have not played together in a pressure situation for three weeks and they are still so desperate for bodies that they’re suiting up their third-string goaltender as a skater in practice.

    No coach in the country has had more experience dealing with such disruptions than UMD’s Shannon Miller, who guided her team to an NCAA title in 2002 despite missing several players in February for the 2002 Olympics. UMD has overcome problems in the past thanks to its experienced goaltending and outstanding depth. Miller admits that this team has neither.

    “It’s not that it’s new to us, just that this is actually the worst it’s ever been,” Miller said.

    Not to mention, this disjointedness all comes at a time when the Bulldogs enter a make-or-break stretch of ten games in a row against top six teams.

    “This [stretch] is going to basically dictate where we finish at the end of the season,” Miller said.

    Duluth has been idle two of the last three weeks with games against North Dakota in between. Typically, a team recovering from injuries could heal players or make adjustments. In this case, none of the injured players are back, and other short-term illnesses interrupted the practice schedule. Now the Bulldogs are more rusty than ready.

    “It’s been a month since we’ve played a really competitive team and had to really step up and play under pressure,” Miller said. “That’s a long time, so I’m a little bit worried about how we’re going to come out of the gate.”

    The rustiness is most problematic on the Bulldogs specialty teams. Already, the power play (just 14th nationally) and penalty kill (just 18th nationally) are among the team’s most visible weaknesses, and Miller has had little time to fix the problem. U.S. Olympian Jenny Potter, naturally a key player on the top units, was out sick all of last week. Prior to that, most of the team was playing in the Four Nations Cup in Sweden.

    Those disruptions leave UMD just three days of practice this entire month to prepare its best specialty units. They will likely be put frequently to use, as Dartmouth leads the nation in both penalties committed and penalties drawn per game this season.

    Miller once attributed her team’s early season specialty team struggles to a disjointed practice schedule that didn’t allow for the team to practice regularly together. The team amended that situation in October by holding more early-morning practices. Now, the Bulldogs are down to just one 6 a.m. practice with the rest at 3:30. There are still academic conflicts that prevent players from coming to practice on Tuesday, however.

    While the practice schedule is frustrating, the injuries are the greater problem. Larissa Luther, who scored the first NCAA goal against Dartmouth last season, is now expected to be out until February with a broken leg. Nora Tallus, the junior forward who clinched the last NCAA title for Duluth, came back from the Four Nations Cup with her wrists in casts. Miller says Tallus can skate and forecheck this weekend, but she can’t pass or shoot. Junior forward Megan Stotts is likely done for the season.

    One fix for Miller against North Dakota was to dress third-string goaltender Kasperak, but she said there is no way she would play against an opponent of Dartmouth’s caliber. Kasperak has been valuable in providing pressure for the Duluth breakout and specialty teams in practice.

    “It’s kind of comical, really,” Miller said.

    A Difference in Depth

    Despite the injuries and the youth in net, UMD hasn’t given up more than three goals in a game since the season opener. Yet Dartmouth has been even better defensively, keeping opponents under three goals all season. Miller doubts her team’s current trend will last the weekend.

    “We have two freshman goaltenders who have not yet seen a team like Dartmouth this year,” she said. “I am anticipating they might have a little bit of trouble with that. I know Dartmouth has snipers.”

    Dartmouth netted 10 goals combined last weekend against two tough defensive teams in Princeton and Yale, a big improvement over four goals against Connecticut the week before. Yet the power play still struggled last weekend going just 1-for-14.

    One explanation for the overall improvement is Dartmouth coach Mark Hudak’s decision to switch up Meagan Walton and Tiffany Hagge on the first and second lines. That move freed up Katie Weatherston to play wing on the second line where she had centered, and Cherie Piper to play center on the first line when she had played wing. It also reunited a first-line combination of Hagge, Piper and Gillian Apps that had played together much of last season.

    Even though the change was implemented on Tuesday, the team was rolling by Friday. The second line produced the first goal against Princeton. Piper had five assists as a center, and Hagge had a hat trick as first-line wing against Yale.

    Hudak said the move was one he had been considering since the start of the season and he wanted to give it a shot. So far, so good.

    “I certainly think a line of Walton, Piper, and Apps is very strong, but after putting Tiffany in the wing they continued to do well,” Hudak said. “I think putting Walton in the center position [on the second line] frees up Katie a bit on the wing, and Walton just does a super job defensively in the zone.”

    Despite the adversity Duluth has faced, Dartmouth is not about to underestimate the Bulldogs’ national team talent on either end of the ice. UMD’s blueliners include two from the Finnish national team, and one each from the U.S. national and Canadian U-22 teams. The UMD first line of Potter, Canadian Olympian Caroline Ouellette and freshman Jessica Koizumi has been as dangerous as any in the country, and Koizumi has shown she is capable of finishing against one of the nation’s best goaltenders in St. Lawrence’s Rachel Barrie. Like the Duluth freshmen, Dartmouth sophomore goaltender Stephanie Cochran could be put to the toughest test of her career to date.

    “Duluth certainly has one or two lines that are very strong and their defensive core is very solid,” said Hudak, who expects a fast-paced game. “I think both teams are going to match up well with each other. You hope both teams play up to their potential and it’ll be a great hockey game.”

    To survive, UMD will have to rely on a smaller pool of players than ever before. Playing two tough 60-minute games against a Dartmouth team loaded with talent will be no easy task.

    “It’s been tough for us so far — bad practice times, a lot of injuries — but having said that we have a solid plan that everyone has bought in to, and we all know that we need to get the next level by this Friday,” Miller said. “We have been practicing that way, our mindset is that way, and now we have to see if physically we can get there.”

    Obstruct This

    One sight that has become all too common at Thompson Arena this season is officials making the ‘O’ shape with their hands. Obstruction penalties were a point of emphasis in this year’s NCAA hockey rulebook, and officials reminded both Dartmouth and Princeton of that before Friday’s game. The result was a tightly called game with 22 penalties, including three for obstruction.

    “I think in a way they were asking us both to play a different style of hockey then either of us wanted to play,” Hudak said. “There were a lot of penalties in the second half of the game and it really disrupted the rhythm for both teams.”

    Princeton forward Susan Hobson and coach Jeff Kampersal expressed similar views in the Daily Princetonian.

    Friday wasn’t even the worst Dartmouth day for obstruction this season. There were four such calls in the season opener against Providence.

    Hudak noted that ECAC D-I women’s coordinator of officials Gerry Toner was in attendance on Friday and hoped that the officials would re-evaluate their methods.

    “I think there’s a happy medium there,” Hudak said. “Before there was too much obstruction not being called. I think it went to them calling it extremely tightly.”

    Tennis Anyone?

    There was also a delay in the first period of the Dartmouth-Princeton game, this one caused by the fans who pummeled the ice with tennis balls after the first Dartmouth goal. Hudak has mixed feelings about the tradition usually reserved for the men. After all, he coaches a Dartmouth team that scored goals in bunches in its first home game against Providence.

    “I understand it’s a tradition and it’s fun and it adds another component to the game, but at the same time it’s a disruption both ways,” Hudak said. “We’ve got some momentum going, we’ve just scored a goal, now we’ve got to sit there and wait for them to pick up tennis balls.”

    “But again, it’s something neither myself nor the team has a lot of control over, so you just roll with it.”

    ‘Bourdon’ School

    In terms of injuries and off-the-ice disruptions, Duluth might be the national leader, but New Hampshire isn’t far behind as it hosts Harvard on Sunday.

    One distraction that is thankfully past the Wildcats is the eligibility controversy over freshman goaltender Melissa Bourdon. She won her reinstatement on an appeal in early November after questions over her academic credentials kept her off the ice for all UNH practices.

    Despite the inconvenience, Bourdon has put up the best numbers of any Wildcat goaltender so far. She shut out Princeton and Northeastern, too of the best teams UNH has faced.

    Before being reinstated, Bourdon had stayed as involved with the team as allowed, so she would be ready to step right in if the time came.

    “It was definitely tough, but it was a learning experience as well,” Bourdon said. “I’ve definitely come out of it lot stronger. I got to know my teammates really well through it all. The support I got from the whole UNH community was great. It really motivated me to be ready to come back.”

    She’s been so ready that she earned three of the next four starts in net — not an easy task with two other goaltenders in Maghan Grahn and Brittany Busa also fighting for the spot.

    “Our staff feels [Bourdon] has deserved the opportunity to start back-to-back this weekend,” said Wildcat coach Brian McCloskey after Bourdon gave up just two goals against Northeastern in two games this weekend. “So we’re just going to go game-to-game and the other two will see some action as well. Melissa’s certainly playing good hockey right now — hard to argue with that.”

    The most recent shutout came despite several Northeastern breakaway chances, but Bourdon was up to the task.

    “It’s really a mental game,” Bourdon said. “You just have to take it one step at a time, and be patient when they’re coming down, try to read the play, where they go, and not overreact and play the puck too quick.”

    Bourdon did not get the start in Tuesday’s 5-2 defeat against Brown, and she will await her coach’s decision for the Harvard game.

    “The other two goaltenders, we’re all in the same boat now, we all hoped to get a shot and get in there,” she said. “Every one of them has been doing a great job. It’s tough being three freshmen when we have such big shoes to fill from Jen Huggon last year, but the three goaltenders seem to be consistent and all three of us are ready to go when coach needs us.”

    The Crimson Nemesis

    The Wildcats have not beaten Harvard in 10 meetings, the most recent of which was the most one-sided — a 7-1 Crimson win with a 51-3 shot margin. Those 10 also include the epic UNH-Harvard ECAC and national championships in 1999 that each went into overtime. Prior to this 10-game win streak, the Crimson was 0-22-1 against the Wildcats.

    UNH will be hard-pressed to reverse the current trend with its recent string of injuries. Captain Kristen Thomas sprained her ankle against Northeastern on Saturday and was out for Tuesday’s loss against Brown. She has been the defensive leader and the main source of offense on the power play. Her health will be a major factor in Sunday’s game.

    UNH is even greener than expected at forward, with Vicki Davis lost for the season with injuries and Randi MacMaster out this semester for academic reasons. Add to that the recent two-week absence of Hockey East Rookie of the Year Lindsay Hanson, though she has come back strong within the past week. Those disturbances have resulted in a lot of playing time for freshmen. Nicole Hekle has been foremost among them with six goals.

    “We’ve been getting good contributions from the freshmen,” McCloskey said. “We’ve had to … we don’t have any other bodies.”

    McCloskey noted after the Northeastern sweep that even though his team’s record isn’t as strong as a year ago, this team has been just as good, which is quite an achievement given its injuries and youth.

    Unlike last year’s team, this team has beaten both St. Lawrence and Princeton.

    “We’ve had our share of first-half injuries, which makes the way the team’s been playing even more impressive to me,” McCloskey said. “We got a lot of reasons why we could not be playing good hockey. And we’ve been playing pretty darn well even in the games where we haven’t come out on top.”

    It will be tough for New Hampshire’s young lines to crack a Harvard defense that has given up just one goal in five games.

    “One goal in five games — that’s a reflection of how much we are emphasizing defense this year,” said Harvard co-captain Angela Ruggiero. “Last year obviously we played good defense but I think it’s going to be more of a priority this year just because the games are going to be a lot closer.”

    Defensive zone coverage was one of Harvard’s biggest targets for improvement during the 11-day break between its 3-0 win over Providence and a sweep of Niagara.

    “We spent a lot of time on defensive zone coverage, because I didn’t feel we were that good at it against Providence and that’s something we’re going have to be really good at,” said Harvard coach Katey Stone. “Goal-scoring often times takes care of itself. We’ve got plenty of kids who can put the puck in the net. We’ve got to take care of our own end first.”

    Harvard also drastically switched it its lines from the first two weeks of the season, mixing in more of the freshmen with the veterans. Freshman Katie Johnston made the biggest impact, scoring the first goal in both Niagara victories. She had missed Harvard’s first games due to the overlap of the soccer and hockey seasons.

    CHA Grows Up Fast

    Despite two defeats to Harvard this week, there was still plenty of good news for Niagara coach Margot Page.

    On Monday, Ohio State announced that it would leave the WCHA for the CHA, giving the CHA six teams for next year — enough to qualify for an automatic bid in an eight-team tournament. Page praised Ohio State for considering what was best for women’s hockey in making its decision.

    “We know our league is strong and Ohio State adds to that strength and depth,” Page said. “We know deep down they’re going to help us. We’re very excited.”

    The distance from Niagara to Ohio State is just a six-hour bus ride — what Page considers a short trip. She looks forward to Ohio State joining the local rivalries that have already developed between her program, Mercyhurst, Findlay and Wayne State.

    Goulet Fund Update

    Niagara has met its goal of raising $1500 for Jennifer Goulet’s first thyroid cancer treatment.

    Page talked to Goulet last week and found that her spirits were up. Goulet, a recent Niagara hockey alum, was expecting to get results from the first treatment this week, and she was hoping to play hockey in Switzerland for the next few months.

    Now that the fund has met its initial goal, it is hoping to cover costs for a second treatment coming up in March and additional related costs to the family. Check donations made payable to the Jennifer Goulet Fund are still being accepted at the following mailing address:

    Attn: Niagara head coach Margot Page
    Dwyer Arena
    Niagara University, NY 14109

    This Week in the WCHA: Nov. 27, 2003

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    Double the Pleasure or Double the Pain?

    Some thoughts this week, while kicking around the idea of a double College Hockey Showcase each season:

  • Our thoughts are with Norm Bazin and his family. Bazin was seriously injured in a car accident while on a recruiting trip last Thursday. As of the middle of this week, Bazin remained in critical condition and in intensive care.
  • Welcome back and thank you to North Dakota media relations director Dan Benson, who spent more than five months deployed in Kuwait and Iraq as a member of the U.S. Army Reserve. He returns to his job with the Sioux in a pretty good spot — No. 1 in the country.
  • Yes, that was Adam Berkhoel who gave up eight goals to North Dakota last Friday. In defense of the Denver goaltender, however, he faced 44 shots on goal. Very un-Pioneers-goalie-like, though.
  • And finally, Michigan coach Red Berenson mentioned this week that it would be interesting to extend the College Hockey Showcase to twice a season, one weekend at the WCHA teams and one weekend at the CCHA teams. It doesn’t sound close to happening yet, but the one thing that could sway the coaches to push it through is the extra opportunity to earn bonus points on the RPI.

    Tough Times

    At least publicly, Colorado College’s players and coaches have held up well in the last week despite tough times in their program.

    Bazin’s injury was announced to the players during the day last Friday, before they played Wisconsin in Madison. CC coach Scott Owens said he didn’t give his players the full report until after Friday’s game.

    “We had to go through it,” Owens said. “It was pretty glum in our meeting, but you know what, when they strapped on the skates, I thought they played pretty hard.”

    Owens said he got about 25 phone calls from coaches around the country last Saturday, with many of them making the correct-but-painful observation that it’s a wonder this doesn’t happen more often, considering the number of road trips coaches make.

    The Tigers got through the weekend with a pair of 2-2 ties against the Badgers. They were down 2-0 after 40 minutes Saturday night, but rallied behind a pair of Joey Crabb goals.

    “It was a little emotional [Friday] night,” Crabb said. “It’s a tough thing to go through, but hopefully everything works out. We know we’ve still got to focus on the job at hand. It’s great to come out with a point. We’re all thinking about coach, but we’ll be playing for him.”

    What Does This Mean?

    One has to wonder how to interpret the following quote from St. Cloud State coach Craig Dahl, to USCHO’s Jayson Moy after the Huskies were swept by Rensselaer last weekend:

    “Things have a way of evening out over time,” Dahl said. “I have a saying that the cream always rises to the top, you have the half-and-half in the middle and the crud on the bottom, so that’s what will happen.”

    Before last weekend, the Huskies were the cream of the WCHA with an 8-1-1 record after splitting with North Dakota in Grand Forks.

    So where does that put St. Cloud now? Certainly not the crud, although letting leads slip away and getting beat in the third period twice last weekend was somewhat cruddy for Huskies fans.

    But take into consideration that Adam Coole, the goaltender who has reproved himself and is one of only two with perfect records this season (North Dakota’s Jordan Parise is the other), was out last weekend with a groin injury.

    So judging them on last weekend is about as good as, well, judging them on their overall start to the season. It’s only a piece of the picture.

    “We thought we’d be in a rebuilding year and we got a few bounces early and that got us off on the right foot,” Dahl said. “All my guys are thinking that we have a chance to win the league title, but realistically it’s a rebuilding year and when things don’t go your way you have to keep your head up, keep on trucking and keep trying to improve and stay positive.”

    Pictured

    Wisconsin defenseman Ryan Suter got some face time on ESPN.com this week, when the Web site’s Page 2 “Here’s Looking at You” feature put his mug alongside that of actor Sean Astin of “Rudy” and “Lord of the Rings” fame.

    Suter didn’t see the resemblance.

    Nearly Perfect

    Getting back to St. Cloud State for a moment: The Huskies are 23-0-1 all-time against Alaska-Anchorage at the National Hockey Center.

    But just keep reminding yourself that there are no gimmes here.

    Bad Start, Bad Finish

    We don’t want to beat a dead horse by mentioning again that Alaska-Anchorage is having trouble scoring goals, but the stat that shows the consequences is that, in 10 games, the Seawolves have scored only four first-period goals and just four in the third.

    If you can’t build a lead early or add onto it late, it’s tough to be consistently successful. Still, the Seawolves are 1-1-1 in their last three games and go to St. Cloud this weekend off a bye, so maybe they’re ready to shake out of it.

    Still the Captain

    Owens and the rest of the Colorado College team knew Colin Stuart wasn’t going to play at Wisconsin last weekend — he’s out with a shoulder injury.

    But Owens thought his young team still needed its captain, so Stuart came along for the ride.

    “If it wasn’t for the fact that we were young and fragile, we wouldn’t have brought him,” Owens said. “But we’re just in a situation where we need him. He biked, he stretched, he led the stretch in the locker room and the warmups and all those types of things. It’s very important for our young team.”

    Sophomore defenseman Mark Stuart has taken over wearing the “C” for his brother on the ice, but hasn’t needed to take over in the locker room yet.

    “He’s still been a big presence even though he’s hurt,” Crabb said. “And Mark Stuart, he’s stepped up awesome as a captain. And then even the younger guys and the older guys who aren’t captains, they’ve really stepped up and had a big leadership role. It’s been good.”

    Falling Off?

    The testament to Chris Conner’s start to the season is that the Michigan Tech forward has not scored in five games, yet he remains the nation’s leader in goals with 12.

    It’s probably no coincidence, though, that the Huskies are 0-4-1 in those last five games.

    The Energizer

    Keith Ballard’s return to the lineup after missing seven games with a knee injury appeared to be crucial to Minnesota.

    Ballard, the Gophers’ top defenseman, had two assists in a 6-2 victory over Michigan Tech that snapped a five-game winless streak. He scored his second goal of the season in a 3-0 victory a night later, which provided Minnesota’s first sweep of the season.

    Taking the Third

    Despite injury, illness and an emotional drain, Colorado College was able to regain its form as one of the best third-period teams in the WCHA last Saturday.

    And Crabb wasn’t surprised.

    “A lot of times whenever you’re hurt or sick, something, it almost seems like you buckle down even harder and you battle even harder because you know you’re a little down,” he said. “I wasn’t too surprised. We’ve got a lot of character.”

    The Tigers had outscored opponents 19-4 in the third period before last weekend, but Wisconsin scored the only two goals of the third period on Friday to earn a 2-2 tie.

    So when the Badgers had the Tigers down 2-0 on Saturday, CC knew what it had to do.

    “We’re a competitive team and we don’t like to lose,” Crabb said. “We just buckle down.”

    In the Rankings

    Twelve WCHA players, headed by North Dakota freshman Drew Stafford, made the list of college players in the NHL Central Scouting Service’s preliminary rankings.

    Stafford is the top-ranked collegian, although he would have to opt-in to the 2004 draft to be eligible. In doing so, he would lose his collegiate eligibility.

    Other WCHA players in the rankings: St. Cloud State defenseman Casey Borer, No. 9; Wisconsin forward Jake Dowell, No. 12; Wisconsin forward Robbie Earl, No. 13; Wisconsin defenseman Jeff Likens, No. 18; Wisconsin forward Mark Heatley, No. 29; and Michigan Tech’s Bryce Luker, No. 3 among goaltenders.

    Five other players were mentioned but not ranked because of limited viewing: Colorado College’s John Brunkhorst, Brian Salcido and Scott Thauwald; Denver’s J.D. Corbin; and Minnesota-Duluth’s Bryan McGregor. Salcido is the only defenseman in that group; the rest are forwards.

    In Other Words

    League players of the week were North Dakota’s Mike Prpich on offense, Minnesota’s Ballard on defense and CC goaltender Matt Zaba as the top rookie. … No, it was not a good weekend for Denver. The Pioneers were swept for the first time since February 2001 and allowed the more goals than any series since the 1991-92 season. … Michigan Tech defenseman John Scott got a game disqualification penalty last Friday after leaving the bench to join a scuffle after the final horn sounded. He sat out Saturday’s game. … Two reasons why Wisconsin fans wouldn’t want to see the College Hockey Showcase extended: 1-9 (the Badgers’ record against Michigan State in the CHS) and 1-8-1 (their record against Michigan). …

    The next three weeks could determine whether Minnesota-Duluth will be in the running for a high spot in the WCHA in the second half. The Bulldogs host Minnesota State this weekend before going to Michigan Tech and North Dakota to end the first half. UMD can put itself in a good position to make a run. … Minnesota State has gone six games without a power-play goal and hasn’t scored on its last 25 man-advantage chances. … Minnesota-Duluth center Evan Schwabe has 12 points this season, 10 ahead of his season total last year.

    • This Week in Atlantic Hockey: Nov. 27, 2003

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    Keeping With Tradition

    Sitting here this Thanksgiving, I remember four years ago to November of 1999. It was my first full year covering the MAAC for USCHO. As Tuesday and Wednesday of that week arrived and it was time to pull together a column, I came to a realization.

    Coaches are hard to get in touch with on Thanksgiving week.

    It became clear to me that if I were going to have a column that week, it was not going to be based on words from the mouths of the league’s hockey deans.

    As so, way back then (it really does seem like a long time ago) I decided to speculate about what the coaches and administrators of the MAAC had to be thankful about at this time of year.

    So as we dawn on this new age of the league — the Atlantic Hockey era — who am I to break such a tradition?

    And so, here you have it — the 2003 version — and inaugural Atlantic Hockey edition — of what our coaches have to be thankful for:

    We’ll start with American International coach Gary Wright. College hockey’s all-around good guy is thankful for the same thing I am: the fact his club captured its first win this past week. Trust me, I’m happy as pie for Wright if for no other reason than the fact that all losses heading into this week would’ve made it difficult to write anything nice.

    Wright’s squad, though, went above the call of duty — not just winning its first game, but this past Tuesday beginning a winning streak. Wins over Army and Bentley have pulled the Yellow Jackets from the league cellar all the way up to seventh place. Goaltender Frank Novello proved that he’s a force to beat (not that we didn’t know that after some of his past performances) in the wins over Army and Bentley.

    Moving south, UConn head coach Bruce Marshall will give thanks this holiday for the outstanding play of rookie netminder Scott Tomes. The Huskies, who a season ago should have earned the award for the nation’s biggest underachievers, have at times this year shown signs of brilliance. Some of that credit has to be given to Tomes, who has begun to solidify the Huskies between the pipes.

    A 36-save performance in a 4-1 win at Alabama-Huntsville and a more recent 31-save effort in an upset of Bemidji State on Tuesday has undoubtedly earned the rookie the number one job between the pipes. What’s still to be seen is how he’ll handle the pressure of the stretch run — though my estimations are that this young gun will be as cool as the ice on which he skates.

    Up in Buffalo, things haven’t exactly gone according to plan for Canisius coach Brian Cavanaugh. A 1-7-5 record at the Thanksgiving holiday may sound bad, but needs some explanation. The Griffs have looked impressive at times in battling a tough non-league schedule. Back-to-back nights they let slip games to Lake Superior State, managing only one out of four points on the weekend.

    But impressive ties against Mass.-Lowell and this past weekend against Findlay have to give Cavanaugh hope heading toward the Christmas break and the season’s second half. At this point, though, he is thankful that most of his non-league schedule is over save a two-game home-and-home with cross-town rival Niagara. Don’t be overly surprised, though, if this young Griffs team looks a bit more settled in the second half of the season.

    Staying west in Erie, Pa., Rick Gotkin and his Lakers have plenty to give thanks for this season. Non-league success, something that Gotkin has long bantered about, is beginning to come for the Lakers. Wins against nationally-ranked Ohio State and last weekend against Western Michigan have opened eyes to a Lakers club that has to be considered, once again, a favorite in Atlantic Hockey.

    Between now and the New Year, though, Gotkin’s schedule doesn’t get much easier. This weekend’s solo game at Cornell is joined by a single game at St. Lawrence in mid-December, a visit to the RPI tournament after Christmas and a two-game set at Clarkson in January. The Lakers could sit below .500 entering the final two months of the season, but could have an impressive record in the league to capture their fourth straight title.

    Army coach Rob Riley should probably be one of the league’s most thankful coaches. His reasons for thanksgiving came before the first puck was even dropped on the Atlantic Hockey league season. When the league decided to award Army’s Tate Rink in West Point, N.Y., to host the entire league championships this season, Riley had to feel like he got an early Christmas present.

    League administrators decided that not only would Army host the tournament but that all nine teams would qualify, giving Riley one guarantee: if his team can put together a decent winning streak on home ice in early-to-mid March, the Black Knights will make their first ever NCAA tournament appearance. What Riley would appreciate just as much as a late-season winning streak is one a little sooner. After winning two exhibition games and its first two regular-season contests, the Black Knights have seen the win column only once in the last month.

    I’d love to say that Bentley coach Ryan Soderquist is sitting down this Thanksgiving thankful for another successful season, but to this point, his Falcons have struggled to find the win column. Bentley hasn’t won since the consolation game of the Q-Cup tournament on October 11, and is yet to pick up a win in Atlantic Hockey play.

    The bright side, if there is one, to this equation is the fact that Bentley has played every single opponent tough. Only once, a 5-1 loss to Army, did the Falcons lose by more than three goals, four times they’ve lost by a single goal and twice they’ve earned overtime ties. The translation is that if Bentley can pick up a couple of wins — relearning how to win in the process — it might just be like riding a bike. If that’s the case, look for the Falcons to make a nice second-half run.

    Sacred Heart coach Shaun Hannah can relate to that. His Pioneers were winless entering a mid-November weekend series at Army, but since that time have lost only once. A 4-1-0 record in their last five games includes Tuesday night’s upset of Holy Cross on home ice. It impressively comes just days after the Pioneers blew a two-goal third period lead in Worcester and eventually lost, 6-5 in overtime. Hannah is giving thanks for the ability to land a player such as rookie Peter Giatrelis, who right now shares the team lead in scoring with senior Mike Regan. A .916 save percentage for netminder Kevin LaPointe is also reason for Hannah to smile.

    Which leaves two of the league’s top teams still to talk about: Quinnipiac and Holy Cross.

    Crusaders coach Paul Pearl has to be giving thanks for his club’s hot start this season; that, despite the 2-1 loss to Sacred Heart to give the Crusaders its first league defeat. Many are surprised by Holy Cross’ record at Thanksgiving, but not if you’ve listened to Pearl for the last few years.

    These Crusaders, particularly the senior class, have turned around a program that was 8-22-2 when they were freshmen, and now is a contender for the league title and the club’s first NCAA berth. Recruiting will get a boost from alumni Pat Rissmiller, who became the first MAAC/Atlantic Hockey player to play in the NHL when he laced up his skates for the San Jose Sharks earlier this month.

    Quinnipiac head coach Rand Pecknold is not only thankful, he’s breathing deeply that his club is still unbeaten in league play. For what seems like the millionth consecutive season, the Bobcats have already been bitten hard by the injury bug, with four players lost for the year. Still, Quinnipiac trudges on, thanks very much to the well-known goaltending tandem of Justin Eddy and Jamie Holden.

    This is a school that doesn’t have a number one and number two goalie. They don’t even have a 1 and 1-A. The Bobcats have two legitimate number one netminders with five years and countless big games of experience. This weekend could be a milestone one for the Bobcats if they can overcome injuries. Quinnipiac will play a two-game set against a struggling Merrimack team in which a win would give QU and Atlantic Hockey its first ever victory against a Hockey East opponent.

    Finally, we look past the coaches and on to Wakefield, Mass., and the new home of Atlantic Hockey. Freshly-anointed commissioner Bob DeGregorio continues to try and take the league beyond its original cost-containment mentality with the desire to not only operate successfully as a business, but also increase attention and attendance around the league championship — something that could begin to give these nine clubs more credibility.

    DeGregorio has to be thankful for a good beginning, but obviously has a lot more he’d like to see accomplished in the coming years.

    To all of our readers, coaches, players and administrators: Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!

    This Week in the CCHA: Nov. 27, 2003

    By
    -

    The Young and the Restless

    With just three league games on tap this weekend, there’s an interesting potential for movement in the conference standings. With three points, Notre Dame could find itself sitting in first place, alone, provided Bowling Green beats Ohio State.

    With two points and an OSU loss, the Irish could be tied with the Buckeyes, who would have the advantage on at least two tiebreakers, should the world end Monday and league play cease.

    With two wins, Northern Michigan could catch Notre Dame in the points game, and would have one more league win than would the Irish — and the top three spots in the conference would remain the same even if OSU loses, because no one else is playing a league opponent.

    Then there are the games in hand to consider, assuming the world continues on its merry way come Monday.

    Interwoven throughout this tantalizing CCHA tapestry is the theme of youth versus experience, and just how that may shape the final league standings come March.

    At this moment, Miami and Michigan State have identical conference records (6-3-1), have split a series in Oxford, and have two-game series to play in East Lansing at the end of January. Read what MSU head coach Rick Comley has to say, and you can predict now what will happen then.

    Right?

    The Nature of Youth

    After a slow start and the first time they’d been swept at home since 1995, the Spartans rebounded with a five-game tear, pausing briefly for Notre Dame and stopping cold for an experienced Miami team and for … Wayne State?

    “Obviously, it was frustrating that first night,” said Comley. That first night was a Thursday, Nov. 20, 3-2 loss to Wayne State in Munn Arena.

    “Their goaltender played very, very well and I would say the quality of our play was average. Friday night, we found a way to get the puck in the net better.”

    Marc Carlson — a senior — made 39 saves for the Warriors Thursday, one night before the Spartans came back to beat WSU 7-2 with sophomore Matt Kelly earning the loss. Junior Brock Radunske had two goals in that contest, junior Jim Slater had one of his own, and junior Mike Lalonde had the hat trick. The upperclassmen let rookie standout Tom Goebel contribute one as well.

    “We play seven, eight freshmen every night,” said Comley. This inexperience, said the coach, is the reason for MSU’s inconsistency so far.

    “We only have one senior [Joe Markesun] on the team. For some of the juniors that we really thought would take off, it’s been a struggle. They haven’t scored as well as we hoped they would. It’s really tough with one senior on the team.”

    Slater (10-12–22) and Lalonde (9-9–18) lead the Spartans in scoring, followed by Goebel (9-8–17) and freshman defenseman A.J. Thelen (3-10–13). Radunske (5-6–11) rounds out the top five, which includes — you may have noticed — only one 10-goal scorer in the bunch, in 14 games played.

    The team is an admirable plus-66 in overall play, second only to league-leading OSU, and clearly the Spartans are playing a good defensive game, and playing as a team. But while Comley inherited that good defensive sense from mentor Ron Mason, he prefers to play a more open game with an offense that flies, and these Spartans have yet to launch this season.

    After losing back-to-back games to OSU at home, it would appear that the Spartans reinvented themselves during that five-game win streak, sparked by the sweep. MSU beat WMU twice, FSU twice, defeated and tied Notre Dame before splitting with a very good Miami team in Oxford.

    But looks can be deceiving.

    “Ohio State was just better than us that weekend, for sure,” said Comley. “They’re older, they’re very mature, and their goaltending was outstanding. We just did not threaten them in any aspect of the game. They’ve given us trouble for two years now.

    “Western and Ferris aren’t as good as Ohio State. We’ve been up and down a little bit as we continue to mature and grow as a team.”

    Now the Spartans are facing two-time national champions, Minnesota, and another Big Ten and WCHA foe, Wisconsin. At 4-7-1, the Golden Gophers appear to be a struggling team.

    Again, this is a cautionary tale.

    “That’s a misconception,” said Comley. “They played without [Keith] Ballard and without [Chris] Herrington for long stretches this year. You don’t take someone like Ballard out of the lineup…without some consequences.

    “I think they’re a very, very good team. I think the heart and soul of that team wasn’t there.” Comley said he’s excited about the style of hockey he’ll see when the Spartans take on the Gophers and Badgers. “It’s going to be a fun weekend because it’s going to be up-and-down kind of hockey. We’ve played a lot of teams lately that play ‘old-time hockey,’ a more defensive style and the trap. That’s hard for us because our young defense has to handle the puck more.”

    Comley is quick to point out that he’s not criticizing old-time hockey. “You do what you do. Last year Ferris was a wide-open team; now they’ve necessarily gone back to a more defensive style.

    “This weekend, we’re going to see two teams with talent and a lot of speed.”

    As for Minnesota’s seemingly slow start, Comley said, “They have two titles, back-to-back. You don’t have to feel sorry for them.”

    The Nature of Youth, Part 2, a.k.a. the Games of the Week

    The Irish have experience up front while the Wildcats have a proven veteran in net, but does Notre Dame have the edge with a rookie goaltender?

    Northern Michigan (5-5-0, 4-4-0 CCHA) at Notre Dame (6-3-2, 5-3-2 CCHA)
    Friday, 7:35 p.m., Saturday, 7:05 p.m., Joyce Center, South Bend, Ind.

    “Things are going about the way I thought they would be,” said NMU head coach Walt Kyle. “We’re playing most nights with 13 to 15 freshmen and sophomores.”

    Ah. Youth.

    Two weeks ago, the Wildcats split a pair in Omaha, losing to UNO 2-1 Friday, Nov. 14, before winning 4-2 the following night. Kyle isn’t exactly happy with that split, but he’s realistic. “You can never go in and expect to win two in someone else’s place. That’s disrespectful. I like Mike and think he’s done a good job with that program.”

    Ah. Fish.

    After a weekend to recuperate, NMU travels to Notre Dame to take on the experienced Irish, who took three points from another poised team, the Lakers, last weekend.

    “One week you’re preparing for the wishbone, and the next you’re preparing for the West Coast offense, in a sense,” Irish head coach Dave Poulin told Steve Lowe of the South Bend Tribune this week. Poulin said that because of the Northern’s transition game, “there has to be an awareness from the defensive standpoint. Going from offense to defense is going to be critical this week, without a question, because of their speed.”

    Here’s a look at the match. The stats are for overall games played.

  • Goals per game: NMU 2.80 (seventh), ND 2.73 (eighth)
  • Goals allowed per game: NMU 3.20 (eighth), ND 2.09 (first)
  • Power play: NMU 17.8% (seventh), ND 18.8% (sixth)
  • Penalty kill: NMU 90.0% (tie second), ND 90.7% (first)
  • Top scorer: NMU Darin Olver (4-6–10) and Nathan Oystrick (2-8–10), ND Rob Globke (7-5–12) and Aaron Gill (3-9–12)
  • Top goal scorer: NMU four guys with four goals, ND Globke (7)
  • Top ‘tender: NMU Craig Kowalski (.912 SV%), ND David Brown (.942 SV%)

    Kyle said that the youthful Wildcats are “too reliant” on senior goaltender Craig Kowalski, whom Kyle calls “exceptional.”

    “I’m not as happy with that,” said Kyle. “The thing I do like is that eight of our top 10 scorers are freshmen and sophomores. We’re happy with the way those guys are producing and the way that those guys are scoring.

    “We’re starting to move the puck better. Earlier in the year, we weren’t doing that. I’d like to see us grow defensively.

    “You don’t want to bring in young guys that aren’t going to get better.”

    Then there are the young guys who hit the ground running, like Notre Dame’s Brown, whose .942 save percentage through nine games puts him second in that category in overall play among CCHA goaltenders. (LSSU’s Jeff Jakaitis, another freshman, has a .956 SV% in three games.)

    “Brown’s been an outstanding for them,” said Kyle. “They have those three senior defensemen, they have Globke and Gill. We played them last year right before the end of the regular season, so we know how good they are.”

    The Wildcats lead this all-time series 14-8-4, with an 8-5-2 edge in South Bend, but the series is 8-8-4 since NMU rejoined the CCHA in 1997.

    Two of the Fighting Irish, goaltender Morgan Cey and defenseman Derek Smith, are out for this series. Cey underwent knee surgery on Nov. 19, and is expected to miss four to six weeks. Smith, who suffered a concussion Jan. 4, 2003, against UNO, is still sidelined with post-concussion syndrome.

    “This year,” said Kyle, “we’re spending very little time focusing on who we’re playing. We’re in the process of teaching these [young] guys who are stepping into roles vacated by last year’s seniors.”

    Picks: You can’t knock the Irish for tying the improved Lakers last week, and even though the Wildcats are well rested after a week off and in spite of NMU’s team speed, I like Notre Dame’s luck. Notre Dame 4-2, 4-3

    Why I Love Frank Anzalone

    Okay, so I’ve been hard on the guy. His success-to-firing ratio is just a huge red flag for me, and I did not like the way he publicly dressed down his players in his first season back at LSSU.

    But I like what he’s doing with the Lakers, who are playing smart, careful hockey.

    And I love what he says to the press.

    “It looked like Notre Dame let down … like they were kind of toying with us.” This is what Anzalone told Lowe after LSSU’s 5-3 loss to Notre Dame last Friday.

    That, my friends, is a thing of beauty.

    And Dave Poulin

    Okay, so Dave Poulin is quotable, too.

    “I think line combinations are formed similar to good nicknames,” Poulin told Lowe after the same game. “They just kind of happen.”

    Hockey is serendipity. Of course.

    Happy Thanksgiving

    It’s 43 and overcast, and the roof above my bathroom leaks. Between three jobs, this is the first chance I’ve had to sit and attempt to finish this column this week. It’s Thursday, and I’m running on 16 hours of sleep since Sunday night.

    My parents, sister, and one brother are 1,000 miles south; my best friend is 600 miles east. My right hand is numb from a pinched nerve in my back, and I’m fairly certain the transmission on my 14-year-old Jetta is about to give.

    I’m single, broke, fat, six months from 40, and I can’t find my front door key, but last night I did 90 back wheel kicks and 280 punches, rescued Moxy from the top of the French doors in the living room, found a great, inexpensive bottle of chardonnay, and belted out Cher’s version of “The Shoop Shoop Song” at a friend’s karaoke show, stopping the assembled in their drunken tracks and earning a bottle of Labatt from an admirer.

    I was driving and tired; I couldn’t drink it.

    Today is Thanksgiving Day in the U.S., and I’m struck by what, as we get older, makes us grateful. The roads aren’t icy. I can pay the rent. I actually reached two coaches this week. I’m going home for Christmas. The car started this morning. I can defy gravity, time, and circumstance with this surprising body I inhabit. My back and front doors have different locks. I can still get a beer and a phone number from a guy in a bar — okay, so I have to sing for it — and I have friends in Columbus who are doing all the cooking today.

    And on a weekly basis, I can potentially outrage D-I men’s ice hockey fans from at least five states in this Union.

    I’m exhausted but the blues are at bay, and we are all here.

    Happy Thanksgiving, folks. And thanks.

    • This Week in Atlantic Hockey: Nov. 27, 2003

    By
    -

    Keeping With Tradition

    Sitting here this Thanksgiving, I remember four years ago to November of 1999. It was my first full year covering the MAAC for USCHO. As Tuesday and Wednesday of that week arrived and it was time to pull together a column, I came to a realization.

    Coaches are hard to get in touch with on Thanksgiving week.

    It became clear to me that if I were going to have a column that week, it was not going to be based on words from the mouths of the league’s hockey deans.

    As so, way back then (it really does seem like a long time ago) I decided to speculate about what the coaches and administrators of the MAAC had to be thankful about at this time of year.

    So as we dawn on this new age of the league — the Atlantic Hockey era — who am I to break such a tradition?

    And so, here you have it — the 2003 version — and inaugural Atlantic Hockey edition — of what our coaches have to be thankful for:

    We’ll start with American International coach Gary Wright. College hockey’s all-around good guy is thankful for the same thing I am: the fact his club captured its first win this past week. Trust me, I’m happy as pie for Wright if for no other reason than the fact that all losses heading into this week would’ve made it difficult to write anything nice.

    Wright’s squad, though, went above the call of duty — not just winning its first game, but this past Tuesday beginning a winning streak. Wins over Army and Bentley have pulled the Yellow Jackets from the league cellar all the way up to seventh place. Goaltender Frank Novello proved that he’s a force to beat (not that we didn’t know that after some of his past performances) in the wins over Army and Bentley.

    Moving south, UConn head coach Bruce Marshall will give thanks this holiday for the outstanding play of rookie netminder Scott Tomes. The Huskies, who a season ago should have earned the award for the nation’s biggest underachievers, have at times this year shown signs of brilliance. Some of that credit has to be given to Tomes, who has begun to solidify the Huskies between the pipes.

    A 36-save performance in a 4-1 win at Alabama-Huntsville and a more recent 31-save effort in an upset of Bemidji State on Tuesday has undoubtedly earned the rookie the number one job between the pipes. What’s still to be seen is how he’ll handle the pressure of the stretch run — though my estimations are that this young gun will be as cool as the ice on which he skates.

    Up in Buffalo, things haven’t exactly gone according to plan for Canisius coach Brian Cavanaugh. A 1-7-5 record at the Thanksgiving holiday may sound bad, but needs some explanation. The Griffs have looked impressive at times in battling a tough non-league schedule. Back-to-back nights they let slip games to Lake Superior State, managing only one out of four points on the weekend.

    But impressive ties against Mass.-Lowell and this past weekend against Findlay have to give Cavanaugh hope heading toward the Christmas break and the season’s second half. At this point, though, he is thankful that most of his non-league schedule is over save a two-game home-and-home with cross-town rival Niagara. Don’t be overly surprised, though, if this young Griffs team looks a bit more settled in the second half of the season.

    Staying west in Erie, Pa., Rick Gotkin and his Lakers have plenty to give thanks for this season. Non-league success, something that Gotkin has long bantered about, is beginning to come for the Lakers. Wins against nationally-ranked Ohio State and last weekend against Western Michigan have opened eyes to a Lakers club that has to be considered, once again, a favorite in Atlantic Hockey.

    Between now and the New Year, though, Gotkin’s schedule doesn’t get much easier. This weekend’s solo game at Cornell is joined by a single game at St. Lawrence in mid-December, a visit to the RPI tournament after Christmas and a two-game set at Clarkson in January. The Lakers could sit below .500 entering the final two months of the season, but could have an impressive record in the league to capture their fourth straight title.

    Army coach Rob Riley should probably be one of the league’s most thankful coaches. His reasons for thanksgiving came before the first puck was even dropped on the Atlantic Hockey league season. When the league decided to award Army’s Tate Rink in West Point, N.Y., to host the entire league championships this season, Riley had to feel like he got an early Christmas present.

    League administrators decided that not only would Army host the tournament but that all nine teams would qualify, giving Riley one guarantee: if his team can put together a decent winning streak on home ice in early-to-mid March, the Black Knights will make their first ever NCAA tournament appearance. What Riley would appreciate just as much as a late-season winning streak is one a little sooner. After winning two exhibition games and its first two regular-season contests, the Black Knights have seen the win column only once in the last month.

    I’d love to say that Bentley coach Ryan Soderquist is sitting down this Thanksgiving thankful for another successful season, but to this point, his Falcons have struggled to find the win column. Bentley hasn’t won since the consolation game of the Q-Cup tournament on October 11, and is yet to pick up a win in Atlantic Hockey play.

    The bright side, if there is one, to this equation is the fact that Bentley has played every single opponent tough. Only once, a 5-1 loss to Army, did the Falcons lose by more than three goals, four times they’ve lost by a single goal and twice they’ve earned overtime ties. The translation is that if Bentley can pick up a couple of wins — relearning how to win in the process — it might just be like riding a bike. If that’s the case, look for the Falcons to make a nice second-half run.

    Sacred Heart coach Shaun Hannah can relate to that. His Pioneers were winless entering a mid-November weekend series at Army, but since that time have lost only once. A 4-1-0 record in their last five games includes Tuesday night’s upset of Holy Cross on home ice. It impressively comes just days after the Pioneers blew a two-goal third period lead in Worcester and eventually lost, 6-5 in overtime. Hannah is giving thanks for the ability to land a player such as rookie Peter Giatrelis, who right now shares the team lead in scoring with senior Mike Regan. A .916 save percentage for netminder Kevin LaPointe is also reason for Hannah to smile.

    Which leaves two of the league’s top teams still to talk about: Quinnipiac and Holy Cross.

    Crusaders coach Paul Pearl has to be giving thanks for his club’s hot start this season; that, despite the 2-1 loss to Sacred Heart to give the Crusaders its first league defeat. Many are surprised by Holy Cross’ record at Thanksgiving, but not if you’ve listened to Pearl for the last few years.

    These Crusaders, particularly the senior class, have turned around a program that was 8-22-2 when they were freshmen, and now is a contender for the league title and the club’s first NCAA berth. Recruiting will get a boost from alumni Pat Rissmiller, who became the first MAAC/Atlantic Hockey player to play in the NHL when he laced up his skates for the San Jose Sharks earlier this month.

    Quinnipiac head coach Rand Pecknold is not only thankful, he’s breathing deeply that his club is still unbeaten in league play. For what seems like the millionth consecutive season, the Bobcats have already been bitten hard by the injury bug, with four players lost for the year. Still, Quinnipiac trudges on, thanks very much to the well-known goaltending tandem of Justin Eddy and Jamie Holden.

    This is a school that doesn’t have a number one and number two goalie. They don’t even have a 1 and 1-A. The Bobcats have two legitimate number one netminders with five years and countless big games of experience. This weekend could be a milestone one for the Bobcats if they can overcome injuries. Quinnipiac will play a two-game set against a struggling Merrimack team in which a win would give QU and Atlantic Hockey its first ever victory against a Hockey East opponent.

    Finally, we look past the coaches and on to Wakefield, Mass., and the new home of Atlantic Hockey. Freshly-anointed commissioner Bob DeGregorio continues to try and take the league beyond its original cost-containment mentality with the desire to not only operate successfully as a business, but also increase attention and attendance around the league championship — something that could begin to give these nine clubs more credibility.

    DeGregorio has to be thankful for a good beginning, but obviously has a lot more he’d like to see accomplished in the coming years.

    To all of our readers, coaches, players and administrators: Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!

    Between the Lines, Nov. 26, 2003

    By Adam Wodon
    -

    • So college hockey is not the only sport that struggles with its mathematical ranking system. The perverse football BCS is a logical freak show, far worse than the moderately-flawed Pairwise/RPI system used by hockey. It uses many of the same flaws hockey has, and then throws in numerous more wrinkles. The biggest problem is, it uses numerous different computer ranking systems, plus two polls(!), to come up with an amalgamated final ranking. And these rankings can be so wildly different, that each team gets to throw out the worst one, like it was some sort of Cold War-era gymnastics meet. Miami (Ohio) ranks between 4 and 21. LSU is between 2 and 9, Texas between 2 and 10, Florida between 5 and 17. There are differences between the flawed RPI (used in some capacity by most NCAA sports) and KRACH (advocated by USCHO as a superior method of comparing strength of schedules), but the two may as well be twins compared to some of the BCS computer rankings (see: collegebcs.com). The Massey Ratings come the closest to KRACH, but that’s only one component of the BCS anyway.

    This is what you get when you try to ramrod new ideas into old systems. Football seems to think that using many different flawed methods balances each other out. Maybe it does, in a perverse way, but they also tend to influence each other, especially in regards to the polls. And I’d rather have one method that’s known to work. Maybe it’s just me, but I’d rather tear the whole thing down, do something new from scratch, have it not work, and then have to think of something else, than to try to keep fitting square pegs into round holes.

    • That being said, we have yet another egregious example of this being perpetrated upon us by the Division I men’s ice hockey committee this year. Last year’s tinker job had “bonus” percentage points added for “good wins” — an attempt to reward teams that played tough opponents on the road. Good thought, horrendous execution, for reasons outlined in the past. In this year’s shenanigans, teams can throw out wins earned during their league tournaments, if those wins — against inferior opposition — caused a team’s RPI to go down. Once again, this is a good thought — the RPI’s biggest flaw is that your rating can go down even after a win — but it is again awful execution. Why can’t a team throw out a regular season win from two months prior that had the same adverse affect? And yet again, KRACH solves this problems all by itself, without the need to jury-rig it. But nobody asked me.

    All these RPI machinations “fix” one thing, and cause other problems. Just chuck the dang thing and use something that actually works all by itself. Criminy.

    Ohio State's Dave Steckel has it going for the Buckeyes this year.

    Ohio State’s Dave Steckel has it going for the Buckeyes this year.

    • It’s hard not to be impressed with Ohio State so far this season. The Buckeyes are playing “as a team” better than any time in the recent past. In the last few years, there had always been one tumultuous thing or another going on. But despite losing NHL first-round draft picks R.J. Umberger and Ryan Kesler early to the pros this summer, the Buckeyes have improved. And a lot of it is the play of the other first-round pick, who decided to stay for his senior year, Dave Steckel. He’s a force right now, and he’s playing with the dynamic winger Paul Caponigri on one side and the workhorse J.B. Bittner on the other, to provide a lethal combination that can play both ends of the ice. The defense and goaltending are experienced and strong. “You know, it’s hard when you lose 80 points,” said Steckel, “but I think that made us come closer as a team, personally, and we’re working pretty hard to fill that void.”

    • Two weeks ago, I said I’d be surprised if Minnesota didn’t go at least 3-1 in its next four games. Well, it went 2-1-1, but I’m not that surprised. The Gophers ran into a hot Wisconsin team on the road, and earned one point. Then it beat up on Michigan Tech at home. The problems for Minnesota have mostly been defensive. After star Paul Martin split early to play for the New Jersey Devils, and their goaltender quit, it left a big void defensively. Then the remaining defensive standout, Keith Ballard, got hurt. It’s no coincidence that Ballard returned and the Gophers held offensive-oriented Michigan Tech to just two goals last weekend. Whether this means the ship is righted for the 4-7-1 two-time defending champs, who knows. But we should know a whole lot more after this weekend’s College Hockey Showcase, at Michigan and Michigan State.

    • So Harvard finally defeated BU, its first time defeating a Top 15 team (1-11-2 in last two seasons) since the 2002 ECAC championship game, including three close losses last year to both BU and Cornell. You had to be worrying in Crimson-ville, after coming into the season with huge, deserved, expectations, then going 2-2-1 in ECAC play in the first five. Now you have to wonder if the two teams they lost to, Dartmouth and Brown, aren’t just pretty good themselves. Tough to say. But last year, the losses to tough teams were all too often excused away by some. To be taken seriously, you have to start winning some of those games. Harvard has played a lot of close games against high quality opponents in the last few years, but has lost just about all of them. Under Mark Mazzolini, the Harvard program has unquestionably improved every year. The problem, however, is they haven’t improved as much as people think they have — and it’s frustrating, because until you understand the problem, it can’t be fixed. Getting from 10 wins to 22 wins while playing in an ECAC that’s not even as strong top to bottom as it was just four years ago, is a lot easier than getting from 22 wins to 25 wins. I think their coaches understand this, but I don’t think all their fans and “people” have understood this. This is a very talented team. And if it continues to pay the price, for 60 minutes every night, like it did against Boston University on Tuesday, it can go very, very far. But there’s still some ghosts to exhume from the closet. A big one was exhumed on Tuesday. Another one looms in Ithaca on Dec. 6.

    The Crimson also need to get goaltender Dov Grumet-Morris on track. We’ve seen him be great, but he’s allowing some pretty bad goals so far this year. Both goals allowed against BU came on monsterous, inexcusable rebounds. If he gets going, it could really be fun in Cambridge.

    • We’ve often talked about professional hockey organizations that “get it” when it comes to college hockey players, and others that flat out don’t. New Jersey is always the first that comes to mind in the “get it” category, and all it’s done is won three Cups under the leadership of ex-Providence coach Lou Lamoriello. There are others.

    It is true that extensive use video tape and satellite dishes has made defensive systems more potent. And the crackdown on the size of goalie equipment must continue. But the bottom line, as far as I’m concerned, is that goalies are just flat out better.

    The organization that flat out doesn’t get it is the New York Rangers. It’s not just about college players, though, it’s about all its young players. Forget the fact that a 43-year old living legend is getting 20 minutes a night — Mark Messier is actually the team’s top scorer — but there are so many other high-priced loafers and malcontents on that roster, year after year, it’s no wonder the team has missed the playoffs six straight seasons. Meanwhile, across the river, Lamoriello plugs in Brian Gionta, John Madden, David Hale, Paul Martin, Scott Gomez, and so on … and just wins. Lamoriello runs the organization like it’s … organized; he runs it almost like a college program, in the sense that there are seniors, juniors, sophomores and freshman. He’s constantly turning things over and bringing in young, hungry newcomers, many of whom were overlooked by other franchises. Meanwhile, the Rangers continue to bury their youth. Currently, those most notably include Harvard product Dominic Moore, Michigan product Jed Ortmeyer, and Jamie Lundmark. Every time these guys are given ice time, something good happens. They all had good training camps. Yet they are forced the languish on the bench, or in Hartford, until five malcontents guys get injured. I don’t get it.

    • The Showcase is the only Thanksgiving-time tournament this year, and it’s not really a tournament. What happened to all the tournaments? There used to be tournaments at Thanksgiving and Christmas-time. Now they’re all loaded into the Christmas time. I’m not sure why that changed — I’m sure someone will tell me — but it happened about four or five years ago.

    • North Dakota is rampaging through its schedule right now, and everything is falling into place. And while anything can still happen in the ultra-competitive WCHA, I said since the beginning of the year I wouldn’t be surprised at a North Dakota-BC title game. If it happens, it would be the third time in five years. That would make it the first time anything remotely close happened to the three straight meetings between Minnesota and Michigan Tech from 1974-76.

    • Mercyhurst did it again last weekend, winning its second game of the season on the road against a CCHA team. The Lakers have wins against Ohio State and now Western Michigan, and account for Atlantic Hockey’s only two nonleague victories against ‘Big 4’ opposition. The Lakers also have two league losses, both to Holy Cross. The Crusaders have played nonleague games against Maine, Massachusetts and Dartmouth and lost them all, the latter two by one goal. Atlantic Hockey will never be one of the big boys, and that’s OK — college hockey needs all kinds. But at least it is competitive now in a lot of these nonleague games, some against the very big boys, which makes the college hockey world more interesting. And interesting is always good.

    • I loved this past weekend’s NHL version of the outdoor game, but what I love even more is that Michigan-Michigan State from two years ago was first, and topped the game in Edmonton in attendance by almost 20,000. The record will likely stay in the states, because I don’t think there are any stadiums in Canada that are bigger than the 74,000 that attended Spartan Stadium, are there? There is talk that many other NHL teams want to try it for a special occasion, and the closest to doing so is the Columbus Blue Jackets. And the further word is that their game would coincide with an Ohio State-Michigan college hockey tilt. Sweet.

    • Early Hobey candidates: Mike Ayers (New Hampshire), Thomas Pock (Massachusetts), Jim Slater (Michigan State), Brandon Bochenski (North Dakota), Derek Edwardson (Miami) — not in any particular order. And don’t count out any of my preseason all-America forwards: the sensational sophomore trio of Jeff Tambellini, Zach Parise and Thomas Vanek. And I’m keeping an eye on Dave Steckel — although Ohio State is a more defensive oriented team, which will hurt him. But you know who leads the nation in points per game? Cornell sophomore Matt Moulson at 1.88.

    • I hate shoddy theories. My biggest pet peeve in baseball is that the rise in scoring over the last decade is due to “watered down pitching.” I could go on and on, but I won’t. My biggest pet peeve in hockey, is that the decline in scoring over the last decade is attributed to the neutral zone trap. Banning a strategy always seems like a knee-jerk overreaction to me. Actually, any rule that’s specifically designed to help offense or defense in any sport always seems like an arbitrary decision, and unnecessary, since the conditions usually end up reversing themselves. In baseball, the mound was lowered and DH implemented because offense was suffering, and now there’s too much offense. In football, rules changes were implemented a number of years ago to help the offense because there were too many low scores, and now the scores are higher than ever. In hockey, the 4-on-4 was eliminated because the Oilers were too good at it, and then, once they weren’t good at it anymore, the NHL brought back the 4-on-4.

    However, there is one change that seems radical on the surface, but I think is entirely necessary to helping hockey … widening the net. There are many reasons why scoring is down in the NHL and all of hockey, and it doesn’t have to do with the neutral zone trap, per se, or “expansion” (the other whipping boy in all sports). The trap wasn’t always called that, but some derivative of it has been used for decades. It only became an issue because scoring went down for other reasons.

    It is true that extensive use video tape and satellite dishes has made defensive systems more potent. And the crackdown on the size of goalie equipment must continue. But the bottom line, as far as I’m concerned, is that goalies are just flat out better.

    When I was broadcasting in the minors, you saw quality goaltending almost every night. I’ll venture to say that most starting college goaltenders today are better, overall, than the run of the mill NHL goalie in the 1970s. They are certainly better trained, better conditioned, and much more athletic. I challenge anyone to watch ESPN Classic games from the ’70s and watch the goaltending. Watch how many low slappers from the point, without a screen, just go in past immobile netminders.

    The athleticism also leads to the ability to play the puck. Twenty years ago, Billy Smith was considered a rarity for his puck-handling skills. Nowadays, a goaltender must must be at least pretty good at playing the puck or they will never get a sniff in the NHL. Most college guys are decent at it as well. Also, twenty years ago, there was only one European goaltender — Pelle Lindbergh. Now there’s dozens in the pros.

    Being able to play the dump in is another thing that hurts offense, because the goalie becomes like a third defenseman, and he can’t be touched by the opponent. This has led to the rule change proposal by Bob Clarke — general manager of the Philadelphia Flyers. He says goalies should be banned from coming out of the crease to play the puck. There is some validity to that, but, again, I don’t like legislating against strategy.

    So, if you just widenened the net six measley inches, you could start bringing more offense back. Why is this different from those aforementioned arbitrary rules changes I talk about? Won’t offense just “come back” on its own accord, as it asserted earlier? In this case, no. When the current conditions are created on an irreversible set of circumstances, things need to be altered. Goalies aren’t going to get less athletic. Coaches aren’t go to stop watching videotape. In football, when kickers became so good, they narrowed the goal posts and moved the kickoff spot back five yards (two different times).

    This is the same thing. Six inches. Let’s see what happens.

    Ohio State Women Jump To CHA

    USCHO Staff Report
    -

    The Ohio State women’s ice hockey team has accepted an offer to join College Hockey America and will begin league play in 2004-05, ending a five-year affiliation with the Western Collegiate Hockey Association.

    “We have certainly enjoyed our stay in the WCHA. It has been very beneficial for the growth and development of our young team,” said Andy Geiger, Ohio State director of athletics, said. “At the same time, we look forward to our new affiliation with the CHA and the opportunities this league presents. The proximity of the teams in this league make it especially attractive from a travel standpoint for Ohio State.”

    Ohio State is one of two teams which will begin start CHA play in 2004-05, as Quinnipiac accepted the CHA’s invitation in July. The CHA Women’s conference, which began in 2002-03, currently consists of Findlay, Mercyhurst, Niagara and Wayne State. Mercyhurst claimed the regular-season and playoff titles in the league’s inaugural campaign.

    Ohio State is familiar with the teams in CHA, as the Buckeyes have played Findlay, Mercyhurst and Wayne State during the past four years. OSU will play three teams currently in the conference (Findlay, Mercyhurst and Niagara), as well as Quinnipiac this season.

    Since moving to Division I in 1999, Ohio State has competed in the WCHA. The Buckeyes placed fourth in the standings in each year except 2001. That year, the Buckeyes placed fifth during the regular season, yet still advanced to the WCHA championship game by upsetting regular-season champion Minnesota.

    “We have had a positive experience competing in the WCHA the past five years,” Jackie Barto, Ohio State head coach, said. “We are very excited about joining College Hockey America, which is committed to women’s hockey and the growth of collegiate hockey. We look forward to beginning this new association next season and feel it will be a positive for our program.”

    With the addition of Ohio State and Quinnipiac, the league will feature six members, the minimum number required to be eligible for an automatic berth in the NCAA championship.

    “I think it’s a huge positive that Ohio State looked at the big picture for not just themselves, but also from a women’s hockey standpoint,” said Niagara coach Margot Page. “We have four [six-team] leagues now. Because of that everyone’s getting a home, which hasn’t happened in the past.”

    D-III Championship to Play at Predetermined Sites

    USCHO Staff Report
    -

    The Division III Men’s Championship will begin play at predetermined sites beginning in 2006, and is currently soliciting bids from parties interested in hosting the event in 2006, 2007 and 2008. Currently, Division III Championships are located on campus sites at one of the final four competing programs.

    “The committee hopes that this move will allow the championship to develop into an event that will create an electric atmosphere for the student-athletes and expose more people to the excitement of Division III ice hockey,” said the committee is a news release.

    Bid materials are due March 3, 2004. Final approval for the site selections will be announced to the public in July 2004. The championship dates are March 18-19, 2006; March 17-18; 2007 and March 22-23, 2008.

    “The Division III Men’s Ice Hockey Committee’s objective is to select sites that will provide maximum attendance and visibility for the championship,” the release said.

    The committee says it will apply the following criteria in selecting sites:

    1. Quality and availability of the facility and necessary accommodations for participants, fans and media. Preference will be given to facilities with a seating capacity of at least 3,000.
    2. Geographical location. This includes consideration of the potential site’s accessibility, proximity to other areas of college hockey interest and rotation of sites. The committee would like to provide each region with an opportunity to host in 2006 or 2007.
    3. Revenue potential. Host institutions, conferences and sponsoring agencies shall submit a fiscally responsible proposed budget or financial proposal. Officials’ expenses, city and state taxes, committee members’ expenses and other items listed on page six of the financial report are not figured into the financial guarantee, since these expenses cannot be projected.
    4. Attendance history. This includes consideration of the popularity of college hockey, or other comparable sports events conducted by the prospective host, as demonstrated by attendance and ticket sales.

    BU Trainer Narrowly Avoids Tragedy

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    Boston University athletic trainer Larry Venis — credited with saving Travis Roy’s life when the freshman was paralyzed on the ice in October 1995 — narrowly avoided a tragic fate of his own last Friday night when hit by a puck on the bench during the Terriers’ 2-2 tie at Merrimack.

    “He got hit directly in the head by one of our guys hitting the puck out of the zone,” Terrier Coach Jack Parker said. “He didn’t see it coming. It’s a real dangerous rink there [at Merrimack], the way that both benches and the penalty boxes are all on the same side. Puts both benches way in the zone, so that’s when it’s real dangerous: guys firing pucks out of the zone. Plus it’s a real narrow bench too. They’ll have to do something about that; I think they had plans on doing that when they finished the rink, but right now it’s a pathetic situation.”

    Venis initially appeared to be okay and showed no immediate signs of serious injury until well after the game. “He’s a lucky guy, to tell you the truth, he’s a very lucky guy,” Parker said.

    “It was a very dangerous situation: He wound up with a lot of blood on the brain, a lot of bleeding on the brain, a lot of pressure on the brain, some particles of his skull in his brain, but I’ve seen him three times now, and he’s gotten better and better.”

    Venus was in the intensive care unit for several days, and he remained hospitalized one week after the incident. However, all signs thankfully now point to a complete recovery.

    “There’s not going to be any ramifications for full recovery — no physical ramifications, no mental ramifications,” added Parker. “Just a matter of time. The only trouble is he’s going to have a wear a helmet on the bench now, and he’s going to be very, very upset about that, I’m sure.

    “But he’ll be back — I don’t know how soon, but he’ll be back pretty soon, I’m sure. When he gets back, he’s going to be Larry Venis, that’s for sure.”

    Hockey fans wishing to send cards or notes to Venis can do so by writing to Larry Venis, c/o Boston University Athletic Training Office, 285 Babcock Street, Boston, MA 02215.

    This Week in the CCHA: Nov. 20, 2003

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    Fishy Business

    Here I was in hockey heaven last weekend, watching two of the top teams in the country — rivals in both the CCHA and the Big Ten — battle to a hard-earned split in Columbus, thinking for all the world that life was as good as it could possibly be.

    There was Buck-a-Brat night. There was Script Ohio on ice. There was Dwight Helminen, scoring his fourth and fifth goals against the Buckeyes in three games. There was Al Montoya, shutting out OSU for the second consecutive contest. There were the Buckeyes, answering the call the following night with a decisive victory.

    If I had only listened to my psychic, Madame Zelena, who told me just last week to go fishing in Nebraska.

    Forget the Michigan-OSU split. Forget that Miami broke Michigan State’s win streak. Forget the 0-0 Bowling Green-Lake Superior State tie. Forget that Northern Michigan and Nebraska-Omaha split a series, too.

    It’s all about the fish.

    It is customary in certain hockey venues to fling a flounder onto the ice after the home team scores its first goal.

    Sometimes customs are good things. Turkey until you drop late in November is a good thing, followed by generous amounts of football and pie (and remember to clean up after yourself, please).

    Other examples of good customs include saying, “Please,” and “Thank you,” where appropriate, holding the door open for someone who has his or her hands full, giving up your seat on the bus to someone significantly older than you or to a pregnant woman, using your turn signal whenever necessary, and using a tissue rather than your sleeve after you sneeze.

    As far as customs go, throwing a fish onto the ice after your team scores its first goal ranks right up there with firing a gun into the air to celebrate the New Year, toilet papering your own campus before the OSU-Michigan game, and adding a string of obscenities to the end of the “C-Ya” chant.

    Tossing a fish onto the ice during a hockey game is wrong. Period. Nothing — no fish, no beer, no paper, no nada — should be thrown onto the ice while a game is in progress, even when the play is stopped. This is potentially dangerous for everyone on the ice, including the home team. It’s also potentially dangerous for people in the stands, should said object not make it over the glass.

    It should always be a two-minute minor for the home team. Delay of game. Period.

    Of course, in Omaha last weekend, it was much more. In Saturday’s 4-2 loss to NMU, Mavericks fans threw out that customary fish after UNO captain Mike Lefley tied the game 1-1 just after the second period began.

    Wildcat Pat Bateman pushed the fish away with his stick, and a melee ensued.

    After all was said and done, the teams received a combined total of 38 penalty minutes. For UNO, Lefley received a double minor and a 10-minute misconduct, and Justin Chwedoruk, Brent Kisio, and Jason Krischuk each received two-minute minors. For NMU, Pat Bateman received a 10-minute misconduct, Jordan Bianchin earned a double minor, and Zach Tarkir was given a two-minute minor.

    The Mavericks were not assessed a delay of game penalty, but NMU found itself on the power play, on which they did not score. And instead of spurring on the home team — a team that had just tied the game 1-1, an underdog that had beaten the Wildcats the night before — all the UNO momentum was lost. Once the Wildcats regained the lead late in the second, they never let it go.

    Perhaps the most amazing thing about this incident is the post-game commentary of NMU head coach Walt Kyle, as reported by my esteemed colleague Rob White in the Sunday edition of the Omaha World-Herald. Kyle remarked not only on the game of the day, but on a certain perceived history between the Mavericks and the Wildcats. Here are the comments as they appeared in print:

    “Last year they make a (expletive) call on a curved stick — nobody makes that call. Last night we put down the wrong starting goalie, and he goes to the ref and asks for a penalty. That’s (expletive). You just don’t do that. So our guys are (expletive).

    “They throw the stupid fish on last night, and they do it again tonight. Our guy goes over and whacks it, and he gets a 10-minute misconduct. That (throwing the fish on the ice) is delay of game, and the league’s got to handle that.

    “I like [UNO coach] Mike [Kemp], and I have a lot of respect for him. But those are (expletive) calls. Everywhere I’ve ever coached, those are (expletive).”

    I’m heading to Oxford this weekend, where the Nanooks are playing the RedHawks, and there is a certain amount of “history” between these two teams in recent years as well. Watch. These games will be as clean as a hospital floor, and all the action will be in South Bend.

    Clean As That Whistle

    For those of you playing along at home, the Lakers and the Irish are the two least-penalized teams in the league. Averaging eight minutes per game is an accomplishment for any team, but it’s especially telling for a team with just two league wins, four overall, as have the Lakers.

    “Friday” Is a Dirty Word

    “I don’t want to talk about Friday,” said OSU head coach John Markell. He wasn’t talking about the Buckeyes’ 4-0 loss to Michigan last Friday; what he means is Friday, all the way around.

    The good news for Buckeye fans is that OSU hasn’t lost a Saturday game, having gone 5-0-0 so far this season. Friday games, however, are another story. The Bucks are 2-5-0 in those contests, and Markell does not think it’s fair that everyone’s making such a big deal out of it.

    “We played well Friday night in Northern Michigan and didn’t score goals,” said Markell. “Same with last Friday night. We played well in that game [against Michigan]. Pucks go in the net, and it’s a different story.

    “I don’t think there’s a pattern there. It just happens to be the night that pucks are not going in.”

    In fairness to Markell and the Buckeyes, he’s right. In their 3-2 home loss to Mercyhurst, OSU ran into goaltender Andy Franck. In their 2-1 loss to NMU, the Bucks couldn’t solve Craig Kowalski. And last Friday in their 4-0 loss to Michigan, OSU found a brick wall named Al Montoya.

    It isn’t as though OSU isn’t playing well on Friday nights. Last Friday, the Buckeyes did everything but score in the second period, one of the best periods of college hockey I’ve seen in a long time.

    But, as Markell said, when pucks go in the net, it’s a different story.

    The league-leading Buckeyes travel for two games to my beloved motherland of central New York, where they’ll face Colgate and then Cornell. Dave Caruso gets the start in net for OSU in the first game — I hesitate to call it a Friday contest — because, as Markell said, “It’s a chance to get him some game time.”

    Friday, Part 2

    I don’t know why Al Montoya is giving up close to three goals per game overall. If he played every night like he did Friday against the Buckeyes, Michigan would be darned near unbeatable.

    Having seen the number of goals Michigan has given up in certain games this season — the 8-3 loss to Miami, 5-4 win over Quinnipiac, and 6-5 loss to Ferris State come to mind — I was prepared to see a sophomore goalie having, well, a sophomore year.

    Not so. Montoya is still outstanding, occasionally stunning in net. The 4-0 win over OSU marked his second consecutive shutout of the Buckeyes, dating back to last season’s Super Six. Yes, he allowed five goals Saturday, but only one of those was “soft,” a puck that rebounded — ironically — off Dwight Helminen’s skate and back into the Michigan net, after Montoya made a save. Dave Steckel was credited with the goal.

    Why was that rebound ironic? Because Helminen has been a Buckeye slayer. The junior had a hat trick in Michigan’s 3-0 CCHA semifinal win last year, and netted a goal in each game against the Buckeyes last weekend. In the loss, he scored on his very first shift, 21 seconds into the contest.

    Unfortunately for Montoya, Helminen, and the Wolverines, the Buckeyes scored four goal-scorer’s goals.

    Why couldn’t I have been in Omaha?

    Double Zero

    “It was a great game.” That’s how Bowling Green head coach Scott Paluch described the 0-0 tie in Sault Ste. Marie last weekend.

    “Both teams had some chances. Both teams have trouble scoring goals. Neither team is offensively gifted.”

    It should surprise no one in the league that a game between the Falcons and the Lakers could end 0-0. Not only are both teams underperforming offensively — BGSU averages 2.27 goals per game, LSSU 2.00, and they’re 11th and 12th, respectively, in overall play.

    But each team has solid goaltending.

    In the tie, Jordan Sigalet blocked 36 shots for the Falcons, while his Laker counterpart, Jeff Jakaitis, stopped 30. Sigalet has a .918 save percentage in 11 games, while the freshman Jakaitis is making a name for himself with a .960 save percentage in four games.

    “Both teams played hard,” said Paluch.

    The Falcons continue their five-game road trip this weekend, partnering up — travel-wise, at least — with OSU. BGSU plays Cornell Friday and Colgate Saturday.

    “Ohio State set up the series,” said Paluch, who added that the trip was already arranged when he took the reins at BGSU a year ago.

    “It’s a great road trip. A Cornell-Colgate type of swing is good for our program. They’re two tough buildings to play in. Those are the types of situations we want to situate ourselves in.”

    The Falcons are definitely making progress under Paluch. Through 11 games, BGSU is 3-5-3; through their first 11 games last season, the Falcons were 2-8-1, and had endured a five-game losing streak. The longest BGSU has gone without a point this year is two contests.

    “We’re obviously doing a lot of things better in the defensive end of the rink,” said Paluch. “We’re still looking for defensive consistency.

    “Our work ethic has been outstanding. It’s exciting for us that our defensive game and defensive awareness have improved from a year ago.”

    Paluch points to Donny Morrison as one example of what’s going right in BG. Morrison, said Paluch, “has made a good jump.” The 5-9 sophomore blueliner from Bentley, Alberta, was pressured to perform as a rookie last year, and Paluch said that this season Morrison has done “a good job of taking that experience” from a year ago and building on his success. Morrison (1-1–2) is one of five Falcons with a positive plus-minus rating.

    Further testimony to the improvement of the Falcon defense is BGSU’s outstanding penalty kill, successful 93.1 percent of the time in overall play, having coughed up a mere four goals in 58 opportunities.

    There Are No Coincidences In Hockey

    Why, you ask, would two CCHA teams from Ohio travel to play two ECAC teams in New York? The answer is simple: hockey is a small world.

    Casey Jones, associate head coach at OSU, is a 1990 graduate of Cornell, where he captained the hockey team and amassed 112 career points. Ron Fogarty, BGSU assistant coach, is a 1995 graduate of Colgate, where he dressed for a school-record 135 consecutive games, registering 141 points.

    The Buckeyes and the Big Red — along with the Maine Black Bears — are founding participants in the Everblades College Classic, played annually in December in Estero, Fla.

    Home Sweet Home

    Just ending a six-game road trip are the Western Michigan Broncos, who return to Lawson Arena this weekend against Mercyhurst, having earned a 2-3-1 record in those six away games.

    “We can take a lot of positives from the trip,” said WMU head coach Jim Culhane. “Obviously, we would like to be above .500 on that road trip. We’re within about two-and-a-half minutes of a couple of ties.”

    In Fairbanks Nov. 7, the Broncos dropped a 5-4 contest to the Nanooks when Nathan Fornataro scored at 3:33 in OT to give UAF the win. That game was a wild one. The Broncos jumped out to a three-goal lead in the first before giving up four unanswered goals to the Nanooks between the second and third periods — only to tie the game with less than a minute left in regulation.

    In Niagara last weekend, the Broncos held a 2-1 lead through two periods, only to see the Purple Eagles score early in the third to tie it up, then again with 1:33 in regulation to win the game.

    The Broncos first two games of that road trip included a win and tie in Ithaca to Cornell. “That was a good weekend for us,” said Culhane, “a good weekend for our league.”

    When told his team seems improved this season compared to last, Culhane responded with, “Thank you, but not enough.”

    The Broncos are 4-6-2 after 12 overall games this year; they were 4-7-1 at this point last season, but had then endured three-game and four-game losing streaks. Like their counterparts in Bowling Green, the Broncos haven’t had a losing streak of more than two games this season.

    “We need to improve on special teams,” said Culhane. “One game that got away from us was a disappointing loss against Michigan State.” The Broncos dropped a pair to MSU earlier this season, but in the 7-3 home loss Oct. 25, the Spartans tallied four power-play goals, including the game-winner.

    Culhane is proud that WMU is the third least-penalized team in the league — quite an accomplishment compared to years past — but added, “We need to play better defensively.”

    Once again, the Broncos have shown that they can score goals, although their offensive stats are not as impressive as seasons past — 2.92 goals per game in 12 overall contests, sixth best in the league. But just as in seasons past, WMU is having difficulty controlling play in the defensive end, allowing 3.50 goals per game, 11th best in the CCHA.

    And Scott Foster (3.34 GAA, .886 SV%) is averaging 25.11 saves per game.

    Adding to WMU’s struggle to improve is the injury and illness bug. “We had a full lineup for one weekend, and we had a full lineup for just one practice,” said Culhane, whose Broncos are now recovering from flu-like symptoms.

    What’s encouraging for WMU, though, is that with that full roster, the Broncos were able to take three points from Cornell in Lynah.

    “I really like our team,” said Culhane. “There’s a lot of hockey to be played. I’m really interested and encouraged that we play our next seven games at home.”

    Games of the Week

    Games with grudges — and so few know.

    Alaska-Fairbanks (5-5-0, 4-2-0 CCHA) at Miami (6-6-2, 4-3-1 CCHA)
    Friday and Saturday, 7:35 p.m., Goggin Arena, Oxford, Ohio

    Last weekend, the Miami RedHawks stopped the then-hottest team in the nation, the Michigan State Spartans, with a 4-2 win in Oxford. MSU picked up Saturday’s rematch 3-1.

    “Both nights, the team that won played 60 minutes,” said Miami head coach Enrico Blasi. “Friday we played 60. Saturday they played 60. They’re well coached, and Dominic Vicari is obviously going to be their starter.”

    Blasi said the RedHawks are playing “a lot more consistently,” and that Miami’s lines are “set the way we want them.” Miami is a young team, with just four seniors in the line up. “We’re a sophomore-dominated team,” said Blasi. “There’s a little bit of growth that needs to occur, but we get better every day.”

    Four RedHawks — Greg Hogeboom, Mike Kompon, Todd Grant, and Marty Guerin — had the goals in last Friday’s contest, and Brandon Crawford-West earned the win in net. Saturday, Matt Christie had the lone Miami goal; Steve Hartley had the loss.

    Blasi has been splitting net time between freshmen Crawford-West and Hartley, and although their win-loss records are significantly different — Crawford-West is 4-1-1, Hartley is 2-5-1 — Blasi said he’s comfortable with the situation, as the goalies’ numbers are otherwise nearly identical, each with a 2.63 overall GAA. Crawford-West holds a very slight edge in save percentage.

    The Nanooks travel to Ohio after a much-deserved week off. Their last action was a home sweep against WMU, 5-4 and 4-0 wins that included UAF’s first-ever shutout of a league opponent in 234 CCHA games played. Senior goaltender Preston McKay earned CCHA Defensive POTW honors after that series; with four goals and four assists on the weekend for UAF, Kelly Czuy was named Offensive POTW.

    “We feel this is a big-time weekend, a real challenge,” said Blasi. It’s not too soon to speculate how these games may affect CCHA post-season play. In a league where the word parity has gone from cliché to reality, one point separates the RedHawks from the Nanooks entering this series. Miami is five points behind league-leading OSU, but has two games in hand; UAF is six points out of first with four games on the Buckeyes.

    Here’s a look at the match. The stats are for overall games played.

  • Goals per game: UAF 3.30 (third), Miami 3.07 (fifth)
  • Goals allowed per game: UAF 3.40 (tie ninth), Miami 2.79 (sixth)
  • Power play: UAF 12.5% (12th), Miami 25.7% (first)
  • Penalty kill: UAF 71.9% (10th), Miami 80.8% (seventh)
  • Top scorer: UAF Kelly Czuy (5-6–11), Miami Derek Edwardson (7-9–16) and Mike Kompon (4-12–16)
  • Top goal scorer: UAF Cam Keith (6), Miami Matt Christie (9)
  • Top ‘tender: UAF Preston McKay (.913 SV%), Miami Brandon Crawford-West (.893 SV%)

    The RedHawks lead this all-time series 22-9-3 with a commanding 12-3-2 lead in Goggin Arena. Since Guy Gadowsky became head coach at UAF at the start of the 1999-2000 season, the RedHawks hold a slim 4-3-3 edge.

    There is a bit of “history” here, albeit all fairly recent — which makes these games all the more interesting.

    “We’ve had some bad karma there,” is how Gadowsky put it this week to Richard Larson of the Fairbanks News-Miner. “They’ve called goals against us that definitely were not goals. We’re trying to erase a bit of bad karma there.”

    In February of 2000, Gadowsky’s first trip to Oxford, Miami beat UAF 4-3 in a penalty-filled game, then followed up with a controversial, last-minute, 5-4 overtime win the following night. UAF led that game 4-2 going into the third, but Miami rallied with two third-period goals. The UAF bench disputed Jake Ortmeyer’s game-tying goal at 11:36, protesting that the puck hit the crossbar and never went into the net.

    In overtime, Evan Cheverie won the game for Miami at 4:51, and Gadowsky’s protests led to a disqualification penalty, forcing the first-year head coach to stay home for UAF’s home series against Ferris State the following weekend.

    The following year, Gadowsky missed the trip because of the birth of his first child, and then-assistant Tavis McMillan brought a win and a tie back to Fairbanks.

    Last Nov. 22, the Nanooks led the RedHawks 2-1 after the second period, but Matt Medvecz scored with eight seconds left in regulation to send the game to OT, and the game ended 2-2. Miami pounded UAF the following night, exploding for four third-period goals en route to a 6-2 win.

    Oh, and by the way, the UAF bench disputed Mike Kompon’s goal at 6:05 in the third period of that 6-2 Nanook loss, the goal that stood up to be the game winner, the first goal in that four-goal avalanche.

    Gadowsky said that the bye week came at the right time, as several Nanooks are recovering from illness.

    Picks: Miami is 4-2-0 at home; UAF has yet to win a road game. Karma schmarma. Miami 4-3, 3-2

    • This Week in Women’s Hockey: Nov. 20, 2003

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    When last week’s column led off by saying “The Four Nations Cup’s disruption of the college hockey season is now past,” it was only referring to scheduling and the presence of bodies at games. It was not referring to the physical state of those bodies and whether the equipment for those bodies would come back to the United States in time for anyone to practice.

    Regardless of nationality, most Four Nations participants did not get their equipment back from Sweden until last Thursday. While Harvard’s Angela Ruggiero and Julie Chu were the only participants who had a college game before then, plenty of others ended up with little time to practice last week.

    Natalie Darwitz and three of her U.S. and Minnesota teammates had to leave for their longest regular-season road trip to Brown the same week. Darwitz joked that in her first game action after all that travel, she felt like she was seeing 20 skaters on the ice.

    Hardest hit by the Four Nations Cup was Minnesota-Duluth’s Nora Tallus. Tallus, best known for her NCAA championship-clinching goal last season, came back in a cast that will keep her out at least two weeks, according to the Duluth News-Tribune. Tallus’ injury incited UMD coach Shannon Miller to suit up third-string goalie Shannon Kasparek in her teammate’s gear for the forward position. Indeed, the Cup forced participants to play without their own equipment in both direct and indirect fashion.

    Although being an international hockey superstar might make for a tough life in college, these players were selected in part for their ability to handle adversity. It should come as no surprise, then, that the six teams that returned athletes from Sweden went a combined 11-0 last week and maintained the top six spots in this week’s USCHO.com poll.

    These are athletes with no need for excuses.

    Three compelling intraconference matchups stand out this week. Northeastern, already the surprise of the year with a young roster, begins a Hockey East home-and-home at No. 8 New Hampshire. Friday night, No. 2 Dartmouth hosts No. 10 Princeton in a rematch of a 2003 ECAC semifinal. In perhaps the most compelling of them all, in the WCHA Minnesota State hosts a pair against No. 1 Minnesota on Saturday on Sunday.

    This isn’t the first time Minnesota State has played a No. 1 team this season, of course. The Mavericks took two from three-time defending champ UMD to start the year. The question now is, can they be a giant-killer again against the Gophers, the first unanimous No. 1 team of the season?

    The biggest difference between this week and the season-opening sweep for Minnesota State, however, is that Duluth was missing two Canadian national-teamers for its series, while the Gophers are near full strength and lack any glaring weaknesses. Not to mention, their youth makes for a learning curve that’s still pretty steep.

    Two Frosh To Excel

    "We’ve gotten to know each other better off the ice – now we’re starting to click on the ice as well. … They’re pretty fast, and when they get the puck, they bury it, so it’s nice to see them get a couple [goals]."

    — Minnesota’s Krissy Wendell, on freshman linemates Becky Wacker and Andrea Nichols.

    Freshman forwards Becky Wacker and Andrea Nichols have already faced a stressful transition from high school to the University of Minnesota. Then coach Laura Halldorson decided to pair the two on a line with U.S. Olympian Krissy Wendell at center.

    No pressure there.

    The young Gopher line did not exactly tear the world apart in its first six games, as Wacker and Nichols netted just one goal between them. As expected, the more seasoned line of Darwitz, U.S. national-teamer Kelly Stephens and captain La Toya Clarke was much more productive, but the Wendell line is now catching up.

    Wacker and Nichols each scored goals in both a 5-2 Saturday win against Brown and an 8-1 Sunday rematch. When four veteran Gophers were still reeling from jet lag in the Saturday game, the first two goals came via Nichols from Wacker and Wacker from Nichols. No one was more appreciative of that than Wendell.

    “We’ve gotten to know each other better off the ice — now we’re starting to click on the ice as well,” Wendell said of her line. “They’re pretty fast, and when they get the puck, they bury it, so it’s nice to see them get a couple.”

    Wacker’s offensive emergence came at an opportune time because her family and friends were there to see it. Wacker is the only Minnesota player from New England, and last weekend was the Gophers’ only trip east all regular season. Although Wacker was happy see familiar faces in the stands at Brown last weekend, she chose to play her home games in front of thousands of passionate, unfamiliar faces instead.

    “The atmosphere in Minnesota is really great,” Wacker said. “It’s Minnesota — they’re all about hockey there. You can’t go wrong with that.”

    Mt. Iron, Minn., native Nichols was no stranger to that feeling, as she became the sixth straight Minnesota Ms. Hockey to sign with the Gophers. She faced a more difficult adjustment period than others, though, as she was the first non-Twin Cities metro player to ever win the honor given out by Let’s Play Hockey.

    On top of the usual adjustments for schoolwork and displacement, Nichols had to learn a lot about hockey. Not only did she have to learn systems far more complicated than those in high school, she had to adjust to her new role as a winger, having played center on Mt. Iron.

    “Pretty much when you’re a freshman, there are so many different changes,” Nichols said. “Now that I’m getting more comfortable with everything, I’m playing with more confidence.”

    A huge burden was lifted off her shoulders when she scored her first collegiate goal to open Friday’s game.

    “It’s great to see her getting more comfortable out there and playing with confidence,” Halldorson said. “I think anytime you put the puck in the net you feel a lot better about how you’re doing.”

    The freshmen still have room to grow. Both of Nichols’ goals and one of Wacker’s came off rebounds, the kind of shots that seasoned teams are less likely to give up. Wacker’s Sunday goal, a one-timer in the slot off a feed from the boards by Danielle Ashley, was the most skillful of the weekend.

    To see why Wendell is on a line with two freshmen to begin the season, look no further than last season. Halldorson started the year playing a line with three current national-teamers in Wendell, Darwitz and Stephens, and the Gophers jumped out to a 13-0-1 start and a No. 1 ranking. But that was short-lived, as the Gophers fell to both UMD and Dartmouth.

    Halldorson put Wendell and Darwitz on separate lines midway through the season, but an injury knocked Wendell out shortly thereafter, leaving Minnesota’s lines in disarray. Wendell came back in time for the Frozen Four, but it was too little, too late, as the Gophers were dispatched 6-1 by Harvard.

    This time, Halldorson is starting Wendell and Darwitz on two lines from the get-go, and already each line is developing its own synergy. And the two still get to play together on Minnesota’s power play, which features the captain and four national-teamers and ranks No. 1 in the nation. As for the third line, it took a hit when captain Kelsey Bills went out with a broken leg, but senior Jerilyn Glenn has filled her role.

    “I think the combinations seem to be working well right now,” Halldorson said. “I don’t think you can focus on one player or one line.”

    About Them Mavericks

    When Minnesota State beat UMD to start the season, coach Jeff Vizenor made the point that his team had circled those dates on the calendar and devoted every bit of focus to winning those games.

    Vizenor has informed Halldorson that the Minnesota dates have also been circled.

    “They’re going to be very different form the past because they have a huge freshman class,” Halldorson said. “The schools they haven’t beaten yet are the ones they’re excited to play this year because they are much improved.”

    This Maverick team has 11 new faces in addition to a team that gave the Gophers all they could handle at Mankato a year ago. The Mavericks trailed 3-2 entering the third period of the first game and led at one point in a 3-1 defeat in the second game.

    Minnesota State goaltender Shari Vogt has been vital in keeping Minnesota from pulling away in the past. With her in net, the Mavericks have won four games when they have been outshot this year. The Gophers will have to be creative to get by her.

    “What we try to do is get some lateral movement, making her move, trying to generate screens and chips, because if she can see the puck generally she’s pretty good at stopping it,” Halldorson sad. “She’s hard to beat with the first shot but we want to put a lot of pressure with screens and rebounds with moving the puck.”

    While Vogt is good, Minnesota junior Jody Horak has distinguished herself as well. She was the top goaltender on the U.S. U-22 team this summer and hasn’t had any major lapses this season.

    “I’m going to be biased and say we have the best goalie, but I think [Vogt] is right up there,” Darwitz said. “She’s a great goalie and a great athlete, and it’ll be tough to face her next week.”

    In all likelihood, if the Gophers score in bunches, the Mavericks will not have the offense to catch up. Melanie Salatino leads Minnesota State with nine goals, but she has just three in her last seven games. The Mavericks have been shut out in two of their last four games.

    On special teams Minnesota State brings the nation’s ninth-best penalty kill and eighth-best power play. The Mavericks are the nation’s fourth-most penalized team with 14.7 minutes per game. Holding the edge on power plays and converting them were crucial in their victories against Duluth. They will have to do the same to have any chance against the Gophers.

    The Beasts of the East

    Princeton seems to be playing Dartmouth at an opportune time. The Tigers are riding high off a 4-2 over Providence, while the Big Green went through an offensive lull against UConn with 1-0 and 3-0 wins last week. Give the Huskies credit, though — they’ve now limited three top-ten teams to just a goal this season.

    The Tigers have the nation’s fifth-best penalty kill, fourth best power play and the most shorthanded goals in the nation. They have a veteran First Team All-Ivy goaltender in Megan Van Beusekom and one of the nation’s most prolific clutch finishers in Gretchen Anderson. That combination adds up to a lot of wins in hockey, and it brought a win against Dartmouth last year by a 3-2 margin.

    “We’re just trying to battle and prepare for them,” coach Jeff Kampersal last week. “We beat Dartmouth once last year. What does that mean? I don’t know. We’re close. We’re knocking on the door.”

    All but one of the Tigers’ goals in the last four games has come from the first line or special teams, so there’s still plenty of room for them to grow. They will be in good shape once their younger players come around.

    Friday could be the toughest challenge of her career for Dartmouth sophomore Stephanie Cochran. Princeton is capable of creating more dangerous chances than any of Dartmouth’s opponents thus far — or what little Harvard brought in last year’s ECAC final.

    Purple is Green

    Among the other Frozen Four favorites, No. 4 UMD is getting much-needed time to heal this weekend before its huge showdown with Dartmouth next week. No. 3 Harvard faces Niagara in its home opening series, the Crimson’s first games in 11 days.

    The Purple Eagles have been very green this year, and freshman goaltender Allison Rutledge showed it when she earned a disqualification for fighting in the final minute of last week’s Findlay game. That will keep her out of action on Saturday. She has split time well with Jennifer Mascaro, however, so the suspension won’t have a monumental impact.

    Harvard coach Katey Stone said after the Providence game she was impressed with her team’s speed, grit and penalty-killing. The power play, which has been the ECAC’s best each of the past five years and the nation’s best the last two, needed some work.

    “The power play needs to get better. It will. It will take a lot of reps,” Stone said. “I want a good seven-to-nine days with these kids to work with them before we start it up again against Niagara. We’ve got a lot to work on. We need to rest, but we also need to come together as a team a bit more.”

    Brown is Green Too

    Brown was young last year, when the team was a year removed from the national championship game. Now the Bears are even younger with eight new freshmen. They graduated key players with national-team experience like goaltender Pam Dreyer, defenseman Cassie Turner and Kim Insalaco. The sophomore class isn’t quite there yet.

    “I think halfway through the year it will all click,” said Brown coach Digit Murphy. “We’re young. I just got keep bringing them in and teaching them. It’s fun stuff.”

    The lowlight of the season so far has been a 3-1 loss to Boston College on Nov. 8. Murphy associates the game with the astronomical event that happened that evening.

    “It was a lunar eclipse,” Murphy said. “It was just one of those anomalies that wasn’t supposed to happen. I’m trying to block it out of my memory bank. Their goalie played well, and BC played with some energy, but it should have never happened.”

    Brown has shown flashes of brilliance. Sophomore Keaton Zucker and juniors Katie Guay and Kerry Nugent were among the leading returning scorers and they have not disappointed. The Bears, with a 10-1 win over Quinnipiac on Tuesday, already are showing signs of turning the season back around. But New Hampshire will be a more telling challenge next Tuesday.

    Former Terrier Sabo Acquitted of Assault Charges

    USCHO Staff Report
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    Former Boston University player John Sabo was acquitted by a jury of assault charges stemming from a fight outside of a bar in Allston, Mass. in the fall of 2002 during Sabo’s senior year with the Terriers.

    Sabo, an assistant captain for the Terriers last season, was found innocent of assault and battery, and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon (a shod foot) on Nov. 19 in West Roxbury (Mass.) District Court.

    Sabo had been accused of assault on a fellow BU student, Christopher Boccuzzi, during an altercation outside the bar, The Avenue, on Commonwealth Ave. on Sept. 22, 2002.

    Boccuzzi suffered a broken jaw and broken orbital bones around his eyes, injuries which nearly left him blind and resulted in multiple surgeries.

    According to the Boston Herald, the defense argued that a chaotic brawl on a dark street after a night of drinking made it difficult for witnesses to positively identify who was responsible for the injuries to Boccuzzi.

    Sabo had pressed similar charges against Boccuzzi, but they were thrown out in a separate hearing when a court clerk found no probable cause.

    This Week in the WCHA: Nov. 20, 2003

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    Champions Incognito

    Some thoughts this week, while wondering why Minnesota can look like national champions one period and WCHA also-rans the next:

  • What a weird coincidence it would be if Adam Coole was this year’s Isaac Reichmuth, considering Reichmuth replaced Coole at Minnesota-Duluth.
  • There goes the undefeated season for St. Cloud State. Did we just say that?
  • This week’s column is brought to you by the word injury.
  • Because of injuries to defensemen Matt Carle and Adrian Veideman, Denver played with only four defensemen in last Saturday’s game at Alaska-Anchorage. Does it say more about the Pioneers or the Seawolves that DU came away with a 4-0 victory?
  • And finally, the Gophers had plenty of chances to put Wisconsin away last weekend, but just didn’t do it. The line, “First place was never the goal” seems appropriate right about now.

    Specialty Advantage

    North Dakota hasn’t needed its power play to be effective to win a lot of games so far this season. But one thing the Sioux likely will need to improve is their penalty kill, which ranks in the middle of the pack in the WCHA at 82 percent.

    And as UND goes on the road for the first time all season, a Denver team that is second in the league on the power play awaits.

    While North Dakota has scored just three of its 43 goals on the power play, Denver’s production depends more heavily on the man advantage. The Pioneers have scored 38 percent of their goals (15 of 39) while a man up.

    In fact, including the six shorthanded goals the Pioneers have scored, less than half of Denver’s goals have come at even strength, the time when North Dakota’s offense has struck.

    Unless things change suddenly, a special teams battle at Magness Arena this weekend favors the Pioneers.

    Special Score

    Wisconsin’s Adam Burish was mighty excited to score the game-winning goal against Minnesota last Saturday night. After hearing his story, it’s hard to blame him.

    Burish was told by doctors he might never play hockey again in 2000, when he was involved in a serious car accident that left him with a broken leg. He then hurt his kneecap in a boat-docking accident. In his season of junior hockey with Green Bay, he suffered a broken arm in the first game of the playoffs. And last season, he suffered a broken collarbone just 19 games into his freshman season at UW.

    So, yes, his first collegiate goal in his hometown of Madison was pretty special. But so was his first goal for the Badgers, which came a week before at Michigan Tech.

    “I just felt like a piano came off my back,” Burish said. “It was unbelievable. The last two weeks, I’ve been sleeping better. It’s the best I’ve slept in two years these last two weeks because I can just relax. In the locker room, too, I say something and I feel more credible. I just feel like guys are going to listen more. I feel like I’m a leader on this team — I felt like I was a leader early on, not scoring. But you score a couple goals, get a couple points on the board and you just feel more confident, you feel more comfortable around the guys.”

    ‘Injured and Injureder’

    Aren’t teams supposed to get healthier on off weekends? Not Colorado College, apparently, where another Tigers player has joined a growing list of those out of the lineup.

    Curtis McElhinney, a second-team all-American goaltender last season, has mononucleosis and will miss about four weeks. That puts freshman Matt Zaba in the spotlight. Zaba has only two games of collegiate experience, but won both on the road — at Clarkson and Denver.

    CC already was minus three forwards: Brett Sterling (thumb), Brandon Polich (lacerated spleen) and Colin Stuart (shoulder).

    Stopping the Starter

    Last season, a goaltender from Minnesota-Duluth named Reichmuth wowed the WCHA with his play. This season, a goaltender formerly of Minnesota-Duluth named Coole is wowing the WCHA with his play at St. Cloud State.

    Of course, everything the Huskies have put together this season has been a surprise, but Coole has been one of the directors. He’s 5-0 after making 32 saves in a 2-1 victory over North Dakota last Friday.

    Coole, however, has been sidelined since then with a groin injury and will miss this weekend’s series at Rensselaer.

    “All I’ve been doing is riding the [stationary] bike,” Coole told the St. Cloud Times. “I feel like Lance Armstrong. I’m not happy about it.”

    When Coole returns from the injury, all eyes will be on whether the setback derails the great start.

    Grow Up

    To the bozo at the Kohl Center who decided a moment of silence in honor of Herb Brooks was the proper time to air his views on the legendary coach: Get some class. No wonder Badgers fans are getting a bad name.

    Setup Man

    Gabe Gauthier is living up to his billing as one of the top forwards in western Canadian junior hockey two seasons ago.

    And Gauthier, just a sophomore, may be emerging as one of the WCHA’s best playmaking centers. He set up four of Denver’s eight goals last weekend at Alaska-Anchorage, including all three goals in a comeback from a 4-1 deficit that forced a 4-4 tie on Friday.

    He’s third in the nation with 10 assists this season, a figure that’s two ahead of his total from his freshman season.

    Injury to Insult

    Alaska-Anchorage has lost forward Ales Parez to a separated right shoulder for three to six weeks, meaning he likely won’t play again until the start of the second half of the Seawolves’ schedule.

    Parez, who’s second on the team with nine points, has been on a line with other top scorers Chris Fournier and Curtis Glencross. Coach John Hill told the Anchorage Daily News that John Hopson will join the line when the Seawolves get back to action next week at St. Cloud State.

    Change of Heart

    Minnesota lost three points to Wisconsin last weekend but won one recruit a few days later. Nate Hagemo, a defenseman who had verbally committed to the Badgers, decided instead to sign a national letter of intent to play for the Gophers.

    Wisconsin coach Mike Eaves said he was disappointed, but understood that was one of the risks in recruiting a 17-year-old. He added that, by all appearances, the situation was handled in a proper fashion by Minnesota coach Don Lucia.

    Hagemo, an offensive defenseman who plays for the U.S. National Team Development Program, is from Edina, Minn.

    “[Hagemo] wanted to be closer to home,” Lucia told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis. “He’s a local kid, and he grew up idolizing Gophers players. Plus, he made his decision at such a young age, we hadn’t even recruited him yet. He felt bad because he’d developed a relationship with Mike [Eaves], but there’s always going to be that danger that kids will change their minds.”

    How Now?

    Last week, we relayed some of the comments made by Minnesota players during a bad weekend at North Dakota. Captain Grant Potulny questioned his team’s heart.

    Before last weekend’s series against Wisconsin, Potulny said those comments were made “in the heat of the battle” and out of anger and frustration.

    So now what to make of these Gophers? First place, the near-unanimous selection for them at the start of the season, appears to be all but lost. The focus now could turn to recovery in time for a good playoff showing, the hallmark of the last two seasons.

    But it’s clear Minnesota needs some success rapidly to shake off a nightmare start.

    “It’s getting real frustrating,” Gophers defenseman Chris Harrington told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis. “We’re so addicted to winning that to get a dose of losing, it’s ruining every day. Right now, it’s ruining my life. I don’t even want to talk to anyone.

    “We’ve just got to battle through this. We know how to win, and that’s the weird thing. It’s just one of those deals where nothing is clicking.”

    The third period certainly is not clicking. In the Gophers’ current five-game winless streak (0-4-1), they haven’t scored a single goal in the third period. Not one.

    They entered the third ahead 3-1 last Friday in Madison but got only a tie. They were tied after two the next night and lost.

    ‘Whooo!’

    You may have heard it or read about it. Wisconsin radio color commentator Rob Andringa’s reaction as play-by-play man Brian Posick announced Burish’s game-winning, shorthanded goal against Minnesota last Saturday night has even been the talk around the Wisconsin locker room this week.

    By Tuesday, Eaves had heard it, too.

    “You talk about [Fox Sports Net color commentator] Tom Sagissor having genuine enthusiasm. This matched anything that Tom has done,” Eaves said. “Especially when he said, ‘Keep that horn going, baby!’ It was classic. That’ll get on a record someday when they talk about fun moments in Badger history.”

    You can find the archive of the broadcast on the multimedia section of the UW hockey page on uwbadgers.com. Select the Minnesota game of Nov. 15 and go 2 hours, 12 minutes into the broadcast. A note of advice: Turn the speakers down.

    Thanks for Reading

    Michigan Tech’s Chris Conner and Brandon Schwartz both list USCHO as their favorite Web site in this year’s Huskies media guide. Thanks for the pub, guys.

    In Other Words

    League players of the week were Denver’s Gauthier on offense, Minnesota State goaltender Jon Volp on defense and Wisconsin’s Jake Dowell as the top rookie for the second week in a row. … Minnesota-Duluth forward T.J. Caig has a slightly separated shoulder and will miss this weekend’s series at Union, the Duluth News Tribune reported. Also out this weekend for the Bulldogs: forward Dan Kronick (back) and defenseman Ryan Geris (concussion). … Michigan Tech’s scoreless tie with Minnesota State last Friday was just the second in the 83-year history of the program. The other was against North Dakota on March 8, 1968 — the first game in total-goals playoff series. Friday’s game was the first scoreless tie for the Mavericks. … The 2-7-1 mark is Minnesota’s worst 10-game start since opening the 1971-72 season 2-8. That team, which featured a winger named Dean Blais, finished 8-24 under interim coach Ken Yackel Sr., who replaced Glen Sonmor at midseason. …

    St. Cloud State’s Craig Dahl will coach his 800th game Saturday night at Rensselaer. He’s 384-363-51 in 22 years as a college coach. … Babe the Blue Ox resides in the Minnesota-Duluth locker room after the Bulldogs beat Bemidji State last Saturday. It’s the first time the trophy has been awarded. It goes to the winner of Game 2 of the non-conference series. … Volp passed the 1,000 mark in career saves last weekend. … Michigan Tech senior captain Brett Engelhardt broke out of a scoring drought with two goals against Minnesota State last Saturday. He had just one goal in his last 15 games dating to last season before netting two against the Mavericks. He scored in the second game of the first-round WCHA playoff series against Minnesota last season. … It was polar opposites for Minnesota State last weekend. The Mavericks scored no goals on Friday and six on Saturday, the highest offensive production of the season. Mankato still is averaging only two goals per game.

    • This Week in the CHA: Nov. 20, 2003

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    Last week Beavers, Bulldogs, and Babe the Blue Ox, battled to create a Minnesota rivalry. This week, it’s (the state of) Michigan’s turn.

    A young Wayne State squad leaves the friendly confines of Hockeytown, USA, to face No. 14 Michigan State in East Lansing. The two Michigan residents have never squared off before and Warrior coach Bill Wilkinson reckons it is about time.

    “Any time you have teams from within the same state, it is bound to lead to some developments,” Wilkinson said. “There are also a lot of issues between the CHA and CCHA. There are many intricacies in the game itself.”

    The games are awkwardly timed, coming Thursday-Friday. (By the time you read this, the first game may have already been played.) The Warrior strategy does not require much thought, and goes something like this: do everything to keep the more offensively-gifted, nationally-ranked Spartans off the scoreboard.

    Granted the Spartans have played four more games than the Warriors, but Michigan State’s leading scorer entering the weekend, Jim Slater, has the same number of points as the first three on Wayne State’s list combined.

    “The premise is that we are trying to be as conservative as possible,” Wilkinson said. “We don’t want to let anyone go alone on defense, and slow the game down as much as possible.”

    “We are not as explosive a team as Michigan State,” he added. “So we can’t get into a shootout-type game with them.”

    If Wayne State succeeds in tightening the contest with its physical play, than a presently nonexistent rivalry will develop quickly. Wayne State is looking for its place among the Michigan college hockey teams.

    The Warriors also have a chance to further inflict some CHA damage on the Spartans. Findlay stunned Michigan State, 4-3, back on Oct. 10. That surely has not been lost on the boys from East Lansing.

    While we’re on the subject of rivals, Wayne State and Findlay turned up the pressure against each other this past weekend. Playing a home-and-home, each team won in the other’s building.

    On both nights, the Warriors blew leads. Rigel Shaw scored for the Oilers at 11:45 of the third period to send the game into overtime before Nate Higgins potted the sudden-death winner. More disturbing for a team that will rely on defense against the Spartans, on Sunday, the Warriors had opened up a 4-1 lead, but special teams abandoned them. Two power-play goals and a shorthander keyed a comeback in an eventual 6-5 Findlay win.

    It was an impressive performance for Findlay, which needed a boost to its offense. The Oilers get to host their first nonconference games this week, playing Canisius.

    “We came back and showed some toughness at the end of Sunday’s game,” Wilkinson said. “They got some opportunities to put in some goals and they cashed in on them. We’re a young team and we are going to make some mistakes.”

    The games against Findlay have gotten increasingly more heated. Scheduled to face each other at least six times this year, the two teams have squared off four times in two months. All those games except one have been decided by one goal.

    “Anytime you play someone this many times, you are going to get familiar with each other,” Wilkinson said. “That increases since the games have been so close to each other, than if our next meetings were in January and February.”

    Rivals Redux

    Speaking of the Minnesota rivalry, Bemidji failed in its quest to win the first-ever Babe the Blue Ox traveling trophy against No. 15 Minnesota-Duluth last Saturday, but the Beavers might not mind.

    They had already beaten the Bulldogs, 3-1, the night before — the first ever win for the program against a ranked opponent.

    “You take a win against someone like Minnesota-Duluth,” said Bemidji coach Tom Serratore. “It’s a big win for the program and for the league.”

    Senior goaltender Grady Hunt led the way by allowing one goal in the first period and nothing more, making 20 saves on the night to protect the Beavers’ lead. His efforts — and the significance of the win for his program — earned him USCHO’s national Defensive Player of the Week award.

    “Wins against ranked opponents need strong performances from your goaltender,” Serratore said. “Grady had a good game, making 20 saves and came up big for us when we needed him.”

    Unlike the Wayne State-Michigan State games, Bemidji and Minnesota-Duluth first played back in 1947. The two schools decided this year to make their meeting an annual event, and crafted a trophy to add a little flair.

    “We’ve been trying to make more of being in the same state of Minnesota,” Serratore said. “We put a lot more on the line and we said let’s add a little flavor to these games.”

    The familiarity of the Land o’ 10,000 Lakes could not be more opposite than the next two weeks for Bemidji: the Beavers travel East to play two games apiece at Merrimack and Connecticut.

    Merrimack will not be much easier than UMD. The Warriors just battled depleted, but No. 2, Boston College to a tie and will have some momentum of their own.

    “We don’t know much about these teams at all,” Serratore said. “It’s going to be difficult just to be on the road for such a long time, playing four straight games.”

    You can’t play a rival every week.

    And Lastly

    At the start of the year, I solicited fan responses to make predictions in this column space. I renew the offer, gentle readers, if you wish to add your opinions on this week’s games to the end of the column. Simply drop me an email at [email protected]. Thanks to Chris Brown for buoying me in the first weeks.

    Finally, in analyzing college hockey, we sometimes forget the fun of playing the games. To all of you out there at any level getting on the ice at unholy hours just to take some shots and skate — especially those that have to turn around and stay awake in class — you have my respect.

    This Week in Hockey East: Nov. 20, 2003

    By
    -

    BU Breakout?

    Going into Saturday night’s rematch with Merrimack, Boston University had been held to two or fewer goals in four of its six games. The power play had failed to score on 21 consecutive opportunities and was converting at a league worst 6.25 percent rate (2-for-32 on the season).

    The Terriers had just been tied by Merrimack in a contest in which they had two wide-open opportunities all alone in front during overtime and had failed to capitalize. The postgame shot charts showed BU with attempts galore from just outside the crease. The scoreboard, however, showed only a 2-2 tie. And this was on the heels of scoring only a single goal against Maine and then being shut out by New Hampshire in the previous two games.

    The Terriers had officially entered the can’t-throw-a-puck-into-the-ocean zone.

    BU coach Jack Parker opened his postgame comments by saying, “I don’t like the fact that we got two goals on 40 shots. Again.”

    He then added, “When you have the puck all alone twice in overtime in front of the goaltender and you walk in another time in overtime and can’t put it home and shoot it wide, you’re a little snakebitten, I’d say.”

    The one thing BU partisans could hang their hats on is that the opportunities were there. Sooner or later, the Terriers had to start converting. A week earlier against UNH, they hadn’t generated the kind of chances that lend themselves to an offensive breakthrough. This, at least, was progress.

    “We got a lot of shots against UNH, but not [quality] shots,” Parker said. “We weren’t at the net all night. We were at the net all night against this team. We had a lot of opportunities right at the paint. But if [we’re] not getting goals it’s hard to watch.”

    Hard to watch indeed. The top returning scorers — Frantisek Skladany, Mark Mullen, Brian McConnell and Kenny Magowan — totaled only four goals and five assists in six games.

    “We’re getting shots,” Parker said. “We’re getting plenty of shots. Territorial advantage is what we want.” Pointing to the shot charts, he continued, “They got two grade-A [chances] and we got 15 or 20. So the problem is we’re just not getting it by the goaltenders.

    “I can’t fault our play as far as getting the puck into the zone. We’re flying on the power play, getting through center ice, we get it set up and get opportunities. We’re just not scoring goals.

    “But I’m sure they will come. Guys like Skladany and McConnell are struggling, but they’re going to get goals for us. Laliberte is going to get goals for us. There’s no question in my mind.”

    There might have been a little whistling past the graveyard with those comments, but Saturday night’s 6-1 win proved them prophetic — at least to a point. Helped out, that is, by the reuniting of the Magowan, Skladany, and Brad Zancanaro line for the first time since last year. That unit responded with three goals.

    “Actually, I came pretty close to benching Magowan tonight,” Parker said after the win. “I was undecided; he was playing on our third line, and I thought he didn’t play that well last night. There was a question of how can I get this guy going. He’s not playing that well; he didn’t play well against UNH. I was thinking of benching him and telling him he’s not good enough.

    “I chatted with him and decided I’d put him back on his old line to see if I could get him going,” Parker added. “He obviously got jacked up a little bit. I thought Skladany was flying and so was Zancanaro; he looked like a waterbug out there. So we’ll keep them together.”

    Laliberte scored his second of the season, as did freshman Kenny Roche, while David VanderGulik made it three goals on the weekend for the fourth line.

    Of course, one game does not a season make. And McConnell and Skladany are still not producing. But the BU offense still poses a lot of problems.

    “They’re strong down low,” said Merrimack coach Chris Serino. “They’re tough to get the puck from. They’re big and they’re strong down there. The thing that makes them tough, too, is their defensemen are so active in the offense that they create a lot of mismatches down there. Guys think their forward is down low and they start covering the wrong people. [Ryan] Whitney is going to the net all the time.”

    And it’s not as though the Terriers offense has to recreate the editions of the early- and mid-nineties BU powerhouses. For eight straight seasons through 1997-98, they featured at least one All-American forward. Since then, only second-team selection Carl Corazzini in 2000-01 has earned that distinction. Yet, BU has been an NCAA tournament team all but twice, riding defense, goaltending, and enough offense to be successful.

    “We don’t have pure goalscorers,” Parker said. “We didn’t have one guy in the top 15 in the league scoring last year and we were runnerup in the league championship and went to the national tournament. We won 25 games with offense by committee and I do believe that we’ll have guys who will step up. We’ll have more guys differentiating themselves this year than we did last year. It just hasn’t happened yet.”

    Second To None?

    When Providence opened the season, all eyes were on the offense. Gone were the big guns of the past several years: Jon DiSalvatore, Peter Fregoe and Devin Rask. The assumption was that Peter Zingoni, the only returning 20-plus-point man, would be the focal point. And he’s certainly done his part, scoring seven goals along with five assists.

    Of late, however, it’s been the Friar second line that has been doing the heavy lifting. The trio of Torry Gajda, Chris Chaput and Jonathan Goodwin scored four goals in last Friday’s upset of New Hampshire and added another one on Saturday against Massachusetts.

    “They weren’t our second line [against UNH],” PC coach Paul Pooley said. “They were playing a lot and they executed and [contributed to] two power-play goals. They’ve really stepped up since we put them together. They seem to have a little chemistry; they read off each other. They’re not our second line anymore.”

    Gajda, a sophomore, now leads the team with 13 points on six goals and seven assists. He earned Hockey East Player of the Week honors for his two-goal, one-assist weekend.

    “He’s always scored, but [now] he’s shooting the puck,” Pooley said. “He’s going to the net, he’s got quick hands and he’s relentless. He doesn’t always look good getting it done, but he’s getting it done.”

    Although Chaput preceded Gajda to the Friars by a year, they played together for the New England Jr. Coyotes, so it’s no surprise that they’re hitting it off well together.

    “Chap and I played together back in junior hockey so we know each other pretty well,” Gajda said. “John Goodwin is just a solid player. He bangs the body and the puck comes loose and he goes to the net. We find him and he finds us. We’re just jelling.”

    When a questioner jokingly asked him about Goodwin being the outsider of the trio, Gajda laughed.

    “I don’t know if he’s the outsider, but I tell you what, he’s becoming the insider now,” Gajda said. “He’s working real well.”

    That working together hasn’t just been in putting up the points. It’s also been in the defensive zone. All three rank among PC’s top forwards in plus-minus.

    “That’s been my weakness [in the past], the defensive part of the game,” he said. “So I’m just concentrating on that right now. My offensive numbers, I have that. It’s easy to play offense now that I know how to play defense.

    “[As a line], we play solid defense. The numbers might say we play better offense, but the guys are covering really well on defense and we transition the puck really well. Chap just knows where the puck is going to go and Goodwin finds it or I find it. Our transition game is really solid and we run with it.”

    As to whether the goalscoring will continue at its current pace, who knows?

    “I hope it’s not [just] a hot streak,” Gajda said. “I had an opening this year so I came in ready to go, knowing I was going to get a shot. I’ve just run with it.”

    So Much For “The Weak Link”

    Since the first day of practice, the media mantra surrounding Boston College has been, “What a great lineup! But I dunno about the goaltending.”

    It’s not as though anyone has considered Matti Kaltiainen a sieve. It’s just that when you’re going after a Hockey East title and then a national championship, you’re facing the goaltending elite, such as UNH’s Mike Ayers or last year’s Cornell phenom Dave LeNeveu. So if you were a BC fan and Kaltiainen was your man, you expected to be out-goaltended. Matti might be a really nice kid and a very good goaltender, but he wasn’t in anybody’s elite category.

    Based on the early returns, however, Kaltiainen may be pulling a Scott Clemmensen on all of us. Clemmensen, you’ll recall, was similarly considered BC’s weak link, especially after that brutal goal as a freshman in overtime of the national championship game in 1998. He recovered from that crushing defeat to become one of the major keys to the Eagles advancing to the Frozen Four his next three years, culminating in the 2001 title.

    He wasn’t flamboyant, but he was rock solid, seldom giving shooters much of the net to work with. The kid became well-nigh unbeatable after the calendar flipped to March.

    Kaltiainen may be following a similar path. Since a poor game at North Dakota on Oct. 17, he has held opponents to only a single goal (plus an extra-skater tally by UNH a week ago) the past six starts. In that stretch his save percentage has been .941.

    Certainly the BC defense deserves a lot of credit. After all, they’ve kept the shot totals down to exceptional levels: 18 (North Dakota), 18 (Notre Dame), 16 (UMass-Lowell), 24 (Maine), 21 (UNH) and 15 (UMass).

    But if a goalie is seeing few shots and stopping over 94 percent of them, he’s going to win you a lot of games.

    “If you’re going to be good, you need solid goaltending,” BC coach Jerry York said. “That was the one area that we really had to solidify for our club this year. I think Matti’s play in the NCAA tournament last year and his start here has really helped us think that we have that equation solved.”

    The turning point was near the end of last year when assistant coach Jim Logue, who handles the BC goaltenders, convinced Kaltiainen to let his 6-2 frame do more of the work for him. The idea was to be less of a reflex goalie playing deep in the net, and to come further out.

    “We’re trying to make him more aggressive,” York said. “He’s a big kid. The current trends are to stay deep in your net or come out. We like him at the top of the blue, out at the top of the crease.”

    Kaltiainen added, “I cover much more net and I don’t have to react so much. I just trust my size and use it.”

    The “Other” Pointman

    It doesn’t take long to see that defenseman Thomas Pock is the focal point for the UMass power play. The guy didn’t score 37 points as a converted forward last year for nothing. He already has eight goals and eight assists this season to lead Minuteman scoring.

    As a result, he gets a lot of attention. A case in point was Saturday’s game against Providence. The Friars made the sensible decision to make sure Pock wasn’t the guy to beat them on the power play. That paid dividends when he pulled much of the attention to the right side, only to feed Marvin Degon for a one-timer and an early lead.

    “I think Tommy just read off of what he saw he saw out there,” UMass coach Don “Toot” Cahoon said. “Quite honestly I think he just took himself out of what we call ‘The House’ — the grade-A area — and [Providence] was just honoring him so much that they came off angle with him and that left the middle of the rink open to get it to [Degon] to tee it up.

    “They did a good job of trying to neutralize Tommy tonight, but I don’t think you can fully take the game away from him because he’s so adept with the puck and he has such a feel for the game. He still manages to be a strong contributor for us.”

    With the extra attention on Pock, Degon’s contributions will become all the more important. The goal against Providence was his first, but he added an assist to bring that total to seven.

    “I’ve hit four posts already, so it’s a good feeling,” Degon said with a smile. “Whenever you score a big goal in a game like this, it’s always a good feeling whether it’s your first or your 100th. You just take it in stride and hope more will come.”

    Two Huge Points

    Some may consider ties to be like kissing your sister, but at the end of the season Merrimack may well look back on the ties with BU on Friday and BC on Tuesday as decisive. With their upcoming gauntlet of games (see “Tough Sledding” below), pulling two points out of a possible six with BU and BC was huge.

    “We’ve been in every single game, but you can’t continually lose and keep your confidence level going,” Merrimack coach Chris Serino said after the Friday night tie. “No matter what kind of a team you are and how good you play, when you lose you keep finding ways to lose. That’s why it was important for us to get points tonight and not find a way to lose this game. It would have been devastating for us to lose the game. Hopefully, this is a little pick-me-up for us.”

    Granted, the Tuesday night tie included being outshot by BC, 40-14, but sometimes you take your points where you can get them.

    “We don’t get many points over here, so to get a point and get out of here is good for our team,” Serino said.

    Tough Sledding

    Over the past decade or so, the four perennial powerhouses — Boston College, New Hampshire, Maine and Boston University — have provided the other Hockey East teams with their stiffest competition. If you had a weekend series with one of those schools, you knew you were in for a battle.

    Between now and January, the other five teams will be seeing not a hint of each other, but only a steady dose of the four league bellwethers.

    Northeastern, Merrimack and Providence face the stiffest challenges, each with those toughest of league games extending into the middle of January. Northeastern, still looking for its first win, will face UNH and BC twice each along with a singleton at BU. Only a stunning upset (or two) will prevent the Huskies from a Jan. 15 position in the cellar, having garnered only a single league point. Providence faces a similar test: two games each against BC and UNH as well as a lone contest against Maine. Merrimack faces Maine twice followed by single games at UNH and BC.

    The gauntlet is similarly testing for Lowell and UMass, but only lasts until the New Year. The River Hawks play a home-and-home against BU and travel to UNH. The Minutemen, who are bidding to join the perennial powerhouses, face Maine, BU and UNH.

    All of which means that in the next month and a half we could be seeing some major separation in the standings.

    Quotes of Note

  • Pock, on UMass being ranked ninth in the country: “We can feel good about ourselves being up there. [In my first two years here] we were ranked ninth. But that was in Hockey East.”
  • BU goaltender Stephan Siwiec on a shot that hit him right on the mask: “The face save was, I don’t know, I guess my head was just in the right place at the right time.”
  • Serino on being late to the postgame press conference after the 2-2 tie with BU because he’d gotten sidetracked with fans: “If we lost the game, no one would want to talk to me.”
  • After that same game, Serino looked at yours truly and said, “You picked us to lose!”

    Trivia Contest

    (As noted last week: if you’re dying to win this trivia contest, here’s a hint. Go to the Hockey East page and look for this column there. It’ll show up earlier on that page than on the front page because of the way the columns are edited. Don’t give your competition a head start. Alternatively, bookmark this page and then hit refresh a bajillion times until it shows up on Thursday night. That’ll also make my editors think I’m wildly popular with all those bogus requests for the page. Hey, I’m not proud.)

    Last week’s question recognized Lowell’s Ben Walter for his great start with 10 goals in his first seven games and asked who the last UML player was to achieve this feat. The answer was All-American Mike Carr. Carr went two games during the stretch without scoring a goal, but managed to total 12 goals in the first seven games of the 1981-82 season. According to UML Assistant Director of Athletic Media Relations Dan Fisher — who is as nice of a guy as he is a horrible poker player — “Carr picked up his 10th goal at 16:53 of the second period, while Walter notched his 10th at 6:16 of the second.” That, folks, is why they pay Dan the big bucks.

    It’s no surprise that Scott Kaplan was the first to answer correctly since he’s a River Hawk mega-fan to rival any other. He and his wife even followed the team to Anchorage, Alaska, earlier this year for its appearance in the Nye Frontier Classic. Every team should have fans as loyal as those two. His cheer is:

    “Hey BU, This Our House! Go Hawks!”

    This week’s question asks in what way Maine’s schedule this season is unprecedented. The answer does not mean playing an individual team or league for the first time. It goes beyond one or two matchups. Think big picture. Email my trivia account with your informed answers or wild guesses. The winner will be notified by Tuesday; 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…

  • So Anna Kournikova plans to quit tennis and devote herself to becoming an actress and TV awards presenter? A TV awards presenter? A TV awards presenter? You know, I’ll be nice and just leave it at that. Anything more would be like shooting fish in a barrel.
  • I had to love Bill Simmons, also known as “The Sports Guy” on ESPN.com, addressing New York Yankee fans who were whining about losing the World Series after so many years of success. He wrote: “So for all those ungrateful Yankee fans out there — at least the few who can read — put a sock in it.”
  • Can we agree that any male who watched the Travel Channel’s World Poker Tour event on Wednesday night instead of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion show must immediately enroll in Gamblers Anonymous? This is worse, much worse, than betting the rent check.
  • Anyone got a tape of the Victoria’s Secret show?

    Thanks to Scott Weighart and Jim Connelly.

    • Hand in Hand

    By Adam Wodon
    -

    It began with little fanfare. If you had a satellite dish, you could have seen it, but probably didn’t notice.

    College Sports Television flipped the switch last April, and just like that, it was being beamed out over Channel 610 of DirecTV satellite systems. And if you were paying close attention, you may have noticed its first ever original programming event: pre- and post-game shows from the Frozen Four in Buffalo.

    That moment, however, was just a dry run for what was to come — a union of lost souls, two parties who wanted and needed each other, coming together for the benefit of themselves and fans everywhere.

    logos/cstv.gif

    It started almost two years ago, when word of an all college sports television network was getting under way. It was hard not to dream about college hockey finally finding a home, but the sport had been burned before, with eager commissioners searching for ways to create a national television package only to find roadblocks at every turn.

    But who were these CSTV guys? Yes, the founders of Classic Sports Network, later sold to ESPN. But would guys like this be interested in hockey? What would their approach be?

    Those questions were soon answered.

    CSTV had it in mind early. The big sports like football and basketball were well covered, but it left so much more out there. It knew what the next sport in line was … hockey. It was just sitting there, a rabid audience just not large enough for the likes of ESPN, but perfect to be the cornerstone of a fledgling network.

    “They didn’t make promises right out of gate, which I give them credit for,” says CCHA commissioner Tom Anastos, whose league was the first to sign a deal with CSTV. “It’s fair to say not everybody took it that seriously [at first]. I said, ‘Prove to me you can do what you say you can do.’ It’s true of any startup business.

    “[They] said they received a considerable amount of feedback about hockey.”

    Chris Bevilacqua, CSTV co-founder and Executive Vice President, was the network’s point man. He went out, met with the commissioners of all the hockey leagues, and made deals. One by one it was done. The ECAC was the last to fall into line, late this summer.

    “In meeting with Chris, I sensed a sincere interest in the sport. I could see in him his passion for college athletics,” Anastos says. “I like doing business with people who are passionate in what they’re doing.”

    Oct. 3, 2003 — St. Lawrence at Miami. Friday Night Hockey was born. Complete with its own 30-minute lead-in studio show.

    “It would be easy to tell college hockey, ‘Hey, we’ll just pick off some games where we can,'” says Tim Pernetti, Director of Programming at CSTV, and a former football player at Rutgers. “Instead, we said, ‘If you want to do this right, you’ll move the games to Friday night that don’t already exist there, we’ll give it its own time period, promote it as a national deal, and we’ll do it right.’ And them realizing that we had the flexibility to make it unique is what caused it to come together.

    “It’s a great fit because of the flexibility. ESPN, for all its money, could easily do what we’re doing with the snap of their fingers. But they’ve become about a different thing, they’ve become a pro sports network. And let’s face it, they don’t have enough shelf space to do something like this anymore.”

    A match made in heaven.

    A National Deal

    "We’re doing a 30-game package, which has never been done. We’ve made a national package out of it, we’ve given it its own night, its own name, its own studio."

    — Tim Pernetti, CSTV Dir. of Programming

    Whenever the powers that be in college hockey had even approached major networks about a national TV deal, they often heard the same thing: “College hockey people know that a game between North Dakota and Maine could be huge, but will it sell to the average sports fan? They want to see rivalries they know from the other sports, like Michigan and Michigan State, Boston College and Notre Dame.”

    That, combined with the sheer economics of it, meant it never happened.

    Enter CSTV.

    “The way we approached it was, these are the best programs in college hockey and we had access to everything, except games that were already spoken for or were part of other TV arrangements that preceded us,” says Pernetti. “And we just took a ‘best of the best’ approach.”

    CSTV doesn’t deny that putting on “recognizable names” is a component of their decision making, but it is not nearly the overriding factor. After all, St. Lawrence and Miami were on the opener.

    “We wanted to make sure we had the highest profile matchups, the best teams, the best venues with the packed houses so it looked good, and really presented the best of what college hockey is all about,” Pernetti says.

    Which is not to say schools like Michigan and Boston College aren’t well represented. In some cases, very well represented. (Complete schedule)

    “We get feedback all the time saying, ‘Guys, enough Boston College.’ And that’s fine,” Pernetti says. “People love to complain, but it means people are watching.

    “Do Michigan and Boston College have name recognition? Yeah. Are Michigan and Boston College in the Top 10? Yeah. To me this is more about — it can be Niagara, Findlay, Bemidji State — I look at the poll. I look at what teams did last year, how teams are coming back this year, who’s gonna be the upper echelon of teams nationally, and that’s the games we went after.

    “Are we slightly heavy in Hockey East in the first half? Probably. But the reason we are is because Hockey East can’t make much available to us in the second half because of their deal with NESN. So name recognition has a certain weight, but for people who are not necessarily hockey fans, they see a game with Denver and Minnesota State and say, ‘What the heck is that?’ But we have it on (Dec. 19).”

    By the same token, the leagues understand the outside influences that pull on a national network, even one with the flexibility of CSTV.

    “We want to work with them,” Anastos says. “We know part of the lure of creating a national broadcast over several markets is to have a broader approach than just a regional game. We’ve been told for years, what makes TV more attractive is schools like Notre Dame, Boston College.”

    The trickiest aspect to CSTV’s package of games was in having to negotiate different deals with all the leagues. Because each league was already tied into a variety of regional and local packages, it was difficult to create one national deal. So each conference deal came with a different set of guarantees, and that all had to fit into one season-long package.

    “We have a terrific relationship with FOX,” says Anastos. “We had to go back into our relationshoip with FOX and get a better understanding. … But CSTV always said, ‘We respect what you’re already doing.’

    “FOX has been great. … [CSTV] did it in a manner that doesn’t compromise pre-existing contracts.”

    The details are complex, but CSTV has already proven to the leagues its ability to work with them, individually and as a whole, to provide the best package possible.

    “The agreement that we’re in with the CCHA or any other conference, they’re multi-year programming and marketing relationships. Basically, they’re partners,” says Pernetti. “They’ve given us access to games, and we’re trying to balance making sure all of our partners gets fair representation in the package.”

    Cooperation

    Once again, hockey’s spirit of cooperation has been in full display. The league commissioners are filled with “hockey people” who are not tied into major all-sport conferences — Tom Anastos, Joe Bertagna (Hockey East), Bob Peters (CHA), Bruce McLeod (WCHA), they all played the game. They run their conferences while keeping one eye on the sport as a whole.

    “All of us want to do well for our respective leagues,” says Anastos. “But what sports is, you’re partners and you’re competitors. There’s not many businesses where your biggest competitors are your partners, even within our leagues.

    “We worked as collectively as we could. We share information all the time, we update each other.”

    CSTV has fit right in.

    “It’s been great,” Pernetti says. “Whether it’s Joe or Bruce or Bob Peters or Tommy Anastos or any of these guys … they’ve been very cooperative. They have a very difficult job because a lot of their schools have had local and regional TV deals for their hockey for a long time, and now they’re asking those guys to co-exist with us in a lot of ways.

    “We did a game in North Dakota early in the year, and North Dakota does every one of their games on local TV live. We come riding in, walking on eggshells, and the local people that do the games there embraced us. We shared camera positions, we shared a truck, we took advantage of each other’s feeds, and we had our own talent and production, and it worked out great.”

    The willingness to cooperate has enabled to CSTV to remain as flexible as possible. For example, take the CCHA deal. Anastos could push for every CCHA game in that requirement to include two CCHA teams, in order to maximize the exposure for his conference. But he understood the bigger picture. So the Miami game to open the season filled one of the requirements, even though it was an ECAC opponent in St. Lawrence.

    “We would like to have two CCHA teams there, but in the big picture, to grow [the sport], it’s not going to happen,” says Anastos.

    One other thing the leagues did was rearrange some games to make sure they were on Friday night, and to move the start times to 8 p.m. ET.

    “If our sport wants to be on TV, it has to be flexible in that regard,” Anastos says.

    CSTV is also thinking “outside the box,” putting a game on from Alaska-Fairbanks at 11 p.m. ET on Feb. 6, as part of a doubleheader with Yale-Harvard, the nation’s oldest rivalry. It has the CHA and ECAC tournament championship games, and the Florida Everblades tournament, which should feature at least three Top 15 teams.

    “If we had the available funds and resources to produce 80 hockey games, I’d get everybody on,” says Pernetti. “But the bottom line is, we’re doing a 30-game package, which has never been done. We’ve made a national package out of it, we’ve given it its own night, its own name, its own studio; and we’ve gotten the rights through CBS to the Women’s Frozen Four which is the first time that’s ever been on live TV.”

    Progress

    If you’re reading this article, it’s more than likely you already know about CSTV — even if you didn’t six months ago, and even if you still can’t see it.

    For now, CSTV is mainly available only through DirecTV’s 15 million homes. A petition drive is under way to convince cable entities to pick up the network, and CSTV remains in negotiations with many of them. But many college hockey fans had already latched onto the idea of satellite TV. Through DirecTV’s Sports Package, college hockey fans already could see a variety of games through regional stations.

    And eventually, CSTV will be on cable networks. Further, CSTV’s clout in the television industry is already spreading college hockey into new places. Through outlest like Score and NHL Network in Canada, CSTV has syndicated many of the Friday Night Hockey games, meaning audiences in Canada are getting a taste of college hockey.

    And through a deal with InDemand, which provides high definition (HDTV) programming to special cable channels, college hockey is starting to penetrate cable households in unique ways.

    “This is a great first step for us in a series of stairs,” says Pernetti. “As much as the community embraces what we’re doing, as we grow in distribution, there’s just going to be more opportunities for college hockey.”

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    ‘A proud day’ as former Minnesota Duluth women’s hockey captain Brodt tabbed new head coach for St. Scholastica

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    Denver sophomore blueliner, recent Wild signee Buium tabbed USCHO Player of the Year for ’24-25 season

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    Western Michigan’s Ferschweiler leads Broncos to national championship, named unanimous USCHO Coach of the Year for 2024-25 campaign

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    After 48-point freshman season with Boston University, Hutson adds to accolades with 2024-25 USCHO Rookie of the Year honor

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    Wisconsin’s Simms, McNaughton, Minnesota’s Primerano take home final women’s hockey HCA monthly honors for ’24-25 season

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    Final HCA men’s hockey monthly honors for ’24-25 season go to Western Michigan’s Washe, BU’s Hutson, Denver’s Davis, Bentley’s Hasley, Minnesota State’s Tracy

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    Norwich grad Dawes named new men’s hockey coach for Cadets, leaves Stevenson after nine seasons behind Mustangs bench

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    Trio of All-USCHO teams announced for 2024-25 NCAA Division I men’s college hockey season

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    NHL’s Devils sign Boston University forward Lachance, who gives up last two years of NCAA eligibility

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    Minnesota men’s hockey coach Motzko, who ‘knows what it takes to have success,’ named head coach of 2026 U.S. National Junior Team

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    Kaplan inks NHL deal with Philadelphia, leaves Boston University after junior season

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    After pair of seasons, national championship with Western Michigan, Bump leaves Broncos for NHL contract with Flyers

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