{"id":26043,"date":"2003-11-06T20:07:02","date_gmt":"2003-11-07T02:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uscho.com\/2003\/11\/06\/this-week-in-the-wcha-nov-6-2003\/"},"modified":"2010-08-17T19:55:32","modified_gmt":"2010-08-18T00:55:32","slug":"this-week-in-the-wcha-nov-6-2003","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/2003\/11\/06\/this-week-in-the-wcha-nov-6-2003\/","title":{"rendered":"This Week in the WCHA: Nov. 6, 2003"},"content":{"rendered":"
Some thoughts this week, while pondering the matchup of a North Dakota offense fresh off a 10-goal performance against a Minnesota defense without its two best players:<\/p>\n
Maybe it’s coincidence, maybe it’s intentional, but St. Cloud State coach Craig Dahl this week sounded a lot like Minnesota-Duluth coach Scott Sandelin did about a month ago.<\/p>\n
Before his Bulldogs embarked on a season-opening stretch that would eventually see them losing to North Dakota and Michigan State while tying Boston College, Sandelin remarked that, no matter the outcome, those games would be good for his team.<\/p>\n
So this week, in advance of a trip to Duluth to play the Bulldogs in a battle for first place — more on that later — Dahl took a similar approach.<\/p>\n
“All of this is really good,” Dahl said, “because it’ll give us a dose of confidence or, ‘This is what we’ve got to work on, boys.'”<\/p>\n
Maybe it’s just a good time to model yourself after the Bulldogs. They’re on a four-game winning streak that has them at 4-2-1 on the season — more importantly, 4-0 in the WCHA — going into this weekend’s series at the DECC. Junior Lessard claimed the second straight USCHO.com national offensive player of the week award for the Bulldogs after recording five goals and two assists in last weekend’s sweep of Alaska-Anchorage.<\/p>\n
There were enough signs before the season that suggested the Bulldogs could be in the thick of the WCHA race at this (admittedly early) point in the season, but St. Cloud’s involvement in such a battle wasn’t much of a thought. Certainly not to Dahl at least.<\/p>\n
But the Huskies have a 3-0-1 record, although all four games have been at home. Dahl said he gets the sense his team is a bit nervous about its first road trip of the season, just like he may have been nervous about his team before the season.<\/p>\n
“I just looked at our team this year, and pretty much habitually playing 12 freshmen and sophomores and rotating three goaltenders, I figured the beginning of the season’s going to be a little bit of a feeling-out period,” Dahl said. “Certainly, I would have been very happy with four of eight points in the league from two series. I can’t believe we got seven of eight. That’s astounding to me.”<\/p>\n
The Bulldogs were responsible for ending the Huskies’ WCHA playoff run last season, thumping St. Cloud 7-3 in the deciding Game 3 of a first-round series. Dahl, however, said revenge isn’t a factor this weekend.<\/p>\n
“I think our players just are really trying to worry about playing this year as well as we can and as smart as we can,” Dahl said. “That sounds like coachspeak, but I haven’t heard a word about last year from them.”<\/p>\n
Which is scarier: That a North Dakota team that scored 18 goals last weekend is playing a injury-scarred Minnesota defense this weekend, or that the Sioux could score 18 goals last weekend without the help of a power-play goal?<\/p>\n
UND, in fact, has not scored a goal with the man advantage yet this season, going 0-for-26. That’s the worst opening run on the power play in coach Dean Blais’ 10 seasons as the Sioux’s head coach.<\/p>\n
Makes you wonder how many goals North Dakota would be scoring if the power play was working. It’s already leading WCHA teams with an average of 5.6 goals per game, but just two power-play goals in the first five games would put that average at six goals.<\/p>\n
“You’d think if you scored 18 goals, you’d have three or four that were on the power play,” Blais said. “But we had our opportunities.”<\/p>\n
While noting that plenty of odd things have happened to prevent the Sioux from scoring on the power play, Blais said his team needs to shoot more.<\/p>\n
That shouldn’t really be a problem when considering the top UND power play unit consists of Parise, Bochenski, Murray, Andy Schneider and David Lundbohm. That group has 11 goals this season.<\/p>\n
“It’s not like we’ve got freshmen out there that are just learning the system and everything else,” Blais said. “The guys that are out there have played a lot of power play in their lives and just have to figure out a way to put it in the net. They know what they’re supposed to do; they just haven’t executed very well at times.”<\/p>\n
Minnesota is wounded on defense, where Keith Ballard is out with a leg injury and Chris Harrington was hurt in a collision with Thomas Vanek in his own end last weekend.<\/p>\n
But Blais said he’s not concerned with what that may do to the matchup. Rather, he’s telling his players to focus on what they can control.<\/p>\n
The rankings — No. 6 for Colorado College, No. 7 for Denver — and the records — 5-0-1 for the Tigers, 5-1 for the Pioneers — might make you think the teams that will play in the opening weekend of the Gold Pan series are that close in many categories.<\/p>\n
That might not be the case.<\/p>\n
CC is being held together with duct tape and who knows what else because of a rash of injuries to its forwards. It appears Denver has been able to avoid the serious injury bug.<\/p>\n
Denver has seen the more serious test of the two, coming out of Mariucci Arena last weekend with a split. CC got its toughest test in a series at Clarkson two weeks ago, getting a win and a tie.<\/p>\n
The teams have had similar experiences of good goaltending — CC’s Curtis McElhinney allowed one goal in two games last weekend against Minnesota State; Denver’s Adam Berkhoel rebounded from a shaky game last Friday to post a win on Saturday.<\/p>\n
But this could be the weekend that separates these teams. CC was picked for the higher finish, based mostly on its regular-season championship a year ago, but that is being threatened by a depleted lineup. Denver has been on the rise despite being picked for fifth by the coaches.<\/p>\n
These teams meet again in the last series of the regular season, March 4 and 5. One has to wonder whether the appearances will be so similar then.<\/p>\n
Some things have a way of making you forget you just got swept in a WCHA series.<\/p>\n
Minnesota State’s Cole Bassett was hospitalized in Colorado Springs on Saturday night after going into the boards headfirst in the first period of a 3-1 loss to Colorado College. He stayed on the ice for several minutes while being attended to by trainers, the Mankato Free Press<\/i> reported.<\/p>\n
He left the ice on his skates, with assistance from teammates, but went to a hospital on a backboard.<\/p>\n
Bassett watched practice from outside the rink on Monday and is doubtful for this weekend’s series against Alaska-Anchorage, coach Troy Jutting told the newspaper.<\/p>\n
The psychological experiment that is the pink locker room just might have worked on Alaska-Anchorage last weekend.<\/p>\n
The visitors locker room at the DECC has long been painted pink in an effort to soothe the opponent to the point where they’re too relaxed to play.<\/p>\n