Camp Randall Classic
by WCHBlog on Feb 8, 2010 1:23 PM PST
1 comment
For being a hockey game played in a football stadium, Saturday's game between Wisconsin and Michigan felt more like a game played on the hardwood at the Kohl Center.
On Saturday afternoon I was driving to a hockey game--and subsequently driving back home, since I suck at reading schedules--and I heard this stat on the radio: Wisconsin basketball coach Bo Ryan has just a .500 record in Big Ten road games over his career, while his home record in conference games is like 8000 games over .500. Why the difference? Among the conspiracy theories are that you basically have to beat the Badgers by double digits to make up for the free throw deficit you're going to face, and the visitor's rim at the KC has been tightened to near comical levels to make sure it kicks out all but a perfect shot in the second half--twice in the past month the Badgers have overcome double digit deficits in the first half and ended up winning by 8 points.*
Back to the hockey game, overall, I thought it was a success. I enjoy the idea of spectacle every now and again in college hockey. Apparently Minnesota really liked the idea, and will likely be one of the next to try it--and the idea of resurrecting the Minnesota Hockey Classic is a genius one, albeit difficult with Bemidji shedding their second-class citizen status. Hypothetical, but Minnesota State could play Bemidji and St. Cloud could play Duluth earlier in the day, and then they could clear out and make way for the riot police and first responders necessary for an evening Minnesota/North Dakota game.
But at the same time, I guess I can see why the WCHA didn't want this game played as a league game between Wisconsin and Minnesota. The ice was certainly a factor in the game, including Bryan Hogan having Lake Mendota in his crease for two periods--I was shocked they didn't switch ends after 10 minutes in the third period-- and overall draining the quality of play. Scott Gudmanson let in a soft goal because he lost the puck in the lights and stands(as opposed to Wisconsin's first goal, which was Bryan Hogan's standard one soft goal per game. Good to know it wasn't a roof that was causing that.) And I wouldn't have been comfortable seeing those two officials they found officiating a WCHA league game.
As for the late penalties that got all the attention, eh, they were judgement calls. My faith in the ability of the people doing the judging should be well known by this point, and I think we all knew which way some of those close calls were going to go late in the game. Certainly those calls weren't as obvious as putting a shoulder into someone's back and sending them head first into the boards being two minutes for cross-checking. If anything, it was a showcase to the rest of the country that sadly, that is the best the WCHA has to offer when it comes to officiating.
But you have to credit to Wisconsin for taking advantage of those opportunities, deserved or not. They clearly found a hole in Michigan's penalty kill and did a nice job of executing twice in a row. That extra bit of talent and discipline will probably be the difference between Wisconsin getting a #1 seed in the NCAA tournament, and Michigan just missing out on the tournament.
*These conspiracy theories aren't necessarily the opinion of the Western College Hockey Blog, except in this case they are.
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Rumpel Commits
by WCHBlog on Feb 8, 2010 11:37 AM PST
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No surprises here. CollegeHockey247 is reporting that BCHL goalie Joel Rumpel committed to Wisconsin after visiting during this weekend's outdoor hockey game. Rumpel has some family ties to the Badgers, and seemed to just be waiting for an offer to commit to the Badgers. It looks like he'll join the Badgers in 2012.
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New Commits
by WCHBlog on Feb 8, 2010 1:10 AM PST
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CollegeHockey247 reported that Shattuck-St. Mary's forward Brad Robbins committed to Bemidji State.
Fargo Force forward Garrett Allen committed to Denver, choosing the Pioneers over some fairly big WCHA schools like Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Blake Hietala, a forward playing out in Saskatchewan ccommitted to Michigan Tech. Hietala is originally from Houghton. There's potential for all sorts of Finnish hiliarity and confusion when Michigan Tech's Blake Hietala meets up with Northern Michigan's Blake Pietila in a couple of years.
Former Benilde defenseman Tom McCarthy committed to Merrimack. I always thought McCarthy was underrated, and thought he might stay in the WCHA, but he's probably better suited for the smaller rinks out east.
Manitoba defenseman Peter Stoykewych committed to Colorado College, while his older brother Adam committed to Michigan Tech.
Two more players from the NTDP U17s committed as well. Defenseman Connor Murphy committed to Miami, while Los Angeles-born forward Adam Reid committed to Northeastern.
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Hanowski Ties Game with .1 Seconds on Clock
by WCHBlog on Feb 6, 2010 4:13 PM PST
2 comments
In case you missed it last night, here's the video of St. Cloud State's Ben Hanowski tying St. Cloud's game against Alaska-Anchorage at 4 with just .1 seconds left on the clock. I passed up the opportunity to go to his game, which apparently was a mistake.
The clock on the SCSU TV feed is synced up with the game clock, so that is accurate. You can't really see the puck with .1 left on the clock, but you can see the UAA player looking into his own net, to give you some indication that Hanowski just barely beat the clock. What's crazy is that it looks like he still has the puck on his stick with .3 on the clock. The tie helped keep St. Cloud in the fourth spot in the PWR, which would earn them the last number one seed in the NCAA tournament.
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Paul Kelly's Chat with USCHO
by WCHBlog on Feb 5, 2010 1:01 AM PST
8 comments
Former NHLPA head and the executive director of the new College Hockey Inc., Paul Kelly sat down with USCHO.com for a chat, and covered a number of interesting topics facing the college hockey world.
There were a couple interesting topics discussed and apparently I have lots of thoughts on them.
-Expansion
The first schools mentioned by Kelly were Arizona State, Delaware, Kentucky and Penn State. Later on, he talked about adding schools in major cities like Chicago, Pittsburgh, Washington DC, and somewhere in California.
Of those, I think Penn State is the most likely and has the most chance of success. In an ideal world, if I got to pick two places to drop college hockey programs, I'd probably choose USC and UCLA. California is the biggest area where college hockey is losing Americans to the CHL simply because playing college hockey requires moving far away from home to play junior hockey and earn scholarship and then going far away from home to play in college. Denver has cleaned up on some kids from non-traditional areas lately simply because it's as close to the west coast as you get in college hockey. USC and UCLA are both in a major metro area, are really well known schools, and would have a natural rivalry with each other. There's also the added benefit that with two more teams way out west, you could have three smaller, much more regional conferences in the west as opposed to two overstuffed conferences right now.
Some of the other cities are less appealing. Theoretically the idea of a team in a major city is nice, but the problem is that you have to have a school attached to it. The University of Illinois-Chicago already tried a team back in the 90's and it failed, because UIC just isn't going to draw much buzz in Chicago. Same goes Washington DC. Navy would be nice addition just because it's another team, and the more opportunities out there, the better, but a service academy isn't going to be drawing kids away from the CHL. Pitt moved to D-I club hockey fairly recently. I guess that would be the next best choice, especially if Penn State got in the mix.
-College teams getting younger
The theme of getting colleges to take more 18-year-olds rather than warehousing them in the USHL for a year or two was mentioned a couple of times.
The problem with colleges wanting older, more mature and developed players is that CHL teams have more flexibility when it comes to signing younger players, since they can cut and trade them. For a very good, but not quite top-shelf 16-year-old hockey player deciding between the CHL and NCAA, he may have the CHL telling him he can sign a contract and play for them right away, while the college recruiting him is telling him they want to see how he does in the USHL--where he might not make a team or seriously contribute for another year or two-- before they're really ready to make a serious offer. Again, it's a particular problem in California, where there are lots of players that could develop into nice players, lots of WHL teams, and limited scouting opportunities for most colleges.
I think one of the big selling points for college hockey is the level of play it offers, and making teams younger just dimishes that. As it stands now, the players that are good enough to come to college as 18-year-old freshman are forced to work harder and become more complete hockey players to fit into the college game, rather than developing bad habits as a top-line superstar.
The main issue College Hockey Inc., and college hockey in general, will have to deal with when it comes to dealing with the CHL is the CHL waving the false promise of "the fastest route to the NHL" under every decent player's nose, when the odds of that happening are fairly slim. So slim, in fact, that for all but a select few players, the focus should be on just making the NHL, rather than getting their as fast as possible, and a player is much more likely to take his best shot at that at the age of 22-24 than he is at the age of 20. In that case, an extra year in the USHL--which has improved tremendously in recent years--maybe isn't the worst thing for a players future.
The other main selling for college hockey is that for all but the very, very select few who make millions in the NHL, college hockey still offers the ability to earn a four-year degree and pursue a career in minor pro hockey, while the CHL still forces players to choose between getting an education OR a career in minor pro hockey--and as the numbers bear out, you guess which one the kids who've been bred to play hockey the previous four years of their life choose more often.
And of course the other problem is that I'm not quite sure how you mandate something like that. It's something teams do because it makes their team better. It's a shame to lose out on some of those kids, but the quality of play in college hockey is still outstanding, and it's still sending more and more kids to the pros without them, so I don't think it's worth cheapening the quality of the game.
Oh yeah, and he said junior leagues like the USHL should start taking more 16 and 17 year olds. Somebody in Minnesota-likely a high school coach--just had their head explode.
-Schedule
Kelly said he'd like to see more exempted games to make the schedule a little longer, but that it would be a really tough sell with the NCAA, which kind of goes along with my theory in regards to the WCHA tournament that it's pretty unlikely that the NCAA would be willing to stretch the season out any longer.
He also had an interesting idea about more showcase games including events at big name venues like Madison Square Garden, the Air Canada Center(College hockey and Allen's Pub? I'm in.), outdoor games, and traveling international teams.
All interesting ideas that maybe won't make a ton of impact, but should help increase the visibility of the game, and honestly, things like this are probably where College Hockey Inc. can make the most progress. As much as people talk about expansion, or other sweeping changes, there's some major limiting factors standing in the way of those things happening. Starting small is likely the only place real progress is going to be made.
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College Hockey Moves to the Rivals Network
by WCHBlog on Feb 3, 2010 1:46 PM PST
3 comments
As some of you may have noticed, there is a new college hockey site that is part of the rivals.com network. Finally you people are getting your damn stars.
I've been asked on more than a couple of occasions why college hockey didn't have a site on Rivals.com--I guess technically McKeen's Hockey is there, but that barely counts--and my response was always, "because it'd be next to impossible to run". But I think this site could do it the right way.
The site is headed up by longtime hockey journo Bob Miller, and while it's still definitely in it's nascent stages, there's already a lot of good stuff up there. They're putting up a weekly line chart, and NCAA tournament projection, as well as the site's bread and butter, which are articles about committed or potential college hockey recruits. Most are behind the pay wall and require membership, though this about BCHL goalie Joel Rumpel is free.
I'll be chipping in as well on the recruiting side of things, which like I said, is far from completed, but should be pretty cool. There are plans in the works for a "Top 50/Top 100" type list, with the much beloved stars.
The other project I'm working on over there is setting up their recruit database. I know a lot of people expressed disappointment that I stopped updating the old recruiting boards,, but that type of thing isn't really conducive to a blog. Having a searchable database like Rivals has is much better software for that type of thing. Of course the big problem is what a gargantuan project that is. I've got a couple dozen names entered in, and by my calculation, there's probably about 1000 kids I could put in. Hopefully by this summer, after the Select Festivals, I'll have it completely stocked and it should be pretty cool.
All that doesn't change anything around here, of course. It will still be business as usual, with the added caveat of a few more contacts, and hopefully less screaming and crying to get passes to things like this year's Minnesota High School Tournament--because why would a college hockey blog want to cover the state high school tournament?--and this year's Frozen Four.
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Grand Forks Justice: Frattin Found Not Guilty
by WCHBlog on Feb 2, 2010 11:09 PM PST
2 comments
Not for the lawn-mower thing; that other thing.
After hearing that North Dakota forward Matt Frattin's blood alcohol level was tested at .12(with the legal limit being .08), it took a Grand Forks less than 30 minutes to find Frattin not guilty of drunk driving.
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WCHA Reprimands Motzko for WCHA's Ineptitude
by WCHBlog on Feb 2, 2010 7:32 PM PST
10 comments
The WCHA, showing all the public relations deftness of the Confederation of African Football, released a public reprimand to St. Cloud head coach Bob Motzko for his actions at the end of Saturday's game between St. Cloud and Colorado College.
St. Cloud appeared to tie the game at 4 apiece with about 90 seconds left in the game during a scramble in front of the net, but officiating crew Don Adam and Brett Klosowski ruled the play dead and waved off the goal. Motzko went out onto the ice after the game to let the officiating crew know what he thought of their call.
I guess you can't blame Motzko for trying to get them to change the call. That was the same officiating crew that changed a penalty call from nothing to a five-minute major after a ten-minute discussion with the opposing team's bench two weeks ago during a 3-hour long debacle in Mankato--which in intself was a shrewd coaching move by Scott Sandelin, who surely remembered that Don Adam was the same official that once overturned a Bryan McGregor breakaway goal, after a lengthy discussion with the opposing team's bench, where Adam was informed he shouldn't count the goal and he decided to take their word for it. Of course, that decision only came after Adam changed his initial call on that play because of a lengthy discussion with the UMD bench.
You also can't blame Motzko for not trusting Adam and Klosowski's judgement when it comes to watching the puck, since that was the same crew(EDIT: Nevermind, just Adam worked that game) that couldn't figure out who illegally hit Chay Genoway in the head, while Genoway had the puck.
But yeah, if somebody else made these guys look bad, it could really hurt the integrity of the game.
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