The Twitters went ablaze last night with a rumor that four OHL teams would be playing a double-header at Michigan Stadium the day before the NHL's Winter Classic, which pretty much would have been the worst thing since fascism and restaurants that serve kettle chips with sandwiches and make you pay extra for fries. Thankfully, I saved a pretty spleen-filled post until the morning, and by then, the rumors had been killed. The games will be played at an alternate location, almost guaranteed to be Comerica Park, which would be a fun event, and a nice addition to the festivities, though it would be a bit watered-down since it would take place during the World Juniors, meaning most of the CHL's bought foreign talent would be unavailable.

Notre Dame's Riley Sheahan was suspended by the CCHA for one game last weekend for a hit on Western Michigan's Dane Walters.The Irish appealed the suspension allowing him to play on Friday, but it was upheld, keeping him out of the Saturday game. Notre Dame head coach Jeff Jackson wasn't happy with how the CCHA handled the suspension. He has a bit of a point. The original penalty was initially charged to the wrong player--Notre Dame's Jeff Costello rather than Sheahan--and incorrectly called a contact to the head penalty. The officiating crew that evening was replaced by a new crew the following night.

That said, I didn't see the hit, but have no problem with the suspension. Sheahan may not have made contact with Walters' head, but he almost certainly made an illegal hit--which is all the CCHA press release for the suspension specified--and even Jackson conceded it was an illegal hit, saying it probably should have been called interference. As a result of the hit, Walters didn't finish that game(Walters apparently gave it a go for a shift or two after the hit, but reports indicate it was the Sheahan hit that caused his injury), missed the following night's game, and didn't play at all last weekend. In what world, other than a bizarro alternate reality that lets Bruce McLeod and Greg Shepherd run a hockey league(that's right, we're the crappy one), is an illegal hit that causes a player to miss three games due to injury not worthy of a single game suspension?

Roman Augustoviz of the Star-Tribune broke the story that has been rumored for months about the five Minnesota schools starting their own annual college hockey tournament. On one hand, this should be a pretty fun event that people have wanted for years. On the other hand, this gives Minnesota a plausible excuse for never having to travel to the outstate schools for road games again.

Minnesota State Moorhead set another artificial deadline that they won't come anywhere close to hitting. Circle the end of February on your calendar for the next "We're so close, but we can't say how much money we've got" article that pushes the deadline back another couple of months.

The USHL held their first ever prospects all-star game last night in Muskegon, and the event seemed to be a success. It may not have been heavily attended by fans, but definitely by scouts, with a reported 200+ scouts being in the building. There were some a little disappointed by the NTDP not participating. They didn't participate this year because the event was scheduled the same week as their high school exams. I'm not sure about their participation in the future. If the goal of the event is about exposure, it's not like any of those kids are hurting for exposure to pro scouts. I'd rather see a few more off-the-radar kids get the opportunity to show something in front of that audience.

Minnesota-Duluth senior forward Jack Connolly picked up 4 points in a weekend sweep of Alabama-Huntsville this past weekend, bringing his total on the season to 40 points through 24 games, and bringing his career point total to 177 points.

That means Connolly is on/close to the pace needed to reach the pretty significant 200 career point plateau. The last player to do so was Michigan's TJ Hensick in 2006-2007, who finished with 222 points in his four year Michigan career. Nebraska-Omaha's Scott Parse finished with 197 points that same year. Since then, not many players have come close. St. Cloud's Garrett Roe had a chance last year, needing 58 points in his final campaign, but only tallied a career-low 36 points for the Huskies. Carter Camper finished his four-year Miami career with 183 points last year. A few other players would have had an outside shot at it if they had stayed in school for four years, including Connolly's UMD teammate Mike Connolly(he would have needed 64 points in his final year), and Boston College's Nathan Gerbe(he needed 67 points as a senior, after scoring 68 as a junior).

Needless to say, reaching 200 points is a pretty big deal in the modern college game. So what does Connolly need to do to get there?

Minnesota-Duluth has 12 regular season games, at least two, very likely three, and possibly four WCHA playoff games, and at least one NCAA tournament game, barring something apocalyptic happening. We'll stick with the minimum to be safe and he has roughly 15 games left in his college career. If he stays on his current pace of 1.67 points per game, over 15 games, that works out to 25 points, leaving him at 198 career points.

Strength of schedule may factor in as well though. Minnesota-Duluth was blessed with a comically weak cluster of Michigan Tech, Minnesota State, and Alaska-Anchorage this year. That means six of Connolly's remaining 12 games will come against those teams, and Connolly managed 4-point weekends against all three of them in the first half of the season. Add in that their playoff series is almost guaranteed to be against Minnesota State or Alaska-Anchorage, and there should be plenty of opportunities for Connolly to rack up a few extra points to push him over that mark.

If Connolly can't reach that mark this year, it may be a while before someone comes close again. Even if he comes back for his senior year, as rumored, Denver's Drew Shore would need 100 points between now and the end of next year to reach the mark. Notre Dame's TJ Tynan fits the mold of a player that might reach it, and is currently on pace to, but being a 3rd round draft pick this past summer, the chances he plays out all four years seems unlikely, despite his barely 5'8" frame.

From Friday night, here is Danny Kristo breaking into tears because he got kicked out of the game for a super illegal check from behind against Minnesota's Ben Marshall. Kristo was doing fine until he came back out of the tunnel for that final 'F--- you" screamed at the officials.

Meanwhile, the following night, Tom Serratore had a hit from behind on North Dakota's Andrew MacWilliam, that was only ruled a 2-minute charging penalty. I don't know that that hit was excessively dangerous given how close MacWilliam was to the boards, but given the current political climate in hockey, and the clamoring for "zero tolerance" on checking from behind, that has to be a five-minute major. It's probably better off for UND that it wasn't, since Minnesota ended up scoring shorthanded on the resulting penalty anyway.

Minnesota's Mark Alt did have a check-from-behind called a five-minute major but I couldn't find a video of it.

But on to the main event. In the closing seconds of Saturday's 6-2 Minnesota win, some pushing and shoving led to North Dakota's Ben Blood being tripped from behind and Blood retaliating by going after a Gopher player in the post-game handshake line.

Here's Blood being tripped by Minnesota's Jake Hansen. And here's Blood punching Kyle Rau in the handshake line.

First off, there are three things that are just absolutely fantastic about this.

1. Blood gets tripped from behind, doesn't see who did it, and just assumes it had to have been Kyle Rau. In his defense, I made the exact same mistake.

2. The North Dakota announcing crew. Not for their spot-on description of "Blood takes Ambroz down" as Blood is laying there motionless in a headlock. That's pretty much what I expect out of them. No, the best part is that they can't possibly fathom how teams could still show respect for each other by participating in a post-game handshake after something like that. Here's a protip: Just do what every other hockey team at every other level does.

3. Wally Shaver's call of the incident. I've always liked Wally Shaver. "I'm done with these guys. Go form your own league." is an instant classic.

As fallout, Ben Blood has been stripped of his role as North Dakota's assistant captain, but will face no further discipline because the WCHA league offiice is basically a high school teacher a year and a half from retirement that just doesn't care anymore, and really, who would want to deal with all those whiny emails?

If it were up to me, I would have handed out at least a single game suspension to both Jake Hansen and Ben Blood. Hansen's trip hasn't gotten as much attention, but I would classify that as nearly as dirty. That garbage seems to happen with every Minnesota/North Dakota, and ultimately, it ends up looking embarrassing to the sport.

In a shocking announcement, the WCHA actually announced that they had handed out supplemental discipline by suspending a player for one game next weekend. In even more shocking news, that player was neither Trevor Bruess nor that guy that made it onto famed ESPN talk show The Gentleman's Yellery and made us all look like jerks.

The WCHA announced a one-game suspension for Nebraska-Omaha's Dominic Zombo for a knee-to-knee hit on Minnesota-Duluth's JT Brown. Zombo was only assessed a two-minute penalty on the play. Many Duluth fans were perplexed why the hit didn't draw a five-minute major penalty. If only there were some short, lupine-themed fable to help explain it.

Zombo will miss UNO's next game, on Friday against Minnesota State, and given his 0 points through 23 games this year, he'll probably miss it more than the game will miss him.

The WCHA's suspension comes a week after the CCHA got serious about discipline, suspending Lake Superior's Andrew Perrault for one game, and Miami's Tyler Biggs for two games for contact to the head penalties.

Add plans for one more outdoor hockey game next year into the mix.

Black & Blue, the excellent unofficial Lincoln Stars blog is reporting that an outdoor double-header featuring the Lincoln Stars and Omaha Lancers, followed by the University of Nebraska-Omaha and North Dakota will take place next February at Omaha's new TD Ameritrade Park, which will be the new home of the College World Series of baseball.

Of all the proposed outdoor games, I think I might like this one the best. The new park has a manageable size, making a sellout almost guaranteed given the teams playing. There's a pretty good natural rivalry being built between UNO and UND, and an already great rivalry between the Stars and Lancers. It may not have the broad appeal of a big name stadium, but would be a fantastic, entertaining event for fans of those teams.

Amidst all the talk of future outdoor games for the University of Michigan, the Wolverines actually played in an outdoor game yesterday, on a Sunday afternoon in Cleveland for some reason. Michigan beat Ohio State 4-1 to win the Frozen Diamond Face-off.

I couldn't find an exact number, but estimated capacity for the rink at Cleveland's Progressive Field was about 40,000, and the official attendance number for yesterday's game was 25,864. It's far from a smashing success, but considering how poorly the event was planned--again I stress, Sunday afternoon in Cleveland--and promoted, it's not all that bad. According to Cleveland Indians president Mark Shapiro, the event made money.

In other outdoor hockey news, Wisconsin is in talks with Minnesota to host an outdoor game at Soldier Field next February. The game could also feature a double-header game between Notre Dame and Miami.

This would be Wisconsin's third crack at hosting an outdoor hockey game. The first two, held at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, and at Wisconsin's Camp Randall Stadium weren't exactly flops, but also not smashing successes. Part of the problem with the Camp Randall game was the WCHA would not allow Wisconsin to schedule a conference game with Minnesota, forcing the Badgers to settle for scheduling a low-stakes non-conference game against Michigan(a lesson about the mundane quality of non-conference games not taken by anyone in college hockey this past summer). Being able to schedule Minnesota would go a long way towards making the Soldier Field game a success.

As for Notre Dame-Miami, both teams want to have a huge recruiting presence in the Chicago area and this would really help that. Notre Dame has also always struggled with getting their large alumni base interested in their hockey program, and this might be the opportunity to do that.

The end of the calendar year was supposed to be Minnesota State Moorhead's third ABSOLUTE LAST DEADLINE for raising the money needed to fund their hockey program. WDAY in Fargo-Moorhead reported last week that so far the Dragons only have $17 million out of the $37 million needed to start their program. That means they've only raised $2 million since first announcing their intentions in July. I guess they could extend the deadline again. The hope was to join the new WCHA once everyone else in the conference leaves in two years, but it's not like there's a bunch of other schools out there dying to get in to the WCHA, so a spot should remain open for them. They seem to have maxed out on what they can get in donations though, so it seems like any hopes of MSUM starting a program are pretty much dead now.

The World Olympic Games started this past Saturday with the US U16 team defeating Austria 7-2, and then losing to Canada 5-1. As expected, this has been a pretty entertaining tournament so far with most of the big hockey powers sending pretty good rosters. The US roster has a lot of the favorites to make next year's NTDP team. Canada's roster isn't quite their best team, but pretty close to it. Every association in Canada nominated a forward, defenseman, and goalie, and then a roster was picked randomly from that. It's as close to a best-on-best between the US and Canada in international play until the World Juniors.

That makes Canada's win pretty disappointing. It was a 3-1 game until Canada added a couple power play goals late. These games just have 15-minute periods as well. The US has games left against Finland and Russia, which should be difficult. Scoring totals by the end of this tournament should give a pretty good indication of who the top players in the '96 birth year are.

Earlier this week, I rambled to the conclusion that next year probably isn't the right time for the University of Michigan to host another outdoor hockey game.

Brian Cook of MGoBlog provides a pretty devastating counterpoint though:

Would Dave Brandon threaten to break Michigan's own attendance record and hopelessly conflict a ton of people when Michigan inevitably plays a bowl game on the same day? Yes. The curly fries are very convincing, and there is at least one dollar in it.

How could I not be cynical enough about a man who made millions selling cardboard-crusted, not-real-cheesed pizzas and drastically under-cheesed Cheezy Bread at Domino's, as you have heard in recent attack ads paid for by Domino's? I'll calibrate accordingly.

Reports have surfaced that the NHL's offer to play their Winter Classic at Michigan Stadium moved Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon...presumably to a bigger house, and the deal is close to being finalized.

The next issue to deal with is appeasing the Detroit Red Wings, the city of Detroit, and Red Wings owner Mike Ilitch, who also owns Comerica Park, the other proposed site for the Winter Classic. While making history is cool and all, they'd also like their own slice of the giant money pie.

ESPN's Scott Burnside suggests the solution to that might be hosting the Winter Classic at Michigan Stadium, but also building a second outdoor rink at Comerica park to host all ancillary events, including, potentially the Great Lakes Invitational. Give credit to the excellent Tech Hockey Guide for being the first to make the case for hosting the GLI at Comerica Park.

I still have a list of pretty list of reservations about this, as currently rumored, but I also think it just could work out.