The New WCHA Final Five and New Broadmoor Trophy
by WCHBlog on Mar 20, 2010 4:39 PM PDT
0 comments
The WCHA held a press conference after today's WCHA third-place game to talk about the new WCHA tournament format.
As most everyone knew, the tournament will feature all 12 teams playing in one of six first round playoff series, followed by two games on Thursday, two on Friday, and just a championship game on Saturday.
Among the stuff I found interesting about the new playoff system...
-They looked at a number of different formats, but the coaches felt strongly about this system because they were excited about the opportunity for one more team to make it to the Final Five every year, which is a pretty big deal for schools.
-The times for the Thursday games will be 4pm and 7pm, and will be on one ticket. The reasoning is that they wanted to make it easier for people to get to the Thursday games if they were traveling.
-The "Minnesota rule" with the Gophers getting the primetime game regardless will still exist. Among the coaches, Don Lucia is the biggest opponent of the Minnesota rule, but it's a decision made with budgets in mind. They can't reseed teams in the tournament because of the Minnesota rule.
-They've petitioned the NHL for the Wild to hold a game at 1pm on the Saturday day of the championship game to give fans something to do during the day. There are also other activities planned for that day for fans looking for something to do, but not going to the Wild game.
The WCHA also unveiled--Quite literally. I gasped. No one else did.--their new Broadmoor Trophy. It's purdy. The original was just something a couple guys went out and bought one day, and the WCHA wanted something that looked a little better in comparison to the MacNaughton Cup. The trophy has a sculpture of the Broadmoor hotel atop it. There will be three versions of the trophy: a large one on permanent display at the XCel Center, a medium-sized one that will current title holder will keep, and smaller ones that each winning team will get to keep.
0 comments | 0 recs |
Baldwin to New York?
by WCHBlog on Mar 20, 2010 11:45 AM PDT
3 comments
There's rumors swirling around the Alaska-Anchorage freshman defenseman Lee Baldwin has signed a free agent deal with the New York Rangers.
It's an interesting signing. Baldwin is a big guy with a lot of potential, but he had a fairly ugly freshman season where he really struggled with the speed of the WCHA. There's certainly no way a team would have signed him if they held his draft rights and had the option of leaving him in the NCAA.
3 comments | 0 recs |
Goloubef Suspended
by WCHBlog on Mar 20, 2010 11:14 AM PDT
0 comments
0 comments | 0 recs |
It's Important Because It's Me
by WCHBlog on Mar 20, 2010 11:00 AM PDT
1 comment
It seems like I'm writing stuff everywhere but here these days. I answered a few questions for Ryan Lambert's weekly NCAA post over at Puck Daddy, where I'm referred to as "the fellows over Western College Hockey Blog." As if there needed to be more evidence that I don't have a life.
A couple things to add...
1. I answered those questions Thursday afternoon before the Hobey finalists were announced, so I think that's pretty good I dropped the names of five of the ten finalists. I was leaning towards Nyquist at the time, but have since switched my full support over to Brendan Smith's Mustache for Hobey.
2. I better provide some context to my saying that I don't believe Bemidji is the 7th best team in the country, before people complain. There was some context, but it didn't make the cut because I'm one of those damn bloggers that can't work within a word count. This way you get my whole line of thinking and get even more to complain about.
I think Bemidji is a good team, but it's not like they were dominating everyone on their schedule. They went 3-3 playing the 5th, 7th, and 8th place teams in the WCHA this year. That's only a little over 20% of a WCHA season schedule I think it's fair to extrapolate that out to around a .500 record, maybe a game or two below in the WCHA this year, which would have got them 6th, maybe 7th place in the WCHA.
A fair comparison to Bemidji State this year would be Colorado College, who at times looked like one of the top teams in the country, but they got ground down by the second half of the WCHA schedule, and their lack of depth got exposed. Bemidji is a similiar team with a good first line, an excellent offensive defenseman, and a great goalie, but not a lot of depth. The difference is that they got to protect their record by picking up a lot of cheap wins against bad teams in the second half. If they had played a WCHA schedule, I think it's more likely they would have finished closer to 17-20 in the PWR, which is about where Colorado College finished the year. Then again, some people would argue--and some ranking systems would agree-- the same is true for any non-WCHA team that gets an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.
3. The article Ryan wrote is pretty tough on autobids, but I've got no problem with them. I didn't like how the CHA handed there autobid; they may as well have played tiddlywinks with Mike Eaves. But in general, I think it's good that every conference gets some sort of representation and at least has a chance in the tournament, and generally, I think the gap between those teams at the top teams is much, much smaller than people think, especially in a high variance one-game playoff type of deal.
1 comment | 0 recs |
North Dakota 4 Denver 3
by WCHBlog on Mar 20, 2010 9:08 AM PDT
0 comments
Ground-breaking recap is here.
For as close as the game ended up, I thought it was incredibly one-sided in North Dakota's favor. Denver's Tyler Ruegsegger seemed to agree, calling it an "embarassing effort" for Denver. North Dakota looks a force right now.
0 comments | 0 recs |
Will Ness Leave for the Pros?
by WCHBlog on Mar 19, 2010 11:11 PM PDT
0 comments
I heard rumors about Aaron Ness leaving the Minnesota program to sign with the New York Islanders going around today, and kind of wrote it off as just another rumor, but I got home tonight, looked it up, and it turns out the guy behind the story is super-credible Chris Botta. So it sounds like there's something to it. Of course, whether or not I agree with the article is another story.
Everyone can agree that Aaron Ness hasn't done all that much with Minnesota, but there's no way signing on to play professional hockey solves his problems. If anything, it will make Ness' problems--namely his lack of physical strength--stand out even more. It's not like Ness doesn't understand how to play the game. He's one of the smartest players I've seen come up through the ranks. But he's reached a point where everybody plays the game pretty well and his disadvantages in size and strength are making him fall behind.
People may be hitting the panic button when it comes to Minnesota these days, but feelings about certain coaches there aside, the most logical step for the Islanders is to give Ness two more years to develop, hope he packs on a ton of muscle, and then see where he's at once his career at Minnesota is done. It's not the type of thing that can fixed with a simple change of scenery.
0 comments | 0 recs |
St. Cloud 2 Wisconsin 0
by WCHBlog on Mar 19, 2010 5:10 PM PDT
0 comments
I'm doing some game recaps for CH247 at the Final Five this year. You can read my first masterpiece of journalism here.
For what it's worth, I probably know as little or less than the rest of you about Garrett Roe's condition, other than that he was in a lot of pain, the trainers were telling the Husky bench it was nothing too major, and that Roe didn't want to go out on the stretcher, but it was already out on the ice, so they did it as a precaution, and that he went to the hospital. Hopefully it ends up being something that doesn't prevent him from playing next weekend.
Update: Just heard that x-rays were negative for Roe, so it sounds like it might not keep him out too long.
0 comments | 0 recs |
St. Cloud/Wisconsin Line Charts
by WCHBlog on Mar 19, 2010 10:27 AM PDT
0 comments
Line charts for today's first WCHA semifinal between St. Cloud and Wisconsin are after the jump.
I don't think St. Cloud ever officially announced who was starting in goal this afternoon, so I guess there's some drama in that. Spoiler alert: it's the one that played well and won two games last weekend.
0 comments | 0 recs |
Secondary Sidebar
User Tools
FanPosts
Community blog posts and discussion.
Recent FanPosts
Featured Stories
FanShots
Quick hits of video, photos, quotes, chats, links and lists that you find around the web.
Recent FanShots
Certain photos copyright © 2010 by Associated Press or Getty Images. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of Associated Press and Getty Images is strictly prohibited.
