Round 1 of one of the biggest WCHA series of the first half of the season went to Denver tonight, as goalie Marc Cheverie returned to post a 1-0 shutout win. The first of four meetings was a turf war, as you might expect, with three diffferent sets of coincidental roughing penalties being called. It was also a pretty tough defensive battle, despite the top defenseman for each team being out with an injury.

Cheverie was the big story of the night, however, making 34 saves in his first game back since getting his leg severely cut by a skate. This is now his fourth shutout of the season in just six starts.

Elsewhere...

Minnesota-Duluth beat Minnesota in the final seconds of overtime. Don Adam and Tim Walsh were assigned to this game despite their colossal error last week with the Marvin/Genoway incident. In my mind, that was way worse than Justin Brown and Brett Klosowski making the wrong determination on a difficult kneeing/not kneeing call. Oh well. I didn't watch that closely, but Adam and Walsh seemed okay tonight, except for maybe a questionable powerplay they gave Duluth at the end of regulation.

Ferris State's Blair Riley had scored two goals in a game three times this year, and finally broke through tonight with his first career hat trick in an 8-1 thrashing of Ohio State. Also getting his first career hat trick was Minnesota State's Jerad Stewart, who scored four goals(that boggles my mind) against Alaska-Anchorage(oh, that makes more sense) in an 8-2 Maverick win.

You've got to wonder how much lower Michigan can go before they hit rock bottom. They lost again tonight, this time to a weak Bowling Green 4-2, after the Falcons scored three unanswered goals in the third period. The three points vaulted BG ahead of Michigan in the CCHA standings.

Colorado College was due for a letdown, playing non-conference Robert Morris, but managed to escape with a 4-3 win on a late powerplay goal.

Lake Superior might be a little better than people think. They pulled out a 4-3 home win over Alaska tonight.