Bulldogs 5-0-1 start earns brief week at No. 1 rating

DULUTH, MN. — Reputations arenÂ’t easily made in NCAA hockey, but the University of Minnesota-Duluth continues to knock down barricades of tradition to eliminate skeptics from all around the college hockey world – including those stubborn souls who rate the top teams in the land.

In three short weeks, UMD was held off at third or fourth in the rankings, then vaulted to the No. 1 spot in the nation. Typically, coach Scott Sandelin found it more significant that the Bulldogs remained No. 1 in the WCHA rather than take a brief, one-week turn at No. 1 in the nation, even though last week was the first time UMD attained the No. 1 national rank under the current ratings structure. In the past decade, since U.S. College Hockey Online/CSTV, and USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine have become the two most prominent ratings systems, the Bulldogs never reached the pinnacle in either.

UMD joined Michigan, Boston College and North Dakota as one-week wonders in the No. 1 spot, because immediately after gaining the top rank, UMD was stung 3-2 and tied 2-2 by unrated Vermont in a nonconference set in Duluth. UMDÂ’s overall unbeaten record slipped to 5-1-2, and was accompanied by a slip in the ratings. This week, UMD dropped to second behind Boston College in the USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine poll, and third behind BC and Michigan in the USCHO/CSTV rating.

When a team works with as much dedication as UMD has shown in SandelinÂ’s tenure, satisfaction requires more than just a fast start and national recognition. But thatÂ’s not bad, for starters. The Bulldogs used explosive scoring outbursts to subdue Michigan Tech and Minnesota State-Mankato to open WCHA action. The Bulldogs rallied from a 3-1 deficit for five straight third-period goals in beating Michigan Tech 6-3 for a sweep of their WCHA-opening series in Houghton, as Evan Schwabe scored four goals and two assists for the weekend.

Going home to a pair of sellout crowds in the DECC (Duluth Entertainment and Convention Center) last weekend, Marco Peluso was responsible for a four-goal weekend, scoring a hat trick amid a six-goal outburst in the second period, which broke open a 2-2 game and led to an 8-3 romp over Minnesota State-Mankato. In the second game, however, the scoring binge disappeared, and it was up to backup goaltender Josh Johnson to make 43 saves to give the Bulldogs a 4-1 victory against the aroused Mavericks.

That put UMD at 3-0-1 atop the WCHA and 5-0-1 atop the nation.
Traditional powers such as Boston College, Michigan and North Dakota have been difficult for the Bulldogs to penetrate, despite making it to the Frozen Four last April before losing to WCHA foe and eventual NCAA champ Denver in the semifinals. The Â’Dogs returned most of last seasonÂ’s team and added a promising crop of recruits, and with 11 seniors, the WCHA coaches voted UMD the clearcut preseason favorite.

Nationally, Michigan, Maine and Boston College ranked 1-2-3 at the start, all strongholds of annual hockey power. North Dakota went into Maine and smacked the Black Bears to open the season, so North Dakota vaulted from fifth to first in the ratings. North Dakota was tied at Mankato, so Boston College became the third No. 1 team in three weeks. Then Boston College lost to Notre Dame.

UMD, meanwhile, opened with a tie and victory at Notre Dame, before winning twice at Michigan Tech and sweeping Minnesota State-Mankato.
Over four decades of Division 1 hockey, UMD had become known for hard work, culminated by the rise to prominence in this, Scott SandelinÂ’s fourth year as head coach. Not that those who preceded him didnÂ’t find success or work hard. Mike Sertich, the coach Sandelin replaced when he moved over from his assistant coaching job at North Dakota, had won a few WCHA championships, and had taken the Bulldogs to the Frozen Four two years in a row.

But that was 20 years ago, and even then, the Â’Dogs established standards for futility by losing a four-overtime thriller to Bowling Green in the 1984 NCAA championship game at Lake Placid, then came back and lost an equally wrenching three-overtime game to RPI in the 1985 semifinals at Detroit.

In Sertich’s last couple of seasons, the Bulldogs played hard, worked feverishly, but had great difficulty scoring and became a team that could have coined the cliché about playing “just well enough to lose.” Sandelin came in, got the Bulldogs working equally hard, and win with increasing frequency, as he found out how tough it is to establish a reputation.

The elite prospects turned up their noses at UMD scholarship offers, refusing even to visit, in many cases. So Sandelin and his staff beat the bushes. If they couldnÂ’t get the best 6-foot-2 blue-chippers, they carefully selected very good 5-foot-8 players willing to over-achieve to become elite players themselves.

The benefit of having under-6-foot players is that pro hockey scouts tend to overlook them, so to speak. When the Bulldogs whipped Minnesota in the NCAA regional final – the fifth time UMD beat the Gophers in six meetings last season – the Gophers had 13 players who had been drafted by the pros, and UMD had one. Everyone loses seniors, and UMD lost scoring champ and Hobey Baker winner Junior Lessard, and standout defenseman Beau Geisler, and a couple others. But 11 seniors returned, all from Sandelin’s first recruiting crop.

The only question was who would do the scoring. Schwabe and Peluso were easy answers, and Tim Stapleton and Luke Stauffacher are among other candidates. But even when the scoring explosion didnÂ’t occur, the Bulldogs found a way.

“It seems like somebody was rising up to score the goals each game,” said Tyler Brosz, one of those 11 seniors, sidelined with an injury. “As long as somebody comes through, it doesn’t matter whether it’s somebody scoring a hat trick, or somebody having a big game defensively.”

Speaking after the 4-1 victory over Mankato, Brosz was referring to Josh Johnson. The sophomore Johnson, from nearby Cloquet, stepped in for ace goaltender Isaac Reichmuth, who had fought the puck a little while easing to the first-game victory. Johnson looked solid and confident.

“If I did,” said Johnson, “it’s because maybe I wasn’t sure of myself so I focused extra hard. The coach told me I was going to play at practice this morning, and I went out and had a bad practice.”
The Mavericks outshot UMD 44-37, and threw a 19-shot barrage on goal in the second period, but only David Backes was able to get one past Johnson. That offset PelusoÂ’s fourth goal of the weekend in the first period and made it 1-1.

Josh Miskovich showed the effects of Sandelin-style coaching that weekend. Miskovich was scratched Friday, then not only played in the second game but was entrusted to kill penalties, and at 19:01 of the second period, Miskovich scored a huge shorthanded goal to break the 1-1 tie. UMD freshman Blair LeFebvre and senior Luke Stauffacher scored third-period goals to secure the 4-1 victory.

Mankato coach Troy Jutting was impressed. “For us to come back and get 44 shots against a great team, in their building, I couldn’t be prouder,” said Jutting. “That was a big-time performance by their goaltender.”

Sandelin likes his six freshmen, and is finding that more and more elite prospects are not only interested in visiting UMD, they are eager to commit early to scholarships. In fact, the three tallest players on this yearÂ’s team are freshmen, with defensemen Jay Rosehill and Mike Curry at 6-3 and Matt McKnight at 6-1. McKnight scored a shorthanded goal in the first Mankato game, and 5-11 Blair LeFebvre got one for the freshman class in the second.

Meantime, the 11 seniors are buzzing at full speed, having already visited the No. 1 spot in the nation, and eager to get back up there again.

Despite spirited rallies, Sioux fall to BC in Frozen Four

MILWAUKEE, WIS. — Faced with a three-goal deficit three different times, the North Dakota Fighting Sioux did the only thing they know how to do – fight back vigorously. But this time, in ThursdayÂ’s first semifinal of the 2006 NCAA Frozen Four, the Sioux ran out of time and fell 6-5 to quick-striking Boston College before 17,637 fans at Bradley Center.

Three goals by Hobey Baker finalist Chris Collins were pivotal for Boston College (25-12-3), but despite the much-heralded Collins and goaltender Cory Schneider, after leads of 3-0, 5-2 and 6-3 had evaporated, the ultimate difference came down to goals by three freshmen – light-scoring defensemen Brett Motherwell and Anthony Aiello, and a spectacular rush by Nathan Gerbe – to give the Eagles enough substance to end North Dakota’s season at 29-16-1. The victory puts BC into Saturday night’s national championship game against Wisconsin.

The youthful Fighting Sioux, who had come of age for a season-high six-game winning streak that carried them to the WCHA playoff title and into the Frozen Four, were victimized by a similarly young Boston College team, which jumped ahead 3-0 in a stunning first period, then regained that margin at 6-3 to blunt a determined Sioux rally.

Collins, who scored two goals in the first period to create BC’s first three-goal lead, completed his hat trick with a clean break to end the second period and give BC its third three-goal lead. The goals give Collins 34 for the season, and made it clear why he – along with Wisconsin goaltender Brian Elliott and Denver defenseman Matt Carle – are the three finalists for the Hobey when it is awarded Saturday night.

“Boston College played very well, very hard, and executed better than we did,” said North Dakota coach Dave Hakstol, who has brought his team to the Frozen Four in both of his two years as coach. “The thing I’m most proud about our guys is that we always battle. There wasn’t an ounce of quit, until the final buzzer.”

The Sioux skated 10 freshmen, as it has done all season, but BC had seven freshmen in the lineup, and the Eagles, like North Dakota, got hot at playoff time to ambush archrival Boston University in regional play to get to Bradley Center. Some in the media tried to create a revenge motive, because BC was eliminated by North Dakota last year in the regional at Worcester, Mass., but Schneider and Collins said that sounded good, but had nothing to do with this yearÂ’s drive to go all the way.

Ironically, after MotherwellÂ’s fourth goal, on a screened wrist shot, opened the scoring, AielloÂ’s first goal of the season may have been most significant. The Sioux had cut the 3-0 deficit to 3-2, when, late in the second period, AielloÂ’s wide-angle shot through a tangle seemed to magically get through goaltender Jordan Parise. That seemed to stun the Sioux into a bit of impatience, and Collins followed up make it 5-2, instead of 3-2, at the second intermission. Without AielloÂ’s goal, the Sioux would have been in perfect position to overrun the Eagles with their three-goal the third period.

“That was a great time for his first goal of the year,” said Schneider, “because we were on our heels right then.”

But BC could never relax, as the Fighting Sioux made a spirited closing bid. Down 6-3, Travis Zajac scored shorthanded at 15:42, and 18-year-old freshman Brian Lee snuck a wrist shot from center point past Schneider with 13 seconds remaining.

“We had a great rush early, but we were hanging at the end,” said BC coach Jerry York. “Even with 12 seconds left, and a faceoff at center ice, there was no doubt this one wasn’t over until the final buzzer.”

North Dakota goaltender Jordan Parise may not have been as dominant as he had been through the Sioux stretchdrive, but mostly he was the victim of his youthful teammates being caught by the speedy Eagles. Hakstol reacted with surprise to a press conference question about whether he considered pulling Parise. Interestingly, nobody seemed to fault Schneider, who allowed an uncharacteristic five goals – two of them shorthanded.

The first period hole was strange. North Dakota outshot BC 12-5, yet trailed 3-0. Motherwell staked BC to a 1-0 lead at 7:43, then Collins rushed up the left side on a near-breakaway, waiting as long as he could before a defender could cut him off, then snapping a shot from the left circle that beat Parise and snared the extreme upper right corner at 12:34. True, the shot crossed in front of PariseÂ’s body, but it was perfectly placed, by a senior sniper who now has 34 goals, after scoring only 30 his first three years.

The Sioux didnÂ’t seem to lose their poise, and instead intensified their attack, but Schneider stopped everything, and at 18:48, the Eagles got lucky when Collins fired again from the left circle, and his shot glanced off defenseman Joe FinleyÂ’s stick for a deflection that found the net to make it 3-0.

North Dakota broke through Schneider at 4:23 of the second period, while killing a penalty. Rastislav Spirko carried up the right side, and shot from the circle. The puck was blocked, but when Schneider swept the puck away from a closing winger on the left side, he put it right back on the right, where SpirkoÂ’s quick reaction converted the wide-angle chance as he passed the goal on the right.

The Sioux kept coming, and just after a power play failed to click, Matt Watkins, behind the BC goal, passed out to Rylan Kaip, who was barging to the crease from the left side. Kaip caught the pass and jammed it through Schneider at 13:25 to lift the Sioux within striking distance at 3-2.

As quickly as they closed in, however, the Eagles got the huge goal from Aiello, who rushed up the boards from right point, cut toward the net, and shot from a wide angle through traffic. Parise was on his knees, and appeared to have left no hole, but the puck found its way through at 15:38.

That restored the BC equilibrium at 4-2, and it may have made the Sioux impatient, while again shorthanded in the final minute of the second period. Benn Ferriero got possession on the right boards and flipped the puck to the slot, where – guess who? – Chris Collins was racing in alone. Collins shifted to his right, made a good move to get Parise to move, and snapped his shot in on the right side at 19:37.
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All that effort to make it 3-2, and the period ended 5-2 – another three-goal deficit. “Those two goals late in the second period turned things around,” said Hakstol. “Especially the fourth goal. Then we got caught with tired legs and had a poor line change at the end of a shift, which led to a bad decision.”

Indeed, the Sioux opened the third period and started stalking the 5-2 deficit. Toews, a 17-year-old freshman, got the puck high in the slot on a power play, circled to his right, and glanced a short-side shot off Schneider an in at 8:11, cutting it to 5-3.

But again Boston College came right back, this time, when Sioux defenseman Matt Smaby played it cautious and chose not to race Nathan Gerbe for the puck. Gerbe, another talented BC freshman, made a quick rush, 1-on-2. He caught Smaby still trying to get set, and beat him with a great deke to get past him on the right. Zooming in all alone, Gerbe saved one more deft move for Parise, cutting sharply to score at the left post. That goal, at 10:33, came just 2:22 after the Toews goal and made it 6-3, again seeming to puncture the UND bid.

“They got that early lead, and it made it tough to come back,” said Sioux junior Drew Stafford. “But we did. I’m very proud of our guys for showing a lot of heart. The trouble was, we’d get one and they’d get one.”

At 6-3, the Sioux made a final bid. Another penalty was no obstacle for North Dakota, as Stafford found Zajac with a slick pass, and Zajac, a sophomore from Winnipeg, skated in alone, deked, and beat Schneider with a backhander inside the left pipe. The shorthanded goal cut the deficit to 6-4 with 4:18 remaining.

Yet another North Dakota penalty diverted the rally, but back at full strength, and Parise pulled for a sixth attacker, the Sioux pressed in the final minute, Zajac got his third point of the game with an artful draw on a left-corner faceoff, pulling the puck back to the left point. Lee, an 18-year-old rookie who also had assisted on ZajacÂ’s goal, moved to center point to pick up a screen, then sent a wrist shot from 60 feet that beat Schneider just inside the left post.

The clock showed only 13 seconds remaining — actually, 12 and a decimal on the new scoreboard, showing 10ths of a second. That led to YorkÂ’s assessment, that even then, the game was in doubt. What would appear to be less in doubt is that, with fourth-line center Mike Prpich the only senior in the semifinal lineup, the Fighting Sioux will be back and looking for more next season.

Gopher women beat UMD 2-1 for more than semifinals

MINNEAPOLIS, MN. — The University of MinnesotaÂ’s semifinal victory Saturday gained far more than the right to face Wisconsin in SundayÂ’s WomensÂ’ WCHA playoff championship game. When the Golden Gophers slipped past archrival Minnesota-Duluth 2-1 in the second semifinal, the victory almost certainly clinched a home-ice berth for next weekendÂ’s NCAA quarterfinals as well.

Wisconsin, the leagueÂ’s top seed, sped past St. Cloud State 9-0, before the dramatic Gopher victory over UMD, which came when Janelle Philipczyk deflected Gigi MarvinÂ’s shot past Bulldog all-WCHA goaltender Riitta Schaublin with 3:55 left in the third period.

The goal came on a heads-up play by Philipczyk, a sophomore from Eagan High School, who was in traffic in the left circle when she saw Marvin – the WCHA freshman-of-the-year from Warroad, Minn. – about to gain possession. Philpczyk broke for the net, and surprisingly, no Bulldog skater went with her.

“When Gigi got to the puck, I yelled for her to shoot,” said Philpczyk.

Marvin, by coincidence, had been a playmaker who has been urged repeatedly to shoot more by coach Laura Halldorson. “I heard Jay (Philpczyk) yelling, ‘Shoot the puck!’ but my back was to the net as I got to the puck,” said Marvin. “There were a lot of people over there, so I just got the puck and shot.”

Philipczyk tipped the shot in, and coach Halldorson said, dryly, “I’m glad she listened to her teammate.”

UMD had taken a 1-0 lead when Noemie Marin converted the rebound after Gopher goaltender Kim Hanlon blocked Jessica KoizumiÂ’s shot at 2:35 of the first period. The Badgers tied it on a power play at 7:56, when Ashley AlbrechtÂ’s shot was deflected in by Andrea Nichols.

That set up the playoff title matchup between the Gophers, at 27-9-1, against Wisconsin, 32-4-1.

“We haven’t really thought about Wisconsin yet,” said Halldorson, right after the victory. “That was a strong UMD team we beat, and we needed great goaltending and a solid penalty-kill. We’re getting good penalty killing from players like Whitney Graft, Becky Wacker and Bobbi Ross.”

Coming into the WCHA semifinals, the Gophers and Bulldogs were virtually deadlocked for the season. A Minnesota sweep over North Dakota on the final regular-season weekend created a tie for second with UMD,, when the Bulldogs won and tied at Minnesota State-Mankato. The Gophers won the tie-breaker with one more victory to become No. 2 seed behind league champ and No. 1 seed Wisconsin.

The outcome also affected national pairwise rankings, where Wisconsin stood third, the Gophers fourth and UMD fifth, following New Hampshire and St. Lawrence at 1-2. The NCAA selection committee generally follows the pairwise to select its top eight, although match-ups attempt to not send league opponents against each other. So the chances are good that the top four teams in the pairwise will get home ice for the first round, while the next four highest-ranked teams will go on the road to oppose them in best-of-three pairings scheduled for announcement Sunday night.

The stakes for the semifinal, therefore, meant that a UMD victory would undoubtedly lift the Bulldogs ahead of the Gophers, not only into the league playoff final but into a top-four pairwise and a home-ice slot for the NCAA. The Gophers, meanwhile, needed a victory to secure that top four slot.

Wisconsin might have remained third even by losing to St. Cloud State in the first semifinal, but the Badgers took no chances, and took no prisoners by crushing St. Cloud StateÂ’s long-shot hopes for advancement with a 9-0 romp. Homestate senior Cyndy Kenyon scored four goals, and her center, Sara Bauer, had a goal and four assists.

Bauer, a junior from St. Catharines, Ontario, was named league most valuable player before the semifinals, and her 22 goals, 31 assists and 53 points have led the Badgers to a 32-4-1 record overall, after a 24-3-1 WCHA slate. St. Cloud State finished 18-18-1, after having swept UMD to ultimately cost the Bulldogs second place, and upsetting Wisconsin once in recent weeks.

The game started out scoreless, but at 13:33 of the first period Kenyon scored , and the Badgers were off and running, with freshman Jessie Vetter making 21 saves for the shutout. Junior goaltender Lauri St. Jacques, who had been St. Cloud State coach Jason LestebergÂ’s choice to play every game the last six weeks, after a seemingly successful alternating plan with sophomore Kendall Newell, was the victim of a flat performance by the Huskies, who were unable to contain the explosive Badgers. St. Jacques gave up five goals, and Newell, perhaps rusty from inactivity, yielded the last four.
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The UMD-Minnesota game was clearly the highlight of the semifinals, and Minnesota had a clearcut edge in play, outshooting the Bulldogs 39-21 – including 14-2 in the decisive third period. UMD coach Shannon Miller brushed the shot count aside, and said, “We had the puck in the offensive zone and set up good scoring opportunities for a lot of the first 10 minutes of the third period, but the shot count never moved.”

Miller said she was proud of her team’s hard work, and the difference was clearcut: “We were 0-for-5 on the power play, and they were 1-for-6. That was the difference.”

However, the Bulldogs had an amazing penchant for shooting directly into Gopher defenders time after time throughout the game, and if the Bulldog shot count was unfairly low, it seemed that the Gophers blocked far more than the eight third-period tries and 17 for the game – which meant Minnesota had nine shots blocked and 39 shots on goal, while UMD had 17 shots blocked and only 21 that got through to the net.

“I noticed that they were only given two shots in the third period,” said Minnesota freshman goaltender Kim Hanlon. “It seems like I noticed 20 times, at least, they wound up and shot. My teammates did a great job of blocking shots.”

Marin said: “They’re good defensively, and it did seem that we’d go right into them.”

Koizumi noted that she and her teammates seemed to wind up not getting to the net on their offensive attempts, despite being inspired by the televised Minnesota state high school boys hockey tournament games they had been watching. She said she didnÂ’t think the Gophers did anything better defensively in the game, compared to their regular-season games, in which Minnesota won 4-1 then lost 6-0 at Ridder Arena, and the Gophers lost 4-2 but rebounded to win 2-0 at Duluth.

“We’ve been watching a lot of high school games, and realized they seemed to shoot from anywhere and scored a lot of goals,” Koizumi said. “So we wanted to try to shoot a lot.”

Coach Miller knows that going home with a 22-8-3 record assures her Bulldogs of a spot in the NCAA pairings. “But I’m sure we’ll be on the road, too,” she said. “I’m guessing we’ll go somewhere like St. Lawrence. We’ve got another week to work on some new power-play things we’ve put in. I know you’ve got to work to create your own breaks, but we haven’t gotten many bounces in the last few weeks.”

The bounces on Saturday were mostly off Gopher shinpads.

North Dakota women rise from 0-4 WCHA launch pad

Under ordinary circumstances, starting a hockey season 0-4 and being outscored 32-3 would be pretty devastating. For the University of North Dakota womenÂ’s team, however, that start served as a potential catalyst for better things to come.

As initiations go, the University of North Dakota womenÂ’s hockey team had an impossible task for opening its first season as a member of the Western Collegiate Hockey Association. But as overload training goes, that mission impossible couldnÂ’t have been more effective for the hopeful Sioux.

The assignment for the Sioux was to open their first WCHA season against the University of Minnesota – last year’s WCHA and NCAA champions, and the unanimous No. 1 ranked team in the nation. Next came the first Sioux WCHA road trip, to Duluth, where they would face the University of Minnesota-Duluth – the winners of the only three previous NCAA tournaments, in 2001, 2002 and 2003, and a top-5 rated team against this season.

The powerful Gophers administered 8-0 and 7-1 whippings on North Dakota in the opening series. Then UMD posted 8-1 and 9-1 thumpings in Duluth.

“If you look at the schedule, we had the hardest start of any team in the country,” said Shantel Rivard, UND coach. “They are two of the top five in the country, with one of them being No. 1.”

Rivard knew there was frustration and disappointment about losing those first four games, but she also was confident that her playersÂ’ attitude remained good and the high level of play they faced from the Gophers and Bulldogs would be a springboard for them for the rest of the schedule.

Sure enough, Week 3 found the Sioux traveling to St. Cloud, where freshman Melissa Dianoski from Fairbanks, Alaska, scored her first two collegiate goals and led North Dakota to a 5-3 victory – UND’s first WCHA triumph. The next night, St. Cloud State came back to stifle the Sioux for a 1-0 reversal.

“St. Cloud was tough,” said Rivard. “They outshot us 15-5 the first period in the first game, and we were lucky to get out of it 0-0. Then we went up 4-1 after two periods, but we gave them a little too much room in the third period and they came back before we won it 5-3. The second game, we had trouble putting the puck in the net. With less than a minute left, we thought we scored, which would have tied the game 1-1 and sent us into overtime, but the linesman said the whistle had blown before the puck went in.”

Nevertheless, a series split at St. Cloud sends North Dakota home for the next two weekends, with Ohio State and then Bemidji State coming to Grand Forks for two very important series. After that, with three nonconference series sprinkled in, the Sioux will face Wisconsin on November 20-21, and Minnesota State-Mankato the first weekend of December, which would give North Dakota eight straight WCHA home games. The perfect venue if the Sioux are going to make themselves a factor in their first WCHA season.

Rivard took on the North Dakota task of starting a varsity program three years ago. During two seasons of infancy, North Dakota was 10-14 and 16-14-2, with last season concluding with a 13-0 run. But every game was an exhibition, and Rivard knew the WCHA would present special challenges.

“I knew about the WCHA before I came to North Dakota, and it is everything I anticipated,” said Rivard. “It’s run very professionally. I think it was good that we had to wait two years to come in, so we could develop our program first. We’re up to nine scholarships now, So we’re halfway to where everybody else is.

“It’s all about development. For us, right now, it’s getting to know one another, and moving the puck.”

North Dakota has only two seniors, linemates Marissa Hangsleben and Meaghan Nelson, with five forwards, two defensemen, and goaltender Margaret-Ann Hinkley among the juniors from her first recruiting crop. Sophomores include two forwards, two defensemen and goaltender Amber Hasbargen, who has emerged as the No. 1 netminder after a solid high school career at Warroad. Hasbargen survived after weathering the assaults by Minnesota and UMD and played well in both games at St. Cloud State.

That leaves a large freshman class as North DakotaÂ’s hope for the future. Melissa Dianoski is joined by twin sisters Cami and Cara Wooster from Salvador, Saskatchewan, among freshman forwards, while Christey Allen of St. Andrews, Manitoba, and Stefanie Ubl of Blaine High School in Minnesota are freshman defensemen, and No. 3 goaltender Jenna Burdy is the sixth freshman in the Sioux lineup.

“We lost our top three goal scorers from last year, and Liz Funk is our top returning scorer,” said Rivard. “She’ll contribute once she gets going, if she makes the same improvement from sophomore to junior that she did from her freshman to sophomore years. Our freshmen have the potential to help our scoring right away. Cami Wooster has good hands around the net, and Melissa Dianoski can score.”

Cami Wooster scored the only goal in the two games against Minnesota, and scored again at Duluth, then Dianoski led the one-game scoring outburst at St. Cloud with her two goals.

“They were really pretty goals, too,” said Rivard. “On the first one, she had just come on for a line change, grabbed the puck and moved in with a little patience. It was a goal-scorer’s goal. The second one was on a rebound, but it was off a faceoff play.”

Looking back at the Minnesota and UMD weekends, the Sioux were facing some of the elite womenÂ’s players in the country. U.S. Olympians Krissy Wendell and Natalie Darwitz led the Gophers, but they were ahead only 1-0 after one period. Minnesota broke loose after that, but four of the eight goals were on power plays. The next night, Minnesota led 4-0 after a period, but again the Gophers were 4-for-5 on the power play.

At UMD, Canadian Olympic star Caroline Ouellette was named WCHA offensive player of the week with 11 points, getting six assists in the 8-1, when UMD scored four power-play goals, and two goals and three assists in the second game, when UMD scored five more power-play goals.

So, as lopsided as those first four games were for the Sioux, 17 of the 32 goals scored by Minnesota and UMD came on power plays. The best teams, typically, have the best power plays, and Minnesota and UMD are no exceptions to that theory.

While Minnesota and UMD have raised national standards for women’s hockey while also calling attention to the caliber of the WCHA, Wisconsin is ranked right up there in the top five nationally as well. “You’ve got Minnesota, Dartmouth, Harvard, UMD, Wisconsin and maybe St. Lawrence as the best teams in the country,” said Rivard. “We don’t fit in there yet, but we will.”

Of more critical importance is the present. “The games this weekend with Ohio State are really important,” Rivard added. “But every game is big, this year.”

Gophers claim, but don’t touch, MacNaughton Cup

From coach Don Lucia on down, the University of Minnesota hockey players frequently insisted they didn’t care about winning the WCHA regular-season championship. They had their focus set on a bigger prize – the NCAA title, of course.

If there was reason for the Gophers to give themselves the psychological benefit of a rationale for NOT winning the title, it would be because no Golden Gopher team in LuciaÂ’s first six years as coach won the league title, even though theyÂ’d previously won two WCHA playoff titles and two NCAA championships.

When it came to the WCHA regular season, the Gophers last shared the title with North Dakota in 1997, and the last time Minnesota won a WCHA title outright was in 1992 – 14 years ago. Ever since then, the Golden Gophers have had to explain why they DIDN’T win it, and that includes the 1997 finish, which was something of a bittersweet achievement. The Fighting Sioux had already clinched the WCHA title, hoisted the MacNaughton Cup, been granted the playoff top seed, and they obviously took the final weekend off and coasted through a pair of meaningless losses while looking ahead at the playoffs. Credit former Sioux coach Dean Blais for ignoring the “one game at a time” approach in his impatience to stockpile championships throughout his tenure.

This season, until a month ago it seemed that Wisconsin or Denver had a better chance to win the title, so the word around Mariucci was that the Gophers didnÂ’t really care all that much about it. Strangely enough, right about then Wisconsin lost its free-wheeling edge and struggled for much of the stretch run, and the Gophers swept Denver to knock the wheels off the Pioneer bandwagon. Minnesota, all the while, just kept on winning at a sizzling pace – losing just once in calendar 2006 — to run away with the crown.

Focus or not, when the Gophers were officially presented with the MacNaughton Cup at Mariucci Arena last Friday night, after shutting out Minnesota-Duluth for the first of two times. Instead of going properly crazy, the Golden Gophers treated the MacNaughton Cup like it might be infected with bird flu.

Captain Gino Guyer was all smiles as he accepted the Cup from WCHA commissioner Bruce McLeod, but he didnÂ’t really raise the stunning and shapely silver chalice to the rafters, the way Wimbledon tennis champs, or Stanley Cup Playoff winners, do. He carried it, properly and respectfully, out to center ice, where he set it on the center faceoff spot while his teammates stood around on the circle. They stood at attention, tapped their sticks on the ice, and simultaneously raised them high, in a time-honored international salute that former coach Herb Brooks first started with the Gophers three decades earlier.

On one hand, it was a very tastefully restrained salute, and on the other, the Gophers didn’t want to get within stick’s reach of the thing. “We had talked it over, and the players all decided to minimize how much we touched it,” said Guyer. “I was just carrying out what the players decided to do.”

The Stanley Cup, which goes to the National Hockey LeagueÂ’s playoff champion, is undoubtedly the best-known trophy in hockey, if not all sports. Over the years, however, so many new bands have been added to incorporate all the names of all the winning teams, that Lord StanleyÂ’s once-splendid cup has grown taller and taller, and magnificent as it is, it looks a lot like a fire hydrant, or at least a silver garbage can with a big bowl on top.
By comparison, the MacNaughton Cup is a visi
on of splendor. It dates back to the WCHAÂ’s early years, when it originally was created by a Michigan Tech backer and donated to the Huskies, who later donated it to the WCHA, where it became the treasured signature of the regular season championship. It resides with great pride and circumstance in a trophy case at the winning school for the next year.

As the Gophers turn to the WCHA playoffs, and a series against 10th place Alaska-Anchorage this weekend, on the nationÂ’s longest winning streak (11-0-1), with a string of three straight shutouts, while giving up only six goals in their last six games, plus a WCHA record of 20-5-3 for 43 points, to runner-up DenverÂ’s 18-8-2 for 38 points, as well as an overall 25-6-2 mark that has earned the Gophers the No. 1 ranking in every national poll, including the pairwise projection that duplicates the NCAA selection committeeÂ’s seedings.

The series against UMD showed how far the Gophers have come this season. And maybe how far the Bulldogs have fallen. Back on Nov. 4-5, the Gophers were lucky to get a 2-2 tie at Duluth when GuyerÂ’s sprawling backhander produced the equalizer in the closing minutes. The next night, UMD handed the Gophers a 4-3 loss, and UMD looked more like the title contender than Minnesota.

Flash forward to March, and the Gophers are coming in like lions and the Bulldogs are the lambs. Minnesota is on an 18-1-1 run since being swept at home by Wisconsin on Dec. 2-3, while UMD seems powerless to stop a 1-13 skid, in which the Bulldogs have averaged barely over a half-goal a game, while giving up close to five a game.

“At the beginning of the year, I was definitely impressed at how UMD was playing,” said Guyer. “I really expected them to come out hard against us this weekend.”

Caught in what looks like a hopeless tailspin, UMD barely put up a fight against the one team that almost invariably gets their blood pumping. Minnesota won 7-0 the first game, getting two goals each from freshman Ryan Stoa and sophomore Evan Kaufmann, and one each from Mike Vannelli, Ben Gordon and Danny Irmen. Minnesota blew it open with four second-period goals, prompting UMD coach Scott Sandelin to say: “That second period really killed us.”

In reality, the first period was less than a masterpiece for UMD, which got off only one shot on goal in the 1-0 first period. That was only barely better than Alaska-Anchorage managed a week earlier in the second period against the Gophers, when the Seawolves got no shots – as in zero – which, for cynics, is believed to at least tie the all-time college hockey record for fewest shots in a period.

Goaltender Kellen Briggs got the first-game shutout for Minnesota, but he could have snoozed through most of it. Freshman Jeff Frazee, who’s been in and out of Lucia’s doghouse with “team rule violations” as much as he’s been in and out of the nets, got a 2-0 shutout in the second game. While UMD worked much harder in that one, the Bulldogs never mounted anything resembling a threatening offense, and the Gophers cruised to victory on Ryan Potulny’s first-period goal, and a late empty-netter, also by Potulny, who ended the regular season as the nation’s top goal-scorer with 31.

The only highlight for UMD was that little-used sophomore Nate Ziegelmann drew the short straw from Sandelin and tended goal in the second game, making 31 saves while allowing just one goal. Ziegelmann, who also played in a game at North Dakota during the earlier stages of UMDÂ’s no-offensive-support mode, is from Grand Forks, where he got to know Potulny up-close and personal.

“We were teammates since junior high,” said Potulny, who has emerged as a Hobey Baker Award favorite. “We also played at Lincoln in the USHL together.”

It was suggested to Potulny that in all those years playing with Ziegelmann also meant practicing against him, so Potulny must have shot 3,000 pucks past him. Potulny sidestepped that one the same way he’d elude a checker, by saying: “Maybe, but he’s stopped me 3,000 times, too.”

That’s probably the best ratio any goaltender has against Potulny, who is the offesnsive barometer for the Gophers. While the team defense snapped suddenly into focus after being swept by Wisconsin, Potulny’s scoring – 31 goals, 23 assists for 54 points – always signal success. Minnesota is 16-3-1 when Potulny scores a goal, and 24-3-1 when he gets either a goal or an assist.

Meanwhile, back at the MacNaughton Cup, sitting there at center ice. The best photo was of a half-dozen media photographers, who had ignored the once-fashionable idea they were taught in photo-journalism of not being obtrusive to get right up close in that circle with the Gophers – poised for the inevitable photos of the arena-circling hefting of the Cup. Instead, the players finished their stick salute and trooped off. Guyer stayed, but only to make sure some equipment guy would pick up the Cup. Then he, too, skated off the ice, leaving the photographers and television cameramen standing at center ice, alone with the MacNaughton Cup.

“Don’t get me wrong, we’re proud to have won it,” said Guyer. “But nobody else touched the Cup but me. We’re waiting for bigger things.”
Bigger things? If the Gophers win the NCAA title they will get a very nice, very tasteful plaque. Nothing like a big silver chalice, and certainly nothing like the MacNaughton Cup.

“I told the players to have fun with it, enjoy it,” said Lucia, with a shrug.

“We were only two games over .500 in December, and then we got going. Then we got into what looked like the top three, and then we were in the hunt. I just didn’t want us to get consumed by that. We looked at a stretch of North Dakota, CC and Wisconsin right in a row in January, and I was thinking we might be doing well to go 3-3 in that stretch, but we went 5-1. That put us in good shape. But our guys were hungry to win the league at the end.”

Lucia hasn’t taken his, or his team’s focus off the NCAA prize, but he knows the importance of maintaining the momentum. “We want to win the first round, so we can play in that venue,” he said, referring to next week’s WCHA Final Five at Xcel Center.

WCHA rivals are already aware of the red-hot Gophers of course. Their added challenge is that after winning a WCHA regular-season championship they said they didn’t really care about, and virtually ignoring the magnificent MacNaughton Cup, now they enter the WCHA league playoffs – the NEXT objective the Gophers don’t care about winning. The Broadmoor Cup is another nice piece of silver the Gophers can salute, but respectfully ignore.

If there is any concern that the Gophers have “peaked too soon,” that’s a handy cliché if a team doesn’t go all the way. If they do, obviously they peaked early and maintained it. However, a month from now, if the Golden Gophers fall short in their bid for the national championship in Milwaukee, maybe they can arrange a post-season ceremony back home, where they can carry the MacNaughton Cup around Mariucci Arena. Just for themselves, their fans, and those photographers.

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• About the Author

  John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
  
  For those who want to keep up with John Gilbert's view of sports, mainly hockey with a Minnesota slant, click on the following:
  
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• Exhaust Notes:

  PADDLING
  More and more cars are offering steering-wheel paddles to allow drivers manual control over automatic or CVT transmissions. A good idea might be to standardize them. Most allow upshifting by pulling on the right-side paddle and downshifting with the left. But a recent road-test of the new Porsche Panamera, the paddles for the slick PDK direct-sequential gearbox were counter-intuitive -- both the right or left thumb paddles could upshift or downshift, but pushing on either one would upshift, and pulling back on either paddle downshifted. I enjoy using paddles, but I spent the full week trying not to downshift when I wanted to upshift. A little simple standardization would alleviate the problem.
  
  

  SPEAKING OF PADDLES
  The Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution has the best paddle system, and Infiniti has made the best mainstream copy of that system for the new Q50, and other sporty models. And why not? It's simply the best. In both, the paddles are long, slender magnesium strips, affixed to the steering column rather than the steering wheel. Pull on the right paddle and upshift, pull on the left and downshift. The beauty is that while needing to upshift in a tight curve might cause a driver to lose the steering wheel paddle for an instant, but having the paddles long, and fixed, means no matter how hard the steering wheel is cranked, reaching anywhere on the right puts the upshift paddle on your fingertips.
  
  

  TIRES MAKE CONTACT
  Even in snow-country, a few stubborn old-school drivers want to stick with rear-wheel drive, but the vast majority realize the clear superiority of front-wheel drive. Going to all-wheel drive, naturally, is the all-out best. But the majority of drivers facing icy roadways complain about traction for going, stopping and steering with all configurations. They overlook the simple but total influence of having the right tires can make. There are several companies that make good all-season or snow tires, but there are precious few that are exceptional. The Bridgestone Blizzak continues to be the best=known and most popular, but in places like Duluth, MN., where scaling 10-12 blocks of 20-30 degree hills is a daily challenge, my favorite is the Nokian WR. Made without compromising tread compound, the Nokians maintain their flexibility no matter how cold it gets, so they stick, even on icy streets, and can turn a skittish car into a winter-beater.