Badger women get back-up goals to claim title
MINNEAPOLIS, MN. — The University of Minnesota womenÂ’s hockey team was playing for its life Sunday afternoon, and impressively shut down WisconsinÂ’s top scorers with a single goal. But Mark Johnson, coach of the No. 1 ranked Badgers, urged contributions from his third and fourth unit support players, a pair of little-known home-staters came through with the goals to boost the Badgers to a 3-1 victory at Ridder Arena and the WomenÂ’s WCHA playoff championship.
Freshman fourth-line center Emily Kranz, from the Milwaukee suburb of Waukesha, Wis., broke a 1-1 tie with her fifth goal of the season midway through the second period, and, while the Badgers eliminated MinnesotaÂ’s opportunities with stifling efficiency in the third period, third-unit sophomore defenseman Rachel Bible, from Black River Falls, Wis., scored an opportunistic clincher at 6:50. It was BibleÂ’s second goal of the season, and sheÂ’s obviously specializing in playoff goals, because her first goal was last weekend, in the WCHA playoff series sweep against North Dakota.
“We spent so much of the first 10 minutes on the power play, we werenÂ’t playing a lot of people,†said Johnson. “So I went to the players and said we needed something from our second group – our third and fourth liners. Emily scored, and that gives you some energy. And Bible scored last week, so I told her that if she keeps scoring, I may have to move her up to forward.Ââ€
The victory gives Wisconsin a pretty impressive resume. The Badgers all season have been defending WCHA, WCHA playoff, and NCAA champions, and now, at 33-1-4, they are current WCHA and WCHA playoff champions, and the unknown of the NCAA coming next. Minnesota, meanwhile, is 23-12-1, and despite playing well enough to upend Minnesota-Duluth 3-2 in overtime in SaturdayÂ’s semifinals, and giving the Badgers all they could contend with, coach Laura Halldorson and her players left Ridder Arena skeptical of their chances to reach the eight-team NCAA field.
“IÂ’m proud of my teamÂ’s effort, and this weekend was very positive for us, the way we held together,†said Halldorson. “But this emphasizes the importance of the entire season – you canÂ’t wait till the end. We put ourselves into position to have to win to get in. The feeling in our locker room was that we had played our last game.Ââ€
An hour after the game, Halldorson’s pessimism was proven correct. Wisconsin and UMD both were selected to the NCAA tournament, but the Gophers were not. Wisconsin, the No. 1 seed, will be host to Harvard (23-7-2). In the same bracket, No. 4 New Hampshire will be host to St. Lawrence (28-7-3), while in the other bracket, UMD (22-10-4) will go to No. 2 Mercyhurst (32-1-3), and No. 3 Dartmouth (27-4-2) will be host to Boston College (23-9-2). The UMD game is March 9, the other three March 10. Winners advance to Lake Placid for the March 16 semifinals.
Going into the weekend, Wisconsin was rated No. 1, but UMD was only seventh, and Minnesota ninth. Despite some Eastern teams losing in their playoffs, the Pairwise ratings didnÂ’t change much. UMD, in fact, didnÂ’t move up one notch when the Bulldogs beat Minnesota 7-1 and 5-1 two weeks ago, although the losses dropped the Gophers from eighth to ninth. So beating UMD and playing well against Wisconsin didn’t lift the Gophers back up. “We needed to gain ground,†said Halldorson.
Still, it appears that the WCHA — the league that has won all six NCAA championships so far — gets much respect for having the toughest league in its most competitive season. And nobody among the 1,157 fans at Ridder, or on the Wisconsin, UMD and Minnesota rosters, can be convinced that Minnesota, and possibly Ohio State, didn’t deserve more consideration.
Similarly, nobody questions why Wisconsin is ranked No. 1. When Minnesota captain Bobbi Ross scored a startling shorthanded goal at 16:53 of the first period, it was the first goal Wisconsin’s pair of alternating goaltenders had allowed if 324 minutes and 6 seconds – a span that goes back seven games to the third period of a 3-2 victory over Ohio State on Feb. 11. Since then, and up through Saturday’s 4-0 squelching of Ohio State by Jessie Vetter, Wisconsin had piled up five straight shutouts, and senior Christine Dufour wasn’t about to let in anything else Sunday.
“IÂ’m not big on statistics and records,†Johnson said. “I didnÂ’t even know we had a shutout streak until somebody told me about it today. Now IÂ’m being asked about giving up a goal.Ââ€
Wisconsin yielded the goal amid nine shots to the aroused Gophers in the 1-1 first period, then the clamped down to yield six in the second, and – when Minnesota’s NCAA future was hanging in the balance on its home rink – the Gophers could manage only two shots in the third period.
“We never questioned that we had a really good chance to win,†said Ross. “We played two really good periods, but in the third, Wisconsin got more defensive, and took away a lot of our chances.Ââ€
Wisconsin star Sara Bauer, a tiny, soft-spoken, 5-foot-3 center who does something of a Wonder Woman transition whenever she pulls on hockey skates, was too humble to even comment when asked about being named tournament most valuable player right after being honored as the WCHA’s player of the year for the second year in a row. But she acknowledged that the Badgers never seem to wear out in games. “As the game wears on, we feel like we can compete on a higher level,†Bauer said.
The Badgers had beaten Minnesota 3-1 before the teams tied 3-3 in October in Madison, and swept 4-1 and 3-0 games from the Gophers at Ridder in January, but the Gophers were in the midst of an intensely determined weekend, knowing their only certain path to the NCAA was to win the final and gain an automatic berth as playoff champion.
So it was not going to be an easy game for the Badgers, who had lost only one game all season – to UMD. Minnesota didn’t help its cause by starting out too aggressively, earning five of six first-period penalties, including the first three. When Dagney Willey and oRoss went off in succession in the first three minutes, it gave the Badgers a two-skater advantage, and they made quick work of it.
Jinelle Zaugg had the puck deep in the right corner and passed to the slot, where WCHA freshman-of-the-year Meghan Duggan slammed a one-timer past goaltender Kim Hanlon for her 24th goal of a freshman-of-the-year season, and a 1-0 lead at 3:30.
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The Gophers kept taking penalties, but capitalized themselves at 16:53 of the opening period, when Wisconsin’s senior Meaghan Mikkelson – the league defensive player of the year – tried to pass from behind her net to start a power-play breakout, but she almost completely whiffed, and the puck skidded slowly out front on the left side of the goal. Gopher penalty-killer Brittany Francis tried to get a shot away, and when the puck glanced out front, it was to the always-dangerous Ross, who wound up alone at the crease. She stepped to her right to elude goaltender Dufour, and tucked the puck in at the right post for a shorthanded goal and a 1-1 tie. “I waited, and outwaited the goaltender and put it behind her,†said Ross.
With a 9-5 edge in shots in the first period despite spending 10 minutes in the penalty box, the Gophers had a chance to go ahead on an early second-period power play, but the Badgers turned up the intensity of their defensive posture and held firm. Midway through the second period, fourth-liner Kranz came up a huge goal. She stole the puck in front and shot, then stayed after the blocked puck as she moved right to left, patiently waiting for goaltender Kim Hanlon to drop before lifting her shot over her and in at 10:58.
After that, the Badgers rarely allowed the Gophers to stir up any promising scoring chances, until Andrea Nichols nearly scored late in the second period. No team is more poised holding a 2-1 type lead than the Badgers, and they simply stifled Minnesota in the final period.
Then they left it to another member of their support cast to clinch it, when Bible moved up to join a scramble in the slot. Zaugg had sent the puck out front, and third-line winger Phoebe Monteleone tried to reach it on her backhand, but as Gopher defender Whitney Graft restrained her, Bible reached past her and knocked it in.
“It was very important to us to come out of this weekend with two games against hungry teams that had their season on the line,†said Johnson. “ItÂ’s a long season, starting back on September 15, and now itÂ’s March. Everybody sees what happens on the ice, but what nobody sees is what happens off-ice, with the conditioning, and the things these players have to do to prepare themselves to be consistent and to improve over the course of the season.Ââ€
Gophers elude upset, face tests at Final Five
Ben Gordon was one of the chosen few University of Minnesota hockey players who stepped outside the Mariucci Arena dressing room to express renewed hope – as well as some relief – after the Gophers ducked past Alaska-Anchorage 3-1 in the deciding third game of their WCHA playoff series.
Gordon’s dark hair is now a somewhat unusual shade of blond, intending, perhaps, to be gold in the Golden Gophers’ attempt to take the hair-dyeing approach to playoff unity. It pretty well clashed with his still-dark eyebrows, but it got to the roots of his hair, as a backdrop for Gordon attempting to get to the root of MinnesotaÂ’s late-season difficulties.
“Tonight was a big step,†said Gordon, a veteran as a junior on a MacNaughton Cup-champion Minnesota squad that has only two seniors, Mike Vannelli and Kellen Briggs. “It was our first crucial game, because we had to win it to go to the Final Five, and that is definitely something we want to do.
“It wasnÂ’t really do or die for us, but we want to be in the Final Five, and our goal was to play hard for a full game, because pretty soon, it is going to be do or die.Ââ€
Minnesota has been a curious team over the last couple of months. The Golden Gophers had built up a lot of Pairwise equity over a 22-game unbeaten streak, enough to secure the league championship despite going only 8-8 before SundayÂ’s third-game decider against the Seawolves. A 9-8 record in their last 17 is hardly impressive, but the Gophers held the No. 1 spot in the Pairwise computer ratings, which mimic the NCAA’s computer system used in making selections for the 16-team tournament that starts next week.
Had the Gophers lost to Anchorage, they still would have gone to the NCAA as a high seed, as would St. Cloud State and North Dakota. But Denver and Michigan Tech are right on the bubble, being ranked in a tie for 14th, while Colorado College stands 18th and Wisconsin 20th. So the first round of the playoffs were definitely do or die for Anchorage, Minnesota-Duluth, Colorado College, Minnesota State-Mankato, Wisconsin. Denver and Tech also could be questionable, because automatic seeds from outside conferences bump 14th seeds to 16th, and potential upsets from the major four conferences could bump them further.
So Tech needs to improve its status at the Final Five, and Wisconsin needs to win it to gain the automatic NCAA berth the playoff title contains. Wisconsin, the defending NCAA champ, but a seventh-place finisher in the league, went to Denver and stunned the fourth-place Pioneers 3-2 and 2-1, while fifth-place Michigan Tech surprised Colorado College 2-1 in overtime, then lost 2-0, but came back to win 1-0 in SundayÂ’s finale.
Third-place North Dakota was the only WCHA team that won according to form, beating eighth-place Mankato 5-2 and 2-1. Elsewhere, ninth-place UMD gave it a great shot, winning at St. Cloud State 3-1, losing 3-2 in overtime, then the teams battled through three overtimes before the Huskies prevailed 3-2 on Sunday.
The reshuffling means Wisconsin and Michigan Tech will play in Thursday’s play-in game at Xcel Center – both needing to win three straight games to be sure of an automatic NCAA berth. That winner will face Minnesota in Friday night’s semifinal. North Dakota and St. Cloud State will meet Friday afternoon in the first semifinal.
Minnesota’s triumph over last-place Anchorage may have indicated how tough the WCHA is this season, but it also left the question of whether the wheels have come off the Gopher express – and if so, whether there is time to get them back on and aligned before the NCAA tournament.
The Gophers whipped Anchorage 6-2 Friday, and were cruising along 1-0 Saturday until the Seawolves struck late for a tie, and won it 2-1 in overtime. That forced Game 3, and Kevin Clarke gave Anchorage a 1-0 lead in the opening minutes, a lead that held until 4:22 of the second, when Gordon scored with a slick pass from Jay Barriball on a power play for the equalizer. Mike Carman got the actual game-winner, with a quick shot off Ryan FlynnsÂ’s neat pass midway through the third period.
But the Gophers didnÂ’t really put the Seawolves away until 1:25 remained. Killing a penalty, Tony Lucia rushed in and fired a shot that glanced up off Anchorage goaltender Nathan Lawson and hit the glass, bouncing high in the air. Lawson whirled around and looked up, and Minnesota’s approaching Kyle Okposo also looked up. They looked like a pair of infielders who had lost the ball in the lights. But when the puck hit the ice, Okposo spotted it first and whacked it past Lawson for a shorthaned goal and a 3-1 victory.
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The fact that Okposo seemed to find his missing goal-scoring touch in the series, and that Barriball continued his strong play, means freshmen, including Lucia and Carman, may reignite the Gopher offense. Okposo leads the team in goals with 19, while Barriball has 18, and the two freshmen are tied for the team points lead at 39.
Seawolves coach Dave Shyiak, whose team offered hope for the future with its spirited run at the league champs, was buoyed by his Seawolves resilience, despite being outshot 29-12 in the deciding game.
“They played extremely well, and they were going to play that way all weekend,†said Minnesota coach Don Lucia. “Last night (in Game 2) we played well for two periods, but went into a shell in the third. Tonight, I think we decided to just shut up and play – just go out and compete.Ââ€
Lucia didn’t need reminding that last year, the Gophers were riding high as the No. 1 team in the country, but lost 8-7 to St. Cloud State in the WCHA semifinals, then dropped a 4-0 game to Wisconsin in the third-place game – a game that was a springboard for the Badgers to take off and go all the way to the NCAA title, while Minnesota was eliminated by Holy Cross in the first NCAA game. The Crusaders were better than Westerners realized, but the Gophers haven’t lived it down yet.
“But this is a different team, and a different year,†said Lucia. “We really gave up nothing all weekend. In the Final Five, we mainly have to start playing with rhythm.Ââ€
Some of the Gophers donÂ’t think thereÂ’s a problem. Carman, who joins Barriball and Okposo as freshmen who have become go-to skaters in the Minnesota offense, said: “WeÂ’ve been struggling on offense the last two weekends. I think itÂ’s just jitters. Everyone gets Â’em.Ââ€
Gordon, however, has been through it before. And he didn’t deny that there are some parallels to last year for this year’s Gophers – such as starting strong, running off at No. 1 in the country for weeks on end, then faltering at the finish.
“ItÂ’s a long season,†said Gordon. “We came out hot, and I donÂ’t think anyone expected us to win as much as we did. But in the second half, I think it was going to our heads. Now itÂ’s a battle to get out of the hole.Ââ€
Maybe that’s the analogy with the golden-dyed hair – something that more purposely has gone to the Gophers’ heads. Gordon intimated that he probably would be rinsing out the dye as soon as the playoffs are over.
“I’m not sure they’d let me back home into International Falls this way,†he laughed.
And, of course, Gordon and the Gophers hope they won’t be doing any rinsing away of hair dye for three more weeks – until after the NCAA tournament.
Fighting Sioux stun Huskies 6-2 to reach Final Five final
SAINT PAUL, MN. — The popular theory that the University of North
Dakota is playing the best hockey in the country at the right time was verified Friday afternoon, when 17,511 fans at Xcel Center saw the Fighting Sioux whip St. Cloud State 6-2 in the first semifinal of the WCHA Final Five tournament.
Not only does it keep the Sioux sizzling, with a 15-2-4 record since
Christmas, but the Sioux dismantled a St. Cloud State team that had, itself, been one of the hottest teams in the nation. Beyond that, the six goals came against Bobby Goepfert, just named first-team all-WCHA goaltender, and a Hobey Baker finalist. Next up, of course, is a Saturday night date with arch-rival Minnesota, as North Dakota tries to duplicate the playoff crown it won a year ago.
The Fighting Sioux have been built on a concept of a spectacular first
line, with Jonathan Toews centering T.J. Oshie and Ryan Duncan on what is clearly the best forward unit in the country. Toews got the first and fourth goals against the Huskies. However, a second line, just put together by coach Dave Hakstol in the last week, was every bit as impressive as the first unit.
Chris VandeVelde, a freshman who was just installed on the second line
despite having only one goal, scored twice and assisted on a goal by winger Matt Watkins, while Chris Porter, one of only two seniors in the explosive Sioux lineup, added the final goal and stabilizes the trio at right wing.
The Sioux were typically humble afterward, while the Huskies were
unrestrained in their praise for North Dakota.
“I felt pretty good,” said Goepfert, who faced many triple-A quality
shots among the 35 the Sioux fired. “They’re a good team, and that first line is really special. They made plays when I thought I had good coverage.”
Huskies winger Andrew Gordon, who set up Andreas Nodl for a 1-1 tie, and scored himself to make it a 3-2 game in the second period, was overwhelmed. “At this time of year, after playing 40 games and getting physically beaten down, the way they’re playing is incredible,” said Gordon. “They come at you 110 miles per hour, all the time. They’re peaking at the right time.”
The first goal of the game didn’t come until a North Dakota power play
at 16:20, when Toews came out from the end boards on the right, and humbly said he just threw the puck at the net, when actually he spotted a tiny opening at the extreme upper right corner and zapped a missile into the only hole Goepfert left.
The Huskies tied the game when freshman Andreas Nodl converted an Andrew Gordon feed from behind the goal, with a quick step to his backhand eluding goaltender Philippe Lamoureux at 4:09 of the second. Then the second line went to work, scoring just 1:10 later on a rush by Porter, up the right side. He fed Watkins, who one-timed a return to Watkins for a quick shot. Goepfert blocked it, but VandeVelde — a state tournament star on the same ice two years ago for Moorhead High School — cashed in the rebound.
Four minutes after that, the Sioux made it 3-1 when Watkins caught
Taylor Chorney’s rink-wide pass for another good shot, another good save, and another rebound goal plunked by VandeVelde.
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The Huskies came back again, when Gordon scored on a power play at 10:06 of the wide-open second period, cutting it to 3-2. But Toews padded the lead with yet another rebound after Oshie had outraced the defense for a loose puck, and a whirling shot from the right side at 12:29, and VandeVeld fed out from behind the net for Watkins to score again at 13:12. The two goals in 43 seconds boosted the score to 5-2, and the Sioux coasted through the third period, with Porter getting the only goal.
“We’ve been gettting better every game, and we don’t look at it as being on a roll, just trying to get better every game,” said Toews, one of 11 sophomores, and the middle man on the all-soph super-line.
St. Cloud coach Bob Motzko said: “I thought Bobby Goepfert played well
tonight. For a 6-2 loss, we did a lot of things well. Bobby had a great first period, and toews made an unbelievable play to make it 1-0. We tied the game, then we turned it over twice, and they scored both times. They’ve got something going up there. The top line is so good, and the other lines work so hard…They’re going awfully good right now.
“The think I like about North Dakota is their forwards skate straight
ahead,” Motzko added. “You never see them backing off. We were on our way to getting there, then they got that short-handed goal, right when we thought we were there.”
That would be the second Toews goal, which is listed, officially, as a
short-handed goal, but Andrew Kozek’s penalty had expired at 12:28 —
one second before Toews scored. The mistake is understandable, however. The Sioux are playing so well, and throwing the puck around with such rapid precision, that it often appears they’re playing with an extra man.
Badgers 3-goal rally beats Huskies in OT for 3rd
As far as Wisconsin was concerned, there was no way the Badgers could make up
enough
ground in the NCAA selection committee’s computer ratings for Saturday’s
third-place
game in the WCHA Final Five to matter. But the Badgers put on a display of what
pride
and caring for teammates can do for a team, rallying from a 3-1 deficit to beat
the St.
Cloud State Huskies 4-3 on an overtime goal by Ben Street.
Street, a sophomore on a team with seven seniors, grabbed a blocked shot in the
slot,
stepped to his right to get control on his backhand, and plunked it behind ace
St. Cloud
goaltender Bobby Goepfert with 10 seconds remaining in a five-minute overtime —
the
only extra session that would be allowed in the third-place game.
The loss could hurt St. Cloud State (22-9-7), which is sure of an NCAA slot, but
will
probably drop from first-seed status after two losses in two days. The Badgers
(19-18-4) go home anticipating they will have no chance to defend the NCAA title
they
won last year.
“If this loss is going to crush us, we’re not going very far,” said St. Cloud
coach Bob
Motzko. “We might have lost a No. 1 seed, but if it drops us to North Dakota’s
band
(second seeds) now, so we can’t go to wherever they go, that’s OK with me. We’re
just
darn happy to be in it, and we don’t know what the draw is going to be.”
North Dakota beat the Huskies 6-2 in the semifinals, which is why Motzko has
seen
enough of the Fighting Sioux to want to avoid them by going to a different NCAA
regional. Wisconsin fell 4-2 to Minnesota on an empty-net goal in the other
semifinal.
Wisconsin coach Mike Eaves conceded that if his team had been guaranteed an NCAA
slot, winning the way the Badgers did would have been very satisfying, but maybe
it was
even more satisfying to win when nothing else was on the line but pride. “It was
an
interesting game,” said Eaves. “Our bodies weren’t ready from having played a
tough
game last night, but they got wrapped up in the game, in the competitive
situation. You
could feel the energy on the bench grow as the game went on.
“We’re playing our best hockey right now. We’ve gone 8-3-2 at the end. If it is
our last
game, from a personal and pride standpoint, playing this way and winning this
was
better.”
Eaves explained that he had planned to start Elliott, then, at the first
whistle, pull him
for sophomore Shane Connelly. “Our intention was to start Brian, then have our
players
honor him when he came out after the first whistle,” said Eaves. “Unfortunately,
they got
a goal. So then I said we’ll wait for the next whistle.”
The Huskies jumped ahead when Andreas Nodl came out from behind the net and
fired
one past Elliott after only 29 seconds had elapsed. The next whistle came at
0:45, and
Elliott came out. Connelly, of course, is more than capable. His last game was
the
season-ending battle at Duluth — a 0-0 tie.
“It’s just a shame Brian had to go out with that goal, after all he’s done for
us,” said
Connelly, the heir-apparent to Elliott’s throne next season.
Senior Jake Dowell tied it 1-1 for Wisconsin later in the first period, when he
scored
with a neat backhand against Goepfert after Ross Carlson’s hard pass from the
left
boards. The Huskies, however, took apparent command with a pair of second-period
power plays. Ryan Lasch, their other prized freshman sniper, banged in Dan
Kronick’s
pass to the crease, and John Swanson added another midway through the period.
Down 3-1, in a game that offered them no future, the Badgers stormed back. Andy
Brandt, a senior third-liner, came up with the inspirational goal before the
second period
ended, and it stayed 3-2 until Jack Skille tied it at 13:20 of the third period,
getting in
the way of Andrew Joudrey’s shot for a deflection goal.
St. Cloud State might have put it away when Lasch cruised up the slot in the
clear, but
fired a shot that glanced off the crossbar and up and out of harm’s way.
That set the stage for overtime, and Street came up with the winner, after
Andrew
Joudrey won a left-corner faceoff, Kyle Kluberanz fired from the shot, and when
the
puck hit a cluster of bodies in front, Street plucked it free and scored.
“It’s always nice to win the last game,” said Street. “Typically, it wasn’t
pretty. But we
were down, and came back. We just wanted to finish over .500 and send our
seniors out
with a win.”
Motzko said: “No question Wisconsin is a worthy NCAA team. If they don’t get to
go,
there’ll be a lot of No. 1 seeds that will be real happy they’re out.”
Speaking for the Wisconsin seniors, Brandt said: “It’s been a battle for us all
year long.
But no one quit, no one gave up. The character of our team, and our seniors,
came through.
Some of our seniors will go on to play, and I wish them the best of luck. Others
won’t.
We came in as a group of 11, and we leave as a group of seven.
“After the game, all the players gathered around in the dressing room, and we
looked
each other in the eye. Not just the seniors, but the freshmen and everybody.
Coach Eaves
said to remember it, because this would be our last time together as a family.”
Gophers, Sioux, Huskies carry WCHA hopes into NCAA
The WCHA has high hopes for capturing its sixth consecutive NCAA hockey championship when the tournament begins this weekend, and Minnesota, North Dakota and St. Cloud State clearly stand as the best three teams in the league when it comes to accomplishing that feat.
Minnesota won the league and playoff championships, and is the No. 1 seed at the West Regional at Denver when the Golden Gophers (30-9-3) take on at-large challenger Air Force Academy (19-15-5) in Saturday’s match. North Dakota (22-13-5) the 3-2 overtime loser to Minnesota in the league Final Five title game, remains the hottest team in the WCHA, if not the country, and stands as favorite against Michigan (26-13-1) in the other West semifinal.
That is a colorful foursome. Minnesota coach Don Lucia and Air Force coach Frank Serratore are longtime close friends, dating back to when Lucia played high school hockey at Grand Rapids, and Serratore tended goal for Greenway of Coleraine, seven miles to the east. Their wives, Joyce Lucia and Carol Serratore, are extremely close friends and will sit together while their husbands’ teams battle on the Denver ice below. Lucia’s son, Tony, plays for the Gophers, while the Serratore family includes twin boys, Tom and Tim, who are solid 16-year-old prospects.
Also, North Dakota coach Dave Hakstol, who is attempting to lead the Fighting Sioux to their third straight Frozen Four, was a defenseman and captain of the Minnesota Moose in the International League when Serratore was their coach. That’s a tight clique for Michigan coach Red Berenson to try to break through.
St. Cloud State (22-10-7), meanwhile, made a strong run at Minnesota in the league stretch-run, then got worn down a bit in playoffs, concluding with two stinging losses in the Final Five. But the Huskies should have everything back in place in time for the East Regional at Rochester, N.Y., as No. 2 seed to take on Maine (21-14-2) in a Friday semifinal, while Clarkson (25-8-5) is No. 1 seeded and faces Massachusetts (20-12-5) in the other semi.
That leaves the Northeast regional at Manchester, N.H., where New Hampshire (26-10-2) is top seed and meets Miami of Ohio (23-13-4) in one Saturday semifinal, with No. 2 Boston College (26-11-1) meeting St. Lawrence (23-13-2) in the other, and the Midwest Regional at Grand Rapids, Mich. which opens with Friday night semifinals pitting No. 1 Notre Dame (31-6-3) against Alabama-Huntsville (13-19-3), and No. 2 Boston University (26-11-1) against Michigan State (22-13-3) in the other.
What’s wrong with that picture?
Nothing is wrong, it would seem, for the teams that made it. Except for the unfortunate setting that finds that if Minnesota and North Dakota both win semifinal games, they would meet each other to recreate the classic battle they waged in the WCHA Final Five championship game with only the winner advancing to the Frozen Four in St. Louis two weeks later. Too bad, if that happens, that such a time-capsule match couldn’t be played on the larger stage of a potential national championship showdown.
It’s true that St. Cloud State ranks on paper as favorite against a very good Maine team, and the Huskies did whip top-seeded Clarkson, from the ECAC, in a 4-0, 7-2 series in November, that could give the WCHA two spots in the Frozen Four. The Huskies had a rugged three-game test before ousting Minnesota-Duluth in three overtimes, which may have left them drained during two hotly contested games against North Dakota and Wisconsin at the Final Five.
Wisconsin, by winning two of three games at the Final Five, was too good too late to be considered as a team worthy of defending its NCAA championship. “I know there’s a lot of No,. 1 seeds relieved that they don’t have to play the defending NCAA champs, with that goaltender (Brian Elliott) and the way they’re playing right now,” said Minnesota coach Don Lucia, noting that the Badgers finished with an 8-3-2 flourish.
So after such a hotly contested season, only three survivors move on, and both Minnesota and North Dakota will be pulling for St. Cloud State to make it, and undoubtedly, if the Gophers and Fighting Sioux meet again, whichever one doesn’t win will grudgingly hope its conqueror will go on to bring more fame to the WCHA.
There’s always the chance for a potential NCAA final between St. Cloud State, with star goaltender Bobby Goepfert and a team-oriented attack led by Andreas Nodl and Andrew Gordon, and either Minnesota, behind the freshman duo of Kyle Okposo and Jay Barriball and the suddenly hot Blake Wheeler, or North Dakota, with its fabulous first line of Jonathan Toews centering T.J. Oshie and player-of-the-year Ryan Duncan.
But that’s far off. For now, the three tournament teams can set aside the fact that the WCHA’s intensely competitive season hurt the league when it came to the NCAA selection committee’s criteria. The case could be made that Denver, Michigan Tech, Colorado College, and late-charging Wisconsin could have been strong NCAA tournament entries.
As strong as that argument is, consider that Hockey East has five teams in the 16-team NCAA field, with New Hampshire and Boston College favored to meet in the Northeast final, Maine and Massachusetts getting half the chances in the East, and Boston University standing as a strong threat as No. 2 seed in the Midwest.
And the CCHA has four teams in the field, with No. 1 ranked Notre Dame and No. 3 seed Michigan State good shots at meeting in the Midwest final, while Michigan could overthrow the WCHA in the West Regional, and Miami is a long-shot, but could prove tough, in the Northeast.
Only the ECAC, with Clarkson in the East and St. Lawrence in the Northeast, has fewer than the WCHA’s three entries, once the mandatory selections of the Atlantic Hockey winner (Air Force) and the College Hockey America tournament winner (Alabama-Huntsville) were selected. Their selections bumped Denver, Michigan Tech, and other WCHA candidates out of the field.
Moreover, there is the suspicion that the selection committee is still stung by the fact that the Frozen Four two years ago was comprised of four WCHA teams at Columbus, Ohio, which was great for WCHA bragging rights, but didn’t do much to spread the wealth of college hockey beyond its cult-following level in the NCAA’s view.
Nobody expects the NCAA committee, or its computerized selection process, from doing any favors for the WCHA — although another case could be made that winning five straight championships might deserve extra merit — but it also doesn’t seem fair to punish the WCHA for its excellence. After all, when the WCHA foursome all reached the Frozen Four two years ago, all four of them had to win two tough regional games to earn their places.
This season, the WCHA teams compiled a 51-22-6 record against nonconference opponents. Minnesota was 8-1, including victories over Michigan (8-2), Michigan State, and Alabama-Huntsville, and a season-opening loss to Maine. St. Cloud State was 6-0, including the two victories over Clarkson, North Dakota was 6-2, including a victory over St. Lawrence, and two October losses against Maine.
While limiting the WCHA to three teams may seem an injustice, a greater injustice might be to put Minnesota, ranked No. 2 behind Notre Dame in the country, and No. 1 in the Pairwise computer rankings, and North Dakota, a team that rose from an injury-hampered first half to lose only twice in 21 games since Christmas (15-2-4) before falling 3-2 to Minnesota in the league playoff final, into the same regional.
It would have been easy to place North Dakota in the Midwest, or the Northeast, for that matter. In fact, in any season, the best and possibly only way to measure if one league has an edge over the others would be to disperse its teams to as many different regionals as possible. And it would only seem fair that since Hockey East, which last won the title six years ago, and the CCHA, which last won nine years ago, both have the chance to win three of the four regions, the WCHA should have a similar opportunity.
Did we mention that the WCHA might deserve more respect than to have its top team and its hottest team clash in the same regional? To recount, the WCHA has won the last five NCAA championships in a row, six of the last seven, and seven of the last 10…But now it seems the NCAA’s selection process is penalizing the WCHA for its success.
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.
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