College Hockey Takes Center Stage
By John Gilbert
It’s cordial of NCAA hockey to willingly — as if they had a choice — step aside and put their season on hold for a full extra week to make way for the basketball tournament to conclude before convening for their championship.
But now, it’s time. Just before the NHL starts its three-month marathon to decide the Stanley Cup, the NCAA Frozen four will be held at Philadelphia this week.
This one is special, because while hockey has maintained status quo in the East, it has been totally disrupted in the West.
We know that Boston College is a perennial power, and so are Minnesota and North Dakota. We also have learned in recent years not to take lightly the rising stars such as Union — which won it last year!
Nevertheless, Boston College will be everybody’s favorite when the Eagles take on Union in the first semifinal on Thursday. And, if you go by ratings, Minnesota’s Golden Gophers will be the big favorite over North Dakota in the 7:30 p.m. second game. Those winners will collide Saturday.
We’ve been over this before, how the NCAA selection committee and its Pairwise computer plan are instantly outdated by the new National Collegiate Hockey Conference — clearly, from top to bottom, the toughest league in college hockey. The result is that maybe it should have been predictable, but Minnesota, BC, and Union all were No. 1 seeds in their regionals, which seem to be proof positive of their ratings. But North Dakota was a No. 4 seed, and had to take out Wisconsin, which was Big Ten runner-up and a higher seed by the NCAA. North Dakota then had to beat Ferris State, the WCHA champion, in order to reach the Frozen Four.
The Golden Gophers have been at or near the top of the ratings all season, and remain No. 1 through this week, when that honor may only offer extra incentive to a North Dakota team that never needs any incentive to be sky-high for the Gophers. This time, though, there also is prestige and credibility for the new NCHC, in the face of the mountain of publicity about the Big Ten.
My pick, before the tournament started, was North Dakota. Shorn of their Fighting Sioux nickname, North Dakota chose to go without a nickname in the aftermath of the ugly confrontation with the NCAA. So it will just say North Dakota on their jerseys, even though they will be pure Fighting Sioux in our hearts and minds
I think it will be a couple of great games in the semifinals, but I think it would be some sort of justifiable irony if North Dakota won it all, just to expose the absurdy of the ruling that took away their “offensive” nickname, which originated as a tribute to the most highly esteemed class of the Plains Indian tribe from which the name came.
Wild Stage Wild Finish
The pressure had never been greater on the Minnesota Wild than it was last week. The Wild’s grip on the two wild card slots, eighth and ninth in the West, was slipping, as Phoenix had risen to a tie with Minnesota’s NHL club, and Dallas and Vancouver were close behind. The Wild seemed to have lost its fire, scoring dwindling and the once-splendid goaltending of third-string netminder Darcy Kuemper had cooled off. Turns out, he was injured, and right after getting shelled 5-1 in St. Louis, Kuemper joined Niklas Backstrom and Josh Harding on the disabled list. I had written last week that no NHL team could survive the loss of its top two goalies, and now the Wild have amended that to three.
But Ilya Bryzgalov, acquired as late-season insurance, stepped to the fore, and led the Wild to victory at Phoenix in a huge game, then another at Los Angeles, where the Kings never lose. Back home, the Wild then had to face the Pittsburgh Penguins, who are the Boston Bruins top rival in the East. Incredibly, the fourth line got two goals, Bryzgalov made all the saves, and the Wild stunned the Penguins 4-0. The NCAA basketball semifinals were a huge television draw, but a Wild record turnout of 19,409 managed to choose the live hockey game at Xcel Center.
That sent the Wild to Winnipeg where Bryzgalov won another shutout, 1-0 Monday night. More than just a victory, the closing three road victories at Phoenix, Los Angeles and Winnipeg lifted the Wild to a 17-17-7 record in road games. I go back to Glen Sonmor, and his protege Herb Brooks, who taught me that a lot of teams are good, but the true mark of a great team is how it does on the road. Rising up to finish an even .500 on the road is an enormous accomplishment for the Wild, and should help send them winging into the playoffs with confidence. If not all their bodies.
But wait! There’s more! The Wild finish the regular season with three home games, and the first of those came Tuesday, against the mighty Boston Bruins, Stanley Cup runner-up to Chicago last year. The Wild led when Jason Pomminville scored his 28th of the season, but fell behind 2-1, before Pomminville got his 29th and then assisted on tying goal in a 3-3 tie that led to overtime, and then to a shootout. Here was Bryzgalov facing Tukka Rask, Boston’s Finnish star. Rask stopped Zach Parise, and Pommenville, but between those two, Mikko Koivu zoomed in and beat his countryman for a goal. Bryzgalov, meanwhile, stopped all three Boston shooters, and the Wild beat the team some say is the NHL’s best, 4-3 in a shootout.
By the way, remember last spring, when the Wild swiped Pomminville from Buffalo and he got hurt before the playoffs? Twin Cities non-hockey cynics put down the Wild by saying Pomminville could be the “Wild’s Herschel Walker.” Whatever that means. Ol’ Herschel wasn’t much of a skater, had no slapshot, and didn’t backcheck. I just hope Pomminville gets No. 30 in the final two games.
If the Bruins aren’t the best team in the NHL, remember, St. Louis is my choice to beat them in the final. And the St. Louis Blues have a Thursday night date at Xcel Center in the next-to-last Wild home game before playoffs.
“Before playoffs,” has an extra nice ring to it this year, doesn’t it?
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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.
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