Howe, upstart CC shock Gophers with 2-0 shutout
By John Gilbert
SAINT PAUL, MINN. — Joe Howe says he never looks back, even while his goaltending has turned sizzling hot while taking down one favored foe after another. Friday night, before 18,949 fans at Xcel Energy Center, Howe stopped all 35 shots he faced and led Colorado College to a 2-0 shutout that seemed to baffle No. 1 ranked Minnesota.
But now that game is in the past, so Howe and the upstart Tigers — who hit the .500 mark for the season at 18-18-5 — must refocus on Saturday’s 7 p.m. championship game of the Red Baron WCHA Final Five tournament against Wisconsin. Usually, if one team has to win three games in three days to win the Final Five, it is near impossible to beat an opponent playing only its second game, but in this case both CC and Wisconsin have won their way to the final with two victories, so the fatigue factor is a wash.
Minnesota's A.J. Michaelson tried in vain to smack a rebound past CC goalie Joe Howe in Tigers 2-0 semifinal shocker.
If there was a tournament darling, it would be Colorado College. And if ESPN covered college hockey, the goals by Rylan Schwartz to open the second period, and by Charlie Taft less than four minutes later, would be highlight video material, although they didn’t seem insurmountable to the explosive Golden Gophers, one of the highest scoring teams in the country. It seemed almost a matter of time before the Gophers would break through.
But Howe was cat-quick in goal against the best Minnesota chances, and the CC defense was superb, blocking shots, deflecting pass attempts, and quite calmly clearing the zone with sometimes soft but accurate passes, to forwards who swept down the ice making short, effective passes along the way.
While Howe praised his teammates, he said he doesn’t think about how hot he’s been recently. “I never think about what’s already happened. I only think about what’s next,” Howe said.
“Rylan put a note up that said we don’t have to win three games, we have to win one game three times,” Howe added. “It felt good. We know we’ve got to win it to move on, and we had a good team effort tonight, and our penalty killing was unbelievable.”
The Gophers, who had a bye into the semifinals as WCHA co-champion and No. 2 seed, had a bit of an edge in the first period, but Colorado College was in the midst of its seemingly impossible mission — to rise from eighth place and then conquer all those higher seeds in the Tigers path. First it was Denver, which won the first of a best of three, only to lose the next two to CC. Then it was the Final Five quarterfinals, and a scintillating 4-3 overtime upset of North Dakota, the three-time defending Final Five playoff champs.
But Minnesota, playing in its “second home,” 8 miles from Mariucci Arena, seemed too big a challenge even for a team desperate enough to throw caution to the winds. Minnesota, repositioned as the No. 1 ranked team in the nation this week, is secure as a top seed in, probably, the Grand Rapids, Mich., NCAA regional; Colorado College knows that when it loses, its season is over, and only a victory in the Final Five title game will give the Tigers a chance to enter the NCAA’s 16-team field, as the WCHA’s automatic qualifier.
Travis Boyd fired point-blank, but Joe Howe blocked it for Colorado College.
“Credit CC,” said Lucia. “They came in here having won two at Denver, then they beat North Dakota and now us in here. Joe Howe gave them the kind of goaltending you need at a time like this. Usually, when you give up two goals, you should be in a good position to win the game. But Howe was very good. When we played them earlier, he didn’t play either game.”
Colorado College coach Scott Owens explained that. “We had goaltending issues till early January,” he said. “Then we decided to give him the ball, and slowly, he’s gotten better and better. He used to make three or four great saves, then let in a soft one. He’s not doing that any more.”
No soft ones, and no hard ones, either, such as when the Golden Gophers outshot CC 12-6 in the first period, but Howe and Minnesota’s Adam Wilcox kept it 0-0. It was the opening shift of the second period, when Schwartz changed the game.
Schwartz carried across the Gopher blueline, with defenseman Jake Parenteau dropping back. Schwartz pulled the puck slightly, then let fly with a rising shot that skimmed between Parenteau’s stick and leg and snared the upper left corner of the net, past the screened Wilcox, at 0:59.
“I was thinking about cutting to the middle, and I was hoping the goalie wouldn’t see me,” said Schwartz, whose goal was his 19th this season.
The Tigers, rushing with a constant sequence of soft, short passes, attacked again three minutes later. This time Wilcox repelled the attack, but as the Gophers impatiently hurried on their breakout, Alexander Krushelnyski, who had dropped back to the offensive blueline, lunged forward and poke-checked the puck away, back into the slot. Charlie Taft was there, and he darted to his right and as Wilcox dropped in anticipation, Taft fired back between his pads, and it was 2-0.
“I was a little lucky on that one,” said Taft, a sophomore from Edina. “I wasn’t trying for the 5-hole, I was just trying to get it on net.”
After that, it was back to a game of the Gophers attacking, and the Tigers turning them back and countering attacking whenever the opportunity presented itself.
Colorado College goalie Joe Howe deflected a backhander by Gopher captain Seth up and over the net.
“We got outshot in the first period, but mostly because of their power play,” said Owens. “I thought it was an excellent game, even in the first period. We wanted to make it a 40-minute game. Then when we scored — not just a goal, but a great goal — you could hear the buzz in the building. Our defensive sticks were as good as I’ve seen, and Joe was solid, not only stopping pucks, but he looked very, very good stopping them.”
For most of the game, Minnesota freshman goaltender Wilcox matched CC senior Howe, although with the Gophers outshooting the Tigers all three periods, Howe had by far more threats to dispel. But the story of the game can best be told by examining the scoreless third period.
First CC’s Joe Marciano was given a 5-minute cross-checking penalty and tossed from the game for pushing Tom Serratore down from behind at 4:50, and the Tigers never lost their poise or got caught scrambling out of position at the Gopher puck-movement. Colorado College cleared the zone and fired the puck the length of the ice so many times that Gopher fans in the big arena began booing the Gopher power play’s ineffectiveness.
Then, with 3:12 remaining, Minnesota coach Don Lucia pulled Wilcox for a sixth attacker, needing to make up two goals. The shots were 34-20 at the time. When the game ended, they were 35-20. Minnesota mustered only one shot on the entire three-minute, six-man attack. More significantly, the Tigers were so poised they never once tried to shoot at the inviting open net, preferring to shoot the puck diagonally out of the zone or chip is softly ahead, to kill time instead of risking an icing call.
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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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