Saturday, December 30, 2006

Seawolves Sweep UAF

Paul Crowder's 3rd goal of the weekend at 5:46 of the 3rd period tonight secured an unbeaten non-conference season for UAA; the Seawolves finished 3-0-1 versus rival UAF, beat Merrimack and tied Nebraska-Omaha.

UAF forged a 2-0 lead with goals at 9:27 of the 1st from Lucas Burnett and 8:47 of the 2nd from Curtis Fraser. Up to that point it'd been a fairly evenly played game with UAA perhaps sitting back a bit more than usual. The second goal though seemed to act as a bit of a wake up call for the Seawolves and they began pressing offensively more effectively than in the first half of the game. Chad Anderson's 5th goal of the season at 12:06 of the 2nd broke the drought for UAA. Chad waited for some traffic in front of the net and buried a hard wrister past Chad Johnson from near the blueline. I'd have to go back and check but it seems to me that all of Chad's goals this season have been virtual carbon copies of each other. Keep it up Chad. I'm all good with cloning.

Chippy play was most evident throughout the 2nd period with 8 penalties called (4 on each team). Overall the weekend saw 37 penalties (19 on UAF; 18 on UAA) ... if you think it was a WCHA "even it up" referee you'd be right. Friesma though deserves some measure of credit though as none of the chippiness ever really got out of hand.

The Seawolves tied the game 2-2 when Kevin Clark took a Chris Tarkir clearing pass in neutral ice and turned on the afterburners into the UAF zone. A nifty flip of the puck to his shooting side and a step outside the defenseman was all the room Kevin needed to absolutely bury the puck in the top right corner. Prettiest goal of the night. Kevin was much more effective tonight than on Friday and seemed to have more passion all night. At one point in the 3rd period in neutral ice he was being pestered by Kyle Greentree but totally schooled him sending Kyle to the bench shaking his head while I laughed my ass off.

3 minutes and 39 seconds after Kevin's goal Crowder netted the game winner when Nils Backstrom smartly passed up a shooting opportunity to instead feed him on the right side down low. And as he did last night Paul finished very intelligently. With his brother drafted and considered a good prospect I wouldn't be the homer that I am if I didn't point out that UAA has the better Crowder. Sorry Tim. I guess you don't suck with your 2 goals this weekend but little bro is owning you so far. I haven't looked at all the stats from the weekend but Paul would seem like a strong candidate for ROTW from the WCHA.

Peter Cartwright scored his second empty net goal of the weekend at 19:18 to finish the sweep.

The most notable accomplishment out of this season's 4 games series versus UAF is that I'm pretty sure that no goalies were run this year. Pretty hard to believe in a rivalry that probably leads all of hockey in goalies getting run. The only injury of the weekend that I noticed was when I'd guess Trevor Hunt turned his ankle early in the first period tonight. I was sure he'd be done for the night but he did play a fair number of shifts in the rest of the 1st period before retiring for the evening.

A good weekend to end 2006 with a strong St. Bob team coming up. Later in the week I'll have a preview of that series that even graduates of Jan Brady State will be able to understand.

__________________________________________________
Edit to rant:
Dear Sullivan Arena Mngt,
Your blatantly over-officious "staff" cast a shadow over the post game celebration when the team took the trophy over to the UAA Student section to thank the students and get them into the trophy picture. By making any attempt to control the miniscule number of hard core fans who were being honored by the team they support your staff has greatly offended the longest term ongoing client of your arena. Please train your staff to recognize the difference between an effusive show of support and an actual dangerous situation where their presence might be required. Not only was those particular students experience marred but now the pictures of the cup will have a couple of asses in yellow shirts.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah!!

Spot on review Don ;) Watching the game again as I speak, waiting for Chads goal.

Happy New Year Seawolves!

GatorGirl

Anonymous said...

Yeah that ***hole was right in front of me! I managed to get the sign up but he kept pushing me back and saying "Get off the glass"

I guess didn't like us chanting "NA-NOOK THREE-SOME" when they had 3 guys in the box either.

Donald Dunlop said...

About six people joined me in a couple of "Pull Your Johnson" chants late in the third. :rolleyes:

They didn't need to be there at all. It was uncalled for and such typical behavior from them that I'm not surprised (and thats the real shame of it).

Anonymous said...

security is evil!!! but in their defence this year they have been one hundred times softer than last year where we couldn't even stomp our feet one game.

dggoddard said...

Nice sweep. Way to help the WCHA strength of schedule.

Donald, I thought you only want to beat UAF two times a year... :-)

Anonymous said...

Donald,
Thanks for the great writups on the sweep!! (where was the ADN- again?) We listened/watched from Baguio City, Philippines- (here for Christmas)
Dan and Janette

Donald Dunlop said...

I was wondering about the Phillipines hits I saw on the counter. Very cool that you got to watch it on the other side of the world.

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