Off Week Potpourri

With a week off there's not much headline material so I'll waste everyone's time with a bunch of "stuff". The first bit of news worth commenting is the hiring situation for Coach Shyiak's job. Athletic Director Steve Cobb has in his possession the applications received from UAA's Human Resouces department for Dave Shyiak's job. If you're not familiar with the situation; UAA had to open Dave's job to qualified American applicants to show the Immigration folks that he isn't keeping an American from a job. There's about a .000001 chance that any currently unemployed and truly qualified (Division 1 head coaching experience) American has applied. Nobody who is qualified would actually try to get this job through the backdoor. The school is happy with Shyiak. The fans are happy with Shyiak. The players are happy with Shyiak. If that .000001 chance panned out for someone and the University was forced to hire them; they'd be villified and hated. Anyone really interested? Cobb won't find any qualified candidates and any discussion anywhere that imply's otherwise is specious at best and foolish at worst. Nothing's gonna change. Shyiak will be here coaching. End of story.

Last week I unintentionally implied that MEg from MTU was included in a group of USCHO female posters that I characterized as "socio-engaged princesses filling their social calendars" and that was misleading. She didn't/doesn't meet that definition. My bad for choosing the reference and mistakenly including her.

It's another important week in the WCHA with St. Bob visiting UofD; Minnesota St. on the road at Wisconsin; ND going to the Mariucci and CC visiting Tech. Who are we cheering for this week?

St. Bob vs. UD -- Who cares? These games really have no UAA impact so hopefully they'll both pound on each other with wild abandon resulting in bruises and broken confidence for someone.

MSU-M vs. Wisconsin -- With 4 games in hand and the same number of points as UAA it might seem that cheering against Bucky would be the wise thing but if MSU-M gets points they could pass UAA in the standings. There are negatives for UAA in any result between these two this weekend but those 4 games in hand are going to be very tough for UAA to overcome. So I guess it's a weekend to hope the Mavericks can split.

ND vs. Gophers -- WooHoo. We all get to cheer for Minnesota again. If ND gets any points vs. the Gophs it isn't good for UAA.

CC vs. MTU -- It's pretty clear that UAA isn't going to catch CC and since the Seawolves are battling Tech for position it only makes sense to cheer for CC to sweep.

Outside the WCHA: (meaningful in terms of Pairwise comparisons)
UAF at BGSU -- UAF
Ohio St. at LSSU -- Ohio St.
Dartmouth at Clarkson -- Clarkson
Hahvud at St. Larry -- Hahvud
Northern Mich at UMD -- Cheer for UMD and save me from getting grief

Anything interesting happening on other blogs? Let's see ... The Wisconsin Blog has a link to the UW library archives showing all sort of interesting pictures from their long and storied history. LetsGoDU makes fun of St. Bob fans. Gopher blogger Hammy says Fisher started Saturday's fight with DU when he taunted Blake "Choke" Wheeler for his open net miss with 1.5 seconds left on Friday nights game. Purist's might point out that Fisher got a piece of the puck but not scoring with that much real estate right in front of him adds up to a choking in my book. New blogger Boosh over at MTU has already learned the art of diminishing the opponent after a loss ... just a note: "primadonna" is preferred to "prima donna". RWD is demanding (begging) that the Bulldog's play better since she gets to actually go to the next three games. Chris over at Western College Hockey reports that Assistant Coach Eric Means punishment for threatening Jon Campion (3 game suspension) was acceptable to the WCHA but he implies that Campion should have been punished as well. So next time an angry chump gets in your face and threatens you don't forget it's all your fault. The Crimson Issue has a good post detailing the facetiousness of calling for Coach Mike Kemp's head at this point in UNO's program's history. He uses Niagra and UAA as examples for comparison's sake. Any fans in Omaha that aren't happy with what Kemp has done must surely be (as he states) "Husker" fans. Finally, last week I had a long-winded multipart exchange with UNH's blogger on the Hockey Least blog regarding shootouts.

I'll have a comprehensive update on all the recruits at the beginning of next week. Winston Daychief played in the BCHL All-Star game and was named the 3rd star. Tommy Grant has moved up the scoring ladder substantially since my last update. Brad McCabe has returned to the ice after rehabbing his blown knee. Jeff Carlson continues his excellent defensive play in Southern Minnesota. And Kane Lafranchise plays in the AJHL All-Star game this coming weekend.

I'll finish by once again soliciting alternative viewpoints, articles, funny stories, or whatever you might like to contribute to this blog. An off-week would be a good time for something like that to show up in my email.

EDIT: It's worth noting that the week of February 5th at UAA has been designated as Canada Week. There are several special events planned. I don't mean to overly criticize the event because of course Canadian's are fine people and deserving of their own "week". BUT ... 5 of the 5 events listed are related to French-speaking Quebec and/or Acadian culture. So? English speaking Canada is once again disrespected in favour (<---- see the "u"?) of the Quebec minority? Does this mean UAA thinks "Nordiques > Canucks"? It's a bit troublesome. But the most priceless part is this quote from the announcement:

"...for everyone wishing to learn more about our neighbors to the north."

What? Last time I checked most of Canada was due EAST of Alaska.