Friday Night Suckage

Major amounts of suckage accompanied everything tonight. Suckage for the fans in attendance. Suckage for the players. Suckage for the staff. Suckage all around served up by a hard working team. For the most part the Seawolves didn't suck though. But for about 20 of 60 minutes in MSU's favor, UAA outplayed and outchanced 'em. Once again though, the Seawolves out-penaltied the opposition and exactly what we all know will happen did so. The team with more power play goals came out on top. Mankato went 3 for 9 on their chances. UAA went 1 for 6. The Maverick's best sustained play of the night came in the 3rd period. Anytime you're in a close WCHA game and you outplay the opposition in the final period you're going to come out with points.

Almost scoring is loads of suckage. The Seawolves almost scored more times than I can remember. Don't get me wrong. The team didn't play badly but, they did get whistled for too many penalties. There were a couple more penalties that might have been called against the Mavericks. One of their power play goals developed from a play that should have been whistled offside. But the suckage being felt by Seawolf players, staff and fans can't be put on the zebra's shoulders. Plain and simple the Seawolves had their chances. I thought UAA's penalty kill looked good. The numbers tell a different story though don't they? One of the power play goals did come at the end of yet another 5-on-3 kill (1 minute 27 seconds worth) just 14 seconds before the 2nd penalty would have ended. The crowd had just settled back in from a rousing ovation for the excellent work the penalty killers had done up to that point. That was Suckage-o-rama.

Zacharias made 3 or 4 excellent saves but more often it seemed the one needed bounce wasn't there. They say hard working teams make their own luck. I'd have to agree. One of MSU's goals was the definition of getting a good bounce and even the empty netter was the result of a fortunate bounce. Not to take away credit from Bruess who's hustle earned him the bounce.

Sometimes the result just doesn't come your way. Suckage galore!

For the Seawolves Paul Crowder was definitely the player of the game. He was everywhere and picked up two goals ... one on the power play and one greasy one when he swooped in to bury a rebound past a goal mouth scramble. I'm not going to pin the loss on goaltending as I didn't think you could blame Jonny O for anything bad. Perhaps he was a bit late coming back across? I'll have to watch the game again to see. On the other side of the Jonny coin though, he made a fantastic save near the end of the first and in quick transition Tommy Grant scored a beauty. The 4th line tonight was Smith, Tuton, Lovdahl. That was a little odd to see. The other change was to swap Sean Wiles and Tyler Moir's line assignments. I'd tend to think the change was made in response to Sean's play the last two weekends. I thought he was effective in making a bit more room for Crowder and Grant. The 1st line was buzzing for most of the game with Lunden and Clark getting most of the good chances. And they had more than a few (all the "almosts" I mentioned earlier).

I can't say anyone played badly. Every defenseman at one point or another made a excellent play in their own end. Every defenseman at one point or another made a nice play on transition. Mat Robinson had a couple of nightmares where pucks showed up in his skates instead of his stick while he was cruising unchecked through the slot. One chance he missed and the other Zacharias made his first excellent save of the night. Sigh ... just suckage all around.