Sunday Potpourri: Random, What's Left and Mr. Blue Sky

Tough weekend on which to end a season.  Perhaps even a bit tougher weekend on which to end a career.  I pondered a fair amount looking for some way to describe these two playoff losses.  I don't want to try to take anything away from Bucky here, I recognize they're a damn fine and deeply talented hockey team ... but I'm not sure that was the difference this weekend.

The "kids" in today's culture love to point out arbitrary events in life with the phrase, "That was random." And to me, both of those games sure seemed to fit the bill.  For me that started with the first goal of the series.  How many goals can you remember a Seawolves player scoring with some random non-goal-scoring part of their body?  My head started spinning as soon as Michael "I'm all right with God" Davies' shoulder acted as puck-richocheting vehicle for the verification of randomness in our Universe.  I call it random, Davies likely thinks it's his faithfulness to a deity and lots of people would call it lucky.

In a sport where the primary object of competition can sometimes act more like a pinball than a hard piece of disk shaped rubber, "lucky" goals abound.  But I can't for the life of me remember a couple of games where the Seawolves came out so badly on the wrong side of the randomness.  You would think Yahweh or the Uncertainty Principle of the invisible Quantum Universe might assert themselves in UAA's favor once.  Lee Baldwin's ripped shot rang the post as loudly as I've ever heard a post ding would have been a perfect candidate.  Whether fate or randomness, if the other guys can get such breaks then why didn't we.  Baldwin's shot wasn't the only "bad luck" the Seawolves had to deal with.

And then even when things were seemingly going well, Bucky would get a break and bury the chance.  The Seawolves though never seemed to get their payoff for their hard work.  I know there's an accurate description.  Good teams make their good fortune.  There certainly is some of that in this weekends result.  Like I said, I don't want to take anything away from the Badgers.  They're honestly likely to go very deep into the NCAA's.  Then again, they definitely got their share+ of good bounces and nice breaks.

With all that in my head, it's not easy to analyze much else from the series.  If there was a game that UAA could have won ... surprisingly it's the one they lost by the bigger score.  But it seems that in getting much more flow going forward (versus Friday's offense), the Seawolves lacked a bit in their own end at crucial times ... nay ... at random times.  See, I can't get past "how" the losses occurred.  

The Saturday game wasn't over with less than 2 minutes to go when Bucky went ahead.  They had responded nicely to UAA tying the game and were mounting some good attacks.  Baldwin gets righteously tagged with a hooking penalty and Wisconsin gets it's first power play goal in twelve tries to go up 3-2.  But the game wasn't over.  UAA just has to survive the last minute and a half to get to the locker room and then randomness rears it's head.  Bryce gets called for a trip because he has his blocker on the ice after deflecting a shot wide and a guy skating through his crease falls over his arm.  As soon as that fucking idiot zebra (Mason or Thul) blew that whistle, the game was over.  

All referees make mistakes, they're human.  But this random mistake at this random time effectively ended the game.  One minute it's 3-2 and the Seawolves have played their best period of hockey out of the first 5.  26 seconds later, with just 38 seconds left in the 2nd period and it's game over man.  On a blown call.  Not that I wouldn't dispute any of a fair number of bad calls this weekend.  But none of them turned out to be costly.  Until this one.  Man, that was the most abritrary and capricious slap in the face of the whole season.  A ridiculously bad call.  

Listen, Bucky was loading on the pressure there at the end of the 2nd period.  They were posssessing and pushing deep, they were holding the zone and generating multiple chances.  This is exactly why referees call penalties at those times.  They are subtlety influenced by the action in the game.  They see one team generating chances and something inside them clicks to call a penalty in that teams favor.  Doesn't matter which team it is, it goes that way (in favor of) for the Seawolves too.  Sometimes, it is indeed the hard work of a team that makes the other team foul them and many such calls are entirely legitimate.  This one wasn't though.  And it decided the game.

Note: no "blame" on the refs in that.  Like I said, you could deconstruct multiple bad calls in every single WCHA game to show how they are wrong.  It happens.  Referees are human.  I'm just lamenting this single call, at this particular part of the game which I believe was the death knell for the Seawolves season.  Random.

_________________________

So that's my perspective on the weekend.   There's a lot of work to be done in the off-season to become one of those teams that makes it's luck.  I'll be examining some of that in upcoming posts.  I'm going to wind down my writing season over the next week or so.  Here's what is planned/upcoming:

• UAA Hockey Fan Blog Awards
• Report Cards
• Dave Shyiak: A Comprehensive Review
• Final Recruit Updates
• A Look Ahead

The 3rd piece will be my critical look at Dave Shyiak's performance in his first 5 years.  It is a year earlier than the fairest possible time to do such a thing.  I've long stated here that 6 years is the proper time frame for such assessments.  I still hold to that pretty much.  If after his 6th season Dave hasn't shown some positive progression in term of success then its fair to have the discussion.  So in the case of me writing this review, consider a "pre-evaluation" evaluation.  In any case, I see it as perhaps the most important post I've made here and am approaching it with that sense in my mind.

Feel free to email me your thoughts.  I want to try to be reflective of ideas, criticisms and just the general fanbase's emotions when I write it.  Thanks in advance.  What's left seems like work to me, so your input will be valuable.

_________________________

And here's my suggestion for next year's Theme Song ...  because it's a happy sunny day song and we all need a little more ELO in our lives.  And oh yeah, it reminds me of being 17 and driving around in my 1974 Mercury Capri, jamming this song on a sunny day with the sunroof cranked open.  This makes me feel like I've ended today on a positive note.  Yay, I can sense spring coming.