Monday, November 22, 2010

WCHA Weekend Review

In the wake of what was honestly a bit of a breathless weekend for me; I thought rather than verbosely reiterate all those issues I'd take a short snarky look at the rest of the WCHA action from the weekend.  

Every weekend my pops recites a list of all the teams in the WCHA that he hates ... Minnesota, Wisconsin, Denver, Colorado College, St. Cloud, Mankato, Duluth, Michigan Tech, and North Dakota.  He does have the occasional memory issue these days so I have to prompt him on a couple of those and add UNO and Bemidji for him.  Then he tells me how much he dislike referees.  Funny thing is that he was a highly certified Soccer referee for a decade or so when I was growing up including being a linesman for NASL games.

The Gophs made the trip up to Houghton to face MTU and came away with the sweep ... 6-4 on Friday night and 4-1 on Saturday.  Think it's coincidental that the Shepherd brothers called exactly the same number of penalties on each team during the weekend?  Just another quality example of the WCHA's "even it up" policy.   Man oh man ... refereeing in this league reall is just about political correctness as frequent commenter -30- so astutely suggests?

Down in the Mile-High city, Boremidji took it's full on left-wing lock trapping game into Magness in an attempt to put that less than full arena to sleep.  It pretty much worked on Friday.  Denver took the first game 3-1 with an empty net goal but did manage to work it's way through the defensive effort enough to get 29 shots on the Beaver.  

On Saturday, the Beaver got a bit more of an offensive effort going and had 2-1 lead after one that lasted until near the end of the 2nd period when the Pios got the game tying goal.  Denver took the lead 7 minutes into the third and wrapped up the game with their second empty netter of the series.

Referees Paul Dupuydt and Butch Mousseeaux called 9 penalties on the Beaver and 6 on the Pios.  One of those dudes is brand new obviously.  He's not up to speed on the "even-it-up" policy.  I bet arena announcers are thrilled to not be introducing the referees by name anymore.

Duluth visited the Kohl Center in Madison and guess what?  Refereeing was an issue there.  Tim Walsh and Brian Thul were in charge (always a loosely used term when relative to WCHA refs) calling 10 penalties on the weekend against Duluth and ... wait for it ... 10 penalties against Wisconisn.

None of this "even-it-up" stuff is controversial to anyone but me really.  But Bucky fans have themselves worked into quite the lather over something though ... or do they?   Did you know they say "beg" in Wisconsin when they mean BAG?

Duluth went into Badgerland "ranked" #1 in the nation.  After sweeping them, I guess they'll still be atop the polls.  Favorite blogger RWD has gone from nonplussed and honestly skerred about the #1 ranking to all jazzed about the prospect of another #1 ranking.  Um ... can you say schizophrenic?  Did you know they say "beg" in Wisconsin when they mean "bag"?

I know I'd like the Seawolves to get another shot at the Bulldogs.  Maybe we'll see them at the Final Five!  Hey ... there's lots of season left.  No reason not to hope for an appearance in St. Paul.

North Dakota split with a popular card game in Omaha.  Could I care less?  Not really.  UNO scored with 1 second remaining in the game on Saturday then held some queer (as in odd) sing-a-thon for their fans?  Um note here UNO players ... you split a regular season WCHA series at home.  

Save the "all dancing all singing crap" for when you win something important.  You can be sure rveteran eferees Jon Campion and Bill Mason will get a talking to from the head office though.  They called 11 penalties on UNO and only 8 on UND during the series.  Tsk tsk fellas.

That was it.  Colorado College and Mankato were idle.

10 comments:

Suze said...

That letter to Eaves is ... priceless! :)

Donald Dunlop said...

Along the same lines ... I have it from a reliable but unnamed source that the UAA Administration has formally and stridently addressed it's concerns regarding the call against Brad Gorham as well as the methodology (going to video replay between periods) used to arrive at the decision.

Word I get is that the referees basically admitted to Shyiak that they made the call as they did so as to best cover their asses.

I'll reiterate here that it's a shame when any college hockey player gets injured. But not every injury is a result of an illegal play. In the case of Travis Novak he was (as most aptly described by Doyle Woody) rubbed-out along the boards. Calling that a 5 minute CFB is beyond unfair to both Gorham and the Seawolves as it directly impacted the final score.

Anonymous said...

I agree Donald, i looked @ it last night and that's total horseshit by the Officials, just like the brad malone hit on Jesse martin.

Seawolfpunk

vizoroo said...

Anon, I must disagree the hit on Jesse Martin was far more violent and there was contact to the head. Malone's penalty was for charging: Gorham's for CFB. However, they were both, Novak and Martin, in vulnerable positions.

I must admit Gorham's hit didn't appear to be very hard on a comparative basis.

Suze said...

Is there a possibility that Gorhams penalty can be reduced to a misconduct instead of a game DQ?

Donald Dunlop said...

Suze,
It was a 5 minute CFB major with a 10 minute misconduct. No game misconduct or DQ was attached.

Anonymous said...

sir just so you know uno goes and sings in the lobby after each and every home win so maybe you should keep your thoughts to yourself until you now the whole story behind what teams do

Donald Dunlop said...

Or maybe I should make fun of whatever team and practices that I think will entertain the audience of readers that I'm attempting to entertain.

Yeah ... I think that's what I'll do.

For the future, I'd advise giving yourself some sort of moniker when you post here. Matters not what it is. It will allow me to differentiate you from the other anonymous folks who are also too lazy to use capitalization and punctuation.

Anonymous said...

The home of the Badgers is something else when it comes to song. I was just about getting over the insipid varsity songs sung at the same juncture of every game when I had to listen to 30 minutes of wave after wave of “Roll Out the Barrel” as excited fans exited their lavish arena. Never seen anything like it. I mean come on, “We’ll have a barrel of fun?” Not sure exactly what a barrel of fun looks like, but if that’s it then just fucking shoot me. (Then again maybe it does make sense if it's a barrel of beer.... But then it must be German beer, because we all know American beer ain't a barrel of fun. Time to shut up and Google, I guess.) -30-

Donald Dunlop said...

LMAO

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