Step One: 2 Points On Friday Night

Curtis Leinweber put two pucks home tonight to lead the Seawolves in a 4-1 win over Michigan Tech.  Wes McLeod and Craig Parkinson both added goals to round out the scoring.  The Seawolves had multiple scoring chances early in the game including a Vidmar shot that rang loudly off the crossbar.

The game had it's share of odd-man rushes and counter attacking but a ton of it was played along the wall.  Tech often worked hard and maintained possession deep the UAA zone ... all throughout the game.  Unfortunately, even when a long shift extended into two icing calls; Tech found getting the puck to the UAA net pretty difficult.  UAA did get the majority of quality chances on the night though by a fair margin.

I wouldn't call it an overpowering defensive win necessarily but it certainly was of high quality against a Tech team that wouldn't be 0 fer the last "whatever"  games in any league outside the WCHA.

The first goal came off a 3-2 rush and featured two excellent passes.  Breaking into the MTU zone on the left wing, Matt Bailey won the puck and threaded a pass to Nick Haddad who was driving down the middle and he laid off a perfect puck to left-handed Curtis trailing on the right wing ... he buried it. Pretty goal.

Wes McLeod picked up his 2nd of the year and the game winning goal with about 16 seconds left on a power two-thrids of the way through the period.  West ripped a hard low shot to the five-hole from just inside the blueline ... the puck squeaked through after it first looked like it might not.

Curtis tallied a shorthanded goal to put the game at 3-1.  The team had a couple of decent breaks overall when they were killing penalties.  The power play was effective scoring once during a power play and once 2 seconds after the Huskies killed off the last penalty of the night.  Craig Parkinson finished the game with that goal to make it 4-1.

I liked the way the Seawolves played tonight.  They were pretty disciplined overall.  They sure worked hard in the defensive end all night.  MTU really forced the play in the UAA zone, but the Seawolves kept their shape and there was just no room to get pucks to the net as evidenced by MTU's shot total of 14.

Chris Kamal was sharp when he needed to be.  The only goal came off a crazy perfect tip on the doorsep from Gordic during a power play.  The puck was going in even if there'd been an NHL Hall of Famer in net for Seawolves.  Chris did a little bit of everything pretty well tonight.  I thought he was pretty calm and confident in his play.  His last 157 minutes have seen no even strength goals scored.  Pretty nice little run.  Don't be surprised to see him get the start again tomorrow night.

Step Two is tomorrow night.  More of the same will be required i.e.... a good team effort in all three zones.

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Didn't appear that the "Chatroom" was any sort of success tonight with a grand total of about three people actually saying something and four or five others just entering and leaving.  If you missed it there is a new "TAB" at the top of the page.  It says "Chatroom" ... it's running 24 hours a day.  Give it a test run.  There seemed to be a consensus that out of town viewers found it useful to have a chatroom so give me some feedback here in comments.

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At the game I was reminded that Damon Whitten is now an assistant with Tech having moved on from his job at Michigan State as video coordinator.  I totally knew that but didn't know it until Suze mentioned it at the game.  I must say in with all due respect, that the already decent attractiveness quotient of the Sullivan Arena crowd rises significantly when Damon's wife is in the building.