UAA/MTU: Friday Night Photos and Recap

During the game last night I was proud of myself for making sure that I wrote down thoughts and observations as they occurred to me.  I've tried making such notes in the past and rarely used much of it in my final posts.  But last night I put gold onto the page.  Pure genius.  Unfortunately for you guys ... the browser window on the graciously loaned Windoze netbook I've been using wasn't actually on the interwebs ... and so all that hockey blogging gold went for naught.  It was frustrating so I went to bed and put this off til this morning.

The win was a nice one.  And important of course in getting the first couple of league points.  I think the post game interviews really summed things up well.  Coach Shyiak said he thought the team played for 50 minutes and I find no reason to disagree with that.  Eric Scheid definitely made the play of the night with his sweet cross-ice backhand feed to Corbin Karl pinching in on the weak side.  

The media area gave a perfect view and I could see the whole thing develop so I crossed my fingers real quick and hoped that Eric saw it ... and as soon as those thoughts formed, Eric did see him.  He got good pace on the pass as well making sure the puck got to Karl before the goalie could get across his crease.  

There was massive concern for Portwood after he went off with a clear knee issue suffered when he laid a massive hit.  I didn't think there was any twisting etc and they're calling it a sprained knee.  Jade is a really valuable player as well as a fan favorite for his workhorse efforts.  He'll be missed even if it's for only one game.  

Coach Shyiak has definitely been running through different line combinations.  Last night the Portwood, Naslund, Mellor line sure intrigued me ... it will be interesting to see the lineup tonight.  Just FYI ... I'm not going to make any more guesses around here about lineups though.  It's embarrassing when I'm wrong (always). 

I thought the guys coulda scored a coupla/three more goals.  I thought they were lucky a bit that MTU didn't get a couple more goals.  The last 4 minutes or so of the game pretty much belonged to Tech and they sure came close a couple of times.  Chris Kamal had a real nice outing and looked pretty confident. 

There was lots of good looking stuff from guys all through the lineup.  Jordan Kwas had a good return but seemed tentative here or there.  That'll go away quickly.  Defense was solid solid last night with few if any breakdowns that I can recall.  Scott Allen's penalty is a complete mystery to me and perhaps nothing other than one particular control freak referee trying to score brownie points in front of  WCHA Commish Bruce McLeod by making a call that is one of the points of emphasis.  Maybe they get an extra 25 bucks if they whistle an "emphasized" penalty?

That's it for now.  Go look at those pics ... some really good stuff in there.  Thanks as always to JJ for the video interviews and to Tom for the pics.