"The Hair Line" Contributes Well In Seawolf 4-2 Win Over BGSU

Dear Hockey World,

Allow me to introduce you to "The Hair Line": Tad Kozun, Nicolas Erb-Ekholm and Austin Azurdia. No doubt there are Seawolf players who think their own hair is all that ... but the three best coifs on the squad are now skating on a line together. The Hair Line.

Bowling Green This Weekend

It's #whatsaseawolf weekend according to the BGSU Atletic Department. Well, at least we Seawolf fans know what a Bowling Green is. 

With only 34 games on the schedule, each subsequent night in college hockey is more important than the preceding night/weekend. That's always the deal. This weekend's series against BGSU is therefore the most important series of the year to this point. There's a number of interesting items to talk about in regard.

They're Just "Facts"

I saw mention over at the ADN that UAA's 4-1-1 record was somehow less than significant because the team's it has beaten have a collective record of 3-11-0 against other opponents (I agree that we haven't played anybody yet). But the statement was made in reference to the difficulties of this week's opponent (Bowling Green) because they were ranked #12 in both national "polls". 

Here's the paragraph ... from this post.

The Seawolves (4-1-1, 1-0-1 WCHA) are off to a strong start. Still, the work gets heavier this coming weekend, when UAA enterains Bowling Green on Saturday and Sunday afternoons at Sullivan Arena. Bowling Green (3-1-1, 0-0-0) is ranked No. 12 in both national polls. And while UAA is 3-0-1 in its last four, it is worth noting that the teams it has beaten this season are a combined 3-11-0 in games against other opponents.

Yeah ... I put quotes around the word poll to demean it's validity as any sort of reasonable metric by which one might measure an opponent. Polls are meaningless "facts". Here's a fact that didn't make Doyle's journalistic editorial cut .... The teams that 12TH RANKED!!!!! BGSU has beaten or tied this year have gone a combined 1-9-0 against other opponents.  Isn't it interesting how choosing which facts to publish can change the tone of a post.

Ahem.

I'll have a full weekend preview Wednesday evening. Fact.

Seawolves Get 3 Point WCHA Weekend: Nothing At Which To Sneeze

3 points on the road is a good result in college hockey; especially in the meat grinder that is the WCHA where teams are as tightly matched as any league. Nothing wrong with that. Sure, I was a little disappointed with the Friday night tie. But that's the beauty of college hockey weekend series. You get a chance to redeem yourself on Saturday night.

Seawolves Squander 2-0 Lead In Favor of 3-3 Tie

Christmas came early for the Alabama-Huntsville Chargers tonight. The Seawolves put together a strong 1st period in which they killed a 5 minute major penalty to build a 2-0 lead on goals from Jeremiah Luedtke at 12:12 and Matt Anholt at 16:38.

#1 Ranked UAA Seawolves vs. #59 UAH Chargers

This isn't a preview per se of this weekend's series against Alabama-Huntsville. It isn't that UAH doesn't deserve a preview. Instead, the reason is purely on me. I had surgery on Tuesday. It wasn't on my fingers or brain which really are the only things necessary to write a preview. I wasn't even going to do this much but it's pretty easy.

Seawolves 33-12-11 In 1st 4 Games Since 2002

I didn't see either game this weekend. Congratulations to the Seawolves on their two victories this weekend. So that puts the boys at 3-1 to open the season. Not the first time our guys have had good starts to the season. Since 2002-2003 the Seawolves have collectively gone an outstanding 33-12-11 in their first four games.

Seawolves Take Down Engineers 4-3

The UAA Seawolves hockey team defeated the RPI Engineers tonight by a score of 4-3. The game winning goal came at  of the 3rd period on Wyatt Ege's 2nd goal of the game. 

The game saw lead changes aplenty after UAA struck first at 14:23 to go 1-0 on off Dylan Hubbs second goal of the year with assists to Cam Amantea and Matt Anholt . RPI tied it at 4:59 of the 2nd and then took the lead at 11:56 taking the lead to the locker room. 

Then at 1:24 of the 3rd Austin Azurdia scored with an assist to Mason Mitchell to make the game 2-2. RPI retook the lead at 5:52 with UAA on the power play scoring a shortie to go up 3-2. After that in terms of scoring it was all Wyatt Ege. He tied the game at 7:12 unassisted. Then he nabbed the game winner at 10:09.

This is an important non-conference win for UAA and helps the WCHA's Pairwise comparisons down the road. 

Congrats to the team on hanging in there during a back and forth contest and getting the win.

The Seawolves cannot lose to AIC tomorrow afternoon. To do so would be crush the non-conference part of the season. We need the momentum going into WCHA play. 

RANT: Seem like everytime we're in Fairbanks the updates for Live Box Scores and the posting of the final box score takes FOREVER (an hour and a half). UA_ needs to find another volunteer or hire someone or god only knows what but this waiting and waiting and waiting for box scores whenever we visit that sorrowful town is ridiculous.

Brice Goal Rush Preview: AIC Yellow Jackets

The American International College Yellow Jackets are the Seawolves Saturday afternoon opponent this weekend at the Carlson Center along the not-so-fair banks of the Chena River. The Yellow Jackets are coached by Gary "Dream Weaver" Wright. The only coach they've ever had. 

Alaska Goal Rush Preview: RPI

Renssalear Polytechnic Institute is the Seawolves first opponent this coming weekend up north. They have played 1 exhibition and 2 real games. They lost to Canadian school St. Thomas University of New Brunswick. Where's Old Brunswick? 

Anyway, then they lost to Lowell last week getting shut-out 3-0 but two nights later they upset #1 ranked Boston College Saw a comment somwhere on the internet where an RPI fan exclaimed that at this point they didn't know if their team was crap or great. Well, let's see if we can figure it out.

SCSU Sharp in 6-2 Win Over Seawolves

I went to a hockey game and a possession style European soccer game broke out. And the Seawolves were on the wrong end of having the puck. If they tracked possession time then SCSU probably had the puck close to 70% of the time. Here's my comments during the game followed by some quick analysis.

Seawolves Nab OT Win 3-2 On Brad Duwe's Nice Finish

Here's my impressions of the win ... written as the game went along. 

1st period ...

First 2:30 was mostly feeling out ... getting everyone a shift ... no chances for either side. The 1st line's 2nd shift generated a couple of chances  which weren't really threatening.

Kendall Tournament Preview: St. Cloud State University

For a long time I was more familiar with SCSUs team than any other WCHA team. Since the old WCHA's collapse and reassembly ... I haven't given their hockey program a second thought. So I know little more about them than I do ASU. They're *17 in the preseason poll.  Let's learn a little about this year's Huskies.

College Hockey Inc Podcast with Matt Thomas

Here's a nice 12 minute interview from College Hockey Inc. that they posted yesterday. The interview was conducted during the BCHL Showcase where Coach Thomas was scouting. I enjoyed it. It'll be great to see the action this weekend; I'm even looking forward to watching the UA_ v. SCSU game.

Kendall Tournament Preview: The ASU Sun Devils

What's a Sun Devil? Clap, clap ... clap clap clap. You'd think such a question would find a bevy of Google reponses. Alas, it takes more than surfing a Wikipedia article or two to get the answer. And yeah, I still don't have the answer after 15 mins. 

Rumor Quash Central: Sully Will Be Ready

I've been getting questioned and hearing rumors that the Sullivan Arena renovations will not be complete for this weekend. Man, that would be the suck. Well, being that it's crunch time I thought I'd check out things for myself. So, I stopped by the joint and took a look.

The boards are in. The new glass is being installed. The seating is 99% installed. I'd expect them to slush the rink and start flooding it pretty quickly. The place didn't look much different that it would have any Monday afternoon of the tournament week in any other year. Ok, different colors.

I spoke with an unnamed authoritative source. The place will be ready to go. Have no fear. If someone asks you or questions whether or not it will really be ready you can now tell them it's game on and you can say Donald said so.

Exhibition Game: Mt. Royal 1 - UAA 0

Had some internet probs. Fixed now. So my impressions from listening (and I didn't hear every minute of David Tuttle's fine debut broadcast) to our guys come up short against Mt. Royal last night ...

Mason Mitchell sounds every bit of what he was described to be and I was hoping for. Nicolas Erb-Ekholm seemed to be able to get the puck into some dangerous places. Jeremiah Luedtke's name was prominent in the broadcast and it seemed to me he played with Blake Tatchell all night ... be nice if they developed some chemistry. Sean MacTavish's play sounded promising as did Eric Roberts. Seemed to me that Wyatt Ege got a lot of ice time (again I had to listen on and off) and played in all situations ... more importantly, it sounded like he played very well. That's all promising.

It was good to hear Tanner Dusyck's name called in situations that sounded like scoring chances too. It'll be good to see him playing this weekend. The goalies played well. The defense seemed to be mostly ok. And even though we didn't score we seemed to match them offensively. 

All in all I call that a good opening season exhibition. The team was challenged all night long by their opponent and they saw some high end guys on the other side of the ice pressing the issue. Not everyone thinks like me ... It's ridiculously early to label this year's team in the following manner ...

On paper, the UAA hockey team looks challenged to score goals in the upcoming season ... On ice, that dearth of scoring manifested itself Friday night, when UAA fell 1-0 to Mount Royal ...

but those are two of the first four sentences in Doyle Woody's coverage of the game.

Give it 10 or 12 games before you start negatively labeling the team couldya Doyle? It'll take at least that long before any sort of trend is statistically significant. And why just shit on the team like that when reporting on an exhibition game?

I won't be attending the Green & Gold game (working) but hopefully folks will take some photo's and video and post it on the Facebook page. Here's the boxscore.

The Mt. Royal Cougars: A Preview

According to UAA Head Coach Matt Thomas, the Mt. Royal Cougars from Calgary, Alberta are not to be taken lightly. They got a new coach last year and the team fully bought into his system and they finished their season 17-11. They didn't have a lot of player losses and have brought in a former CJHL Player of The Year to bolster the lineup.