Black Bear Fans Adopt UAA

Regular readers will recognize that I really dislike referring to CC by their current nickname (Tigers). I think it is just a stupid nickname. A couple of years ago I saw a CC fan with the moniker "Black Bears" on USCHO who apparently doesn't like the "Tiger" name either. All that is really unimportant in terms of this post except for me to clarify which Black Bears I'm talking about. The title of today's post refers to University of Maine Black Bears (you could probably tell by the picture huh?). Their season is over and in respect of SUZE's contributions to their season thread on USCHO and their fondness for departed assistant Campbell Blair they have officially adopted UAA to cheer for this weekend against the "Tigers". Thanks Mainuh's! If I'm not mistaken UAA is the most western school in D1 hockey and Maine is the most eastern. With CC's relative central position perhaps some mysterious vice-like fandom mental energy can come into play this weekend. So in honor of the support of the fine Maine fans I thought I'd share my one Shawn Walsh story.

Back in the D1 Independent days it was always difficult to schedule opponents. For several years UAA made an east coast road swing playing various teams over a week or week and a half. Gawd ... they must have missed a lot of school! At some point though someone arranged for Key Bank to act as some sort of sponsor and Maine and UAA played 2 games against one another at home. Key Bank found it useful to promote it since the two areas represented their most eastern and western branches.

I'm fairly certain the events I'll describe happened in the 2nd game of the series here in Anchorage (but if my memories of the events are different than yours please jump in the comments section and correct them). It has to be noted again here that this was back in the "Independent" days and to be honest occasionally there was some home-cooking by the local referees. It was usually just appetizers ya know but once in a while they laid out a full spread. UAA had beaten the Black Bears on Friday night and a win or a tie would wrap up the Key Bank "championship" since the Seawolves had split earlier in the year in Maine. Seawolf teams under Brush Christiansen were never known for their subtle physical play. I remember a bench clearing brawl with Air Force once at the Sully and can distinctly recall a radio description of goalie Jeff "Buff" Carlson chasing a UMass player up the ice and giving him a wicked two handed slash across the back. Sometimes it wasn't pretty but you could walk away from the rink satisfied that if your team didn't win the game on the scoresheet at least they won the fights.

In any case, on this particular Saturday night UAA had built a 2 goal lead on the strength of it's power play and Shawn Walsh was not too pleased. I hope my memory isn't fooling me but with time left on the clock in the second period Walsh led his team off the ice to the astonishment and ire of a full Sullivan Arena. I don't think I've ever heard sustained cat calling and booing for as long. Since the time on the clock for the period was relatively short (around a minute) the referees just called the period and UAA headed for it's locker room. When the ice was Zammed and the intermission was over the Seawolves came back onto the ice and took their places on the bench. But no Black Bears. The joint was going nuts with Booing and many a colorful description of Walsh's manhood were being yelled. It took several minutes but eventually the Maine team came back out onto the ice and wound up losing the game. The 3rd period was perhaps the only period that weekend that was called straight up fairly by the referees.

So thanks for not holding that ancient screw-job against us Maine fans! We appreciate your support and postive mental energy for the Seawolves in this weekends series against a team that should be called Black Bears. We UAA fans are aware of what it's like to get homered as it happened to us last year in Colorado Springs when the referee called a series of ridiculous "interference" penalty on face-offs and sent UAA players to the box both nights early in the two OT games. The first night the Seawolves overcame that crap calls and won. On the second night CC pulled out a victory but UAA won the fight! You can read (and/or participate) in the USCHO thread by clicking here.

I'll be back tomorrow with a list of reasons UAA will win this weekend and advance to the Final Five.

Alumni Extra: Glencross Notes

I have a hard and fast rule about only writing about current Seawolves. I do so primarily for selfish reasons; the amount of time that it takes to follow everyone and do a fair job of it is simply too much for me. It's great that over the last couple of years that Doyle Woody started blogging because he does a good job of following ex-Seawolves and providing updates. I had noticed a couple of newsworthy bits regarding Curtis Glencross this past week and waited to see Doyle make note of them on his blog but it didn't come. So faced with emailing Doyle and hoping he'd note these things or just posting them myself; I figured I could break my rule just this once.

The Edmonton Oilers hosted a team skills competition to a sold out Rexall Arena last week. Curtis Glencross won the fastest skater competition. That was a nice surprise since teammate Shawn Horcroff had actually won the last NHL All-Star game competition and most Oiler fans assumed that Andrew Cogliano was the fastest player on the squad. Perhaps the bigger surprise here though is that Curtis won the event with an "unofficial" NHL record time of 13.37 seconds. Wows.

The other interesting tidbit is a featured radio interview with Curtis on the Oilers weekly radio show. Curtis talks about his time in Anchorage briefly. You can listen to that entire interview by clicking on this link. Curtis has had a nice first full season in the NHL. So far this season he has 9 goals and 9 assists in 49 games, is a +6 overall and has done that playing an average of about 12 minutes per game. Curtis becomes an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season. With all the nice additions to his resume this season he looks to substantially increase his $550,000 a year salary.

Sunday Potpourri: Whoring Edition

I like to give these little Sunday ditty's a theme. Today's theme comes courtesy of a Sunday afternoon streetwalker that amused my daughter and her friends as I drove them to the bowling alley. Inspiration is an odd thing. It cometh from whereth it cometh and that is the way iteth. Earlier this season after a difficult loss to Wisconsin I cursed the hockey gods saying:

Seemed like no matter what the Seawolves did tonight it wasn't enough to satisfy the hockey gods. To me that makes the hockey gods a bunch of bastards. Yep, I said it; the hockey gods are bastards. Their mothers are harlots and their fathers are wayward scum!

I meant it. I still feel that way especially after seeing their whoring mother walking down the street today. Before you get all worried that I'm going to jinx the team by disrespecting the hockey gods just be aware that they sure aren't going to come to UAA's aid next weekend in Colorado Springs no matter what I do. Nothing I could say would sway them to the Seawolf cause. All the platitudes and compliments I could come up with wouldn't make a difference. They're whores to CC; why else would they choose the Springs for their "Garden of the Gods"? And anyhow, supplication to some imagined deity in return for some kind of renumeration would just make me a whore wouldn't it? Not to mention it is soooo not my style.

Don't think for a moment that I haven't considered that what I do here is akin to whoring. I realized that last summer when I put up the "Donate" button in hopes of prostituting my way to the Final Five this year. I quietly took it down back in January because frankly it's complete lack of success was a constant reminder of what an ugly whore I must be. I think it's always better to be a slut than a whore. I'd rather give it up for free anyway. In that manner I get to enjoy it for the sake of it instead of feeling that I have to provide a service for some fee. I regret having been a whore and so I will not ask the hockey gods for anything. I'll just expect the Seawolves to overcome the obvious wickedness perpetrated by these overrated bullshit self-righteous dieties.

Alaska is pretty famous these days for it's high number of whores. The list of corrupt bastards grows and grows slowly as we learn that that Big Oil stuffed the pockets of virtually anyone that would open them. The latest was former Gov. Murkowski's Chief of Staff Jim Clark who whored himself to VECO or campaign fundage on behalf of the dumbass he worked for. I have to give Clark some credit though as he is the only one of these bastards that fessed up completely and apologized openly last week. It is somewhat of a hopeful sign that he hasn't seemed to personally have benefited financially. The sooner the Federal prosecutors get to the two biggest whores the better. Ben Stevens and Ted Stevens disgust me and the apparent amount of personal graft they received far exceeds the pittances that most of the other whoring corrupt bastards reportedly received. I saw Ted once in the Carr's Safeway Aurora Village store years and years ago. I threw up a little in my mouth back then. He's a decrepit old fart now so if I ever happen across him again I'll just point and laugh. His son Ben wouldn't be so lucky though. That punk ass whore would get some serious in his face confrontation action if I came across him. Alaska has had three right wing idealogues in Washington D.C. since forever it seems (Don Young, Ted Stevens and Frank/Lisa Murkowski). It would be difficult to imagine three (or four) stupider whores if you tried. None of the three whoring bastards has actually lived in this state in the past 25 years. Yet the dolts in this whorehouse of a state kept electing them. Why? Because they brought home the bacon. Man oh man. If that doesn't make Alaska a "State of Whores" I don't know what does. I'm mostly ashamed of my fellow voters here but like so many other things I have optimism for the future. If the world truly has any justice remaining then Uncle Ted and Auntie Don will lose their jobs this election cycle. I hope it does; though I have to admit a bit of cynicism adhering to my optimism. I lack complete faith that my fellow Alaskan's can really overcome their whoring tendencies though.

The WCHA regular season certainly had it's share of surprises for me this season. If Lammy didn't play so well for UND my predictions of a less than successful season for them may have been correct. But he did play exceptionally well all season and I was wrong. I did peg CC as the best team in the league. It really wasn't hard to see that. I called DU's year a probable rebuilding year. But the Pioneers really overachieved in my book. Or maybe just Brock Trotter did? In any case, I'd have to say I was wrong about them when I figured the highest they could finish was 4th. I pegged MTU with an NCAA playoff win before the season started and for the 1st half they looked to be living up to that. But down the stretch they seemed to have lost the magic and along with UAA are one of only two WCHA teams that won't get in the NCAA's without winning the Final Five and getting the autobid that comes with that. I said the Gophers were probably looking at a top three finish. And if Stoa hadn't been injured early and Okposo bolted midstream I probably would have been close to right. Duluth's record sure outpaced my predictions for most of the season but ultimately they landed in 8th place. They aren't out of "it" yet though. A WCHA playoff win and a couple of wins in the Final Five over the right opponent and who knows. They could see an at large bid. I picked SCSU as a likely WCHA road playoff team. But their two ties against UND this weekend locked up the last home ice spot for them. I may have overrated Wisonsin for two years in a row. I thought Turris would spark more offense but Bucky still couldn't bury the puck enough to earn a home ice spot. Sure they could still get into the NCAA's and then anything can happen (Michigan State proved that last year eh?) but like I said that is the case with 8 WCHA teams. My worst prognostication was with regard to Mankato. I figured they suck it up big time. But they got the Eaves trap down solid and managed to find a way to bag enough goals at good times to finish in 4th place and host the Gophers in the WCHA playoffs. I wonder if Mankato's AD is checking with the Xcel Energy Center to see if he can move his playoff games there as he did for a regular season game versus the Gophers a couple of years ago. I saved that for last since the guy is obviously a whore.

The biggest whore in Minnesota lately though seems to be the President of Bemidji State Jon Quistgaard. First he flailed his arms around in the "our program will die if" the WCHA doesn't save us dance. The WCHA responded by agreeing to try to schedule Bemidji more often and Quistgaard runs around called it a scheduling agreement. Funny that the WCHA never called it a "scheduling agreement". Now the guy is using the same sort of whoring extortion with the Minnesota legislature to get his school a new rink. Bemidji obviously has a long rich tradition in the college hockey world and they ought to get support to build a new rink I suppose. Tons of rubes in Minnesota think that the WCHA should add them as a member to save the program. I'm not opposed to any of that philosophically but I'll tell you what; Jon Quistgaard's whoring gesticulations that the sky is falling are souring me quickly. The program can move back to D3 and continue their rich tradition at that level. It's a tiny little berg with less than 15,000 people in the city. Sometimes selling yourself to the high rollers can result in some bruising ya know? Not every whore is suited to the Las Vegas strip. Some of them probably ought to stay on Spenard Road.

Sunday Potpourri: Fried Green Tomatoes

I'll eat a panload of those acutely disgusting unripened fried tomatoes before I'll stomach the regular season as it happened. Yep. I'm not going to spend the weeks before the WCHA playoffs or the off-season focus on records or numbers. The team was better than their record. Plain and simple. I know it. You know it. The coaches know it. The players know it. The opponents know it. Why am I sticking with the same refrain? Because it's the truth. Reality "suggests" the team is exactly as good as it's record. But sports is often a case where truth and reality can be in opposition. That's how it is. I've convinced myself it's the case. And I guess that's all I'm going to say about it.

If I'm not mistaken UAA's first round opponent isn't quite set. Colorado College is in 1st place with 39 points and UND is 2pts back with 37. Colorado College faces a home and home series with arch-rival DU this weekend and UND host's St. Cloud for a pair. If the teams finish tied then CC will have the better out of conference record. They split in their only series of the year against one another. I'm not exactly all up to speed with regard to the tiebreakers. I'm hoping they go to "WayLessThanGrand" Forks only because we might get to see it on TV. I'm guessing the UND games earlier this season weren't on TV because the originator thinks it's worth more than it is and GCI choked on paying whatever the were asking. There seems little chance of seeing a game from CC as I don't think one has EVER been on in Anchorage.

I'm dispensing with any sort of recap of Saturday except to say that with the game at 2-1 instead of a puck off a Gopher thigh onto Selby's stick we had a puck off a Seawolf defenseman dropping in front of a Gopher forward. That's the difference between a 2-2 tie and a 3-1 loss. Just one bounce on both nights determined the game. The ADN's story was pretty much right on so read it if you haven't already.