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.