University of Denver: Ugh ... Not Them Again

Did I mention on Sunday how I hate DU? It is purely based on UAA's results over the last few years. Too many close losses will do that. I can usually muster some disdain for pretty much every other opponent based on where they're from. But I spent from 8th grade through 11th in Denver and returned for a year after I graduated from West High here in Anchorage, so I mostly like the place. I had my first beer there; snuck into my first bar at 17; went to ridiculous numbers of Green Mountain High school parties; I tried Ganja for the first time on the turf at Mile High Stadium during a concert in 1975; I lost my virginity in a cabin on Lookout Mountain; I "cruised" 15th and 16th avenue downtown with hundreds of other teenagers when those were still streets and not some goofy "mall"; before I drove, I rode my 10-speed all over the place; I snuck into god only knows how many drive-ins theaters; and I played a helluva lotta soccer; and I went to at least 60 or 70 Colorado Rockies hockey games before they moved to Jersey. How could I not think fondly of the place? I did all my rites-of-passage stuff there ya know?

So to be more specific about my hate for DU here's a brief recap of the last three years. Last year with 6 players sitting out a game suspension (from the CC fight) the Seawolves put up a spirited battle on Friday night but just didn't have the legs to finish even though they knotted the game at 2-2 with 13:35 remaining in the third; they lost 4-2. Saturday night the suspended players returned and the game was pretty much a barn-burner with a 1-0 DU lead until an empty netter with 1:03 in the game. Argh. That was a disappointing weekend (the same weekend as this upcoming series). Those were the only two games last year due to the ever-popular unbalanced schedule.

In 05-06 the Seawolves went 1-3. The first series was in Denver and UAA had a less than inspired game on Friday night losing 5-2. DU scored ridiculously early, built a 2 goal lead and the game was never really close. The Saturday game that weekend though was a different story with Nathan Lawson making 37 saves to key the 3-0 win. The next series that season was at the end of January up here and the most significant event was Paul Stastny running Lawson and giving him a knee injury. It happened to be the weekend that John DeCaro was attending to the birth of his new baby so reserve 3rd string goalie Mike Rosett had to step in an play. He did a great job but the Seawolves couldn't find a response to Ryan Dingle's goal with about 10 minutes left in the game and 3-2 was the result. John DeCaro was able to play the 2nd night in a sort of nasty game but UAA came up on the short end of the chippiness and lost 5-3.

The 04-05 season had only the two game series in Denver. Friday night was brutal; at the end of the first period the score was 4-2 for DU, by the end of the game those numbers were doubled to 8-4. The Saturday night game was a completely different story. The Seawolves played inspired that night; Nathan Lawson made 34 saves (oops ... he made 35 but didn't get credit for the last one). The game went to OT and on DU's only chance of the OT period, Nathan made one of the all-time great saves you'd ever want to see. He flashed his glove hand low on a point blank chance (within 2 feet of the net) moving from right to left and the puck went into his glove and out. Play continued and UAA had a couple of good chances of their own. Then came a stoppage and Gwoz got Todd Anderson's ear long enough to get him to use the new-fangled experimental video replay system to check if there had been a goal scored. Can't blame him I guess; Nathan had made what looked to be an impossible save. The replay showed the puck going into Nathan's glove and coming back out. Nathan's glove was directly between the overhead camera and the goal line. So even though our good buddy Todd couldn't see the puck (it was in Nathan's glove) he somehow intuited that it had crossed the line. Those cool sunglasses that in last Sunday's "Potpourri" post I mentioned Todd owning, apparently keep his superman x-ray vision intact.

It seems like these games are more often than not some pretty rugged hockey. In the last 8 games the teams have combined for 119 penalties with 6 misconducts issued.

Last year during this series LetsGoDU blog and I did a swap. Damien Goddard wrote here and I wrote there. It was a good experience overall. DG posted a bogus (I thought it was obvious) entry indicating that Coach Shyiak was holding open tryouts for any eligible students to replace the suspended players. Apparently a couple of readers believed it and almost showed up to try out. There was over 1,000 hits on this blog that day after someone posted a link on Fark.com with the same open tryout theme. In response, crafted a faux-investigative journalist entry on his blog about some UAA students on a mission to find DG and improve his grammar. The last time I communicated with DG I think the subject came up about whether to do the swap again and I guess I was reticent enough about it that it never came up again. That's fine. I like driving my own rig. I did notice today though that DG removed my write access to his blog; perhaps he thought I'd sneak something onto it in the middle of the night? It hadn't occurred to me but kudos to him for being security conscious. I was much less trusting as I removed his access last year at the end of the blog swap.

Minnesota: State of Hockey?

Minnesotans are justifiably proud of their accomplishments in the hockey world. They have every reason to be. They're downright hockey-mad. But they aren't the only state that is so smitten with the sport we all love. There's an ongoing argument about which state produces the most and/or best hockey players. The three states that have reasonable claims to that bragging right are Minnesota, Michigan and Massachusetts. The InterWeb is a funny place. It brings out all sorts of chest-thumpers that not only crow about their particular issue but almost always seem to have to trash-talk somebody else while doing so.

I'm no stranger to blustering and bloviating as I've certainly done my share in various Internet locales. Several years ago there was a rash of Minnesota faithful on USCHO's fan boards popping their jersey's while crapping on everyone else about how great their state was: par for the course ya know? Like I said, they have plenty of justification for pride. They are equally as insane about high school hockey as Texans are about high school football. While the rest of the kids in the U.S. play Midget hockey for development, Minnesotans rely on High School for that. They even have a couple of high schools that import players from all over the country. The annual high school state tournament produces more erections in Minnesota hockey fandom than viagra. They have 5 universities playing Division 1 hockey. The 1980 Miracle on Ice team had loads of Minnesotans on it. Minnesota was deeply involved in hockey development in this country when there were less than 10,000 white people in Alaska. They have tradition and halls of fame and an endless parade of great names to hang their hats on. Sweet. Good for them.

In any case, back then in order to verify the facts for myself I did a little counting and cyphering and figured out that Alaska actually produced more Division 1 players as a percentage of hockey playing population than did Minnesota. Man oh man did that ever elicit a bunch of responses; most of which decried my use of the "percentage of population" metric. Nobody seemed to take exception to my methodology or results but instead just wanted to focus on the numbers without any examination (if I remember correctly it was something like 224 - 28). So ... lets do that analysis again.

There are 205 Minnesotans playing Division 1 hockey this season. There are 30 Alaskans playing D1. Here's a bit of how they breakdown and significant numbers. The ECAC has 28 Minnesotans and 2 Alaskans. Clarkson is the only member of that league without either a Minnesotan or Alaskan on the roster. Union has no Minnesotans while Dartmouth has the most with 6. The CCHA has 24 Minnesotans on their rosters while Alaska has 10. UAF has 5 Alaskans. Michigan and Michigan State have no Minnesotans and no Alaskans. UNO has 7 Minnesotans and 2 Alaskans. Hockey East has 9 Minnesotans and 1 Alaskan. College Hockey America has 16 Minnesotans and 1 Alaskan with Bemidji St. having 10 of that 16. Atlantic Hockey has 30 Minnesotans and 4 Alaskans. Interestingly, Holy Cross doesn't have a single Minnesota kid. AFA has 10 from Minnesota and 2 from Alaska. The WCHA has 98 Minnesotans on their rosters with 12 Alaskans. 205 to 30. Slam dunk! Minnesota produces WAY more Division 1 players than Alaska (82 of the 205 play D1 in Minnesota). Case closed? Nah.

Let's look at why eh? The population of Minnesota is approximately 5.2 million. The population of Alaska is about (and I'm rounding up slightly here) 670,000 people. So ... Minnesota is 7.76 times more populated than Alaska. If you just take those numbers then you'll find that Minnesota produces 6.83 times more Division 1 players than Alaska from a population that is 7.76 times larger. I tend to think that means they are underperforming.

But that's not really a fair comparison. The hockey playing populations in both states is substantially less than their total populations. In Alaska there are four primary areas where kids have a chance to play organized hockey; Anchorage, The Mat-Su Valley, The Kenai Peninsula and Fairbanks. The combined population of those 4 areas is about 400,000 people (probably should be a fair bit lower but let's go with a high estimate eh?). Minnesota is a bit harder for me to rationalize as to total hockey playing potential population so I'll turn to USA Hockey registrations to equalize the numbers. In Minnesota there were just at 50,000 USA registrations (49,976 to be exact). In Alaska there were 8,310. Thats just a little over 6 times more for Minnesota. So if we assume that the hockey playing potenial population in Minnesota is around 3 million; would that seem fair (6 times more would be 2.4 million)? It seems to me. I'd tend to think it's higher than 2.4 million and putting it at 3 means 3/5th of the state is in the hockey playing potential population?

So a little bit of math and ... 1 kid per 13,333 in Alaska plays Division 1 hockey. In Minnesota 1 kid per 14,634 plays Division 1 hockey. Hmm? Do the math yourself; fudge the Minnesota hockey playing potential population numbers higher or lower as you think appropriate. I think I'm being gracious to assume that their hockey playing potential population is 3/5ths of the total population. I believe it to be even higher. After all, doesn't everyone in Minnesota live, eat and breath hockey? According to the chest-thumping jersey-poppers they do. And if that's truly the case then certainly more than 3/5ths of the state are hockey enthused, aren't they? If it is as "they" say then the numbers of Division 1 players that Minnesota produces is kinda disappointing isn't it? Shouldn't it be up around 250 or 275?

Looks to me that Alaska has a higher per capita production of D1 players than Minnesota. Go ahead and call yourselves the "State of Hockey" but you don't have anything on Alaska and you sure don't have a clear cut case to the name when compared with Michigan and Massachusetts. And oh yeah ... don't look now but California, Texas and Colorado are up and coming "States of Hockey". So please ... really; stop with all the provincial crowing about how great you are. Yes you have much of which you can be proud. Relax and be at peace with that. Enjoy your "hockey factory" while we toil to produce players in our "boutique". I'm not saying here that it's Ford vs. Rolls Royce but that comparison does have a nice cachet. Anyhow, the rest of us would really like a break from the all bullshit crowing. And oh yeah, there's this place called Canada attached to your northern border that puts you to shame (do British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario have an ongoing pissing contest aboot who is better?).

Sunday Potpourri: Empty Shirt Version

That isn't Todd Anderson's shirt. It's Randy Schmidt's. More about that at the end of this entry.

Here's what I said about the WCHA before this season started:

Last season saw the highest degree of parity in the WCHA in memory. The difference in points between first and last place was the smallest in more than a decade.

Take a look at the standings. 3rd place 13pts, 4th place 12pts, 5th place 11pts, 6th place 10pts, 7th place 9pts, 9th place 7 pts. 3 of the 4 teams clustered at the bottom have only played 10 league games while everyone above them have played 12 with 3rd place Duluth having played the most with 14. Duluth's position in third is clearly tenuous and the 3 teams with games in hand all look in good position to move up the standings. Thats two things that will almost certainly lead to an even tighter race than we have already. Wow is all I can say. Getting points every weekend is more important this year than it's ever been.

Quite a Saturday night for Paul Crowder eh? Both Crowder and DU's Rhett Rakhshani had 3rd period natural hat tricks on Saturday night to lead a come from behind victory for each of their teams. Crowder had a trifecta; 1 shorty, 1 even-strength and 1 power play. In the ADN Shyiak noted that the energy play on a couple of early 3rd period shifts by Grant, Haddad and McCabe sparked the team. As I did yesterday he also noted the excellent play all weekend by Waldrop, Cartwright and Tassone. It will be interesting to see who the WCHA chooses for it's WCHA offensive player of the week. My bet is that Crowder and Rakhshani share the honor. The three points this past weekend are really a good thing to see. 2nd place DU comes up here on quite a roll. They are highly ranked (#1 and #2) on the early season KRACH and Pairwise computer rankings. Since I linked to those two methodologies, it is important to note that it is still a little early for them to be considered really accurate since they both utilize comparisons to reach their conclusions and we're not even halfway into the season. I believe DU is over-acheiving somewhat which must be pleasing their fanbase who overall expected less than they are getting. I'll have more about DU this week of course. I hate them.

There is a bit of a local buzz about a replacement goaltender now that Matthew Gordon is injured. The University indicated they're probably looking for someone to add to the roster for the second half and I've had comments here and questions about Bryce Christianson. He's been a good prospect for a couple of years now from more than a couple of NCAA teams. He had what most people would consider to be an off-year which might have scared some coaches away from committing to him. Take a look at this blog entry from Doyle Woody. I might have more information about this tomorrow. I might not too.

A quick update now on the incoming players. Gustav Bengtson has had a reasonably good start with Texas in the NAHL since his trade. In 7 games he has 2 goals and 2 assists. He isn't tearing it up (yet) but I'd tend to think he is still adapting so hopefully when he settles in he'll pick up the production rate. Tyler Moir with the Drumheller Dragons has added to his scoring line with three goals last week in two games; he currently has 15 goals and 28 assists in 32 AJHL games and interestingly has 146 penalty minutes. He is 11th overall in points, tied for 9th in assists and is 5th overall in penalty minutes. Mickey Spencer is tied for 4th in goals scored in the BCHL so far this season. He added one this past weekend to make his current numbers 23g, 9a and a grand total of 32 penalty minutes.

I'm shaking my head. I don't get it. LetsGoDU is reporting that WCHA commish Bruce McLeod is going to issue an apology for a bad call this weekend that went against SCSU. Kane Lafranchise's former teammate Jesse Martin carried a puck wide right on a 2 on 1 rush against SCSU, one defender played off Martin while Kyle Ostrow went to the net hard on the left side. Ostrow tries to pull up and ends up going into the net on the left side while Weslosky is on the right side defending the upcoming shot. The announcers incorrectly note that there is clear contact between Ostrow and Weslosky. I've watched this replay a dozen times at least and I don't see any contact between Weslosky and Ostrow. If there is any at all it is of a marginal nature.

So what you have is a controversial goal in a tight game. Nothing really new in the WCHA. There are 5 or 6 of these controversies every year. UAA fans will remember a few weeks ago when an SCSU forward skated through the crease and hacked Jonny O's stick out of his hand as a shot got past him. And that's just one example of a bad call. We had an equally bad call last year down in St. Nothingelsetodoville thaat cost us a win. So with all that explanation my only real question here is: Does Bob Motzko have naked pictures of Bruce's wife or something? It's ridiculous to the nth degree for McLeod to choose this play as one to make a statement that his is genuinely concerned about the refereeing fuck ups in this league. There are plenty of mistakes made by WCHA zebras and to choose one that to me looks like it went the right way is beyond ridiculous Bruce. Really mah man. Really? You're setting a really bad precedent here chief. Really bad. Really! The message your sending is that when you're in the building and something controversial happens you can be bullied or coerced or whatevered into an apology. If you're going to referee after the fact then you ought to just lace up a pair and put some stripes on and hit the ice bud. Do you really want to make your referees nothing but empty shirts? I'm way disappointed.

Tres, Trois, Drei, Tin, T'aii, Three

Three is the watchword this weekend for UAA. 3 points out of 4 in the series and Paul Crowder's 3 goals in the 3rd period make it so. I wasn't going to do any post game recaps or analysis this weekend since there was no TV coverage. Naturally, I listened both nights to the always great Kurt Haider but listening doesn't lend itself to me adding any kind of insight or additional information that anyone reading here wouldn't have anyway. And I'm still not going to do any game analysis here. But I couldn't let the most productive WCHA weekend so far this season for UAA pass without some sort of comment.

Crowder's hatty was the first for a UAA player since Martin Stuchlik netted 3 against the Gophers in 04-05. A big phat congrats to Paul. He had only one goal going into this game so it's great to see him breakout of that goal-scoring funk. In keeping with the 3 theme; there are three guys I'd say were definitely leaders this weekend. Merit Waldrop, Peter Cartwright and Blair Tassone combined for 10 points on 3 goals and 7 assists (Waldrop 2g 2a, Cartwright 4a, Tassone 1g 1a). Those numbers combined with their performance last weekend vs. CC tells me these 3 guys are playing at the top of their game and have been displaying lots of on-ice leadership to the underclassmen. I heard Kurt call their names dozens of times each this weekend. Jonny O picked up an assist on the ENG goal. That'll make for a good plane ride home I'd think.

UAA still has 4 games in hand against UMD who still sits in 3rd place in the league standings. UAA and the skating angels from St. Nothingelsetodoville are tied for 9th (last) with 7 points each. Wisconsin and Mankato are tied for 7th (next to last) with 9 points each. Sixth place Minnesota has 10 points. Fifth place MTU has 11 points. UND is fourth with 12. And UMD in third with 13. Sensing something in all that? The league is very very tight. A 4 point weekend could vault a 9th place team to 5th in a single weekend. Wisconsin, SCSU and UAA have all only played 10 games so the chances that the league will get even tighter points-wise sure seem to be increasing. Both CC and DU have given themselves a bit of separation at the top of the league table with 20 and 18 points respectively. Excepting those two, all the WCHA teams are playing at (or damn near) .500 hockey overall.

I'll be back tomorrow with the regular Sunday Potpourri.