I found this article in the Omaha newspaper, I think this newspaper article gives a pretty good illustration of the WCHA and how tough the league truely is. You can not take a night off, that is so true. The tenth place team can beat the top ranked team.
“I look through different glasses at the University of Minnesota than I did at the University of Denver, but when it comes to hockey there is a lot of similarity.”
That kind of commitment shines through on the ice. WCHA teams won six national championships from 2000 through 2006, and the league has 27 national runner-up finishes to go with its three dozen titles. The CCHA, formed in 1971, has nine national championships and seven runner-up finishes — Michigan and Michigan State combined to win eight titles when those schools belonged to the WCHA.
“Week in and week out, you can't take a night off,” said Jeff Sauer, the former Wisconsin coach who now works for the WCHA as an assistant to Commissioner Bruce McLeod. “That's why we think we've had so much success in the national tournament. When you win a MacNaughton Cup (regular-season championship), our coaches will tell you to a man that winning that championship is tougher than winning an NCAA championship — when you consider everything that goes into it.”
UNO Associate Athletic Director Mike Kemp, who was the only coach in the program's history before Dean Blais was hired to replace him earlier this month, grew up on WCHA hockey. He served as Sauer's long-time assistant at Wisconsin before coming to UNO. When, in the 1990s, the WCHA started taking steps to recognize the legends that had passed through, it crystallized for Kemp all the special things he had thought about the league.
“The conference isn't just what it is today,” Kemp said. “It's what it has been since 1951. It's one for the ages.”
Last year a WCHA team didn't reach the Frozen Four for just the fourth time ever, but one year earlier the final top 10 poll included seven WCHA teams.
The league boasts the top three teams (Wisconsin, North Dakota and Minnesota) in attendance nationally, and the addition of UNO now gives the WCHA six of last year's top seven. All but Alaska-Anchorage, Michigan Tech and newcomer Bemidji State ranked in the top 25 in attendance. [Omaha.com]
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ReplyDeleteThat's a good post there goon. Sometimes it's hard for us Sioux, Gopher, Badger, Husky, Tiger, etc fans to band together when we play each other week in and week out for the prestigiuos McNaughton Cup, but your post kind of brings us together as the truly elite conference in college hockey since the beginning of time. While it is true that the WCHA failed to place a team in the Frozen Four for the first time ever last season, no other conference is even close to the success that the WCHA has had since official league inception in 1953, and anyone that thinks the WCHA isn't the best in the sport is either plain stupid or just plain stubborn to admit it.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but you guys don't have the Beanpot tourney.
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