The Week In Hockey

Goon’s Ramblings

I was looking at the Bracketology: for Jan. 24, 2007 over on USCHO Bracketologyand I find a few things that crack me up. Jayson Moy seems to be giving the EZAC way too much love and has two teams making the tourney. While I do agree that Clarkson and is decent hockey team Moy is giving SLU way too much credit. Isn’t this the same team UND beat 4-1 earlier last month during the tourney in Hanover, NH. So am I to believe the logic that UND if they keep winning is going to be left out of the tourney, while St. Larry gets in, hardly. Lets just say there are almost a month and a ½ left of the season. I think we should just wait and see how the rest of the season plays out. Let's not punch those tickets for the big dance just yet. There are going to be many twists and turns in the game ahead. I would also predict that there are going to be a few shockers to come with the conference tourneys during the third week in March. Also, a few other team like Miami seem to be sinking to the bubble fast. I also don’t see the CCHA getting 4 teams in the tourney this year.
Last night B.C. lost to Boston University, hence UND moved up to 14th in the power rankings I guess that throws a wrench in the equation.

Over on Western College Hockey

Chris Dilks has the footage of the Minnesota Riots after the NCAA championship.They know how to throw a party in Minneapolis Minnesota That will teach you to park your car downtown after the Gophers win a big game. I wonder if they will riot if Brewster leads the Golden Gophers to a Big Ten championship in college football. Funny thing when UND won the National Championship in college hockey there were no riots in the streets.


Hammy’s perspective on the DU and Minnesota Fight that Almost Happened

An interesting read. Hammy is right the reffing in that game was really poor, the refs missed a lot of calls and let the game get out of control in the first period. Hum, Gopher fans bringing up the short comming of the on ice officials. I am not about to label Gopher fans as being Halo's just yet, but Hammy is just stating what Sioux fans have been saying for some time, the WCHA is a first class league with second rate officials. Hammy's Blog

* The Denver series was certainly entertaining in a number of respects. I don't tend to say much about the quality of the refs on a weekly basis because I find it to be a very tiring excuse that some fans use quite often. But this is an exception. The games were called relatively poorly this weekend. When Ben Gordon (a player hardly known for being a tough guy) gets a fighting major for wrestling around and then getting punched while on his back, you know something is amiss. That may have been the worst reffed series the Gophers have played in this year.

* Gopher forward James O'Brien may have run into the goalie anyway since he was given a push from behind but the added effort he gave in hitting DU's Glenn Fisher was uncalled for. I have to admit that a part of me didn't feel quite as sorry to see it happen given Fisher's bush league act toward Blake Wheeler at the conclusion of Friday's game but it still should not have happened. When it comes to getting back at a goalie for trash talking, there is no better way to do it than to put pucks in the back of his net and tagging the guy with a loss. Scoring five goals on him and hanging him with a loss is revenge enough.

I have to hand it to the Gopher forward if your going to run a goalie you might as well make it count. I wonder if the Gopher forwards will continue running over the goalie this weekend when the Gophers play the Sioux down in the John down in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I would venture to guess that if any Gopher forward runs over one of the Sioux's goalies there is going to be a brawl. The Fighting Sioux will not take that laying down. All I can say is bring it, if that is the type of game the Gophers want to play. Any exchange of players lost to a DQ only helps the Sioux.

Jeff Dubay Loses Job over telling the Truth

Jeff Dubay aka Puffy from KFAN’s morning show PA and Dubay lost his job at FSN for his off air comments that were directed at the WCHA’s on ice officialsLink to the article This one really chaps my ass. Jeff Dubay’s termination from FSN sports borders on being ridiculous or just plain silly. My question is; are the WCHA officials so thin skinned that it can’t take feed back about the performance of its on ice officials? Maybe Greg Sheppard should actually look at what his officials are doing on the ice and quit complaining about how the public views it’s clowns in stripes. I watched the game between the Gophers and the Pioneers twice and the performance of Todd Anderson was pathetic, Anderson made the game about him and ruined a good match up between two good teams. While Dubay might have been out of line I don’t believe he deserved to be fired, I think Jeff should be given an award for his honesty. Have the league officials ever listened to Gopher radio announces or UND’s Tim Hennesy for that matter? Hey Sheppard are you going to ask that they be fire next?

Bruce Ciske Takes on the Issue of Officating

Not to hammer the officials (yeah right) but here is another interesting perspective of the performance of officials in the WCHA and how we could get them to address some of the issues surrounding their performance or lack of performanceThe Ciske Blog I really like what Bruce had to say in this article.

Frankly, I think it's high time that the league either take visible steps to improve the level of its officiating, or allow coaches to speak publicly on the matter. No one is questioning the work ethic of the officials or their supervisor, Greg Shepherd. No one is questioning the integrity of this crew.

But we're spinning our wheels right now. Too often, the officials take center stage, either for a controversial decision or a questionable penalty call (or non-call) or how the review process is handled.

Already this year, we've seen some extremely bizarre calls that had great bearing on how games ended.

(The two calls in the Gopher-UMD Friday game - one of which took away what appeared to be a UMD goal, and the other taking a late faceoff outside the UM zone when it was apparent that the Bulldogs should have received either a power play or a penalty shot - along with the controversial goal at the end of Saturday's game in St. Cloud, just to name a couple. Oh, and I'm still bitter about that goal ruling in the playoff game in Denver last March.)

It's one thing for coaches to criticize the officials. They aren't allowed to publicly, and they shouldn't be. That would lead to anarchy. But when respected writers who have covered this league as long as Virg Foss has feel the need to speak up, you have an issue on your hands. Simply trying to dismiss the comments of a guy like Foss really doesn't help much.

I'm not calling for anyone's head here. Just saying that Foss has a point, and I'd love for the league to acknowledge that they would like to get their officiating to a higher level.