@ 5:54 Grapes and Ron talked about the Carcillo and Gaborik fight and Grapes said that I have to admire that Gaborik so much, to drop, he can’t fight, but at least he dropped his gloves. This guy is not a tough guy he is not an enforcer, he’s a pest, for him to fight a European is against the code. How he can do that and say that when Gaborik dropped his gloves he licked his chops. Enforcers do not do that.
Gopher fans are in full meltdown mode after being swept by the SCSU Huskies this past weekend. [Link] The Gopher fans one week removed for their win and a tie against the UND Fighting Sioux and with a Gopher player declaring that the Gophers have turned the corner. It too one week for the Gopher fans to jump back off of the bandwagon and back on the fire the coach/lynch mob bandwagon again. Ah, grab a bag of popcorn this is going to be fun to watch.
This comment caught my attention. The Gophers have 20 NHL draft choices on their team that is not my definition of a journeyman.
Pathetic performance I find it funny how these Gopher fans just assume that Coach Blais is going to ride in on a white horse and automatically save their stumbling program. Actually I think that mindset is arrogant and pompous.Saturday Morning or that is what it turned into; Bruce Ciskie took almost 6 hours to get home to Duluth from Bemidji because of the roads. This is the one reason that I didn't go. I know how bad Highway 2 can get in this type of weather.
This is the worst gopher hockey team i've seen in a long time. No size, no speed, no passion (just like the coach). They are a collection of journeymen - the whole squad. the defense is terrible. They can't skate with St. Cloud. last weekend was a fluke (5-1 win over UND). This weekend was more of the same we've seen all year from this crew, and what really pisses me off is to see other teams in the WCHA with much better Minnesota bred talent. Don Lucia has lost his shine and the Gopher squad has been getting worse each year for the past several now. Just think what a Dean Blais coached team would do to attract better talent on this team. I really think it's time for Lucia to go. So - all you Lucia lovers out there - have at me for stating the truth.
Coming Down the Pipe has a really nice blog post on the NCAA. It sounds like they may agree with my assessment of the 1-0 game the Sioux played in on Friday night.
The ECAC always gives me fits. A lot of scouts have told me that it's brutal hockey (as in horrible, not super physical) and the little bits that I've been able to watch on TV or online haven't given me any reason to doubt that thought. I watched Yale and St. Lawrence last year in the playoffs... a was so bored to tears. Maybe because of that game I've never been able to get on board with Yale.I have been saying the same thing about the ECAC for a very long time. The ECAC has the best academic schools in college hockey but they are a bit hamstrung with comes to going for and competing for the best college hockey athletes because of their academic standards and the cost of going to one of these fine schools. I am still convinced if you took the best schools in the ECAC and put them in the WCHA, HE and or CCHA they would have a hard time being a .500 team. While the gap has been closed there is still a big difference in the talent gap.
This weekend they were ranked #6 heading in and yet again they win one, lose one. Clarkson fell 3-2 to the Bulldogs on Friday but Saturday it was Yale that was victimized by the Saints of St.Lawrence. St.Lawrence's 4-2 win gives them a run of only 1 loss in their last 8 games. Maybe I'm not giving enough credit to Yale (or Cornell, Union, Quinnipiac, etc) because the Bulldogs do have a win against Ferris State and tied Wisconsin this year. I still would have a hard time thinking they'd be a .500 club if they were in the CCHA, WCHA or Hockey East. And that goes for all the ECAC programs. Great institutions for higher learning, no doubt about that, but I'm not a believer in them being on par with the other three conferences when it comes to producing hockey players.
The other day I was wondering what SKOL Vikings mean here is the definition - Skol (written "skål" in Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish and "skál" in Faroese and Icelandic or "skaal" in transliteration of any of those languages) is the Danish/Norwegian/Swedish word for cheers, a salute or a toast, as to an admired person or group. The meaning of the Scandinavian skalli/skalle: skal means simply "shell" and skál/skål "bowl".
This Sunday am I begged off playing the magnificent pipe organ for mass at St. Agnes and pedalled my bike down to the X to watch the Gusties from St. Peter play the Johnnies from Collegeville at 10. The game featured a lesson in killer shooting from D-III stars David Martinson and Ross Ring-Jarvi as well as thousands of overfed lady hockey fans slouching around in Clutterbuck sweaters, evidently there for an autograph signing party. Bizarre in capital letters. But what I really want to talk about is a couple of penalty calls during the game. Two, to be exact. Both hits to the head. Now, I sure don't like to see a cheap shot that injures any part of a player, especially the head, BUT. . . As an example, on the second call, with about 5 minutes left in the game, Gustie Eric Bigham makes a solid check on Johnny star Mike Wallgren. It wasn't just a head shot, it put the crush on every inch of his body from his cowlick to his toes and he immediately dropped to his hands and knees where he stayed. The referee observed this for awhile and then finally blew his whistle and after sizing things up put Bigham away for the rest of the game, 5 minute major, hit to the head. Wallgren is helped off the ice and St. John's has the opportunity to play the rest of the game a man up. However, Wallgren doesn't miss a shift and the Johnnies score two PP goals to close it up to a final of 6-4. I have a problem with this. While the penalty call is meant to deter hits to the head, how does a referee determine the severity? A five minute penalty at the end of a close game is almost literally the death penalty. I'd really like to hear an official's explanation of how this is actually supposed to work because at the rate it's going now, they might as well start playing women's rules and get used to it right away.
ReplyDeletePulverized Concepts, I don't have a problem with the refs making a call on a player if it's the right call but to penalize a player for a hard is not cool. Hockey is a physical game and I think the refs need to realize that.
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