Putting the wraps on the season. Boston College Eagles soar yet again...

I was watching the B.C. and UW title game last night and it was eerily similar to the UND and B.C. game that took place on April 10th, 2008 during a NCAA Frozen Four Semifinal game where UND was spanked, thrashed or run over 6-1 by the freewheeling B.C. Eagles. Last night was no different; the Badgers were a step behind or left chasing the Eagles all night. While I am not using the ice as an excuse for why the Badgers lost, I would have like to see this game on a traditional venue and not in some sweaty football stadium. As I have said in the past I am not a fan of hockey games played outdoors or on nontraditional places. I have had enough of the Winter Classics; just give me more hockey and less gimmick.

As a fan of college hockey I was disappointed with the ice conditions at Ford Field, they had to know going into this game that this was going to be a problem. I am going to go ahead and call the ice conditions an EPIC fail for the NCAA. Sure the NC$$ will look at this as a win because they sold 37,000 seats for the championship game but the fans were cheated because of sloppy ice and that is unacceptable for a NCAA championship. I can't except horrible ice conditions, the NC$$ has to be better and demand perfection. The fans deserve it.

The person that decided that the Frozen Four should be in a football stadium should be slapped, let's not do that again. Pucks were bouncing all over the place and it affected the flow and quality of the game.

Questions going forward

First off I am not a fan of the two week break between the regional championship and the Frozen Four. Having to wait an extra week is a momentum killer and I would rather see the week off after the conference championships. Here is why I say that, the WCHA regular season is a meat grinder and the extra week off between the conference tourney and the NCAA playoffs would be more beneficial than the week off between the NCAA regional’s and the Frozen Four.

I don’t like having teams that back into the NCAA tourney waiting to play a team that played in their conference tourney the week before. Think about it, how many times have we seen a team that took a week off because they lost in their first round matchup win their first NCAA tourney game? Is it really fair that a team that was the loser of their conference tourney be rewarded with a week to rest up for their first round match up in the NCAA tourney?

I also don’t buy the argument that if the NCAA hockey tourney was on the same week as the Final Four it would cut into the basketball tourney attendance or whatever lame excuse the NC$$ uses for having the Frozen Four a week later. Hockey is a niche sport and you might be drawing from two different fan bases and demographics. I personally wouldn’t walk across the street to watch a free basketball game and I didn’t watch the Final Four. Butler who?

So what do we gleam from this weekend results? I don’t know if we figured out anything. Boston College proved yet again that they are the best team in college hockey, when they had to be. Boston College loaded up on little trolls speedsters under 5’9” and were able to break race through around the vaunted Wisconsin Defense. In the end Wisconsin's goaltending let them down, if Wisconsin had a weakness and there wasn't many, it was their goal tending duo of Scott Gudmandson (20-5-4, 2.33 GAA and SV % .913) and Brett Bennett (8-6-0, 2.82 GAA SV% .885) this was not a team that had a Brian Elliot to bail them out.

In retrospect I think this season college hockey was down compared to years past. While the WCHA was again the best conference all season long, the regular season again took a toll on the teams at the end of the season. The McNaughton Cup proved to be an anchor as the last three teams went 0-9 from the Final Five on. I am thinking that maybe they should send the cup back to Michigan Tech and let it sit in a display case on the scrap heap of history. Maybe teams will decline it from now on.