The World Junior Roster is Sioux-less

Here is the Roster for the 2008 USA WJC Team

Goaltenders (2)
Joe Palmer (Ohio St.)
Jeremy Smith (Plymouth - OHL).

Defensemen (8)
Jonathon Blum (Vancouver - WHL)
Ian Cole (Notre Dame)
Cade Fairchild (Minnesota)
Jamie McBain (Wisconsin)
Kevin Montgomery (London - OHL)
Bobby Sanguinetti (Owen Sound - OHL)
Brian Strait (BU)
Chris Summers (Michigan).

Forwards (12)
Mike Carman (Minnesota);
Ryan Flynn (Minnesota)
Blake Geoffrion (Wisconsin)
Kyle Okposo (Minnesota)
Max Pacioretty (Michigan)
Rhett Rakhshani (Denver)
Tyler Ruegsegger (Denver)
Matt Rust (Michigan)
Jordan Schroeder (U.S. Under-18 Team)
Billy Sweatt (Colorado College)
James VanRiemsdyk (UNH)
Colin Wilson (BU).

*Head Coach*: John Hynes (U.S. Under-18 Team) Assistant Coaches: Keith
Allain (Yale) and Patrick Foley (Harvard).

First off It is nice to see that there are not Fighting Sioux on the roster, that is actually a first since 2002 there won't be a Fighting Sioux player on USA or Canada's World Junior team.

It is unforunate Sioux fans will not get to see Van Riemsdyk (sp) play when the Wild Cats invade the Ralph in December. One can wonder if he won't be in the NHL next season as well. Second with 4 gophers making the team USA roster it is a guarentee that we will hear the excuse about how the Gopher players that played in the WJC are tired. Heck expect this excuse the rest of the second half. Funny how you never hear the other teams in the league use that excuse after their players return from the World Junior Championship.

So who's the real Sieve?

I hear a lot of Gopher fans referring to Jean-Philippe Lamoureux as a sieve. As a matter of fact it seems as if the Fighting Sioux's starting goalie is well liked by opposing fans around the WCHA. One of my fellow bloggers referred to him as a drama queen. Yeah! Lets take look at the numbers and see if Jean-Philippe Lamoureux is really the great sieve others fans around the league are taking about.

Lamoureux has played in all 13 games this season. Lamoureux has a record of 7-5-1 and a 1.51 GAA with a save percentage of .940, these are hardly the numbers of a sieve. It would appear that those numbers are not the statistics of a sieve.
Jeff Long Island Frazee on the other hand has played in 11 games and has a record of 6-5-0 with a GAA of 2.72 and not so good save percentage of .896. They say you want to be above .900 to be successful in the WCHA.

Things that never get old

My all time favorite Gopher meltdown moment you just can't talk about sieves without bringing up Kellen Brigg's name. That being said I would never buy a Holy Cross Jersey.

My second all time favorite Gopher sieve out moments this one never gets old. I will take a trip to the frozen four over a Final Five victory any day.

How dare someone be upset after being cross checked

This is the play that everyone has been talking about on the Internet, it is the Fighting Sioux goal by T.J. Oshie at the end of the first period; a momentum killer in my opinion. T.J. Oshie scores a nice goal then gets a vicious cross check by the Wisconsin Badgers resident thug/hack Davis Drewiske. The funny part is the announcers view of the game through their cardinal and white goggles.

This is how silly the Wisconsin television people sound: much to their amazement they can't see how a Sioux player can get upset after getting cross checked in the back of the head after scoring a goal. It's unheard of and bush league. The even funnier part is the guy explaining how the Sioux should be getting a another penalty as well (notice all the while that there are 3 Badger players and only 2 Sioux hockey players in the penalty box)

The Sioux and Badgers Rough it up.

Wow, what a way to end a very intense hockey game, almost playoff type hockey this weekend. I thought the coaches were going to start swinging at each other during the hand shake, thank God for DVR because I almost missed it. I would put my money on Hakstol to clean Mike Eave's clock but that is looking through kelly green colored glasses. While I can see how one could make the argument that there was no need for Kaip to charge Smith the way he did, so what? It's not like you couldn't see this thing whole incident coming, in the end it was nothing more than a harmless scrum, that's hockey and I like the fact that Kaip played with the game with an edge, the Sioux need that from their leaders. The Badger player Smith is lucky Kaip didn't pummel him, talk about a miss match.

There is no questing that Kyle Turris is a good player but he has lost some of my respect, Turris might want to think twice before he hacks another player with his stick. Turris is lucky that Jones who is known to be a little bit of a lose cannon, didn't go postal on him. Star player or not you can not slash an opposing player in that matter and not expect to be challenged for it.

By definition: Charging is
taking more than three strides before hitting an opponent. That is exactly what Kaip did. Kaip didn't blind side the Wisconsin player like some in the blogsphere have suggested. This hit although a penalty is not worthy of additional sanctions or punishment from the league or from the coaching staff. I will make a prediction that Hakstol will not discipline Rylan Kaip, nor does he need too.

Some perspective

Super Rookie Kyle Turris has 5 goals 9 assist for 14 points, however, he only has 2 assists in 4 WCHA games. In the WCHA teams are going to focus on Turris because the Badgers do not have a lot of offensive stars up front. Teams are going to be on Turris every night.