WHKY: North Dakota splits with the Buckeyes

Grand Forks, N.D. -- North Dakota wanted to sweep Ohio State this weekend, however, it skated away with a split Sunday afternoon.

Saturday afternoon UND threw everything and the kitchen sink at OSU's goaltender, Alex Lamere in the first period. By the end of the first, UND had 20 shots on goal, but only one goal to show for it.

The lone first-period goal came at the 12:04 mark from Jordan Hampton with an assist from Samantha Hanson. It was Hampton's first career goal for North Dakota.  There were several opportunities for UND to capitalize during the first, but they were unable to complete.

In the second, OSU picked up the pace and wouldn't trail again after potting their first goal which came after a couple of shifts that had North Dakota on its heels.

Early in the third UND's Amy Menke helped take a 2-1 advantage. Menke tallied three goals on on the weekend. A little over a minute later Kendall Curtis scored for the Buckeyes. Followed by another OSU goal from Maddy Field.

That was enough to seal the game for Ohio State after their 2-7-0 record heading into the Ralph on the weekend.

Sunday afternoon shifted North Dakota where they were able to capitalize on their opportunities in the first scoring twice with goals from Kryzaniak and Menke.

Freshman forward, Vilma Tanskanen scored her second goal of the season at the 6:45 mark of the second period.

The Buckeye's Maddy Field was able to break through in the third period for OSU's singular goal of the game, but it was not enough to overcome the deficit. Before the game ended, Menke potted her second goal.

Over the weekend, Menke had three goals and registered eight shots on goal. North Dakota skated away with a spilt.

This Friday (7:07 p.m.) evening and Saturday afternoon (4:07 p.m.) UND will face WCHA conference opponent, Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs. The Bulldogs are 2-6 in conference. 

Michael Downing hit on Christian Lampasso

Michigan Wolverine defenseman Michael Downing was given a five-minute major and a game misconduct for this hit on Ohio State forward Christian Lampasso. I think this is a blown call by the on-ice officials. In my opinion, this is a legal shoulder-to-shoulder hit. But do you expect from Tom Sterns, Brian Thul?

OSU will head to the PP as Mike Downing gets called for a major for contact to the head, also given a game misconduct. 2-0 (10:17, 2nd)
— Michigan Hockey (@umichhockey) February 22, 2015

Big 10 Follow-Up

Frustrations have mounted since the Gophers loss to Union (7-4)
in the National Championship game

Before the holiday break, I took a look at the Big 10 conference after reading an article on USCHO that made me laugh on how stricken from reality they were. Now with more games under the conference's belt and only one month left in the season, well before playoffs, let us take another look at the conference and why it could possibly be just as terrible as the Atlantic Hockey Conference.

Let's start with the obvious, the should be conference power houses(Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan) are sitting at the bottom of the league, with the exception of Michigan who is the conference leader. Between Wisconsin and Minnesota (last and 4th respectively) their combined inter conference record is 3-8-5, with all the victories belonging to Minnesota, and two of which came against Wisconsin.

Their conference non-conference record is nothing to write home about either. In fact, it is one of the worst in all of NCAA hockey. The overall record is 38-43-7, very detrimental to their conference hopes in the Pairwise rankings when it comes time to make the NCAA tournament brackets. So basically if you want to make the NCAA tournament out of the Big 10, you have to win the Big 10 tournament. The only team within the top 16 in Pairwise right now is Michigan, but at 14 they are on the bubble, especially with the 16 seed probably going to the Atlantic Hockey auto bid.

Looking at the overall records, you have one team below 500 tied for second in the conference, Michigan State (10-11-2), at 16 points with Penn State. Yes that's right Penn State. Between them and Michigan, they are really the only good things the conference has going for them right now.

The Big 10 should have kept their noses out of college hockey, yes I know it will lead to more expansion in the coming years, but right now the lack of competition is frustrating fans to the point where it is getting tough for conference teams to get people to their arenas to watch them play. If things do not change soon, they will be the cellar conference behind Atlantic Hockey.

What to Make of Big 10

In an article posted on USCHO, they were quoted with saying that the Big 10 Conference isn't all that bad, and that they are one of the stronger conferences in all of college hockey. Let us just take a look at the numbers to see if we can back-up the USCHO article shall we.

First off, there is only one, yes ONE Big 10 team in the USCHO top 20 and that is Minnesota at number three, which is just a bit too generous. Even though their last game was an exhibition against the USA development team, they still lost, which would mark three losses in a row for the Golden Gophers. If they are able to stay at three after three losses in a row, why did Michigan Tech, from the WCHA, drop big time after getting swept by Mankato last weekend?

Now we have the struggling Wisconsin Badgers. Wisconsin has yet to win a game this season, and has looked terrible in a majority of their contests this season. Last season's Big 10 tournament champions have lost nine in a row, dating back to last seasons NCAA tournament loss to North Dakota, where again they were extremely outplayed.

Just two teams in the conference have winning records this season, Penn State (7-3-2) and Minnesota (7-3-0). Lets see how many ranked opponents each team has beat, starting with Penn State. Penn State holds one of their seven victories over a top 10 opponent, and that is number four UMass Lowell where they won 4-1. Yes they did split with Michigan too, but is Michigan just known and talked about because of their historic name and coach this year? Penn State's last contest was an 8-1 loss to Michigan, making me wonder if they can compete with the big boys for real. Minnesota has had some struggles against other ranked opponents this season as well. In three games against number eight Minnesota-Duluth, they are 1-2-0 and have been outscored 8-5 in the series. They also hold a split against number 16 St. Cloud State and barely pulled off the overtime victory on home ice in the weekend series.

Conference play finally started this past weekend, with four of the six teams in action. Each team won one and lost one game, not showing any powerhouses throughout the conference. If you look inside the conference, Minnesota will probably be the only team with any chance at the NCAA tournament, but with their sloppy play as of late makes me wonder if they will have to win their conference to do it.

Taking a look at Michigan State, they seem to have what it takes to be competitive with their opponents, but doesn't quite have what it takes to finish games on a consistent basis. They most recently played number 12 Boston College and lost the decision 3-2. They could play upset once it comes conference tournament time, but that could be about it.

Finally, Ohio State has had one early season win worthy of note, and that is against Providence, who probably was a tad overrated at the time. Other than that, the Buckeyes have not looked anything but average at best making me wonder how they made it to the Big 10 championship last season.

The Big 10 is a conference that created a lot of drama once it entered college hockey last season, and ruined many great college hockey rivalries that fans have grown to love over the past four decades. With a sub 500 non conference record in almost a year and a half in existence, does the Big 10 deserve to be called one of college hockey's top conferences like some think it should be?

Mark Osiecki out as Ohio State University Hockey head coach

Another week, and another Division I college hockey coach bites the dust, that makes three high profile coaches in less than three weeks. Last week, hockey coach Tim Whitehead was fired after 12 seasons. The week before, George Gwozdecky was ousted in Denver after 19 seasons.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Gene Smith, Ohio State associate vice president and director of athletics, announced today Mark Osiecki will not return as head coach of the Buckeye men's hockey program.

"We are making a change in our head hockey coaching position," Smith said. "There was a difference of opinion over the management of the program that could not be resolved."

Osiecki recently completed his third season as the head coach of the Buckeyes, leading the squad to a 16-17-7 ledger. The squad was 13-10-5 in Central Collegiate Hockey Association play to tie for fourth place and advanced to the league semifinals. In his Ohio State career, Osiecki had a 46-50-16 record.

In the interim, Steve Rohlik, associate head hockey coach, will be the primary point person for the program, student-athletes and recruits.

I find this news interesting, it’s not almost puzzling. It’s no mystery that OSU has never been a power house in college hockey and the university has been a football first school. OSU is known for packing the football stadium and averaged an eye popping 105,278 fans per game in 2011. The OSU hockey team averaged unimpressive, 4004 fans per game in a 17,500 seat arena. That has to have some in the Ohio State administration worried, going into the inaugural Big Ten Hockey Conference season.

UND women complete sweep of OSU Buckeyes

Western Collegiate Hockey Association logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Grand Forks, ND – Tonight, the University of North Dakota woman’s team played their final home game of the regular season.

For eight seniors, tonight’s game marked the last time they would ever play a “regular season” game in the Ralph Engelstad Arena.

In two weeks, the UND women will play one more WCHA playoff series at the Ralph, as they clinched home ice for the WCHA playoffs with last night’s win.

With the win tonight, UND also extended its current win streak to eight games, and also tied the single-season wins record.

One could say that this night was historic for the UND women’s hockey program.

So on this night for the record books, the UND women (22-10-0, 17-9-0 WCHA) donned their black third jerseys and sent the fans home with something to cheer about, as they beat the Ohio State Buckeyes (16-14-2, 11-13-2-2 WCHA) 3-2 to complete the sweep.

This season’s senior class includes two world class players and 2010 Olympians Jocelyne Lamoureux (121g-150a—271) and Monique Lamoureux (106g-149a—255). Both players rank one and two and UND’s all-time scoring list.

Today was a special day for a special for the UND women’s hockey team, and the day wasn’t lacking in emotions. UND head coach Brian Idalski reminisced about his seniors.

“It was an emotional day, it always is,” Idalski said. “It’s a tough day to coach, quite honestly. It’s a special group and they’ve worked hard. We talked about what our vision is here and being the pinnacle of woman’s hockey and making this our woman’s NHL. So these are special kids that are a big part of getting us where we are today. Again, a special group and you know, the emotions kind of sprang out there a little bit good stuff.”

While the night belonged to the eight UND seniors, freshman Meghan Deufault led the way for UND on the score sheet with a couple of goals, including the game winning goal at the 14:11 mark of the second period.

“Were glad to get the two wins out because we needed that,” freshman forward Megan Dufault said. “Tonight was really emotional for our seniors, so I think everyone did a good job keeping their emotion in check and coming out with the win.”

It wasn’t a pretty win, but the Green and White came out on top. “We did what he needed to do to win the Hockey game,” Idalski said.

The work is not done for the UND women’s hockey team; next weekend they travel to Duluth for another crucial test against the Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs. Jocelyne Lamoureux laid out the weekend ahead.

“Going into the post-season you want to be peaking at the right time,” Jocelyne Lamoureux said. “It’s good, but these are teams that we feel like we should be beating teams and we would be disappointed if we weren’t. Next weekend is going to be huge for us, it’s going to be big for points, Pairwise (rankings) and league so we have to be ready to go and take care of business.”

Related articles

• UND Women Run OSU Out of the Building (insidehockey.com)
• WCHA Power Rankings: Week 18 (insidehockey.com)

UND Women run OSU out of the building

United States forward Jocelyne Lamoureux in a game against the ECAC All-Stars on January 3, 2010. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Grand Forks, ND – The University of North Dakota women’s hockey team has been on a bit of a role as of late, winning six in a row and seven of the last eight games that they played in.

Senior forward Jocelyne Lamoureux came into tonight’s game on a hot streak of her own. This past week, Lamoureux broke the existing league record for career points of 262 held by Wisconsin’s Hilary Knight (2007-12). The Record fell, when Lamoureux recorded seven points during last weekend series (0g-7a—7pts) against the Bemidji State Beaver, giving her a collegiate career total of 266 points (120g -146a—266pts) in 140 games played.

Tonight, a couple of hot streaks continued as the Green and White extended their winning streak to seven straight games, beating the Ohio State University Buckeyes 5-2.

With the win tonight, UND also clinched home ice for the WCHA playoffs, but the head coach didn’t seemed satisfied with that fact.

“For a long time, it was one of our goals [home ice] every year,” Head Coach Brian Idalski said. “That hasn’t changed, but I think it’s a smaller goal, and there’s still a lot of work to be done and I think we understand that. We got a big game tomorrow we got to turn around and be ready, that club has a lot of pride, their well coached and you have to show up and be ready to go.”

Senior forward Jocelyn Lamoureux remained smoking hot, as she added two more points to her already impressive career point’s total. Tonight, she chipped in (1g-1a—2pts). Not to be out done, Jocelyn’s twin sister Monique had an impressive night of her own, as she added three helpers (0g-3a—3pts).

Junior forward Michelle Karvinen who missed the first 12 games of the season with an undisclosed injury, continue her torrid pace as she chipped in two more markers. Karvinen now has (14g-26a—40pts). Tonight, Karvinen also recorded her 100 career point in just her 55^th game and this is what she had to say on getting her 100^th career point.

“It’s very special,” Karvinen said. “I am happy it’s not just like a rebound or something and it was a little nicer, it was great.”

The Ohio State Buckeyes actually took a 2-1 lead with a couple of goals from Captain Hokey Langan (Chatham, Ontario). That was all the closer the game would get as UND would blow the game open with three goals five minutes apart.

After the game, head coach Brian Idalski was asked about the explosion in the second period.

“I just thought we executed a little better,” Idalski said. “I thought we were a little hungry as far as getting pucks to the net and being the first to jump on rebounds. You have to out work them – they’re so good at playing with energy and competing and they’re very strong on pucks. You had to turn it up a notch to match that.”

Same two teams tomorrow night at 07:07 pm.

With the win tonight, UND currently sits in 8^th of the Pairwise Rankings, UND would need to 8^th or above to make the NCAA tourney.