UND drops to 6th in this week’s USCHO Poll

USCHO.com Division I Men's Poll

March 18, 2013

	Team	(First Place Votes)	Record	Points	Last Poll
1	Minnesota	(22)	26- 7-5	967	2
2	Quinnipiac	(27)	26- 6-5	958	1
3	Miami		24-10-5	893	3
4	Boston College		22-10-4	820	5
5	Massachusetts-Lowell	( 1)	24-10-2	785	6
6	North Dakota		21-11-7	751	4
7	St. Cloud State		23-14-1	670	8
8	Minnesota State		24-12-3	626	10
9	Notre Dame		23-12-3	578	12
10	New Hampshire		19-11-7	519	7
11	Yale		18-10-3	515	13
12	Western Michigan		19-11-8	408	9
13	Denver		20-13-5	382	11
14	Wisconsin		19-12-7	375	14
15	Niagara		23- 8-5	339	15
16	Providence		17-13-7	269	17
17	Boston University		20-15-2	212	18
18	Union		19-12-5	192	19
19	Rensselaer		18-14-5	91	16
20	Michigan		17-18-3	52	NR
Others receiving votes: Nebraska-Omaha 37, Colorado College 18, Brown 11, Merrimack 10, Alaska 9, Ohio State 9, Robert Morris 2, Connecticut 1, St. Lawrence 1.

Final Five schedule

Last night, Midco had the schedule when UND plays their first game wrong. Here is the right schedule. UND has a 2-2 record against C.C. this season.

2013 Red Baron WCHA Final Five - Xcel Energy Center - Saint Paul, MN

Games for Thursday, March 21: Quarterfinal – No. 5 Minnesota State vs No. 4 Wisconsin, 2:07 pm CT; Quarterfinal – No. 6 Colorado College vs No. 3 North Dakota, 7:07 pm CT.

Games for Friday, March 22: Semifinal – Minnesota State/Wisconsin vs No. 1 St. Cloud State, 2:07 pm CT; Semifinal – Colorado College/North Dakota vs No. 2 Minnesota, 7:07 pm CT.

Games for Saturday, March 23: Broadmoor Trophy Championship Game, 7:07 pm CT

UND Hockey makes the Final Five for a 11th year in a row with win over Tech

Seal of the University of North Dakota (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Grand Forks, ND – With the win tonight, the University of North Dakota (21-11-7) hockey team has made the WCHA Final Five in each of Dave Hakstol’s nine seasons.

What’s even more impressive with UND’s 6-0 win over Michigan Tech, UND has made the Final Five for the 11th-straight year in a row, that’s the longest current streak in the WCHA.

Since coach Hakstol took over the reins in 2004-05, the University of North Dakota hockey team has never lost a first round WCHA playoff series and currently holds 18-4 (.818) record.

Hakstol also holds an impressive 32-9 record in the WCHA playoff games.

After last night’s 2-1 loss to the Michigan Tech Huskies, that streak appeared to be in jeopardy.  In last night’s game, the Michigan Tech Huskies were a miserable team to play against; they clogged up the neutral zone up and gave North Dakota little time and space. Huskies also beat UND to the puck all night long.

Tonight was a different story, the Green and White left little doubt as they were the better team all night long and beat the Huskies to the puck all night long and the Huskies defenders had no answer for UND team speed as they entered the neutral zone with speed and when the Huskies got a chance on Clarke Saunders the UND defense was there to clear the puck.

In the end, UND blew out the Michigan Tech Huskies (13-20-4) and actually ended up pulling the  starting goalie Clarke Saunders with 4:02 left and inserted the backup goalie Tate Maris who’s a very popular third string goalie with his teammates and with the fans as well.

Think about this, Clarke Saunders had a 27 save shutout, when the ever popular Tate Maris entered the game to a standing ovation. That happened. It was a very classy move by the head coach Dave Hakstol.

“I thought the level of play was our most complete of the year, without a question,” Head coach Dave Hakstol said of his team’s 6-0 win over the Michigan Tech Huskies. “We played at a playoff level for three periods tonight and it started right from the drop of the puck.”

An emotional Tate Maris explained what it was like to finally get a taste of game action in the last home game of his college hockey career. “it’s kind of indescribable I guess,” Maris said. I don’t know. I guess I am kind of at a loss for words for it. It’s kind of four years pushed into one night in four minutes there at the end. Pretty surreal, to say the least, it’s just amazing to be out there with your fellow teammates. To be surrounded by those fans, it’s kind of indescribable, just amazing to say the least.”

According to senior forward Corban Knight, tonight was a statement game for the UND hockey team and the head coach challenged the team to be better for 60 minutes tonight.

“We set the bar pretty high tonight with the way we played,” senior forward Corban Knight said. “In order for us to be successful like you said, we need to keep that bar high and make sure we’re working hard to get to that every night, because we’re only going to be playing better teams from here on in.”

Up next for UND is Colorado College who beat DU 4-3. That game will be next Thursday night at 7:00 p.m. central time. UND and Colorado College split the season series 2-2.

Cross-posted at the Hockey Writers Combine.

UND vs. MTU game three WCHA playoffs

Game is on DirecTV 626 and Fox College Sports

UND Forward Lines

21 Brendan O’Donnell–10 Corban Knight (A) –7 Danny Kristo (A)
19 Rocco Grimaldi–27 Carter Rowney (A)–15 Michael Parks
25 Mitch MacMillan–16 Mark MacMillan–13 Connor Gaarder

Drake Caggiula 9–28 Stephane Pattyn–17 Colten St. Clair

UND Defensive Parings

2 Andrew MacWilliam (C)–18 Dillon Simpson
4 Derek Forbort–24 Jordan Schmaltz
5 Nick Mattson –20 Joe Gleason

UND goalies

33 Clarke Saunders

31 Zane Gothberg
35 Tate Maris

Not In the lineup: 11 Derek Rodwell , Andrew Panzarella (22), Dan Senkbeil (8), Coltyln Sanderson (26),  Bryn Chyzyk (29).

Michigan Tech Huskies Forward lines

19 Blake Pietila–10 Tanner Kero–23 Alex Petan
12 Ryan Furne–8 Jacob Johnstone–14 Chad Pietila
20 Blake Hietala–7 Jujhar Khaira–28 Milos Gordic
18 C.J. Eick–9 Dennis Rix–13 Aaron Pietila

Michigan Tech Huskies Defense Pairings

16 Steven Seigo (A) –34 Riley Sweeney
29 Walker Hyland–24 Daniel Sova
3 Bradley Stebner (A) –25 Carl Nielsen (C)

Michigan Tech Goalies

31 Pheonix Copley

30 Jamie Phillips

Ref Marco Hunt (15) , Derek Shepherd (3)  Lines Andy Kokken (70) Justin Hill (83).

College Hockey: On ice officials have to be better

Match penalty (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Some college hockey officials incorrectly assume that if a college hockey player is a heavy hitter and dishes out “legal” heavy hits, he is somehow a dirty player and worthy of a major penalty even when it was a legal hit.

Hence, said player is incorrectly called for a major penalty.

It’s almost like the onus is on the player instead of the referee. I don’t understand this flawed line of thinking.

If anything the on ice officials need to do a better job calling the game of hockey.

Hockey like football is a physical sport – this is not up for debate – physicality is part of the game. This is a fact, there’s going to be injuries as a result of legal checks.

If I am not mistaken, one NHL player hurt himself eating a stack of pancakes last season.

If you could develop a light set of pads that was 100% able to prevent injuries you could make millions of dollars. There is no such thing.

Unfortunately, with college hockey, they’re forced to use part time officials; the product on the ice is suffering because of this. In the WCHA, the officiating has gotten worse the last couple of years and the league has shown no interest in improving the quality of their on ice officials. In my opinion, transparency is at an all-time low.

Often times, the wrong call is being made on the ice, under the guise of not wanting to be that ref that made a wrong call, when it comes to hard and often legal hits. This problem would be easy to fix, with the aid of video review.  s/t Bruce Ciskie 

If the referee on the ice is calling a major penalty, why not allow that referee to step into scorer’s table to allow him to take a quick look to confirm that he’s not making an incorrect call.

In NCAA hockey, penalties can be increased but never decreased. That rules is one that never seemed to make much sense to me.  If anything that rule is incoherent and the NCAA Ice Hockey Rules Committee should take a look at changing it, next time they meet.  Even the NHL can rescind a match penalty.

The game of hockey like football is fast and sometimes the officials get the calls on the ice wrong, the refs are human and will make mistakes. Some refs in some leagues seems to make more mistakes than others.

Lately, legal shoulder-to-shoulder hits have been called hits to the head resulting in major penalties and a game misconduct to the player dishing legal checks. This is unacceptable in my opinion and could be easily fixed if the ref was allowed to step into the scorer table to review the hit.

The on ice officials already review numerous legit goals to confirm that they were legal. One must ask, can they really slow down the game anymore?

I mean think about it, it’s not like they couldn’t review the few major penalties that college hockey has already. So why not review a questionable hit before the ref incorrectly throws a player out of a game for legal hit? Does that not seem fair? Wouldn’t that be better than taking legal hits out of the game of hockey? Why not change the refs behavior instead of expecting a player to change the way he plays the game of hockey.

UND senior defenseman Andrew MacWilliam is 6’2” 230 pounds and he plays a physical game and he is UND’s best penalty killer and he plays against all of the opposition’s best players.  MacWilliam is a hard checker, but not a dirty player and he has been incorrectly thrown out of two games this season for legal hits, one against BU’s Ahti Oksanen and one against MTU for hitting David Johnstone last Friday Night.

Both hits were legal shoulder-to-shoulder hits and shouldn’t have resulted in a penalty at all. In both instances, the same referee Marco Hunt made the wrong call and MacWilliam was given a five minute Major and a game misconduct, next time MacWilliam is given a game misconduct, he will also have to sit out a game due to a suspension for three game misconducts.

Last season, MacWIlliam was also given a five minute major and a game misconduct in game against theDenver Pioneers freshman forward Matt Tabrum as well, for this hit.

Do you see a pattern here? The officials need to learn the difference between a legal hit and an illegal hit. Hockey is a physical game and the players and the fans deserve better. The level of officiating does not match the level of play on the ice and it hasn’t for some time now.

Cross-posted at the Hockey Writers Combine. 

(Edit) MTU No goal, the puck went over the net.

Edit: if this was a goal, the puck wouldn't have shot up into the air. Meaning one thing, the puck in question went over the top of the net. There were also people sitting behind the UND net, that said they saw the puck go over the top of the net as well. So, the right call was made.

In looking at these two images, I don't know, it's hard to say. Like I said earlier, the officiating was equally poor all weekend long for both teams and wasn’t a factor in the game. Both teams will have to play through it tomorrow night, obviously, and one teams is going to advance to the Final Five next week. s/t Tim Boger.

Furne beat Saunders, but had his shot stopped by a defenseman. UND full strength. #mtuhky #followthehuskies
— Michigan Tech Hockey (@mtuhky) March 17, 2013

Related articles

• UND hockey: Time for crunching numbers is over, it's crunch time (ndgoon.blogspot.com)
• UND hockey: Time for crunching numbers is over, it's crunch time (thehockeywriters.com)
• UND finds tough sledding against Tech (thehockeywriters.com)
• UND Slugs Out Win Against Tech (insidehockey.com)

UND finds tough sledding against Tech

“It was a hard fought playoff game and we came up one goal short,” head coach Dave Hakstol said. Well two if you believe the video replay that was shown on television monitors the Ralph Engelstad Arena press box.

We only got one look at “shot” in question and then it was gone from the screen, for some reason we didn’t get a second look at the no-goal in question.

USCHO Blogger Timothy Boger has a gif on his blog that proves otherwise, I guess that is up to you to decide.

We can discuss whether or not Michigan Tech (13-19-4) scored a goal on their first power play of the night, the fact remains that the officiating was equally poor all weekend long for both teams and wasn’t a factor in the game.

Both teams will have to play through it tomorrow night, obviously, and one teams is going to advance to the Final Five next week.

The crowd was barely seated when the Tech Huskies were able to dent the twine first at the 00:20 mark of the second period, with a goal from Tanner Kero.

UND came into the game with a 9-4-5 record when the opposition scores first, you can make that 9-5-5 with the 2-1 loss to the Michigan Tech Huskies.

This was UND’s first loss to the Michigan Tech Huskies since January 28, 2008, when UND lost 2-1 to Michigan Tech in the Great Lakes Invitational.

The game was a carbon copy of the Bemidji State series from a couple of weeks ago. The Huskies collapsed around their net and played a defensive style brand of hockey and made it tough for UND (20-11-7) to generate any offense whatsoever.

Finally, senior forward Danny Kristo was able to break through and got the equalizer at the 14:57 mark on a nice shot. “It was just a good play,” head coach Dave Hakstol said. “He came up with the puck; he got a quick shot to the net. I don’t know where it went in, it found a hole. We didn’t find a lot of holes on him [Phoenix Copley] tonight.”

As always, the electrifying, but recently snake bitten Rocco Grimaldi, had a breakaway and a glorious opportunity to take a lead in the game, but was hooked at the last second by a Tech defender, causing him to miss a glorious opportunity.

Michigan Tech Huskies turned a UND turnover into the game winning goal at the 17:58 mark of the third period when C.J. Eick scored the game winning goal sending the fans to the exits and spoiling the UND fans plans for Sunday evening.

Tonight’s game was summed up best by this frank statement. “Its playoff hockey and if you don’t bring your best you won’t like the outcome, senior defenseman Andrew MacWilliam said. We kind of lulled there in the second period and it came back to bite us. We have to regroup and be ready to play tomorrow.”

“It was a hard fought game,” senior defenseman Joe Gleason said. “We kind of shot ourselves in the foot in the second period; we didn’t have a very good period. We had a great response in the third period. Definitely our best period of the night, if we can play like that for 60 minutes tomorrow it should be a good outcome for us tomorrow night.”

Nonetheless, UND ended up losing a heart breaker to pesky Michigan Tech Huskies and pushed the series to a game three. The same two teams will face-off tomorrow night at 7:00 p.m. central, at the Ralph Engelstad Arena.

Cross-posted at the Hockey Writers Combine.

Related articles

• UND Hockey: Slugs out win against Tech (thehockeywriters.com)

UND vs. MTU game 2 WCHA Playoffs

UND Forward Lines

21 Brendan O’Donnell–10 Corban Knight (A) –7 Danny Kristo (A)
19 Rocco Grimaldi–27 Carter Rowney (A)–15 Michael Parks
25 Mitch MacMillan–16 Mark MacMillan–13 Connor Gaarder
11 Derek Rodwell–28 Stephane Pattyn–17 Colten St. Clair

UND Defensive Parings

2 Andrew MacWilliam (C)–18 Dillon Simpson
4 Derek Forbort–24 Jordan Schmaltz
5 Nick Mattson –20 Joe Gleason

UND goalies

33 Clarke Saunders

31 Zane Gothberg
35 Tate Maris

Not In the lineup: Andrew Panzarella (22), Dan Senkbeil (8), Drake Caggiula (9), Coltyln Sanderson (26),  Bryn Chyzyk (29).

Michigan Tech Huskies Forward lines

19 Blake Pietila–10 Tanner Kero–23 Alex Petan
12 Ryan Furne–8 Jacob Johnstone–14 Chad Pietila
20 Blake Hietala–7 Jujhar Khaira–28 Milos Gordic
18 C.J. Eick–9 Dennis Rix–13 Aaron Pietila

Michigan Tech Huskies Defense Pairings

16 Steven Seigo (A) –34 Riley Sweeney
29 Walker Hyland–24 Daniel Sova
3 Bradley Stebner (A) –25 Carl Nielsen (C)

Michigan Tech Goalies

31 Pheonix Copley

30 Jamie Phillips

Ref Marco Hunt (15) , Derek Shepherd (3)  Lines Andy Kokken (70) Justin Hill (83)

Related articles

• UND: The Weekend Ahead (3/15-3/17) (thehockeywriters.com)
• UND hockey: Time for crunching numbers is over, it's crunch time (thehockeywriters.com)
• UND Slugs Out Win Against Tech (insidehockey.com)

Brad Marchand fights Mike Ribeiro

Brad Marchand fights Mike Ribeiro w/SlowMo 3/16/13: youtu.be/IbDIG_mdLms?a via @youtube
— dafoomie (@dafoomie) March 16, 2013

UND Hockey: Slugs out win against Tech

Grand Forks, ND –What a difference a year makes, a year ago it was near 65 degrees sunny and devoid of snow.

Fast forward to March 15, 2013, 10,571 fans braved  near white out conditions to attend  tonight’s game and outside it looked more like a January 15 game; than a game being played in the middle of March.

UND is 14-1-2 when scoring four or more goals this season. Make that 15-1-2 with the 5-3 win tonight.  What is even more impressive, UND has also won 14 straight WCHA playoff game with the win tonight.

That being said, it wasn’t UND best effort tonight.  The win didn’t come easy.

“It was a tough hockey game to find any flow,” UND head coach Dave Hakstol said. “We need to play better and return our focus to doing that tomorrow night.”

UND was outshot 43-24 by the upstart Huskies and they gave the UND forwards fits by getting in the shooting lanes and taking away UND’s time and space.

At the 12:30 mark of the first period UND defenseman Andrew MacWilliam was assessed a five minute major and a game misconduct for contact to the head of Michigan Tech forward David Johnstone.  After further review of the play, it was apparent that the on ice official Marco Hunt had made the wrong call.  Johnston suffered a broken collar bone on the hit.

The five minute major to MacWilliam threw UND off of their rhythm and it took a while for the Green and White to regain the upper hand. UND coach Dave Hakstol expounded on it a little more after the game.

Michael Parks
Eric Classen, UND Sports

“The five minute major knocked us back,” Hakstol said. “We survived it and recovered. I guess it was the story of the night. We hit a few bumps in the road, but we found a way to win.”

The Tech Huskies took the game to UND until the 15:45 mark of the middle frame when fourth line forward junior forward Derek Rodwell scored his second goal of the year unassisted.

“The Rodwell goal was a big one for us,” Hakstol said.  When the head coach was asked where that goal came from? Hakstol continued, “Derek does that really well. He took the puck wide, drove wide little bit. Pulled it to the middle and snapped it hard at the net. It was well out from, 40-feet out – he put it bar down – it was good timing to get his second (goal) of the year.

Junior forward Derek Rodwell had this to say about his goal. “It was a just kind of a broke play down the center-ice,” Rodwell said. “I saw a little bit room and tried to shoot through the screen, just happened to get a good bounce that happened to go in.”

Senior forward Danny Kristo had a monstrous night on the ice for UND tonight recording (2g-1a—3pts) pushing his season point total to (23g-25a—48pts) three points off of the national leaders Ryan Walters and Greg Carey.

Dillon Simpson
Eric Classen, UND Sports

Danny Kristo was there to answer bell every time the Tech Huskies would score to tighten the game up.  The Senior forward didn’t seemed all that pleased with his team’s effort tonight.

“Friday night is the biggest game of the series,” Kristo said. “I think that we played very average tonight, we didn’t do the things we need to do to keep playing this time of year, but we’re going to move on, and forget this one. We’ll take the win and get ready for tomorrow, it’s going to be tough to end a team’s season, because Tech is playing good hockey – proud of the win – but we got to be better tomorrow.”

Kristo is right, UND is going to have to be better if UND wants to end Tech’s season tomorrow night. Game 2 is set for tomorrow night at the Ralph Engelstad Arena at 7:07 p.m. central.

Cross-posted at the Hockey Writers Combine. 

(Video) Andrew MacWilliam hit on David Johnstone

s/t to @cjzero UND defenseman Andrew MacWilliam was incorrectly given a five minute major and a game misconduct for this hit on MTU forward David Johnstone. Hopefully the MTU forward Johnstone makes a quick recovery, but word is that he has a separated shoulder.