Can't bring myself to comment on the BCS right yet--except that the whole system is beyond stupid, and I'll hold firm to the thought that we need a playoff, even if by some miracle they do put Michigan into the title game. Thoughts from the weekend against WMU:
I didn't go to the game at WMU, so I'm sure these comments are going to be on the negative side, but they should be! There's no excuse for losing to a joke team like WMU at home. We aren't taking advantage of our home games this year (Northeastern for one--note that until this weekend they hadn't won a game since they beat us).
It was huge for us to get a win at Lawson. A sweep to that team would've been devastating. But the coaches can't be happy about giving up 11 goals in two games to a team that had only scored 30 in the previous 11 conference games. That said, we're still only 2 points back of Miami with a game in hand, and we move up by 5 points on Sparty.
Cogliano kept it going with 5 goals this weekend. Red is going to be absolutely pissed if we lose him for the Sunday game against Notre Dame because of WJC commitments. First they move the game to Sunday for TV, then we might lose Cogs because of it. That'd be bad.
Hensick is still rolling. His career-high 4 assists moves him within 1 of a tie for sixth place on our all-time list. He's got a very legit chance at ending his career #2 all-time behind Morrison.
Some other good news is that our powerplay was 3 for 7 last night.
The bad news out of last night was that Johnson, Dest, and Summers were all injured during the game. Summers came back from a very ugly injury--he ran into the open WMU door at full speed--to play the rest of the game, but Johnson and Dest didn't return. It's being reported that they both have shoulder injuries. Here's hoping neither of them are serious. We wouldn't lose a ton putting Cook back in for Dest--I thought Cook was actually playing ok hockey before he came out of the lineup--but losing Johnson would be very, very bad. Hopefully our anonymous commenter who seems to be in the loop with regard to Jack can provide some info as to his condition and status for next week???
From Friday Night, what I posted on the Rivals board...slightly edited:
I only caught the first two periods (hockey playoff game) but it was easy to see where things were going.
Sauer...I've pretty much given up on him. I'm not going to be fooled again. He's a goalie that's capable of putting together a few good performances, but he is NOT a good goalie, or someone that I can see us winning a championship with. When he's off, we might as well just pull him and play 6 on 5 the whole night. 4 goals on 11 shots? Against Western? Are you kidding me?
The first goal he gave up Friday night was the worst of the season definitely. If you want a reason the crowd was out of it, that was probably it. Teams know to go high-glove on him now, but half the time it doesn't even matter. What an awful performance. It's hard to go to a freshman backup on the road, but I'm pretty confident we're going to see Jakiel make his first career start tonight (I called that one!). The only question is if Sauer will go in the tank now like he did last year.
Hunwick was brutal Friday night. He seems to be getting walked around every single shift now. I'm thinking about going ahead and awarding him the Josh Langfeld Memorial "Got Progressively Worse Every Year" Trophy.
Summers seems to be getting better, but he had a giveaway on the 4th goal.
Did you notice: Fardig is still playing center, but he's not taking faceoffs as much (he did take 7 Friday night and won 2)? An incredible 0 for 13 performance on draws against Wisconsin will do that. Turnbull was 2 of 8 though...
That second goal was a sight to see wasn't it? Johnson skated back toward our net by the red line, drops it behind the back to Hensick, he gets spun around and throws it behind his back to Cogliano, he gets into the zone, throws it behind his back into the slot for a shot, then Cogs puts home the rebound. Yowsa. Of course, the third behind the back pass wasn't really necessary. It looked pretty though!
Bailey came out with a lot of energy and went around killing people. Just keep doing what you do Bailey. Don't worry about getting points. That's not what you're here for. I know it sucks to not score, but you can help the team by hitting people and hopefully staying out of the box in the process.
We need to stop losing home games to bad teams.
Oh and the people that sit behind me need to STFU. Lord. I'm starting to feel like I did at football games, where I don't want to be there anymore because our crowd--at least the people around me--are so uneducated. Or they just want to get drunk and try to look cool. The alumni section is looking really good to me right now......
Now I'm going to get back to pouting about the BCS.
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2 comments:
What was the deal with the dudes behind you? And this team is so emotionally frail! How can you look so strong for 7 games in a row and then crap the bed against WMU because you were too tired to get up for Minny?
Or maybe I shouldn't buy the fact that the games are linked to each other. These outcomes aren't contingent on the other. They just happened to be on their A game for a nice string, but who knows what's going to happen with this team. They look so different game to game it's hard to say it's the same team.
Or maybe it's just the goaltending. When Billy is average or better, we win. When he sucks, we lose. Since he has regular breakdowns, we have regular breakdowns, resulting in losses. Throw in random noise from other teams (like say, a 50 save night) and you lose a few more that you might have otherwise won.
I was at the WMU game. Jakiel looked absolutely awful. WMU's goalie stood on his head and was lucky we didn't hang 11 on him. He stopped several Hensick/Porter 2 on 1 breakaways that should've made him cry. He was very confident.
The hit on Summers was dirty as they come. The backup sieve, sitting on the bench, saw the hit coming and kept the door open a little longer so WMU's guy could smash Summers into the edge of the door. Piotrowski called him on it, our coaches called him on it, and for the rest of the night as our players went back onto the bench they tried to jab the backup with their sticks. It was a total premeditated cheapshot.
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