Semi-OT: Frozen Four
I will get way to pissed the hell off if I turn it on. I am already getting pissed off thinking about it. damn you.
Go Smith, he's the only reason I'm watching this right now. Can't wait to see him wearing the winged wheel in a couple of years.
SCORE
it was funny for a while seeing wisconsin dominate but now I feel really bad for RIT. they traveled well and are being obliterated. i wish there was a mercy rule for loveable-mid majors
also, im pissed because i should be nervous about us playing BC right now NOT how bad I feel for RIT
sigh
JOHN GRAVELESE.
I hear it's a ghost town in there.
That's what the NCAA gets for letting conferences put morons on the ice. If we had been in this like we rightfully should be, they would have had to put the ice at center field again.
Our core hockey fanbase isn't much bigger than any of the other heavy hitters, but as soon as the alumni and fans at large find out Michigan is playing for a national championship for ANYTHING, practically in their back yard, you better hire a few more phone operators at the ticket office.
They lost an estimated $1millon by Michigan not being there.
Double post.
Ohio sucks.
...or does RIT look really really slow?
I think watching Michigan play desperate hockey during the CCHA tourney and the Regional has skewed my sense of ice speed.
What could have been...
The NCAA deserves having a ghost town at Ford Field. It was a dumb idea trying it in a football stadium anyway and the incompetence that cost Michigan the chance to go there and actually fill the stands further compounds that mistake.
NCAA Hockey is perhaps the worst run operation on the face of the planet, between it's system for selecting teams for the tournament, an often non-sensical rulebook, and idiotic administrative decisions regarding the tournament that keeps attendance and interest down. It would be better off if it were run by six 13 year-olds and a polar bear.
I agree... as long as the polar bear is in a fighter jet.
Why if it was run by the space bear?
Badgers win 8-1, Smith finishes with five assists.
I just hate watching it on ESPN. They truly could care less about these games. I love all college hockey and will always watch the Frozen Four, but there is only so much of Barry Melrose that I can take.
gotta love how he referred to Denver and New Hampshire as two of college hockey's best "franchises". I would rather watch it on Versus for pete's sake.
i recall when espn 1st got the FF on TV regularly. this is say 94 or so. they have melrose of course in studio. all that dipship could say was, "IDL anything about this michigan team but they do have the best uniform in hockey"
you could tell he didn't give 2 shits about being there. freakin canuck hockey elitist
Just imagine if we were packing Ford Field right at this moment. Ahhhhh imagine how awesome of a feeling that would be getting ready to watch, in my opinion, the most exciting single elimination sport. And all for the right to play for a long last Michigan national championship. This sucks. Mucho. =(
Poor, poor RIT. Just didn't belong in the same building with the Badgers. The same probably would have happened against either of the other two teams. Watching their speed / skill level a couple of weeks ago, it was almost unbelievable to me that they pulled off both of those games.
Also... anyone think that the ice / building just looks strange on TV? The little white lines across the ice are bothering me, and for some reason everything looks really, really slow - even Wisconsin's guys when they're breaking out and you know it must actually be fast.
Could this be a product of something I'm not considering like the building / camera angle? I watch a decent amount of hockey, but this just seemed strange to me relative to anything I've seen, including outdoor games.
i cant watch this second game. f**kin miami. i hope BC wins infinity to negative infinity
ed: 7-1 is close enough for me
My guess is that I'm the only mgoblog reader who grew up going to RIT hockey games in the 1980's. My father left a position at UofM to join the faculty at RIT in the mid-1970s. He's now retired, but my mother still teaches there. Aside from Triple A baseball, RIT hockey was the best thing going in town. They were D-III back then and had a few seasons where they were completely dominant and won at least one NC, maybe two. I don't follow them at all now, but was excited to see them in the tournament and shocked to see them make the frozen four. As one poster noted, I thought they looked much slower than their competition.
I know the experience at Yost is something very special, but I swear that RIT's home rink (Ritter Memorial Ice Arena) has an equally impressive environment. The physical building is pretty ugly, but the fans are awesome. It holds around 2,000 people and can be deafening at times. I learned a lot about hockey going to those games and wouldn't trade the experience for anything. It was the best $4 you could spend.
RIT's win to get to the Frozen Four was labeled by the Rochester paper as the single biggest win in Rochester collegiate sports history. RIT hockey is the only D-I program in the city and the rest of the school's sports are all D-III.
It's too bad that the run had to end and I would be surprised to see them back next year, but it was fun to root for a familiar underdog. Not sure why I wrote all this other than I'm not sure when I'll be able to combine Michigan and RIT again.
i think i saw RIT scrimmage RPI back in the 80s.
I speak for just about everyone here, when I say that I would have LOVED to see a Michigan-RIT championship game...
Normally I'd agree with wanting RIT in the championship game for the common reasons, BUT...
...I'm still pretty angry about getting shafted out of the Camp Randall Classic on two late bogus calls. In my book, redemption trumps the underdog story.
Excellent.
And also, since, screw Miami for stealing "Let's Go Blue". Its insulting, because not only did they steal, most of their fans probably think we took it from them (Just like our chants* and even a couple of MSU songs).
*Yes, I know we took our chants form someone else, but it was from a team we obviously don't play very often, and we've had them for a long, LONG time now. Miami jacked them because they heard us doing them every year.
we don't have a patent on "lets go blue." most teams have a "lets go [team color]" chant.
is legitimately ours, I believe. It was written by an MMB tuba player way, way back. Also, Miami plays the high school version of Let's Go Blue, with just the melody you clap and chant along with, not all the other cool lines in the trumpets and trombones.* So when I hear them play it, I don't even get upset, I just laugh.
* I was a band geek in high school, enough so to consider majoring in music, I notice these things.
EDIT: And yes, Miami fans believe we took all our chants from them. Even the ones that grew up in Michigan. As much as hockey is "the only sport they care about/are good at" down there, they generally don't know what they're talking about, I've found. Just constant refrains about how superior their team/fanbase/school/band/coach/arena/recruits/equipment is than everybody else's.
Want to see Miami lose. Badly.
I'm in grad school at Northwestern and a friend was wearing her Miami gear and asked me if I was going to watch the Frozen Four. [woo go redhawwwks!]
I said that I probably would, then asked if she knew what happened 2 weeks ago to get them into the F4.
She did not.
Eff that.
That is among the fastest penalties I've ever seen to start a period.
BC on the PP to start the 2nd...
BC makes it 2-0 on the PP.
It was an awful looking PP - probably controlled the puck in the zone for only 10 seconds of the first 1:45, then got one cycle, popped it out of the corner into the slot and into the back of the net...
3-0!
the dynasty is under siege.
but i am loving that miami is getting crushed
also, how is BC so good in the tournament every year? they seem to come out of nowhere every time
*sniff sniff* mmm smells like karma
question: why didn't they play this at the Joe? The red wings' last home game was last night
I'm betting initially they thought they'd get a much larger crowd, but that obviously didn't happen when they had to rethink the seating arrangement and consolidate it quite a bit. They definitely wouldn't have sold out the Joe either. A poor showing made worse by the screw job against Michigan that lost a lot of potential fans.
I'm not sure about that - every time I ever looked at the seating chart for these games (dating back to last year), they had the rink in that strange position towards one end of the field.
kind of like when they have NCAABB games at football venues (went to a set of those games at the Metrodome) and they drop in makeshift stands so that the court isn't essentially an island with the fans 300 feet away.
the exact reasons, but I remember seeing an article last year sometime about them reconfiguring it. If it wasn't so old, I'd try to find it and link it, but I'm sure that was something on ccha.com or something, mentioning the reconfiguration. It should have been planned from the beginning, but it wasn't and the big deal was how they were going to redistribute tickets to the guys that already had them.
But that was changed after they realized they wouldn't even come close to filling the place.
Are there are any big NHL prospects for the Red Wings or any other team on BC or Miami? I'd like to watch and see if any of these guys become big later.
I know about Smith and Nyquist. Leave it to the Wings to draft two of the three Hobey Baker finalists.
likes to recruit from the USHL, so they have generally older and more experienced players that generally got passed over or not picked particularly highly (though as the program keeps developing that's changing), so they have a 2nd rounder, a 3rd rounder, three 4th rounders, 3 6th rounders and a 7th rounder. Will Weber is their second rounder, he probably is the best prospect Miami has, in a other players are better, but not really dominant and are probably closer to their ceilings, kind of way. Mimai's strength is definitely as a team, more so than as individuals, hence "The Brotherhood".
BC has a first rounder (Kreider, Rangers), 5! 2nd rounders, a 3rd, a 4th and 2 6th rounders. Kreider's a pretty big time player, he played on America's gold-medal junior team this year.
I don't recall any Wings players, but their websites don't make it easy to find draft picks and I was paying more attention to if/round they were drafted than the team.
You're easy answer is that Kreider is really the only strong name in there.
In case anybody cares, for comparisons, Michigan ha(s/d) a first rounder, 3 2nd rounders, a third rounder, 3 4th rounders, a 5th rounder, and 2 6th rounders.
After watching both of these games I feel no remorse for selling my tickets. I had hopes of Ford Field being an amazing venue for this, but I think I only would have thought so if Michigan was there. I'm much more looking forward to Cold War pt. II in terms of being a more interesting large crowd/football field venue game.
Also,
Dear Miami,
Ain't karma a bitch?
Love,
Michigan
For Boston, For Boston... Go Eagles!
Really controlled the first 5 min of the 3rd period; 3-1 and it is a game...
That'll probably do it for this one, folks.
So much for King Rico's decision to start Knapp tonight off-cycle.
[and BC just got their 5th... Reichard had looked decent until the last couple of minutes. Maybe he couldn't have gotten it done either.]
ug.ly.
I've at least enjoyed Blasi's reactions to both of his #1 goalies choking
was Blasi talking to the Refs after the first period. After the regional, you're complaining to the refs, really?
For what its worth, I haven't been paying a ton of attention to the games, but they've seemed decent, with what I've seen.
EDIT: And since we've had this talk in a different thread already, yes, I know, all coaches (including Red) complain to the refs. A lot. But I am not a Rico fan or a Miami fan, so I'm going to be hypocritical and rip him for this.
6-1 now, with 5 minutes left. Game over.
Well, Michigan can't get the chance they rightfully deserve, but with Miami getting blown out and denied a shot at the national championship, at least justice was half(?) served. Nothing against Miami, normally, but since they shouldn't even be in Detroit, they deserve to lose, them sumabitches.
Miami loses one big contributer next year (Jarod Palmer, leading scorer, but only by like a point), so expect them to be strong next year as well. They lose 3 more players, but they have 10, 3 and 1 points, so it's probably not a big loss. As they don't have a ton of high draft picks and one would assume that "The Brotherhood" has pretty good chemistry, I would also think that not many players will leave.
As we well know, even with all the numbers returning in your favor, your team may underwhelm, but expect Miami to be really good.
Miami will definitely be good next year. Their returning goalies that will both be juniors as old as graduate students is what gets me most.
BUT, we are looking to return most if not all of our underclassmen, and we have some good freshman coming in (Hello Jon Merrill). Also, I've got to believe the guys are going to be very, very angry Wolverines when they head down to Oxford next year.
I know. I'm looking forward to it. I think our team's going to have a pretty big chip on their collective shoulders next year. Led by a legendary coach in what is openly secretly his last year, a speedy Swede and a gritty, hard-working walk-on. Losing probably less than a years ago (assuming nobody leaves (please nobody leave!!!)), since Summers and Mitera cancel out, which leaves Kampfer/Lebler vs. Turnbull/Naurato/Miller/Fardig/Palushaj and while Kampfer was really good, especially towards the end of the year and Lebler contributed all year long, they probably didn't do more than all five of those guys. If the defense can play strong and Hogan can return to form and be consistent, or Hunwick can play all season like he did the end of this year (excluding Notre Dame take 2), we are a team to be reckoned with. Dare I say even more so than normal?
6ish months till puck drop...
Seconded on their goalies. I'm a sophomore, Reichard is almost 4 years than I am. Knapp is pretty normal aged, just huge. But recruiting old is Miami's thing, as I've mentioned and obviously it's working really, really well for them. It's a great hockey team for a MAC school and a great, free, education for a lot of guys that probably aren't going on too much farther in hockey, win-win.