Slummin’

tUMD 2, Vagabonds 1
tUMD 4, Vagabonds 3

You know I’m a dreamer
But my heart’s of gold
I had to run away high
So I wouldn’t come home low

(I’m infinitely cooler than Bruce Ciskie, who chose to mark the occasion with John Denver instead of the Crue. Fail. Although I guess we should all be pleased he didn’t turn to wrestling.)

So the Bulldogs did come home low. I mean, a couple of one goal wins against a team with only 2 wins isn’t that impressive.

But why get upset about it? Why act like this team sucks because of it? They’re still two wins, no matter if they feel like losses to some of us. I bet if you asked UNO or Denver players, they’d love to have a one-goal win against UAH instead of their loss. Previous Bulldog teams would have lost one of these games, or tied.

If the players don’t let the slide continue (and it is a slide, there was probably about 20 total minutes of good hockey all weekend, and a couple of those minutes belong to the Little Chippers and also to the Yeti/Bear/Tiki/Owl game), then we will barely remember this. The only people who will remember this will be the people trying to discredit the Bulldogs, of whom there are far fewer than there were last year.

You’ll notice there’s no jersey drama this time around, because I didn’t bid. The jerseys were nice, but I had to resist this time around. If you DID get a jersey, let me know! I might possibly know where you could get a nametape. *Wink wink* According to the website, tUMD raised $14725! According to the event’s name, Bulldogs for Breast Cancer, this must mean that they raised $14725 to give people more breast cancer. Seems like kind of a poor charitable move.

tUMD plays a much-improved Michigan Tech team, but still a Michigan Tech team they swept back in December. And Michigan Tech didn’t have two weeks to spend solely preparing for tUMD, the way UAH did (and they had free scouting in the form of two nationally televised games.) UAH is also not nearly as bad as I expected them to be. Saunders was good, although I’m not blown away by him the way some others are, since he had lots of nice fatty boom batty rebounds just begging to be buried that were not. UAH is also much more disciplined than I expected them to be; they did not play with the frustration that others with their record might play.

There’s no reason for me to think that last weekend’s play is in any way indicative how of the team will play this weekend. They absolutely, 100%, without a doubt will lose to Tech if they play the way they did for the first five periods of this past weekend, but that was not characteristic of this team. Other than the awful PP, which seems to be very much part of this team’s identity. And that is a serious issue for me, and should be for everyone. Justin Faulk is heading back to Duluth before his all-star appearance… perhaps he can lend our PP a little of his mojo?

tUMD bagged two new recruits: Jared Thomas of Hermantown and Dom Toninato of Duluth East. I’m pretty excited with these two pickups, though I’m not a recruiting guru. tUMD also picked up a Canadian recruit, Brett Boehm, a few weeks ago. Brett is, of course, going to be hounded by the pack of starving dogs that is the CHL, and so there are no guarantees that he ever wears a Bulldog uniform, but we would love to have him and he would love it here.

Okay, guys, enough reading RWD, go back and fix your power play! Let’s see Jack Connolly (vote vote vote!) get the school-record point streak on a POWER PLAY GOAL, aiiight?