Somebody That I Used To Know

tUMD 6, Bad Seeds 2

I guess that game answers a few questions, doesn’t it? We can immediately extrapolate this one game onto the entire season. National championship, here we come!!!

Okay, hee, yes, it was just one game. One beautiful, glorious, joyful game to open the season. Sometimes during the summer I wonder if I’ll be able to sustain the level of fanglee I have had for almost a decade. It takes a lot of time and energy to freak the you-kn0w-what out 40 or so times a season. I’m not even talking about blogging here, I’m talking about the simple routine of getting in my car, driving to Duluth, panicking for a few hours, sleeping somewhere uncomfortable (like the back of a Volkswagen), panicking again, and then driving home. You should see all the gray hairs I have.

Then the season creeps up and the excitement starts to return and by about 6:00 PM on game day I am simply frothing at the mouth like Old Yeller ready for the puck to drop. And here we go, I’m energized for another season.

Of course, it was easy to be re-energized when I saw my team beat the everlasting crap out of an opponent.

tUMD started off the game remembering members of the Bulldog “family” who were lost during the off-season, including Dick Stewart, and then dropped windsocks from the rafters in Dick’s honor. It was a wonderful and sweet moment and I was even more proud to be a Bulldog fan.

And then the game. The team with all the question marks and doubt surrounding its offense came out and put 6 pucks in the net against a former Bulldog. In the first shift of his first game, practically in the first minute of his first game and the first seconds of his first shift, Austin Farley scored the first goal of his Hobey Baker 2015 campaign. Rocco who?

THE Ohio State scored on a PP a little later and I got slightly concerned, but Joe Basaraba responded and then tUMD got a PPG of their own when Mike Seidel put yet another puck past Hjelle 20 seconds after Joe had. Can we just discuss how awesome Seidel is for a minute. I mean, yes, I am biased, he is one of my favorites and has been since before he arrived, but I don’t think this guy ever stops trying to get a goal. Ever. He is absolutely relentless.

THE Ohio State got a 2-minute 2-man advantage a few minutes later and tUMD defended it beautifully. tUMD has an extremely talented defence, as well as excellent defensive forwards like Cody Danberg and Jake Hendrickson, and Crandall was rock solid. The second unit Sandy sent out included Andy Welinski and I loved it. I loved that he was thrown out there to the wolves (or seeds, in this case) and he handled it like he was, I don’t know, Wade Bergman or something. The game could have easily been 3-2 at the very least, but instead they killed off both penalties and goaded THE Ohio State into a few of their own.

Herbert and Justin Crandall made a nifty little play with one too many passes, which should have been a goal, but wasn’t, and I shouted “Baby Crandall, you are on my fantasy team, you’ve gotta shoot that puck!” Never mind that it wasn’t a league game so I wouldn’t have gotten Coug points, it could happen in a league game! Really, he should have taken the shot, but those two were just setting us up for a few minutes later when birthday boy Herbert made a pass on his stomach to J. Crandall and he did not miss that time, making it 4-1 and making the fans clamor for ice cream. I always shout a lot about ice cream but I never actually go get it. I don’t really like Culver’s. Plus we should call it custard, isn’t that their thing?

The second period was a typical Bulldog second period and the less said about it the better. For all of Biddco’s and my talk about Hjelle’s five hole… the only really bad five hole goal belonged to Mr. Crandall. But it was really his only mistake of the game and thus he is forgiven.

In the third tUMD got another goal from Seidel, on the PP, and then got their own two-man advantage and made THE Ohio State pay almost immediately, this time on a goal from Andy Welinski. So that was two freshmen getting ginos tonight, if you’re keeping a tally at home. Sadly, the Bulldogs couldn’t convert the PAT and the game ended 6-2, but not before THE Ohio State got another long two-man advantage and again failing to score. And then THE Ohio State gooned it up and then before I knew it, I was singing along to Holiday Road and grinning ear to ear.

I guess my Peanut Butter Hjelle Time shirt had another win left in it!