EVERYBODY PANIC

tUMD 1, Red Menace 4/tUMD 2, Red Menace 6
tUMD 4, Canadian Goon Squad 2

I mean it. Panic!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Really, I can’t be the only one overreacting to a small sample size of results which are unfavorable.

Let’s start with the women. This was not a competitive weekend. Granted, there were 2 ENGs scored in Friday’s game, one of which was a face-off fluke, so that score doesn’t tell the whole story, but it took way, way, way too long to get the offense going (1 shot in the first period! What!?), and that’s not just because Wisconsin is fairly stifling defensively. Saturday’s game was… I don’t know how to say this without being rude, but it was not a good goaltending performance. We scored first, and then in the final two minutes of the period, Wisconsin scored two perfectly savable goals. After an excellent performance on Friday, Black let in 5 goals in two periods on Saturday and got the hook for Grapp, who only surrendered one. That inconsistency scares me. The other main problem I see is communication: there were too many bad line changes and Wisconsin scored a SHG on Friday after a few of our players ran into each other. The series made me want to bang my head against the wall. And it also confirmed that tUMD is no longer among the elite in college hockey. Sure, we are still better than most teams, but if we’re not competitive against Wisconsin, we’re not elite.

You may be wondering why I’m panicking about a win from the men. A win is great, right? Ok, I get that they’ve barely practiced, and I also get that tUMD put up 57 SOG in the game so there wasn’t a lack of effort or opportunities created. tUMD also took advantage of both their own major PP (thanks to a knee-on-knee hit on Osterberg, status unknown, probably called a diver by Chorske) and Lakehead’s (thanks to Dominato plowing into their goalie), finally taking the lead in the 3rd period. I suppose I should be glad we didn’t get shut out by our Canadian Goon Squad, ala UNO, but this had better be the best week of practice ever to get ready for the vermin infestation to the South. The “Twolves” had one goal on one shot to start the game, and then every puck that went NEAR McNeely scared me. One the Finn came in, I calmed down a bit, but we were trailing for far, far too long in this game.

Now I am going to go panic about an exam I have in 12 minutes. We’ll discuss the vermin at a later time.