The Art of War

tUMD 1, Red Menace 1 (12 round SOL)/let’s pretend Sunday’s game didn’t exist

tUMD played #1 Wisconsin this past weekend without Stalder, Elmes, Mrazova, and Healey. What a massive letdown for a #1 vs #2 matchup, eh? I can’t say that I  was extremely hopeful about the result.

What I did not know was what masterful tacticians our coaches are. I sort of blew off following the game on Saturday because I didn’t want to be depressed, but came home, pulled up my Twitter feed while hyperventilating and covering my eyes while peeking through my fingers, braced for the worst. And it was 0-0! Until I tweeted about it, then Wisconsin scored and I thought it was all over.

AND THEN UMD SCORED. Sydney Brodt scored! And it was not all over! And then when Morin took a penalty in OT, I thought it was all over, and it was not all over!

And then ALL OF THIS HAPPENED, and it was regrettably all over.

tDogs got the crap kicked out of them on Sunday, but who cares? They got a tie. Let’s say they don’t completely sell out for that tie on Saturday, and lose 1-0 or 2-0 or maybe 4-1 or something, not sure. And then they don’t lose 8-0 on Sunday, but does that really matter? A 1-0 loss is the same as a 2-1 loss is the same as a 1000000000000-0 loss when it comes to the PWR and the league standings. Yes, it was a meager 1 point out of 6 available for the weekend, and eking out a shootout win would have been nice, but it is a heckofa lot more than any of us expected. Well, I don’t know, maybe some of you out there are unmitigated optimists.

That tie was important, PWR-wise. The only team with a better record against Wisconsin is UMTC, and they have their second series this weekend to close out the season. We, ahem, would like for the Badgers to be sweeping that, although I think tDogs would still come out in 3rd place. The Goofs would tie us in league wins, they have the H2H comparison we are tied in the H2H comparison, and they have more goals for. So unless the tiebreaker was something odd like league losses (it’s not it is, holy crap), tDogs are in 3rd place. (Update: I made some horrendous errors and corrected them.)

I really never thought I’d be so happy with a tie, but when your team is missing the WCHA’s best player and three other key skaters, a tie against the #1 team in the country (to whom your team has already handed one of their stingy 2 losses on the season), a tie is pretty freaking groovy.