>Pow-Pow-Power Rankings
>How do you move up 2 slots to the number one rank when you haven’t played a game?
Because Boston College did. Boston College? Twenty years ago, nobody cared about Boston College. My parents used to sit by some old guy who yelled “How’s Boston College?” when they announced the scores of other games. Nobody cared then. Evidently this man was a visionary.
Anyway, UMD sits at #2 in the power rankings for the second week in a row.
Other WCHA teams:
North Dakota’s sweep of Maine brings them up 4 to #3. I hate North Dakota, but if you sweep Maine (last year’s runner up) then you’ve got something going on.
Wisconsin was off and didn’t move. They’re still at #4. I think they’re ranked ridiculously high. I guess INCH really thinks their goaltender is somebody. Suter’s gone, what are they gonna do?
Colorado College was off and stayed at #6, but I don’t think they’ll be there for long. A win against Union won’t do anything for them.
The Gophers are up 1 to #9. “Who needs Potulny? We’ve got Potulny!” I’d like to right now declare myself President and Founding Member of the I Hate Ryan Potulny Club. I didn’t mind Grant, but the only Gopher I’ve hated more is Troy Riddle, and that hatred goes back to HIGH SCHOOL and his arrogant locker room graffiti. “T.R. in state, ’98,” he wrote on the locker room walls at SLP. Except it was the ’99 season.
Denver went down 1 to #15. Without Berkhoel… well, we all know that he saved their asses more than once. Let’s see… 5 on 3 in the final minutes of the championship game? You think maybe his teammates could have avoided at least ONE of those penalties? Anyway, Denver’s going to lose to B.C. later this week.
Evidently the Huskies are on the bubble. What do they think this is, March Madness? There is no bubble.
And where’s Alaska-Anchorage?????
heheh.
>Liar!
>Ok, sorry. I lied. I won’t be listening to EITHER game this weekend! I’m WORKING UNTIL 11! That’s what happens when you work retail.
Anyway, a few details:
*I know the comments are annoying, but just post anonymously. I’m going to fix it soon.
*New commentators coming soon!
*GO DOGS!
I’m lazy. It’s my day off and I got up at 9:30. BLEAH!
>FOOTBALL??????????
>To the roar of a seemingly pre-recorded crowd, mixed in with a few golf claps, the Bulldogs and the Fighting Irish took the ice on Thursday. Yes, on Thursday. Evidently, the games were scheduled so as not to interfere with football, and even with the odd scheduling, no one could really be bothered to attend. Evidently the whole little microcosm of Notre Dame revolves solely around football.
Football? Come on!! You know how I feel about football!!!
Oh right, you don’t. Please excuse me.
I don’t hate football. I hate futbol, and also basketball. I just can’t get behind football. I’m a fair weather fan. I admit it. I’M A FAIR WEATHER FAN! I find it difficult to get excited about football, since it only happens once a week. It doesn’t have continuous, exciting action the way hockey does, and it doesn’t have the suspense and tension of baseball. A long drive can get exciting, but I just can’t get excited about it. And if Notre Dame can’t see that hockey is far superior to football, well, they just don’t deserve to be on the same ice as the big Dogs.
Anyway, it’s nice to see that the refs are getting practice blowing those whistles and making those silly arm movements to signal what penalties they’re going to call. They haven’t used those muscles in awhile so they’ve got to test them out, to get back in the swing of things. We don’t want them to be rusty!
A tie in the first game wasn’t really what I was hoping for. I was hoping for a blow out, a scoring explosion. I was hoping that, when Schwabe meets puck, particles would undergo fission, giving off extra neutrons, which would start a supercritical chain reaction of scoring. This did not happen. Evidently, this happens when Mike Curry meets puck. Isn’t he just so cute!??!?!!? I should visit Alaska more often! But Evan, baby, you really need to start scoring. I know you’ve got an assist, but you’re cute too, you should be scoring some points. You don’t have Junior to set up anymore. You’ve got to break out from behind his shadow, just like Ashlee Simpson. She didn’t let Jessica’s success stop her, she went out and went platinum!! You, too, could be a Hobey Baker. (INCH thinks you could be in the top 10!)
It’s nice to see Stapleton on the board with two points as well. I’m going to go ahead and predict he’ll have a banner year. He was third on the team in point totals last year. This year I see him having a similar point total (41) but making more goals than assists. Miskovich was really a surprise, too. Didn’t he have, like, one goal last year? I’m hoping this wasn’t just a fluke. Misky and Hammond are two people I’d like to see make a significant improvement in their offensive numbers over the season. Tim Hambly, too. He had a fair number of points last year, but most of them came from assists. It’s great to have assists, guys, but I’d like to see some GOALS, too!
Marco Peluso is absolutely my favorite. He already has four penalties for eight minutes! Smitty has two penalties for four minutes, which is disappointing. I expect more from him! I saw him escorted from the ice during the last regular season game! (I was sitting in the Wisconsin student section, screaming for the ‘Dogs, to the chagrin of my friend/ticket procurer.) Justin Williams has three penalties for six minutes. Mike Curry has two penalties, but he got a whopping SEVEN MINUTES!!!! I’m so proud of him.
WCHA SCOREBOARD:
No conference games were played this weekend, but wins are wins.
Thursday:
UMD 2, Notre Dame 2
Friday:
UMD 4, Notre Dame 1
North Dakota 4, Maine 3
Saturday:
St. Cloud State 1, St. Lawrence 1
North Dakota 3, Maine 1
Minnesota 5, Denver 2
Look out for North Dakota, beating Maine twice! The Denver loss is unsurprising, because without Adam Berkhoel, well… I don’t want to say they’re nothing, but he was absolutely unstoppable in the NCAA Championship game. These other fellas seem more like chain-link fences than walls.
Next weekend, it’s all about hockey, I promise!
>I’m Sorry
>This weekend’s posting has been pre-empted for the Twins playoffs. I know, I should be ashamed of myself. I have been so excited for the start of the Bulldogs’ season that I should have been on top of things, but that’s the problem with the two sports with which I live and die overlapping in their seasons.
Alas, the overlapping has ended. I follow the BoSox, of course, but not with the zeal with which I follow the Twins.
Thus ends my babbling about baseball.
>@$$%%!!!!
>Bah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Windows Media Player!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Kill!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No hockey!!!!!!!!!!!!
>Ain’t Too Proud To Beg
>Could we please, please, pretty please with a cherry on top, take just ONE from North Dakota?????
>Can You Feel It?
>Today’s Wednesday. I’ll be at the Bulldog (coincidence??) in Uptown watching the Twins beat the Yankees in a few hours. I couldn’t sleep last night, I was thinking about baseball.
But tomorrow is Thursday. There’s no baseball (well, no Twins baseball), but it’s an important day for all of us. Look, down at the bottom of the page. Do you see that countdown? Do you know that when I started that coundown, there were nearly two months to go??? It’s a sight for sore eyes, let me tell you.
It hasn’t been this exciting since the start of the season after that game we’d rather forget. (That game, however, is a game I do not remember, since I was still learning to form coherent sentences and could not form lasting memories. I do remember the ‘Dogs kicking the everliving snot out of Bowling Green last January, so we’ll just pretend that other game never happened. It’s best for all of us.)
The team is ready. The fans are rabid. Keyport Liquor is stocked.
Sure, we don’t have Junior Lessard. He’s off in the NHL. We can’t tarnish his memory, despite his defection to the forces of evil (Dallas). Living in Canada for so many years, and not even the part of Canada where they speak Semi-English, he might not be aware the Minnesota North Stars had deserted us so many years ago. I imagine Lucien, Jr. showing up to tour the Dallas Stars’ arena, and saying something like “Mon Dieu! What are you talking aboot? Zees ees not Minnesota, eh?”
But tomorrow night (“Hockey on a Thursday? Well, I guess Must-See TV tanked, so we’ve got to put something on.”) the ‘Dogs are going to come out scoring. Notre Dame will not know what hit them. They will wish Rudy had played hockey, not football. They will wish they were French, instead of Indianan.
Are you ready?
>Why I Don’t Like Women’s Hockey
>NO CHECKING.
What the crap is that????
>New Questions
>I listened to KDAL all last year, and enjoyed the slightly bizarre banter between Kerry Rodd and Rik Jordan (two men with two first names, oddly spelled). However, after 26 years hard at it, Rik Jordan broadcast his last Bulldogs game. This leaves me to wonder who will be the color man now?
Do they need a color woman? I know someone who is available.
Anyway, Rik is the greatest. During his farewell speech, Rik commented that his eyesight was deteriorating to the point that he could almost be a ref in the WCHA. The fans roared. Kerry was speechless for a moment before bursting out laughing.
Absolutely brilliant. A Rhino Lining hit!
>Old News
>Since I didn’t have this little blog last year, and therefore was unable to comment on some things, and because, as you can see from the countdown, there’s still over a month to go before hockey returns to my life, I am going to occasionally look back rather than ahead.
First of all, it’s hard to be a student athlete. It’s hard enough to be a student. Therefore, the Academic All-Americans from the Bulldogs should be recognized. They played hockey nearly every weekend, sometimes travelling as far as Alaska, and were still able to maintain a 3.00 GPA or better. This is more than yours truly could do, and the farthest I went was Connecticut, for a weekend.
Here are the Academic All-American Bulldogs:
Tyler Brosz*
Steve Czech
Jay Hardwick
Josh Miskovich*
Neil Petruic
Evan Schwabe*
Luke Stauffacher
Jesse Unklesbay
(* denotes extra points for also being hot.)
This is truly an achievement, since hockey involves things like concussions and other head trauma. Also, some of these guys just don’t look that bright (Jesse, Steve, etc.) so they have to overcome even more odds.
And I do realize that some of them have just throwaway majors. But if I kicked ass at hockey, I’d probably have a throwaway major, too, like underwater basketweaving.
Runnin' With the Dogs 