During his time as a skater for Notre Dame
(back when the Irish were in the WCHA), native Minnesotan
Don Lucia never recalls being singled out by fans in Minneapolis
or Duluth when his team played there. He doesn’t see
why it should be any different for one of his players this
weekend, when the Gophers travel to Madison.
But if Wisconsin fans are intent on giving
an earful to Minnesota forward Phil Kessel when the native
son of Madison plays for “the enemy” at the
Kohl Center, the highly-touted rookie says it’s not
something that he’s sweating.
“I’m looking forward to it, definitely,”
Kessel said, expressing absolutely no concern about how
he’ll be treated by the Badger Nation. “I really
don’t care. They might boo me, but I’m not worried
about it. It’ll just be a fun experience to go home
and play.”
Kessel has a few Gopher teammates who have
been down similar roads in recent years, with mixed results.
Current starting goaltender Kellen Briggs was raised in
Colorado Springs, and two years ago made 23 saves to beat
Colorado College 2-1 in his first game back there.
“I was nervous a little bit, but it
was kind of fun,” Briggs said, adding that the treatment
from fans in Colorado is much different than what he’s
heard elsewhere. “It wasn’t that bad, but I
don’t think they take it quite as seriously as fans
in Minnesota and Wisconsin do.”
Earlier in the 2003-04 season, the homecoming
wasn’t so successful for Gophers forward Danny Irmen,
who played youth hockey in Grand Forks, and was a -2 in
a 7-3 loss when he made his first return to the home of
the Fighting Sioux.
“You have mixed emotions,” said
Irmen, saying that the first game back in your hometown
is one of the most emotional games you’ll play in
a career. “You’re really excited to go back
and play in front of your friends and family, but you’re
also nervous that you might not have a good game.”
Duluth native Dave Spehar was the target of
unrelenting verbal abuse, unflattering signs and even nasty
t-shirts every time he returned to the DECC as a Gopher.
By contrast, fans in Minneapolis seem more used to having
talented Twin Citians go to other schools and come home
to play against the Gophers. Lucia noted that the 2005 Hobey
winner grew up 10 minutes from Mariucci Arena.
“Nobody booed Marty Sertich when he
came back here, and he’s had a pretty good career,”
Lucia said. “I think a kid should go to college where
he wants to go.”
Still, Lucia and the Gophers know to expect
a reaction from the Kohl Center audience, and Irmen said
Kessel knows he has every teammate behind him if things
get rough. Lucia said special treatment of Kessel by the
coaches before the trip to Wisconsin is unnecessary.
“He seems so much more relaxed even
than he was a month ago,” said Lucia. “Since
coming back from the World Juniors, it just seems like he
doesn’t have the same burdens on him.”
Perhaps having 15,000 red-clad Canadians yelling
obscenities at you is the perfect prep work for having 15,000
red-clad Wisconsinites yelling obscenities at you.
SEEN
AND HEARD IN THE WCHA
Tigers' Time Off: A month
before teams from Seattle and Pittsburgh descended on the
Motor City, the Tigers of Colorado College left town with
a pair of wins and a ton of momentum. In scoring a dozen
goals to beat Michigan and Michigan State in the Great Lakes
Invitational, the Tigers seemingly had a springboard to
launch them into the season’s second half, with designs
on keeping the WCHA title and making a return trip to the
Frozen Four.
Four games later, there’s pain and discouragement
where glory once seemed inevitable. The Tigers head into
a weekend off having lost four in a row. In fact, when Joey
Crabb scored in the first period of Saturday’s 3-2
loss at Minnesota, giving the Tigers a 1-0 lead, it was
the first time they’d held a lead since leaving Detroit.
And since scoring in a 3-2 loss to Wisconsin
on Jan. 13 to collect his 99th career goal, Tigers star
forward Brett Sterling has been unable to crack the century
mark. In the series in Minneapolis, it was not for lack
of trying. He assisted on two of the Tigers’ four
weekend goals, but spent the rest of his ice time having
shots blocked and being repeatedly roughed up by Gopher
defenders.
“That happens every weekend,”
Sterling said. “Guys try to get in my kitchen, hit
me after the whistle and do other stuff to try to piss me
off. I’d like to see them call something when I get
stuck in the face, but there’s not much I can do.”
After Saturday’s game, Sterling used
his left to shake hands with reporters, as his right arm
hung at his side with a hand that looked red and swollen.
He said it was the result of a slash late in the game, and
shrugged it off, but other reports out of Colorado Springs
have Sterling possibly recovering from a broken thumb. Despite
the physical and mental healing that can come from the weekend
break, Sterling insisted he’d rather be playing on
Friday.
“We definitely want to get back out
there, but this (break) probably comes at the right time
for us,” he said. “We know we’re a good
team, and I think we did win these kinds of games earlier
in the season. Things just aren’t going our way right
now.”
Great Weekend Getaway
Minnesota
at Wisconsin (Fri.-Sat.) Sure, there are DQ Cup points on the line
at the DECC where the Mavericks and Bulldogs square
off, but there are more significant MacNaughton Cup
points to be had at the Kohl Center, where Wisconsin
hosts Minnesota. And as if the Badgers needed another
distraction, what with the two-game losing streak,
the injured star goalie and the drop from the top
spot in the INCH Power Rankings, NHL writer Stan Fischler
picked this week to list Mike Eaves as a candidate
for the New York Islanders’ coaching job. All
of that should make for a fun weekend on the rink
at the end of Mifflin Street.
While You’re
There: The view of Madison provided by Google
Earth shows a thin strip of city surrounded by
huge expanses of lake on both sides. If frozen rinks
get you dreaming of the open water to be had a few
months hence, head over to the former home of Badger
hockey (it’s now called the Alliant Energy Center,
but it’ll always be “the Dane” to
us) for the Capital City Boat and Water Sports Show,
which runs Friday to Sunday. More than 275 watercraft
will be on display.
Stick
Salute
There’s
something nice about heading to the rink wearing sunglasses,
and watching the game with the late-day sun shining
through the windows. Some will tell you that hoops,
not hockey, is the better daytime sport, but after
attending last Saturday’s Colorado College-Minnesota
matinee in Minneapolis, we’re all for
the occasional afternoon tilt. For those
who enjoy a post-game beverage, there’s something
to be said for ordering that first round at 6 p.m.
instead of 10 p.m.
Bench
Minor
Michigan
Tech’s Tyler Shelast appeared to have scored
for the Huskies last Friday when he tipped a Brandon
Schwartz shot into the Alaska Anchorage net. But after
a video review of the play, using only the view from
an overhead camera, the officials ruled no goal, saying
that Shelast had played the puck with a high stick.
While we’re all for using video replay to determine
the validity of potential goals, we join Tech coach
Jamie Russell in asking how the height of a player’s
stick in relation to the crossbar can accurately be
determined via the view from an overhead camera.
The Tigers host North Dakota after the break,
and a hungry crowd of Tigers fans will certainly be watching
to see if Sterling can become the fourth player in the program’s
history to score 100 goals.
“That’s definitely a nice milestone,
and something I’ll look back on someday,” Sterling
said. “But at this point in the season, I just want
it to be a game-winner.”
FRIES
AT THE BOTTOM OF THE BAG
• There were plenty of St. Cloud State
fans disappointed a few years ago when Chris Harrington,
son of 1980 gold medalist John Harrington and a star at
St. Cloud Apollo High School, chose to leave the Granite
City for college and went to Minnesota instead. Four years
later, Huskies have landed a close relative of a Miracle
on Ice player. Jordy Christian, son former North Dakota
forward Eddie Christian, and nephew of 1980 Olympian Dave
Christian, has committed to St. Cloud State. Currently a
junior at Moorhead (Minn.) High School, Christian is expected
to be in a SCSU sweater for the 2007-08 season.
• Former Minnesota Duluth Bulldog Dan
Kronick’s hat trick versus his former team last weekend
marked the continuation of an interesting trend. You can
add Kronick to a list that includes Billy Lund and Adam
Coole, both ex-Bulldogs who transferred to St. Cloud State,
sat out a year, then had success versus their former team
once they had matured a bit as hockey players. Of course,
many Bulldog fans relished the fact that two years after
leaving UMD, Lund was on the ice for the visiting team the
night the Bulldogs clinched the 1993 MacNaughton Cup at
the DECC.
• If Bulldogs coach Scott Sandelin was
missing from practice at all recently, it’s understandable.
A few weeks earlier than planned, Scott’s wife Wendy
went into labor this week and delivered the couple’s
second child, a daughter who they named Katie. Congratulations
to the Sandelins, and to the greater family of Bulldog fans
on the new addition.
• Last weekend’s wins in Madison
were notable for Denver for a few reasons. The Pioneers
not only became the first team to sweep the Badgers this
season, they handed Wisconsin its first shutout loss since
Thanksgiving Weekend of 2003. The 1-0 Denver win on Friday
came via 28 Glenn Fisher saves, for his first collegiate
shutout.
• A check of the game summaries makes
us think one WCHA official might have pulled the numbers
6 and 4 in his football pool last weekend. North Dakota
was whistled for 64 minutes in penalties in both wins over
Minnesota State Mankato, and the Mavericks also had 64 minutes
in infractions on Saturday. The combined total of 128 minutes
in that game was the most put up by North Dakota and an
opponent since the Sioux won 7-3 at Yale while the teams
notched a whopping 180 penalty minutes on Nov. 2, 2002.
• Despite a three-month layoff, Mavericks
goalie Chris Clark didn’t look too rusty when he came
on in relief of Dan Tormey in Minnesota State Mankato’s
6-3 loss at North Dakota. Clark, who played in 17 games
for the Mavs last season, stopped four of the five shots
he faced in his first appearance between the pipes since
Oct. 21 when he went the distance in a 5-2 loss at Minnesota.
• If anything resembling the trap was
being played by either Alaska Anchorage or Michigan Tech
last Saturday in Houghton, it was stunningly ineffective.
The Seawolves put a season-high 43 shots on net, and were
still outshot by 10, as the Huskies sent 53 toward the opponents’
goal in the 2-2 tie. Both Seawolves goalie Nathan Lawson
and Huskies goalie Michael-Lee Teslak were honored by the
WCHA for their work, with Teslak grabbing Rookie of the
Week honors and Lawson being named co-Defensive Player of
the Week.
A variety of sources were utilized in
the compilation of this report.
