WCHA Playoffs

The WCHA playoffs have come and gone. They were all great games and it was a fun weekend for hockey in St. Paul. I was lucky enough to attend 3 of the 5 games and I had a great time at all of them.

SCSU and Duluth started the weeked with the play in game on Thursday night. SCSU dominated the game from start to finish. Duluth never should have made it this far. SCSU won the game 5-1.

The Friday 2:30pm game was played between NoDak and Wisconsin. This was a fun game to watch (especially from center ice). This was anyones game to win at anytime. Goals were exchanged one for one and both teams played very well. I thought Wisconsin actually played a little bit better but they had a hard time keeping Earl off the ice. He even got a penalty for diving. Who gets that anymore? NoDak won the game 4-3 to propel them into the WCHA championship game.

That night the U of M Gophers matched up against SCSU to see who would meet NoDak in the final Saturday night. SCSU came out on a mission and scored like like there was no goaltender in the net. In fact, with 5 goals allowed in just over a period, we needed to check to see if Briggs was breathing. He was taken apart by the Huskies.

Goals were matched 2-2 in the first period and then SCSU broke it open in the 2nd with 4 goals. 5 minutes into the period, Briggs was replaced by Frazee. He did not do much better as SCSU scored 3 more goals on him.

The score was 6-5 going into the 3rd with the game going back and forth until Hooton (SCSU) beat Frazee and made the score 7-5. The crowd was bummed. Goldy Gopher fled to his hole and the cheerleaders left for a beer. As the last cheerleader left, Irmen came out of nowhere and scored goal number 6. Then with 14.6 seconds remaining in the game Potulny scored his 4th goal of the evening and the 7th goal of the night to tie it up.

When the next Hobey Baker winner (Ryan Potulny) scored his hat trick, the crowd went crazy. It took the Xcel staff 10 minutes to clean up the 150 hats and millions of Red Baron beads thrown on the ice. What nitwit gives Red Baron beads to a bunch of Gopher/SCSU fans at the second game of the day, at a venue that serves beer and on St. Patricks Day. Where did they think these beads would end up? Well, they ended up on the ice, on other peoples heads, and in the protective net that surrounds the ice.

After the 7th goals was scored you can imagine the uproar from the crowd. It was deafening. This is when Jen calls me. I am glad she called, I just could not talk to her for about 5 minutes. This is when the crowd calmed and we went into the break before overtime. She was very excited to talk to me about the game, only problem was, I was pretty much hoarse from screaming. It was a very in depth conversation, as I am sure you can imagine.

The overtime kicked off and the Gophers continued to buzz the SCSU net. Many scoring opportunities passed and the puck finally left the SCSU zone. It entered the Gopher zone, was picked up and a very soft goal (like a fluffy pillow, on a fluffy bed floating on the fluffiest cloud) was scored on Frazee to win the game. The previously filled, screaming lungs of the Gopher fans deflated so fast that oxygen masks fell from above to keep everyone from passing out. It was over, 8-7 and SCSU would go on to face NoDak in the final where they would eventually lose in a good effort, 5-3.

The Gophers then played Wisconsin in the 3rd place game. The Gophers didn't even show up. They lost the match 4-0 and it was actually the most boring game I believe I have ever witnessed. That is all I have to say.