Brian Halverson

The postseason begins this weekend with six series making up the WCHA’s first round of playoff competition. By Sunday, half of these teams will be out of the conference playoffs and while a couple of those may still be able to squeeze into the NCAA’s they’ll need to rely on the success and/or failure of … Read more

Here’s a sampling of what interested us from this past weekend’s action and results. SCSU’s extra attacker: cell phone It occurred to St. Cloud State coach Bob Motzko before Saturday’s game against Minnesota-Duluth that whatever happened in Omaha directly affected the Huskies, and that the timing between the games would be critical. So, Motzko made … Read more

Outstanding individual efforts by Minnesota’s Erik Haula and Nate Schmidt in the third period erased a one goal Wisconsin lead and lifted the Gophers to a 2-1 win over the Badgers on Saturday at Mariucci Arena. Already assured of the number one seed in the WCHA playoffs, Minnesota’s victory clinches the MacNaughton Cup outright for … Read more

Minnesota clinched a share of its first MacNaughton Cup since 2007 on Friday night, but the Gophers’ hopes of hoisting the Cup in celebration before their home crowd were put on hold for at least one more night. Behind Mark Zengerle’s goal and three assists and two points from Ryan Little (1-1–2), the Wisconsin Badgers … Read more

No. 9 Denver (19-11-4, 14-8-4 WCHA) at Nebraska-Omaha (14-14-6, 11-10-5 WCHA) Tyler:  Denver’s stars are getting hot at the right time as Jason Zucker, Luke Salazar and Nick Shore are all on five-game point streaks and Zucker has goals in all five of those games. Nebraska-Omaha’s defense has been questionable and wildly inconsistent with UNO utilizing multiple goalies all season. Ryan Massa seemed to … Read more

In their infinite wisdom, executives at the ‘Worldwide Leader in Football and Basketball’ took time away from kneeling at the altar of Roger Goodell and discussion of the undying virtue of the routine slam dunk to make the decision to chip away at the foundation of the final vestiges of hockey programming on its family … Read more

Gophers up by a nose over Bulldogs entering season’s final stretch When Minnesota stunned defending national champ Minnesota-Duluth in mid-October by sweeping the Bulldogs in Duluth to open conference play, the Gophers grabbed an early share of first place in the WCHA. With the exception of one week in January in which the teams were … Read more

No. 6 Minnesota (21-11-1, 17-7-0 WCHA) at Nebraska-Omaha (14-12-6, 11-8-5 WCHA) Tyler: Minnesota’s speed and skill is capable of overmatching Nebraska-Omaha in a time when the Gophers power play is clicking. The PP has scored six goals on 19 chances over the past five games and has scored once in each of the last five games. … Read more

Weekend brings an abundance of regrets to WCHA race When the dust settles on the WCHA season on March 3, the results of this past weekend may come back to haunt a handful of teams as they eye the first round playoff matchups. The league’s bottom three teams (Wisconsin, Minnesota State, and Alaska-Anchorage) earned in … Read more

As if completing a series sweep wasn’t difficult enough in the WCHA this time of year – this weekend being a perfect example – Minnesota was faced with doing so in front of Gopher hockey royalty on Saturday night at Mariucci Arena against Bemidji State. With several members of Minnesota’s 2002 team on hand to … Read more

Nebraska-Omaha (13-11-6, 10-7-5 WCHA) at No. 15 Colorado College (15-11-2, 12-9-1 WCHA) Tyler:  UNO is probably the most inconsistent and unpredictable team in the WCHA, not only wins and losses, scoring and goaltending as well. If Josh Thorimbert returns this weekend, which CC coach Scott Owens is optimistic about, CC is going to shut the Mavericks down. … Read more