Jim Connelly

The Minnesota-Duluth Bulldogs made history on Saturday night, and it was a hometown boy who will forever be remembered as the hero. Kyle Schmidt, who grew up just minutes outside of Duluth in Hermantown, Minn., scored the overtime game-winning goal 3:22 into the extra session, setting off an explosion of the 19,222 fans at the … Read more

Minnesota-Duluth’s quest to make history and win the school’s first-ever national championship lived on Thursday, as the Bulldogs used near-perfect special teams and a remarkable effort in net from goaltender Kenny Reiter to edge Notre Dame, 4-3, in the opening game of the 2011 Frozen Four. Minnesota-Duluth will face Michigan in Saturday’s championship game. The … Read more

National title, please head west. With a 2-1 victory by Notre Dame over New Hampshire in the NCAA Northeast Regional final at the Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester, N.H., the national championship will be claimed by a team from the WCHA or CCHA for the first time since 2007, after three straight Hockey East teams … Read more

It was billed as the battle of the Bulldogs, and in the end it was the less aggressive dog — at least in terms of banging bodies around the rink — that prevailed. Minnesota-Duluth placed its opposition, Yale, into a massive hole by capitalizing on power plays generated from undisciplined penalties in the middle period … Read more

When the field for the East Regional was announced last Sunday, there was a lot of talk about the power play units for three of the participants: Union, Yale and Air Force. It was the one team that wasn’t mentioned — Minnesota-Duluth — whose power play was successful at the right time, scoring twice on … Read more

With all four teams practicing Thursday at the East Regional, there were plenty of quotable moments. Minnesota-Duluth head coach Scott Sandelin kicked off his press conference on Thursday by introducing leading scorer Jack Connolly as Zac Brown from the Zac Brown Band. I’ll admit that I had to do a Google image search for Zac … Read more

It’s cliché in hockey playoffs to say that experience is what matters, but when it comes to the Boston College Eagles, that’s a cliché that continues to be proven worlds over. ‘ Saturday night, experience was essentially the difference maker, as the Eagles, who have won two of the of the last three national championships, … Read more

When the Northeastern Huskies began this season 1-7-2, far too many began to write off this team, only to see it rebound down the stretch and win a first-round road playoff series for the first time since 1991. So when Northeastern fell behind 5-2 late in Friday’s Hockey East semifinal against the No. 1-seeded Boston … Read more

The Hockey East quarterfinals are in the books and our field is set for the 27th Hockey East Championship at the TD Garden. Three of the top four seeds advanced, the lone exception being Northeastern’s three-game win over No. 3 Boston University. I wrote a blog about NU winning the opening game of the series … Read more

BOSTON – When the dust cleared Sunday night at Agganis Arena and sixth-seeded Northeastern moved onto the Hockey East semifinals, the Huskies faithful took a very deep breath. That’s nothing new for the fans from Huntington Avenue. Northeastern, which scored an empty-net goal to 2:14 remaining in regulation to take a 5-2 lead in game … Read more