Paula C. WestonHe Shoots! He Scores! He Shouldn’t Have! There’s only one thing more exciting than a shootout, and that’s a shootout that helps to illustrate the idiocy of the shootout. When the game between Bowling Green and Nebraska-Omaha remained tied at the end of a five-minute overtime Friday, Oct. 30, a shootout ensued — as is … Read more
For the Western Michigan Broncos, one more tick of the clock would have sent this game to overtime, giving WMU a chance at a fifth straight win to open the 2009-10 season, equaling the best start in Broncos’ hockey history. “I wish we had an extra split second,” said WMU head coach Jim Culhane following … Read more
Scary Good The start of every new season is nothing but sweet potential, a potent elixir of hope and talent that has yet to sour into a reality as cold and hard — and sometimes as lingering — as an Alaskan winter. The first month of hockey is perfect, no matter what your team’s record. … Read more
Youth in a Young Season This season is a scant two full weeks old, and already some interesting tidbits — too early to call them patterns — have emerged. Last season, the CCHA seemed to have had a particularly promising freshman class. Notre Dame’s Billy Maday, Michigan’s David Wohlberg, Ohio State’s Ian Boots and Zac … Read more
Beginnings, Auspicious and Otherwise Not with a bang, but with a whimper. Or, maybe, a tiny yelp. Not very loud. A smallish hooray. It was the proverbial mixed bag in the opening weekend for the CCHA, with clear-cut winners, out-and-out losers, and teams that were somewhere in the middle. Congratulations to the Nebraska-Omaha Mavericks, this … Read more
With strong play from special teams and a 33-save performance from senior Bobby Jarosz, the Michigan State Spartans did something they hadn’t done since the end of the 2007-08 season: they swept a single opponent in a two-game set. Four different Spartans tallied, twice on the power play, to give MSU a 4-2 win over … Read more
If you love Spartan hockey, here are three words for you to embrace for the upcoming season: bigger, stronger, older. Last year’s tender young Michigan State team, picked third by the media and fifth by the coaches in the 2008-09 preseason CCHA polls, finished tied for 10th place with Lake Superior State at the end … Read more
Can the Bowling Green Falcons finally take a breath? And will the revolving door of assistants finally stop spinning? After rumors about the potential demise of the BGSU program were leaked to the press earlier this year — former head coach Scott Paluch heard about them as he was walking into Nationwide Arena in Columbus … Read more
For years, college hockey fans have been hoping that Dean Blais would return to the game we love, to the game we know he loves, and we CCHA fans are the lucky ones to welcome him back. “My best time of the day is spending that half-hour on the ice in practice,” Blais said at … Read more
The good news for Lake Superior State is that the Lakers return seven of eight defensemen and three of five double-digit goal scorers from a season ago. The bad news for Lake Superior State is that the Lakers return seven of eight — oh, do I really have to say it? “We have not been … Read more
The 2009-2010 CCHA: The Direction of Change “The moment of change,” said poet Adrienne Rich, “is the only poem.” If there’s even the smallest grain of truth in Rich’s statement, then CCHA fans are in for plenty of poetry in the coming months. Bowling Green has a new head coach. Nebraska-Omaha has a new head … Read more
In one season as head coach, Dallas Ferguson managed to take the Alaska Nanooks from ninth place to fourth, from 20 league points to 34, and from first-round playoff loser to Joe Louis Arena. It’s no wonder that he was awarded a five-year contract extension last week. And he doesn’t let a little success go … Read more
“For once, I’m returning a bit of a veteran team,” said Ohio State coach John Markell. If you’re not a Buckeye hockey fan, there is no way for you to appreciate the optimism of this statement. Markell tends toward the glass-half-empty side of life. In his defense, he has had to contend with some of … Read more
Fighting Irish coach Jeff Jackson can give his counterpart in Ann Arbor some competition in the understated department. “We’re returning a pretty good group of players,” he said in preseason, with a completely straight face. While Notre Dame graduated a senior class that was pivotal in the history of the program, the players who remain … Read more
In the past decade, the Western Michigan Broncos have finished higher than sixth place exactly once, in 2000-01, when they tied with Northern Michigan for fifth — and NMU won the tiebreaker that year for the higher playoff slot. So, it’s a bit strange to think of last year’s seventh-place finish as an accomplishment, but … Read more
In 2007-08, the Northern Michigan Wildcats began regular-season CCHA play with seven straight losses, six of them against three of the league’s top teams. By the end of that campaign, the ‘Cats had climbed to sixth place on the strength of a good second half, won a first-round home CCHA playoff series, and played their … Read more
You know what they say about a two-goal lead: it’s the hardest lead to keep. The 2008-09 Miami RedHawks proved true that old cliché on the most public of college hockey stages. Having netted two goals less than three minutes apart late in the third period of the 2009 NCAA championship game, the RedHawks played … Read more
Sure, the Ferris State Bulldogs ended their 2008-09 season with seven straight losses, including two to Nebraska-Omaha in the first round of the CCHA playoffs, a series in which FSU scored just a pair of goals. And sure, the Bulldogs had three total wins in the entire second half last year and averaged a hair … Read more
If the Michigan Wolverines weren’t so much fun to watch, college hockey fans who are not among the Maize and Blue faithful might tire of UM’s same old, same old: excellence, year after year after year. It’s been nearly 20 years since Michigan finished lower than third place in league standings; in that span the … Read more
One week after the CCHA rejected Alabama-Huntsville’s application for membership, one thing is still clear: There is much more to this situation than has been made public. Said CCHA Commissioner Tom Anastos, “There are a lot of moving parts.” The vote on Huntsville’s application was somewhat surprising, both in its timing and its format. The … Read more