Todd D. Milewski

A quick update on the WCHA awards: Wisconsin defenseman Jamie McBain is the league’s player of the year, and North Dakota’s Dave Hakstol is the coach of the year. The first team includes McBain and North Dakota’s Chay Genoway on defense; Minnesota’s Ryan Stoa, Colorado College’s Chad Rau and St. Cloud State’s Ryan Lasch at … Read more

This is a great time of the year for college hockey, with conference playoffs, NCAA regionals and the men’s Frozen Four dotting the landscape. But this coming weekend is my favorite of them all, and here’s why: ** Men’s conference tournaments and all the PairWise banter that comes with them. I’ve only ever been to … Read more

No overtimes in the first round of the WCHA playoffs? It seems like a rarity, but it happens. No Game 3s? Same deal. Until this season, however, those two things have never happened together since the league went to best-of-three series in 1988. The five first-round series this weekend combined for no overtimes and no … Read more

The voting process for the WCHA awards was a little more rushed than usual — I didn’t know I was going to be voting until last Friday night, and the ballots were due less than 48 hours later — but I managed to pull together all of my statistical research in good time. This year, … Read more

You should always remember and learn from your failures. And in terms of picking the WCHA standings, I’ve had plenty of failures. The good thing (for me, anyway) is that I’m usually not alone. In the media poll I organized before this season for The Capital Times, I was one of 22 voters to pick … Read more

The top two spots and the bottom two spots in the WCHA standings are locked in, so we know two of next weekend’s first-round playoff matchups. Four of the five home-ice spots are locked up, so that leaves three teams with a chance at the last one on the last day of the regular season. … Read more

So we’ve got nine games this weekend to decide eight spots in the WCHA standings. I was going to try to figure out tiebreakers in this space, but that seems like something more suited for after Friday night’s games, after the possibilities are a little better defined. So here’s my best guess as to how … Read more

Why? Why do I let North Dakota do this to me every season? Somewhere around the middle of the season, I start to look past UND when thinking about the race for the WCHA’s MacNaughton Cup and which teams will be best equipped to make a run in the NCAA tournament. Then the Sioux go … Read more

Regular season championships carry no weight in selection for the NCAA tournament, so it’s easy to look past them as inconsequential. I don’t buy into that. Yes, there are two championships that are more important — a league postseason title, which carries an automatic bid to the national tournament, and the NCAA crown — but … Read more

Just when you thought you’ve seen everything … Wisconsin’s John Mitchell was ejected from Saturday night’s game against Denver in the third period for excessive roughness on a hit up high on the Pioneers’ Tyler Ruegsegger. If only that was the end of the story. Outside the Kohl Center media room after the game, we … Read more