Wcha 2022-23

[ARM]

But should the Gophers somehow sweep today and remain undefeated at 7-0 wouldn't they then establish themselves as "the team to beat"?

In my mind, not yet. OSU has shown it can win big games in March; the current group in maroon & gold hasn't. Four months down the road, a series in October isn't going to look all that significant. Admittedly, all the players can win today are October games, so that's where their focus has to be.

As far as rankings, at some point we have to get serious about figuring out where Colgate, Quinnipiac, and the rest of the ECAC fall in the mix.

[FiveHoleFrenzy]

As far as rankings, at some point we have to get serious about figuring out where Colgate, Quinnipiac, and the rest of the ECAC fall in the mix.

Q > than toothpaste right now so they are the cat's meow...

The WCHA top four are all pretty darn good. The Yuckeyes, when they have Webster, may still be the top of the heap, which for now is the Tunnelers. The Tunneler's 4 forward lines are going to be a matchup nightmare for any team.

[Timothy A]

UMD rides that top line like crazy. Game 1 Hughes took 22 faceoffs, the rest of the team took 20 ( only 3 players took them). Game 2 she took 27, the rest of the team took 30 (5 total took faceoffs this game). I think all the tv timeouts helped them quite a bit.

[ARM]

I'd guess that UMD's top D pair was out there even a higher percentage of the time.

[Still Eeyore]

Ohio State is a very good, very skilled team. They are also Exhibit A for why the league needs to start calling the rulebook as it is written. They are extremely physical, and throw bodychecks constantly. I don't think that they play dirty or particularly dangerously, but they are committing a lot of penalties if you read the rulebook.

Nadine Muzerall is daring the refs to actually call things, and the officials are not stepping up. If there's little or no price to pay for it, there's no incentive to stop.

At this point, it's not about the decision making of individual referees. This is the league office setting the tone. There are two possibilities here. The first is that this is the sort of game that Greg Shepherd and his bosses want. In that case, they should petition the NCAA to change the rulebook to allow checking. Until it is changed, they have an ethical responsibility to enforce the rulebook.

The other possibility is that they don't want to call penalties out of a misguided desire not to have the refs affect the outcome of the game and because they don't want games to be filled with too many penalties breaking up the play. This is letting a short term outcome prevent them from solving a long term problem. Call bodychecking as they are supposed to, and teams won't do it as much. Early this season, they made a few delay of game calls for multiple face-off infractions. It worked. The face-off shenanigans are way down from previous seasons. Call bodychecking, and the number of penalties will go up immediately, and then drift back down. You can reach a new equilibrium.

I don't really have a problem with a coach who chooses to skate on or over the edge of what is allowed, so long as they aren't significantly compromising player safety, so this isn't a complaint about the Buckeyes or Muzerall. But the league needs to be willing to impose a cost for that decision, and they aren't.

[Timothy A]

UMD is better than I thought they were though I think they benefitted more than UW with the TV timeouts. Or UW's cupcake schedule betrayed them as far as prepping for a tough opponent. Or a combo of both. MN was not betrayed by their sugar loafs, they got my attention. The wcha is just loaded this year. I think there will be a different regular season champ and tourney champ. If one of the 4 gets hot and starts destroying the other three that would be impressive.

UMD at UM. Bigtime measuring stick series. I'm hoping UM buries UMD to make it a 3 horse race.
St Cloud at BSU. Interesting.
OSU at Tommies. Get out the tourniquets
Sacred Heart at MSU. Defend the West MSU.
Bye at UW. The UW pp will still suck.

[ARM]

Bye at UW. The UW pp will still suck.

While I'm not a fan of Bye, it doesn't get whistled for many penalties nor yield PP opportunities.

[Timothy A]

MSU sweeps Sacred Heart.
St. Cloud sweeps BSU.
OSU sweeps the Tommies, but only 4-0 and 6-0
MN with the unconventional sweep of UMD.

What was the N/C game between St. Cloud and UM all about on Monday?

This week....
Tommies and Lindenwood tangle, should be very interesting.
UMD at St. Cloud. VERY interesting series.

Looky here, St. Cloud in 4th place! Wow. Looks like Idalski is having a major impact and quickly too. I hope they get out of this weekend still ahead of UMD in the standings.

[Hockeybuckeye]

Will UM's loss to St.Cloud remove their #1 ranking next week?

[Timothy A]

Will UM's loss to St.Cloud remove their #1 ranking next week?

It was an exhibition, so I would say no.

[Hockeybuckeye]

It was an exhibition, so I would say no.

Aren't preseason games basically exhibition? I'd say those influence voters.

[Lindsay]

It was an exhibition, so I would say no.

It was non conference, not exhibition per the play by play guys. Counts towards pairwise.

[Hockeybuckeye]

It was non conference, not exhibition per the play by play guys. Counts towards pairwise.

Then it should count against the Gophers in the national rankings. I guess we'll see if it does in next weeks rankings.

[D2D]

UMD 2, SCSU 0
coming right after the Gophers sweep UMD last weekend then fall to St. Cloud two days later. Just another example of the WCHA growing more competitive with each passing season.

[KTDC]

One good thing is that in a lot of games WCHA refs don’t feel obligated to call a penalty every time someone falls down!