Wcha 2022-23

[FiveHoleFrenzy]

OSU defeated Cornell earlier this evening by a score of 4-3. This game had long stretches of dominance by OSU but Cornell was just scrappy enough to hang in there with a ENG goal late in the game to make it a one goal deficit. OSU's goaltending seems to be the one area that could you could say is a kink in their armor. Maybe their offense is good enough to overcome that as it was tonight.

[Hockeybuckeye]

OSU's goaltending seems to be the one area that could you could say is a kink in their armor.

I feel OSU played a much better game Sunday and I think Kirk has the edge in goaltending at this junction of the season but it was hard to be certain today when the defense only allowed 12 shots on goal for the entire game!
(Big Grin)

[Timothy A]

So to re-cap

The Tommies with a shocking sweep of BSU. WOW. Their head coach was out of town, so maybe he needs to stay away a bit more, eh?
MSU sweeps LIU as expected.
Cornell makes tOSU sweat out game 1, game 2 all tOSU.

No games for a couple weeks when tOSU travels to St. Louis for a new years party and plays a little hockey against the Woodsters and UW travels east to play Q.

Mid-season standings...

UM/tOSU tied, but UM has one less loss so we can all them #1.
2nd tOSU
3rd place the BADgers, but have played 2 less games than everyone else, but not played tOSU at all.
4th place UMD, fending off St. Cloud, having also played 2 less games than everyone else, so in reality UMD is comphy in 4th.
5th St Cloud, with MSU right on their heels 3 pts back with the same amount of games played.
6th MSU
7th Tommies
8th BSU

Maybe it's time for BSU to look at a coaching change at the end of the season. Look what a difference it has made for St. Cloud.

[ARM]

Maybe it's time for BSU to look at a coaching change at the end of the season. Look what a difference it has made for St. Cloud.

It may be that the situation is similar to when Giesen took over SCSU. Scanlan, like Giesen, did well with the players his predecessor recruited. Once they graduated, he didn't have much luck attracting new players of the same caliber.

[Steamboat]

It may be that the situation is similar to when Giesen took over SCSU. Scanlan, like Giesen, did well with the players his predecessor recruited. Once they graduated, he didn't have much luck attracting new players of the same caliber.

Both St. Thomas and Bemidji have predominately Minnesota players. The Beavers have a pair of players from Alaska, several Canadians, and a player from North Dakota. St. Thomas has one Canadian, a player from Maine, a player from Alaska, two from Switzerland, one from Hungary(via Vermont), plus the Promersberger sisters from North Dakota. These two teams have a very similar composition.
I think Bemidji does have a harder time recruiting than any of the other colleges in the WCHA. They have given the Gophers many headaches in the past, and I hope that they get it together enough to keep pestering the highly ranked teams.

[MinnOTB]

It may be that the situation is similar to when Giesen took over SCSU. Scanlan, like Giesen, did well with the players his predecessor recruited. Once they graduated, he didn't have much luck attracting new players of the same caliber.

While it is correct that the most successful season in Beaver program history was in Scanlan’s second year when they finished third in the WCHA (2015-16, which was the only season they have ever finished in the top four, I think), they did finish above both the Mavericks and the Huskies in each of his first six seasons. By the fifth season, the only impact player remaining on the roster that was recruited in the Sertich era was Emily Bergland. Scanlan’s first couple of recruiting classes each had several impact players (including Bench, Halluska, Jorde, Kaasa, Mack, and Radke in the class of 2020 and Beebe, DeGeorge, Dowhy, Festherstone, Kampa, Langei, and Passolt in the class of 2021). It was the third recruiting class where things dropped off with only Ellie Moser showing signs of becoming an impact player and her career was plagued by and ultimately cut short by injury. It is that class that would be fifth year players this season, and Bemidji has none (they are the only team in the conference without any). The next couple of recruiting classes also don’t include a lot of impact players (the last two groups that will have five years of eligibility) so that is going to continue to hurt the Beavers going forward relative to everyone else. The current freshman and sophomore classes are both large and seeing a lot of ice time but it remains to be seen if they can have the an impact over the course of their careers that approaches that of Scanlan’s first two classes. I’m afraid their drop to the bottom is not going to change anytime soon.

[Hockeybuckeye]

I think the only game this coming weekend that could have any significance would be the UW vs UMD game.

[Timothy A]

Lots of interesting N/C games...

St. Cl - New Hamp
UM - Merrimack
RIT - St. T x 2
MSU - Lindenwood x 2
St. Cloud - Merrimack
UM - New Hamp

The WCHA can legit sweep the n/c weekend. MSU can get to .500 for the season with a sweep, that would give 6 of 8 teams in the league with winning records.

The UW UMD tilts will put all the teams in the league having played the same amount of games - 16.

[Still Eeyore]

This St Cloud/Merrimack game has been a constant parade to the penalty box, and it's not because Binkley and Kaehler have a new found philosophy of calling a tight game. The penalties have just been that obvious.

[FiveHoleFrenzy]

So far goaltending and UMD have the upper hand over the Sinners. 3-1 Dogs over the Sinners.

St Cloud gets two wins on the weekend with a 3-1 win over Merrimack today. There was one 5 minute major called and there could have been one or two more called.

[FiveHoleFrenzy]

Admittedly the competition the WCHA faced in non conference action this weekend was weak, but it was a clean sweep across the board.

[Hockeybuckeye]

With Wisconsin getting swept by UMD it looks like the battle for conference regular season champions is between the Gophers and Buckeyes at this point.
Minnesota's toughest remaining games are UMD, UW & OSU.
The Buckeyes are UW, UM and UW again. Should be an intense home stretch.

[Timothy A]

This Wisconsin team is like the fat kid at the Golden Corral who only ate at the desert buffet.

[ARM]

With Wisconsin getting swept by UMD it looks like the battle for conference regular season champions is between the Gophers and Buckeyes at this point.

The Badgers are 4 points behind with each team having 36 more points on the line. That kind of gap can be reversed in a single weekend.

[Timothy A]

I've seen UMD and UM play in person and UMD is the better team. They were fantastic today with their total team D. I though when UW played at UMD, UMD's short bench benefitted from all the TV timeouts. WRONG. They looked like a top end lock down WI team looked in the past. Very impressive. At this point UW is the 3rd best team in the WCHA.