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Wcha 2022-23

ARM said:
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.
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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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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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.
 
Hockeybuckeye said:
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.
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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.
 
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.
 
Timothy A said:
I've seen UMD and UM play in person and UMD is the better team.
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Probably true on the weekends that you watched them, but the Gophers had just lost Laitinen when they were in Madison, and Oden moved to the blue line to fill her spot so three lines were reconfigured. Now Laitinen is back, and the forward lines have at least had more time to adjust. UMD is still tighter defensively than UM. On their plus side, the Gophers aren't going to go 180 minutes scoring a single goal. Of that I'm confident.
 
robertearle said:
107 shots on goal, one goal.

I don't know what to do with that.
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Admittedly, that was against two of the top five statistical defenses, so it is unlikely to be repeated. For some reason, that is something that we have seen from time to time from the Badgers over the years. They will have long stretches where they are dominant, and the other team can barely get the puck out of the zone to change. Tons of offensive zone time, and it will produce what look like good scoring chances, but the puck just doesn't go in at the rate it should. You definitely have a roster where the dam can break and they will explode again, but it is a puzzler.
 
ARM said:
. On their plus side, the Gophers aren't going to go 180 minutes scoring a single goal. Of that I'm confident.
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As loose as D they play, that bet is a safe one.

So the WCHA did indeed sweep the weekend!

Full slate of league games....

WI at OSU
St. Cl at MSU
St. T at UM
BSU at UMD
 
Timothy A said:
As loose as D they play, that bet is a safe one.
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Not sure that turning pucks over and failing to cover opponents around your own net makes it easier to score at the other end. If the problem was that their D were constantly down around the attacking net like they were playing Shannon's torpedo system, then I could see it.
 
ARM said:
Not sure that turning pucks over and failing to cover opponents around your own net makes it easier to score at the other end. If the problem was that their D were constantly down around the attacking net like they were playing Shannon's torpedo system, then I could see it.
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If you supposed to be covering someone in front of the net or in the corner and you are at the blueline.....
 
Steamboat said:
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.
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It's much more about coaching that it is recruiting. The bottom half of the league has to play a different style of hockey against the top half and secondly improve across the board as a team as the season moves on to be closer to the middle of the standings at the end between. The glaring difference between STT and BSU? Coaching. Does the 'buck stop' at the HC in the WCHA.
 
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