Re: Minnesota @ Nebraska Omaha, Feb. 24-25: Worst. Drive. EVER.
A bunch of observations on what turned out to be an event filled night for me and the boss.
What a stupendous showing by Gopher fans, who one-upped the North Dakota fans from their trip here last year. I bet there was 2000 Gopher fans in the building, easy.
My wife and I gave up our season tickets to friends tonight and we bought tickets and sat in different seats than normal. It was our pleasure to be seated next to former Gopher football player Tom Pribyl ('71-'72) and his family at the game as a result. He regaled us with some funny Dean Blais stories as he was a Gopher at the same time as Coach Blais. He was incredulous that UNO might forsake the Clink for another (of their own) arena until I explained to him the circumstances of why that might be. He said he liked the entire atmosphere at our games as he pronounced it "NHL-like" and, to him, that was a breath of fresh air and a nice change of pace from the collegiate atmosphere, which is ironic since the lack of that is what I, personally, think is wrong with our "game experience".
On both nights there was a lot of "***'s?" from Gopher fan at the sight of the Mavboni.
If anybody was at the game, you saw us, as my wife and I were the on-the-ice-contestants for the "No Frills What's in the Box" contest between the first and second periods. How did we rate this? Dunno. They just walked up and asked us immediately after we sat in down in our seats in section 102, right by the Zamboni tunnel. We won gift cards to No Frills (a local grocery store chain) and to a local bar and grille that has 3 locations here. We chose the box since, as I told the gal running the contest, "Guys always want what's in the box". If you saw my wife slug me down there, that was why.
This was the first and only game I have ever attended where they announced a crowd size markedly smaller than I guessed as I figured there was more than 13,000 in the building. It was the first game in school history where all the curtains were raised in normally unused sections of the arena. There have been several announced crowds in the realm of tonight's in the past without raising any curtains at all so I am a little suspicious of the announced crowd of 11,772.
The game itself was basically a carbon copy of the night before with both teams looking awfully gassed from the middle of the 2nd period on tonight.
On both nights, I though UNO's offense looked at it best when we were shorthanded, of all things. UNO now leads the WCHA in shorties and Matt White and Nate Condon have more than any other player in the WCHA as well. In fact the two of them are tied for 2nd in the nation in that regard.
Andrej Sustr and Bryce Aneloski could both have hardly had worse games than they did tonight. Sustr, basically, personally allowed both of the Gophers first two goals. If UNO really is a potential Frozen Four candidate next season, its hard for me to imagine that either one of them will play big rolls in making that happen. We need help on defense, our Achilles heel. Aneloski is a big stiff and Sustr is just flat out too tall (6" 8") and gangly. Not a fan of either guy.
If we are going to the NCAA tournament, after this weekend, we are doing it by winning the WCHA tourney, which, while not likely, I do NOT think is an impossible task for UNO. There are three tourney favorites and then I think there are three other teams that could win the tourney, UNO being one of those.
Boy, this is not a vintage year in the WCHA. Every team seems to have warts. Now, watch somebody come out of conference and win the whole enchilada, again.
Grudging respect to the Gophers for sweeping this weekend although I still don't think that you guys are meaningfully a much better team than we are. Both games could have gone either way, really. C'est la vie.
