WISCONSIN Hockey Vol. XXIV - Craziest Season Of All Time

[Wisko McBadgerton]

Re: WISCONSIN Hockey Vol. XXIV - Craziest Season Of All Time

Might as well put Kerdiles and Mersch up top with McCabe. No sense in leaving them down low waiting for a puck that never comes. Send Rammer or the Littles or maybe Dahl down low. At least those guys are winning some puck battles in the corners lately. Maybe between them we could get at least get a pp set up. Something we only seem to be able to do once every ten trips or so.

I seldom like to single anyone out but I just wonder about Zengerle. Maybe it's me, but it just doesn't seem like he's been the same guy this year. Not just point wise, but all the way around. Am I the only one?

 

[Gandalf the Red]

Re: WISCONSIN Hockey Vol. XXIV - Craziest Season Of All Time

Might as well put Kerdiles and Mersch up top with McCabe. No sense in leaving them down low waiting for a puck that never comes. Send Rammer or the Littles or maybe Dahl down low. At least those guys are winning some puck battles in the corners lately. Maybe between them we could get at least get a pp set up. Something we only seem to be able to do once every ten trips or so.

I seldom like to single anyone out but I just wonder about Zengerle. Maybe it's me, but it just doesn't seem like he's been the same guy this year. Not just point wise, but all the way around. Am I the only one?

Not to start the year, but since his injury. I was thinking this exact thing this morning.

 

[Wisko McBadgerton]

Re: WISCONSIN Hockey Vol. XXIV - Craziest Season Of All Time

Not to start the year, but since his injury. I was thinking this exact thing this morning.

I don't know if it just stood out more on Saturday... I mean Knight, Kristo, and little guy are pretty impressive and tough to play against but it just seems like there are shifts where Zengerle plays and shifts where he's hardly there. Unless there's something physical, he just seems like a better player all around to me than he's shown the last month.

 

[Gurtholfin]

Re: WISCONSIN Hockey Vol. XXIV - Craziest Season Of All Time

No one's gonna deny that Schultz was great.

On Friday, we couldn't even get the puck into their zone and set up for the second half of the 5mm. Same for the power play in OT. 4.5 minutes of man advantage where we can't even win a 2 on 1 board battle.

Surely we don't need a Schultz just to gain possession of the puck, do we?

 

[Gurtholfin]

Re: WISCONSIN Hockey Vol. XXIV - Craziest Season Of All Time

Zengerle's been pretty invisible lately. No doubt about it.

 

[Wisko McBadgerton]

Re: WISCONSIN Hockey Vol. XXIV - Craziest Season Of All Time

No one's gonna deny that Schultz was great.

On Friday, we couldn't even get the puck into their zone and set up for the second half of the 5mm. Same for the power play in OT. 4.5 minutes of man advantage where we can't even win a 2 on 1 board battle.

Surely we don't need a Schultz just to gain possession of the puck, do we?

Agree... But I just watched Eaves presser. Turns out their just trying too hard. So... you know... no worries.


McCabe is getting another x-ray today and Lee still has some headaches, so both are ?'s still.

 

[Timothy A]

Re: WISCONSIN Hockey Vol. XXIV - Craziest Season Of All Time

I disagree, I think a guy like Schultz could be worth 7%. 1) He is a stud, 2) having a force like him out there pushes a lesser player to the 2nd unit, which then pushes an even lesser player off of the PP when they probably aren't ready for it. The PP QB can make a huge impact, and UW has no PP UW right now at least not like Schultz or McBain.

If he's worth 7%, then the top 27 teams who have a pp % equal to or better than 17% all have a Schultz type QB on their team? I'm humbly not buying.....McCabe at this point in his career isn't much of a PP QB, or they wouldn't suck. If they don't have Lee this weekend they might as well put a cone at the other point and ricochet the puck off it.

 

[burd]

Re: WISCONSIN Hockey Vol. XXIV - Craziest Season Of All Time

One thing that stands out as different with this team. In the past, at least agains the Sioux, if the Badgers seized momentum, even on foreign ice, they were deadly. Sioux fans got sick of seeing the Badgers come back with goals when they needed them, sometimes when you figured the Sioux had them on the ropes. They played extremely well Friday night only to fall flat when they got the major--a time when they usually would have stuck the dagger in. You can say it's just the PP, but it seems to be something more or different. It's like the eagerness and hunger to score is lacking. Maybe that is attributable to lack of finishers, but I'm not convinced it's that. They've been hot in recent weeks, so it's unfair for someone like me who doesn't watch them often to be critical, but UND is not that strong at this point, and UW certainly should have rung the bell Friday night.

That's not a very analytical contribution to this discussion, but there are more things missing with that team than just hockey skills and work ethic.

 

[Gandalf the Red]

Re: WISCONSIN Hockey Vol. XXIV - Craziest Season Of All Time

If he's worth 7%, then the top 27 teams who have a pp % equal to or better than 17% all have a Schultz type QB on their team? I'm humbly not buying.....McCabe at this point in his career isn't much of a PP QB, or they wouldn't suck. If they don't have Lee this weekend they might as well put a cone at the other point and ricochet the puck off it.

That disregards competition, if the Badgers were in the AHA or ECAC do you think they would be worst in the country w/ the guys they have on the ice? While the Badgers are only 21st in SOS this year, they have shown they can score on the PP when they play weaker teams and not when they play better teams. A lot of teams above the arbitrary 17% are either in those conferences or are the top teams in the power conferences headed to the NCAA tourney and yes many of those teams have someone close to a Schultz running their PP.

On top of that, the Badgers overall forward talent is lacking, and those other teams have the extra talent as a cummulative group which the Badgers obviously do not. And further, some of those teams probably have a second or third defenseman of quality offensively adding to their attack. Remember how good the PP was when someone was feeding Brendan Smith the puck, but also contributed their own offense on the PP back in 2010?

UW is also in the top half of the WCHA, but they haven't gotten there because of their offense, but because of their defense. 5th nationally is a great showing in scoring defense.

UW basically has the same team as last year besides Schultz and Springer. I'll level with you, Schultz is only worth 6%.

 

[Wisko McBadgerton]

Re: WISCONSIN Hockey Vol. XXIV - Craziest Season Of All Time

While the Badgers are only 21st in SOS this year, they have shown they can score on the PP when they play weaker teams and not when they play better teams..

I was curious about this so here are the numbers:

Against teams in the bottom 20 in the nation in penalty killing (the highest included, MI Tech, is tied for 39th with WI.) WI is 7-31 on th pp. (22.5%) Sounds stellar, but these teams are a combined 405- 518- 78.1% pk. Still, you could say Bucky is .6% better than average against the bottom.

Against the remaining teams in the top 2/3, WI pp is a nearly unbelievable 1-47 or 2.13%. (Having gone 1-6 against 30th place UMD- 83.3% pk.)

While this bears out Gandalf's statement regarding WI performance against the low end, the level of futility against everyone else is ridiculous. I'm not too sure Schultz comes close to making us 8x or 9x better there.

Besides it's more than just the guy at the top. The first thing we have to accomplish is possessing the puck. I don't care who is out there, if you are playing D1 hockey there is no reason not to be able to possess the puck more than your man down opponent does. Let's start there.

 

[Wisko McBadgerton]

Re: WISCONSIN Hockey Vol. XXIV - Craziest Season Of All Time

One thing that stands out as different with this team. In the past, at least agains the Sioux, if the Badgers seized momentum, even on foreign ice, they were deadly. Sioux fans got sick of seeing the Badgers come back with goals when they needed them, sometimes when you figured the Sioux had them on the ropes. They played extremely well Friday night only to fall flat when they got the major--a time when they usually would have stuck the dagger in. You can say it's just the PP, but it seems to be something more or different. It's like the eagerness and hunger to score is lacking. Maybe that is attributable to lack of finishers, but I'm not convinced it's that. They've been hot in recent weeks, so it's unfair for someone like me who doesn't watch them often to be critical, but UND is not that strong at this point, and UW certainly should have rung the bell Friday night.

That's not a very analytical contribution to this discussion, but there are more things missing with that team than just hockey skills and work ethic.

I kind of agree with this. It seems to me that taking the season as a whole, the only guys that have been able to elevate their play consistently has been our third line. For some reason a number of the guys just don't seem to be able to get it shifted into a higher gear very often. That sort of intangible seems lacking a bit to me as well. I still think we have very serviceable talent. Perhaps the injuries have just prevented these guys from really being comfortable and putting it all together. Which isn't a sufficient excuse, but a plausible explanation I guess.

 

[solovsfett]

Re: WISCONSIN Hockey Vol. XXIV - Craziest Season Of All Time

I kind of agree with this. It seems to me that taking the season as a whole, the only guys that have been able to elevate their play consistently has been our third line. For some reason a number of the guys just don't seem to be able to get it shifted into a higher gear very often. That sort of intangible seems lacking a bit to me as well. I still think we have very serviceable talent. Perhaps the injuries have just prevented these guys from really being comfortable and putting it all together. Which isn't a sufficient excuse, but a plausible explanation I guess.

...whatever the reason is that these kids are not taking the next step (talent or lackthereof? systems? etc), the bottom line is 5 of 7 years out of the playoffs soon to be 6 of 8. if Besse were on this team right now would he be enough to put them over and get them into the playoffs? I sort of doubt that. and even if were good enough to secure 4 more wins than they currently have it still would not be enough to do damage in the playoffs (imo)

this 5 of 7 year thing is EXACTLY why Sauer was let go.

Wisconsin Hockey - where's that light at the end of the tunnel?

 

[Gurtholfin]

Re: WISCONSIN Hockey Vol. XXIV - Craziest Season Of All Time

Wisconsin Hockey - where's that light at the end of the tunnel?

The 2015-16 class is looking really strong. Hang in there!

 

[Timothy A]

Re: WISCONSIN Hockey Vol. XXIV - Craziest Season Of All Time

I was curious about this so here are the numbers:

Against teams in the bottom 20 in the nation in penalty killing (the highest included, MI Tech, is tied for 39th with WI.) WI is 7-31 on th pp. (22.5%) Sounds stellar, but these teams are a combined 405- 518- 78.1% pk. Still, you could say Bucky is .6% better than average against the bottom.

Against the remaining teams in the top 2/3, WI pp is a nearly unbelievable 1-47 or 2.13%. (Having gone 1-6 against 30th place UMD- 83.3% pk.)

While this bears out Gandalf's statement regarding WI performance against the low end, the level of futility against everyone else is ridiculous. I'm not too sure Schultz comes close to making us 8x or 9x better there.

Besides it's more than just the guy at the top. The first thing we have to accomplish is possessing the puck. I don't care who is out there, if you are playing D1 hockey there is no reason not to be able to possess the puck more than your man down opponent does. Let's start there.

Great numerical analysis. Basically the pp is so bad they can only score on bad competition, literally, aside from 1 lucky goal against top 2/3 competition.

I apologize for my negative attitude. I was pretty hopeful going into last week they could claw their way into 4th, but instead they played their worst game of the year in the most important game to date of the year. To me that slammed the door on hope. 6 of the last 8 league games are against teams above them in the standings. I can't see them hanging on to home ice.

I assume UW is still playing the 1 1 3 forecheck, correct?

No word on Lee, McCabe yet?

 

[bucky15]

Re: WISCONSIN Hockey Vol. XXIV - Craziest Season Of All Time

Shocked Mersch did not get at least one game suspension from the league. He clearly jumps off the bench and takes his helmet off to fight. UW got very lucky that they will not be without him and Lee. I assume no news is bad news for Lee.

At this point with the PP, just throw out the 4th line and see what happens...can't get much worse.

 

[Timothy A]

Re: WISCONSIN Hockey Vol. XXIV - Craziest Season Of All Time

Shocked Mersch did not get at least one game suspension from the league. He clearly jumps off the bench and takes his helmet off to fight. UW got very lucky that they will not be without him and Lee. I assume no news is bad news for Lee.

At this point with the PP, just throw out the 4th line and see what happens...can't get much worse.

That is just another example of the utter idiocy of the WCHA refereeing people. Apparently since Merch didn't actually get into an altercation, what he did was ok. That is a ridiculous statement, he had total intent and it sends the wrong message to all the players. Remember, these are the same losers who said a hit to the facemask isn't a hit to the head. From the top down, they are horrible.

 

[Gurtholfin]

Re: WISCONSIN Hockey Vol. XXIV - Craziest Season Of All Time

That is just another example of the utter idiocy of the WCHA refereeing people. Apparently since Merch didn't actually get into an altercation, what he did was ok. That is a ridiculous statement, he had total intent and it sends the wrong message to all the players. Remember, these are the same losers who said a hit to the facemask isn't a hit to the head. From the top down, they are horrible.

Too bad the Nancy from Nodak only looked like he wanted to go once a linesman had a good hold of him.

"If only this guy would let me go, I'd beat you silly!"

 

[icebadger]

Re: WISCONSIN Hockey Vol. XXIV - Craziest Season Of All Time

That is just another example of the utter idiocy of the WCHA refereeing people. Apparently since Merch didn't actually get into an altercation, what he did was ok. That is a ridiculous statement, he had total intent and it sends the wrong message to all the players. Remember, these are the same losers who said a hit to the facemask isn't a hit to the head. From the top down, they are horrible.

I've thought about this and wondering if we'll be wishing for these WHCA guys next year and beyond (says the guy who still has Randy Schmidt in his signature). I thought I remember reading somewhere, maybe here, that the BTHC hired some CCHA guy as its head of officials, so maybe we could expect lots of those guys. Anyone know anything else?

As for the PP, my absolutely non-numerical thought is that we don't really have anyone who has a dangerous slapper from the outside, or heck even a sneaky, twisted wrister. That and our plan always has at least two guys in non-shooting positions (below the net or thereabouts). I keep dreaming for another PP goal like the '06 title game....zzzzzzz..zzzzzzzz....

 

[Wisko McBadgerton]

Re: WISCONSIN Hockey Vol. XXIV - Craziest Season Of All Time

That is just another example of the utter idiocy of the WCHA refereeing people. Apparently since Merch didn't actually get into an altercation, what he did was ok. That is a ridiculous statement, he had total intent and it sends the wrong message to all the players. Remember, these are the same losers who said a hit to the facemask isn't a hit to the head. From the top down, they are horrible.

As far as I can tell, there is no rule against what Mersch did. I believe there are two rules that apply. The first is rule 74.1
Leaving the Bench
- A player may not leave the players’ bench or penalty
bench at any time during an altercation. Substitutions made before the
altercation shall be permitted provided the players substituting do not enter
the altercation. For purposes of this rule, an altercation is considered to be
concluded when the referee enters the referee’s crease or, in the absence of
penalties, signals a faceoff location.

Mersch was allowed to come on as a substitution as long as the ref had gone to the referee's crease. (No doubt the WI bench also claimed (right or wrong) he was coming in on a change) Regardless of his intent, by the rules Mersch was allowed to enter the ice at the point he did. Once that is accepted by the officials, this rule has no further application to the incident. That leaves us with rule 48.1:
Fighting or Punching
- A player shall not fight an opponent or participate
in a fight, on or off the playing surface. A punch thrown may be considered
fighting.

Clearly Mersch intended to fight Pattyn. However he didn't. Obviously due to the intervention of the officials. But there is nothing in this rule about that, it only says that they shall not fight. They didn't. The end.


Regardless of how anyone feels about what Mersch did, I don't see the mechanism with which to punish Mersch in the rules. Maybe someone can point me in another direction?

Edit: I mean beyond the penalty assessed by the game official, of course.

 

[solovsfett]

Re: WISCONSIN Hockey Vol. XXIV - Craziest Season Of All Time

The 2015-16 class is looking really strong. Hang in there!

tryin! they can still climb that mountain