January
18, 2007
Silver
Lining as St. Cloud's Streak Ends
By
Jess Myers
With the weather in Minnesota finally turning
cold, the January gloom that brings about seasonal affective
disorder setting in, and his team’s school-record,
12-game winning streak coming to a surprisingly sudden end
last Friday, St. Cloud State coach Bob Motzko was still
able to maintain an upbeat attitude. The Huskies led Minnesota
State 4-1 with less than 16 minutes to play in St. Cloud
before giving up five unanswered goals in a 6-4 loss. The
teams skated to a scoreless draw the next night in Mankato,
leaving the Huskies in what their coach called a bit of
a “January funk” as they prepare to host Minnesota
Duluth this weekend.
WCHA
Notebook
Ryan
Lasch and his St. Cloud State teammates had a 12-game
win streak and 15-game unbeaten streak snapped by
Minnesota State last weekend,
“What’s surprising isn’t
that we gave up five goals,” said Motzko of last Friday’s
game. “The big surprise is that we ever had a 4-1
lead, because we were not playing well.”
After getting just one point out of the weekend,
Motzko took an optimistic tack again, pointing out that
his team had held Minnesota State to one goal for more than
110 minutes over the weekend, and only had 10 truly bad
minutes.
The Huskies enter the final seven weekends
of the regular season tied for second place in the WCHA
standings and seemingly in good position to get one of the
five coveted home ice slots, but Motzko’s quick to
point out that there’s not much separation between
second and ninth place, and the Huskies are far from clinching
anything just yet. The injury bug stayed away from central
Minnesota for much of the season’s first half, but
the Huskies are suddenly dealing with assorted bumps and
bruises.
“We’ve been very fortunate, because
every team goes through some injuries at some point and
now it’s just our time,” Motzko said, noting
that defensemen Justin Fletcher and Aaron Brocklehurst both
missed significant time last weekend.
Another recent change in St. Cloud is the
adjustment über-talented freshmen Andreas Nodl and
Ryan Lasch are having to make as they get into the meat
of the conference schedule in their first college hockey
campaigns.
“The second half in our league is a
totally different animal,” Motzko said. “The
first half is all about survival and positioning, and now
in the second half, you’re in a fight for marbles.”
The coach said that glancing in the rearview
mirror at both the winning streak and 15-game unbeaten streak
– the Huskies were 12-0-3 from Nov. 4 to Jan. 12 –
it kind of came as a surprise to a club that tries not to
look forward or back, but to focus on the task at hand.
“The lesson we take from it is don’t
look at what you did to get there, just take it week to
week,” Motzko said. “That’s one of those
boring coach statements.”
Even after a dozen consecutive wins, the second-place
Huskies are closer in the standings to the teams a few spots
below them than they are to the first-place Golden Gophers,
who enter the weekend with a seven-point advantage. Motzko
certainly isn’t talking about making a run at his
old team in the race for the title, but he isn’t exactly
conceding it just yet either.
“Right now, it’s Minnesota’s
deal, but we’ll hang around and see what happens,”
he said. The Huskies’ second-to-last WCHA series is
a home-and-home with Minnesota on Feb. 23-24. If they can
hang around enough to enter that weekend within three points
of the Gophers, one would think that any remnants of a January
funk in St. Cloud would be long gone by then.
SEEN AND HEARD IN THE WCHA
Copper Country Anthem ... or Dirge?:
In the copper mining town that has been home to Michigan
Technological University for more than a century, long-suffering
Tech hockey fans figured they’d found a vein of some
precious metal on the weekend before Halloween. That’s
when the Huskies swept Alaska Anchorage in Houghton to improve
to a surprising 5-1-0. The opening game of the sweep was
a 9-0 rout that, a few months later, has given the Huskies'
coach some second thoughts.
“We don’t give up a whole lot
of grade-A scoring chances, but flip that around and we
don’t generate a lot of offense either,” said
Jamie Russell. “It’s a pretty fine line between
winning and losing for us. Looking back, instead of winning
a 9-0 game I would’ve liked to have saved some of
those goals for later.”
Tech is in Anchorage this weekend, prepared
to face the Seawolves again and maybe looking for the same
kind of boost they got from the October meeting. After that
hot start, the Huskies went on a 3-11-2 run before sweeping
non-conference Bemidji State last weekend. Tied for ninth
in the WCHA heading into the series, Russell admits it’s
been a roller coaster ride for the Husky Nation.
“We lose four in a row and it’s
like the world’s ending, where earlier in the year
they were ready to give us the national championship,”
said the coach. “We’re coming off a sweep without
getting any league points, but we’re definitely coming
into this weekend with some confidence and some momentum.”
With both teams desperately in need of points
if either are to factor in the race for home ice, Russell
doesn’t see his team’s second series versus
the Seawolves as any kind of rematch or measuring stick.
“Your team is judged every weekend in
the WCHA, so I don’t know if this series is a measuring
stick more than any other in this league,” Russell
said. “It’s a huge series for both programs
in terms of the standings.”
It seems as if the Huskies are just the latest
in a long line of explorers who've headed to Alaska down
on their luck, but seeking to strike gold, or something
like it.
Great Weekend Getaway
Denver
at Minnesota (Fri.-Sat.)
Jewelers could have as much interest as hockey fans
this weekend as the owners of four of the past five
NCAA title rings get together in Minneapolis. This
series might be the last best chance for anyone to
catch the Golden Gophers in the race for the league
title. DU trails by seven points, but could cut that
margin to three with a sweep at Mariucci Arena. Of
course, the Gophers haven’t lost a game there
in more than a year.
While You're There: Saturday is
the first Hockey Day in Minnesota, and Fox Sports
will highlight three games during an all-day hockey
broadcast. While the outdoor high school game being
played between Lake of the Woods and St. Paul Johnson
on a frozen river in Baudette, is a good six-hour
drive from Minneapolis, fans with connections can
enjoy a double-dip if they leave Mariucci a little
early and head to St. Paul for the Wild and Stars
at Xcel Energy Center.
Stick
Salute
We may have overlooked a super sophomore by predicting guys named
Oshie and Toews would lead North Dakota offensively
this season. The WCHA has picked Sioux sophomore forward
Ryan Duncan as its offensive player of the week twice
already this month. The most recent honor came after
Duncan had four points in NoDak’s win and tie
over Alaska Anchorage. He leads the team with 27 points
in 24 games.
Bench
Minor
We love the
idea of Minnesota following hockey-mad places like
Michigan and Canada in having its own Hockey Day this
year, and we realize that this is the first one. That
said, there are five Division teams in the state.
Having the event focus on just one (Minnesota) of
the five is a disappointment that we hope is corrected
in the future.
FRIES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE BAG
• One reason for the better-than-expected
record put up by Alaska Anchorage so far (the Seawolves
were picked for 10th by the league’s coaches, but
are 10-11-3 heading into this weekend’s homes series
with Michigan Tech) has got to be more shots and more goals.
One goal this weekend by the Seawolves will give them 67
for the season, which equals their total for all of the
2005-06 campaign. And the Alaskans have outshot opponents
in 12 of 24 games this season, after outshooting their foes
just 11 times in the previous 113 games.
• Last Friday’s 2-1 Wisconsin
win over Minnesota was notable not only because it snapped
the Gophers’ three-month unbeaten streak. The victory
was number 1,000 for the Badgers since the reinstatement
of the Wisconsin hockey program in 1963. And, in continuing
evidence that it might just be “one of those seasons”
for the Badgers, they held the league’s most prolific
offense (the Gophers) to just two goals for the weekend,
and only managed a split.
• Colorado College goalie Matt Zaba
had a relatively light night of work in last Saturday’s
4-2 win at Minnesota Duluth. The Tiger netminder faced just
19 shots, which was the third time this season that a CC
opponent has been held below 20 shots on goal. Interestingly
enough, the Tigers are just 2-1 in those games, having lost
3-2 to Bemidji State last month in a game where the Beavers
had a paltry 14 shots on goal.
• Bulldog fans might shudder just a
bit when they see their team get on a bus headed for a WCHA
opponent’s rink. Minnesota Duluth heads to St. Cloud
State this weekend having won just one of its past 14 WCHA
road games. A 7-4 victory at Alaska Anchorage on Dec. 2
was the only bright spot in a 1-11-2 streak by Scott Sandelin
and company.
• The WCHA front office can continue
to taunt the CCHA office with the chant “Our Mavs
are better than your Mavs!” On Tuesday, Minnesota
State improved its all-time record versus Nebraska-Omaha
to 12-5-3 with a 3-2 overtime road win. Jon Kalinski got
his 11th goal of the season in the extra session, extending
the purple-wearing Mavericks’ unbeaten streak against
their red-clad counterparts to 11. After a dismal start
to the season, Minnesota State is a respectable 5-3-1 in
its last nine games, and is off this weekend.
A variety
of sources were utilized in the compilation of this report.
Jess Myers can be reached at jess@insidecollegehockey.com.
Ryan
Lasch and his St. Cloud State teammates had a 12-game
win streak and 15-game unbeaten streak snapped by
Minnesota State last weekend, 