With no games on their schedule for the holiday weekend, one likes to think that the Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs will be doing what most of us do after Thanksgiving: getting some rest and watching a little football.
The gridiron action comes courtesy of the defending D-II national champion Bulldog football team, which hosts powerhouse Grand Valley State on Saturday in the NCAA quarterfinals. And the weekend off for the hockey Bulldogs will come as a relief to the defensemen and goalies for the WCHA’s other nine teams, not having to face the league’s thus-far hottest offense.
Last weekend’s rare sweep at Minnesota was a prime example of the Bulldogs’ new puck-moving ways. Trailing 2-0 in the second period of both games, UMD rallied in both, winning 4-3 on Friday with 12 seconds remaining in overtime when Justin Fontaine worked in the corner down low, relentlessly keeping the play alive long enough to feed Travis Oleksuk for the game-winner. Coupled with Saturday night’s 3-2 win (on a Mike Montgomery goal with 2:02 to play), the Bulldogs moved into a tie for first place in the league with Colorado College and Denver – although the Tigers and Pioneers play this weekend and are likely to overtake the idle Bulldogs.
While Fontaine has the team lead in goals with 11 (including four in a 8-1 win over Michigan Tech a few weeks ago) and has garnered some early buzz as a guy with a chance to bring UMD its fifth Hobey, he’s not even the current offensive leader. That honor goes to native Duluthian Jack Connolly, who had a solid freshman season, but was out-shone in his own family when brother Chris helped Boston University to the 2009 NCAA title.
On a team recruited and coached by Scott Sandelin, himself a Hobey finalist defenseman as a senior, and led to the WCHA’s playoff title by a red-hot goalie last season, the focus was expected to be blue line play and goaltending if the Bulldogs were to contend in 2009-10. The reality is much different, as the tandem of Brady Hjelle and Kenny Reiter in goal has been good, not great (both sport saves percentages just a hair above .900), their impact has mattered less with the Bulldogs scoring in such numbers.
And with their next three WCHA series all at home, versus title contenders North Dakota, Denver and Colorado College, that weekend of rest is something of which the Bulldogs should take full advantage.
SIX YEARS LATER, A TRUE CLASSIC
Between Christmas and New Years’ Eve in 2003, I had the good fortune to be at the Ralph for the last Subway Classic. Although, other than the still-new opulence of the rink and the pre-game welcome to fans on the video board from Subway sandwich pitchman Jared, there was little that could be called “classic” about the gathering.
The Fighting Sioux, ranked among the tops in the nation at the time, were short players with Zach Parise off winning a gold medal for Team USA at the World Juniors in Finland, but still managed to capture the title. Part of that was due to their remaining talent, and part of it was the field of Brown, Wayne State and Findlay. It’s worth noting that two of those three don’t field D-I hockey programs anymore (and you can insert your own joke about 0-7-1 Brown’s current D-I legitimacy here).
Six years later, they’re getting together in the name of the five-dollar foot-long again in Grand Forks this weekend. And a glance at the field shows significant upgrades from the 2003 gathering, with a quartet of 2009 NCAA tournament teams gathering at the Ralph. The Sioux are expected to be short-handed again, with Chay Genoway still smarting from the check from behind he took versus St. Cloud State three games ago, and enter their first-rounder versus Ohio State on an uncharacteristic three-game losing streak.
Before the matchup with the Buckeyes, the Sioux and the fans in the Ralph will get to see the first-round Frozen Four rematch, when top-ranked Miami (9-1-4) faces 10-1-1 Bemidji State. It will be the Beavers and Buckeyes in the first game Saturday, with NoDak versus Miami to close out the weekend.
The weather outside has finally turned cold in recent days, and there will certainly be that biting west wind on the North Dakota prairie. But this is one weekend where there’s no place in the college hockey world we’d rather be than the Ralph.
