Hockey Talk

I won't fool you and tell you that I'm some sort of die-hard hockey fan. I'm somewhere between casual and enthusiastic, if I could place it.

While the Wild have been around since 2000, I never have been to a game. I went to a bunch of Division III Gustavus hockey games in high school, mainly for something to do because eventually you run out of things to do in a little town. I'm follower of two college hockey teams: Minnesota State-Mankato and Minnesota.
I do have some stories, however.

I've been to three Mavericks games, including one against the Sioux where I learned two things: 1. My high school business/computers teacher went to UND and is a big hockey fan. Didn't know that until I saw him there and 2. College kids will always have one go-to cheer. In this case it was "F--- The Sioux," and we basically heard that relentlessly for three periods. St. Cloud's is explained below.

In what was probably the best college sporting event I've ever been to, I was a witness to the Gophers topping the Mavericks in the first round of the 2008 WCHA playoffs in Game 3, a 3-2 double-overtime win for Minnesota. I was more-or-less amazed with the basic plot of the game and how it unfolded. MSU was No. 11 in the country and finished fourth in the conference, good for a home best-of-three series prior to the Final Five in St. Paul. Of all the teams to host, they got the Gophers. I don't remember a lot of the specifics other than that each game went to overtime (Games 1 and 3 went to 2OT) and that Alex Kangas was the Gophers goalie. (It feels like between Kangas and Kent Patterson they were goalies for 10 years combined.)

I come from a part of the state that has high school hockey and there are some ardent followers but none of the teams are really that good. The team my school is associated with has nine letters in its acronym. Nine. I don't know of many backyard rinks in Le Sueur County. It's mostly basketball and wrestling country because hockey is expensive and there are fewer indoor rinks.

However, it's hard not to catch some of the college hockey action for many reasons. The state hockey tournament is on television for four days and has each round covered, so all of the good players are covered well from 10th grade on. There's five D-I schools in Minnesota and all of them pick away at the leftover talent that the Gophers don't want/need. Almost every Gopher game is on TV. The Final Five is a lot of fun.

In the last post, I mentioned that I would wax poetic about the Western Collegiate Hockey Conference and its final year as we know it and that time has finally come. The conference is probably as competitive as ever, with the two aforementioned teams, North Dakota and Nebraska-Omaha within striking distance of the regular season title. Even Mankato has a good chance of finishing in the top half and having a home playoff series. Now is a bad time for the conference to call it quits.

It's going away because of conference realignment in college hockey and amazingly, it's not tied to football. Instead, it's the other main culprits: television and Jim Delany, Big Ten commissioner.

With the Big Ten Network needing programming on Friday and Saturday nights and Penn State getting Mr. Moneybags to donate nine figures to start men's and women's hockey for Nittany Nation, the Big Ten had the resources to get going with a hockey league. They feel there's a lot of money there. I'm not that sure. (Playing as an independent, PSU hasn't been bad this year. There's some promise there.) Minnesota, Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State, Ohio State and Wisconsin makes for a conference steep in tradition and enough for an annual automatic bid.

The rest of the WCHA is being shaken up as well. Let's go to the chart. The above is 2012-13, the bottom is 2013-14.

Top to bottom, the NCHC will have the best teams. The Big Ten has the potential to be a multi-bid league and they should get two each year but it's not impossible to see it being a one-bid league if a bunch of teams struggle. That's one man's thought.

The new WCHA will be sort of cobbled together but I think it could allow Bemidji and Mankato to rise to the top. If the NCHC ever expanded and the Beavers and Mavericks can create some space, they could be candidates to move up and the Minnesota outstate teams would be connected again. That's a dream scenario and the Mavericks have to improve their arena. That's a must.

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As for the actual series I went to, I found it to be quite fun. The National Hockey Center is a good facility and it's in the process of being renovated, which will widen the concourses, add seats and suites and justify their conference move because at first, the NCHC didn't want St. Cloud. In fact, the seats we occupied on Saturday night won't exist next year; they will be swollowed up by added suite space at the top of the arena.

The atmosphere was roughly split 70/30 between Husky and Gopher fans. One guy behind me told me to sit down after I was cheering a Gopher goal in the Saturday game; I ignored him. As my friend David said, "St. Cloud's fans act like they know what they're talking about but they usually never do." Exhibit A occurred during the Gophers' 4-2 Friday win. There was one man behind me who was cheering for Minnesota and then a couple other guys who sounded like they had gotten their fill before the game. When it came to rooting for St. Cloud, they would yell at the players, mainly because they had a lot of shots that missed the net, asking "YOU'VE GOT TO HIT THE NET! HOW HARD IS IT TO HIT THE NET?!?" Mind you, they're not asking for goals. Just to put it on the net.

FYI, Hockey nets are six feet by four feet.

Some other thoughts:

• St. Cloud's students relentlessly cheered "Sieve" at the Gophers' Adam Wilcox but they did it even before he allowed a goal. To me, you shouldn't be able to use the cheer until you score on the guy.
• I don't know enough about hockey penalties, so I didn't do much complaining about calls. I did not see Ted Valentine at the series.
• I laugh every time a person does the "Chuck-a-puck" and fails to throw it over the glass. Bonus points if it hits someone in the crowd. 
• After the first St. Cloud goal against Minnesota Friday, the fans threw very small gophers onto the ice. That's not just a Coyote-Jackrabbit thing, then. They did check the jackets and bags both nights upon entering.

Good times, I say.