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. 

Naters Gonna Nate, Part 542

I thought everything had basically been accomplished by SDSU point guard Nate Wolters.

I was wrong. Very wrong.

After a career-high, school-record and NCAA season-high 53 points Thursday against Fort Wayne in a 80-74 win, he's basically proved that the rest of the season is his for the taking.

I'll let the SDSU game recap take some of the details here:

Wolters scored 38 of his points in the second half, one more than the entire IPFW team, finishing the night 17-of-28 shooting overall, 9-of-14 from 3-point range and 10-of-11 from the free throw line.

"They were sagging off of me and my felt pretty good tonight, I was able to knock a couple down and just got into a little bit of a rhythm," Wolters said. "It's a good accomplishment, but it's a big win for us, we had to have it. We knew that they were gonna come out and play hard, they played tough, but we were able to put together a big second half and pull away."

The 53 points not only tops his previous career-high of 36, but breaks the SDSU single-game mark of 44 points, set by Dave Thomas against Coe College on March 10, 1973. His nine 3-pointers tops his previous high of five, set in the season-opener at Alabama, and breaks the SDSU mark of eight, a mark set by Jason Sempsrott on Jan. 12, 1996 vs. North Dakota State, and by Randy Suarez against Augustana on Feb. 7, 1987.

Of course, he's good but the ability to just take over is a skill that few players have. Fort Wayne is one of those places where the building is pretty dead and he made his performance count on a night when the Jacks needed it badly. I'll be curious to see what happens at Oakland Saturday in a must-win ballgame. But as Wolters put it, every game has been a must-win since about mid-December. The Jacks share 1st place with Western Illinois after a three-point loss for NDSU against the Golden Grizzlies tonight.

Earlier this year, I said that I didn't think he would score in bunches at home on a Collegian postgame video. I was wrong because he went for 29 the next game but tonight validates the claim some because I did say that he would have his big games on the road. This will qualify there. At the end of the day, the Jacks need him more on the road because they play much better as a unit at home. 

Wolters is one of two reasons SDSU is the favorite to get back to the NCAA Tournament, along with having the Summit League tournament in Sioux Falls. I would have to say that he gives the Jackrabbits a great chance of getting a win in the Big Dance. He's that good but I'm not telling you anything you didn't already know.

Some of the media from tonight. Check it out as well:

Nate Wolters erupts for 53 points, most by any Division I player this season (Yahoo).

South Dakota State's Nate Wolters scores 53, highest total this season  (ESPN)

Night Court: Nate Wolters gives CBB most points in a game since '09 (CBSSports.com)

Goodbye, 'Roos.

I was going to lead with this but Nate Wolters did his thing, so the Kansas City to the Western Athletic Conference gets bumped. The Kangaroos will be out of the Summit after this year. There's a lot of facets to this, so we'll get to this in bulletpoints.

• At best, this is a lateral move. There's only one way to buy this and that's if the Kangaroos were the third or fourth best basketball team in the conference and were consistently on the cusp of making it to the NCAA Tournament. That's just not the case because their men's basketball program, which should be marquee program for a non-football school, is awful and poorly-managed. 
• Obviously, UMKC has a tough time reading the tea leaves here. Of the nine current members in the conference, SEVEN are leaving the WAC by July 1, 2014. There's a reason everyone else is leaving and they clearly don't see it the same way everyone else does. Denver just left the conference. Was nobody in Kansas City paying attention?
• What's left is not Murderer's Row: California State University, Bakersfield; Chicago State University; Grand Canyon University; New Mexico State University; Seattle University, The University of Texas-Pan American and Utah Valley University.
• The WAC is not anymore of an airplane league than the Summit. Let me know if you find any cheap flights to Las Cruces, N.M.
• They are centrally-located in the Summit. The Kangaroos will be the second-most eastern school in the WAC now. More proof geography doesn't matter anymore in conference realignment.
• How does UMKC not address the media with a press conference today. They really don't know what they're doing, do they?
• People need to get over this idea that the Summit is just garbage as a basketball league. It's not spectacular but it's not like it's high Division II either. See the Wolters notes above. Frank Gaines, Travis Bader, Ceola Clark III, Marshall Bjorklund are all great players. I know that Denver is decent this year (Ha, they're coming to the Summit, New Mexico State made The Dance last year and Utah State is usually good.) Two of those teams are leaving and NMSU will try to get out at any moment. Perception is everything and people will likely see that the WAC is a fraud, far from where it was years ago.
• I would be surprised if the Summit disintegrates, which is what is posed here by Kansas City Star writer Blair Kerkhoff. Certainly, Oakland to the Horizon is a real possibility. As it stands, it doesn't make sense for Omaha to leave the Summit right now because they are in the I-29 pact with the Dakota schools. Also, I don't buy that the WAC is looking at SIU-Edwardsville either. 
• Also thrown out there is SDSU and NDSU looking at the Missouri Valley. That is probably a dream scenario for NDSU for sure but SDSU has a lot going for them in the Summit. The conference tourney is in their backyard and they are having great success. The Valley is a basketball league for sure. However, if the offer is there (it's clearly a step up), how do you turn it down? This would only happen with moves by Creighton and Evansville to the Catholic 7 and the Horizon, respectively.

Lots to chew on there. 

One last time

I'll be heading to St. Cloud Friday for the final WCHA regular season series between St. Cloud State and Minnesota for the weekend showdown, which should be a great series. The Huskies are No. 1 in the conference and the Gophers are No. 3 but it's the Maroon and Gold are No. 1 in the Pairwise rankings (which basically decide who gets into the NCAA Tournament) in what is the final season for college hockey's best league as we know it. I'll miss it and I will probably wax poetic about the WCHA on Monday.