Kinda Morbid

Well it's Wednesday morning, I know I should put some kind of post up but I just don't know what to write about. This season just keeps dragging on, and unless Michigan Tech or Bemidji State lose out to finish their season we are going to finish in last place. And, I'm not so sure we can beat UA_ seeing as they finally might be getting their shit together. This season just alright freaking sucks. Our only saving grace might be Blake Tatchell, that freshman leads us in scoring (5-10-15 in 24 GP) and will probably finish the season leading us in scoring. And, of course this will also not be our worst season in the WCHA ever. I am really trying to keep this whole positive thing going, but it just keeps getting harder without any recent wins. Scheduling note, we keep playing each weekend until Feb 15-16 (UNO), and then we get two weeks off until Squarebanks and Denver to end out the regular season. The Super Bowl is this weekend, it just seems like fate that Ray Lewis will win another ring, much like that year the Saints won it all by eeking out a victory against my Vikings. I think this is where I will end this rambling post, enjoy this classic rock song on your hump day:

Game Day 1/26/2013

So I had forgot to mention that I would not be able to attend the chats (congrats to Alaskana for finding a new chat site since tinychat was down last night), but I was at the 2013 Annual ANSEP Banquet. Seeing and listening to Buzz Aldrin twice in one day was amazing, as I am a member of ANSEP and without them I wouldn't even be where I am in college. I would upload some of my own photos of him at ANSEP talking but my SD card is being a jerk. I forgot my camera at the banquet and I regret that but here's one from the ADN, courtesy of the ADN and blah blah blah.

And another:

Guy is pretty funny, told his life story and all around was a class act. But enough with the self promotion and promotion of ANSEP, back to hockey.

Getting home at 10 meant I had to change and put all my stuff away so I missed the news, so I have no idea how our team did last night. We lost, don't know if we can come back tonight to win, but I hope we can. Again, here at UAA I can view all the ADN articles and photo gallery's, but at home I cannot. Is this happening to anybody else?

                                           Round-Ups

This Week in the WCHA (Current Week Link)

Alaskana's TinyChat

Alaskana's Chatzy (Option II)

Things to point out, and watch for

• Sophomore Kory Roy has yet to register his first collegiate goal, 0-9-9 in 42 GP

• Matt Bailey is one goal away from his career 25th goal

• Senior Alex Gellert needs two more assists for his career 25th 

• Matt Bailey need one more point for his 50th career (Kwas got his 50th point last night)

• That Blake Tatchell is probably going to lead this team in scoring

• Don't forget the game starts at 5:07 AKST

• To end the season we play Denver in Denver on Friday night and then Sunday afternoon, anybody else see that before?

Game Day 1/25/2013

We must absolutely split with Wisconsin. I don't care how we do it, tie and tie or win and loss. We need something, anything to put some pep into our boys skates. I don't want our team to finish in last place and we are running out of time. This is the first home game for Bucky in over a month, it will be loud but our boys seem to feed off from it. Game starts at 4:07 AKST and at 5:07 Saturday night.

Round-Ups

Alaskana's Chat

UAA's Release

Bucky's Release

WCHA's Release

This Week in the WCHA
New kick ass stats page

• Junior Jordan Kwas has 2-3-5 totals in 4 GP against Bucky

• Junior Matt Bailey against Bucky has amassed 1-2-3 in 4 GP

• Sophomore Kory Roy has yet to register his first collegiate goal, 0-9-9 in 42 GP

• Aside from Chris Kamal (Goalie), Brett Cameron (Injured), and Ben Matthews (1 GP) everybody else has now at least one point this season

• Matt Bailey is one goal away from his career 25th goal

• Senior Alex Gellert needs two more assists for his career 25th 

• Matt Bailey need one more point for his 50th career

• Jordan Kwas needs two more points for his 50th career point

Frick

Well this seems familiar, I was saying to myself after MSU scored the first goal of the game. But then fate reared its ugly head and we just got outplayed. Moving on. 

Our best bet to finish in 11th place is to sweep Michigan Tech later this season and at least gain an additional three more points than MT. So in ten league games left we would have to go at least 5-4-1 against Bucky, CC, MT, UNO and Denver, and this would be assuming MT goes 2-7-1 ( against UNO, UAA, MSU, SCSU and CC). Could we still do it? Ummmm.........yes? This season's version of the Seawolves is not consistent, I would like to think we could pull off a split with Bucky, maybe even CC, then if we could sweep MT that would leave us a record of 1-2-1 against UNO and Denver assuming of course MT falters and goes 2-7-1 to end the season. Looking at Bemidji's schedule, it is fucking rough: UNO, SCSU, Bucky, MD, ND, and Minny. Now I feel a little bit better, looking at MT's schedule and Bemidji's we have hope.

[Bold and italicized indicates home series]

Must have goals
• Split with Bucky, either win and loss or tie and tie
• Same with CC
• Sweep MT
• Then coast a win and tie out of the UNO and Denver series

Simple right? But alas, even with the best of laid out plans, something very unexpected arises. Maybe Brett Cameron will come back and lead the charge from out of the cellar. Maybe Robby or Kamal will steal the end of the season with some fantastic goal keeping. Maybe Matt Bailey will go on an absolute scoring spree and catapult our team, we all know he is capable of this. 

With Bemidji and Michigan Tech, surely one team must royally screw up right? If I had all of King Midas' gold, I would bet on Bemidji. That is an absolute hell of a way to end your season, unless of course they can somehow split there way to a .500 record here down the stretch. And if Bemidji does do poorly, we could potentially end up in 10th or tied for 10th. I don't think we could catch up to CC (currently in 9th place), they have the easiest of schedules between these four teams and are at 15 points.

On a side note, the 2013 Division I Rulebook has been passed and there seems to be a lot of money now available to student-athletes, whether it be financially, performance based, or medically based. I think it's in the right direction, this will help some less fortuante student-athletes and will help cut down on illegal payments made to student-athletes across the board. Link is here.

Well it's something

It wasn't a win last night, but it's something. Maybe this was karma for last Friday night, but I would've wanted a win. It started out ugly being down 2-0 to end the first period, but we found something late to preserver. MSU has now played three straight overtime games, and four of the last five. We need a win tonight, and we all know what we must do to accomplish this.

Hmmm yes, well

Yes there was no Wednesday post because I'm am getting used to my new schedule for this college semester, that Monday off was absolutely amazing. By next week, things will run hopefully more smoothly. Last weekend started off well, then it started going to crap, and then it hit the fan by the end of the Saturday game. We played well Friday and in my eyes deserved the win, but this was not the case. Saturday night we started out sluggish and perhaps tired, then it all went to shit.

We need to salvage something from this season, whether it be an 11th place finish or perhaps playing Minnesota whatever way possible in the playoffs. How frickin' sweet would it be if for the last real WCHA playoffs, we beat Minny in the John? It would be sooo sweet, that the original Cookie Monster would be put to absolute shame. Normally I would not condone maybe laying down low in order to finish in a more desirable place for the post season, but this would not be the first time a WCHA team did this and would not be the last. Michigan Tech is currently in 11th place with nine points (16 GP), we are 12th with five points (16 GP).

"I wanna believe that there is still hope, 

Now I'm hanging in the balance alone,

I don't wanna be the last to know"

This weekend we are playing a streaky Minnesota State hockey team, evidenced by a seven game win streak, a four game win streak, and only once did they lose only one game in a row. They recently got swept by Wisconsin in back-to-back OT games, but they still are getting great play by there freshmen goaltender Stephon Williams (a 1.84 GAA with a .925 save percentage and a 11-6-1 record). 

We need to play smarter, don't try and make the plays that don't need to be made. Keep it simple, dump the puck, cycle, and hang onto the freakin' puck. When we were doing this against the #1 team in the nation, we were winning. Man I'm starting to sound like Dave Shyiak....don't know if that's a good thing or not. But please rest assured, I do smile more than Dave.  Okay, now that I'm done tooting my own horn, let's talk puck control. A previous comment from the last post nailed it on the head, " UAA needs to have more puck poise. They often ping pong it around the ice when there is an open guy they could pass it to, and they aren't seeing it". Here is the whole comment. As I have stated before, teams don't give us respect when we possess the puck. Look at the tournament games we play to start the season, those teams generally don't know us and back up off the puck controller. This gives the guy time and space to make a good play, whether it be a pass, dump, or a shot. Now look at our current games, opposing players hound our puck controllers and do not give us respect. We can still play well, by well, dumping the puck, cycling, and hitting. All this in my eyes is to combat our opponents aggressiveness. It does well and if we stick to the game plan and don't take too many penalties we are competitive. We stay out of the box and we are dangerous, evidenced by Friday nights previous game.

• Also of note the Skate the Seawolves has been moved to the Wells Fargo Sports Complex, it is at 1-3 AKST this Sunday. 
• And the Green & Gold Friday Promotion is still there
• Students you do get in for free by the way

Round-Ups

ADN's Piece (Don't know if it will work though due to the new subscription crap but I can view it here at UAA)

Tommy Grant Traded

UAA's Release

WCHA's Release

MSU's Release

USCHO Thread

UAH Coming to the WCHA

This Week in the WCHA

Calling out the Ref's

A Goalie doing his time (Guess who it is)

No Sound for Autism

Things to point out, and watch for

• Senior Jordan Kwas is now a Junior, via goseawolves.com
• Junior Chris Kamal is 2-2-0 against MSU
• Junior's Kwas and Brett Cameron both have totals of 2-3-5 in eight games against MSU, Brett is still on the Inactive List I believe
• Senior has achieved numbers of 1-5-6 vs. MSU
• Sophomore Kory Roy has yet to register his first collegiate goal, 0-9-9 in 40 GP
• Sophomore Andrew Pettitt is one game from his 25th
• Matt Bailey is one goal away from his career 25th goal

• Junior Brett Cameron is one strike from his 10th career goal

• Senior Daniel Naslund is one assist away from getting his 25th

• Senior Alex Gellert needs two more assists for his 25th

• Matt Bailey needs one more point for his 50th career point

• Jordan Kwas needs two more points for his 50th career point

• Alex Gellert the only Seawolf who is positive in league games +1, and in all games +4 (Freshmen Ben Matthews is even in his one tourney game appearance though)

Game Day 1/12/2013

That one really hurt, we more than needed that win. Nonetheless we can still split with a win tonight. We played very well against the #1 team in the nation, and we were one penalty kill away from a win. Long story short, regardless of whether or not Tyler Currier deserved a five minute major, that was a hit that he didn't need to make. He had backup in Chris Crowell, if he had just pressured Zach Budish, who knows we could've went to overtime at the very least. I'd hate to be so hard on Tyler Currier because I like his style of play, the grit and nastiness of his game. But:

Dude you are a senior, you are from Anchorage, and we could've made the push to OT or won. 

Upon watching this again and again, in all honesty that was a bone-headed play by Tyler Currier. Chris Crowell had Zach Budish all tied up, and occupied. Tyler just got way too excited, and in this one conference win season so far, makes it even worse. Just try to get the puck or skate over to the defenseman and clog up a passing lane Tyler. Here's the video:

And a little breakdown.

Somewhere in the middle of the 2nd period to around the start of the third period, Kurt Haider on air called out Chris Crowell and Tyler Currier. I don't remember his exact words but it went something along the lines of "Currier and Crowell should know better, there are currently taking the bait from Minnesota and should stop biting". Boy was that foreshadowing or what, but I digress.

Feel free to vent your frustrations here, but this is the last time I will bring this up this season.

We need a win badly, and how do we do this you ask? By playing exactly the way we did in the first period last night. We had the #1 team in the nation on its heels, we scored first and got the crowd out of it until Minny scored. Again, Minnesota only scored one even strength goal. We are hard to score against five on five, Don Lucia brought this up in the Golden Gopher's Preview Interviews. If we can stay out of the box, come out fires a blazing and play smart hockey the whole game, ladies and gentlemen we have a split series.

I thought Gundy played very solid last night, the game winner you knew was going in though. Doesn't matter if we had Dominik Hasek or Jacques Plante in net, that baby was going in. I say stick with the rotation, Kamal is 3-4-0 against UM and maybe he can help work some puck luck to the boys. As for the Gophers, it will be interesting to see if there stud Adam Wilcox will start tonight, he has already played two games this week (Notre Dame on Tuesday then us). According to College Hockey News, Adam will get the nod again from Head Coach Don Lucia.

Things to watch for
• The whole score by committee was in full action last night as nine different Seawolves registered a point, nobody had more than one last night
• Blake Tatchell had an assist last night and is the current leader in points 3-9-12 in 19 GP

And the drop of the puck is 4:07 AKST tonight and on 650 KENI for us locals listening in on the great Kurt Haider.