Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting

From 3-8-08 CC vrs...

Nickelback's new version of the song as the Tigers came onto the ice was an ominous indicator as to how the regular season would finish off for the Tigers and Pioneers. The first period was fast, fun, and featured 2 goals by the Tigers to get the gold-clad World Arena rocking. It looked like it was going to be a blowout as the Tigers seemed to score every time they took a shot. When Bill Sweatt scored 2:37 into the second period on the Tigers 8th shot, the students started to chant "hey hey hey, good bye!". Whether it was directed at the enraged Peter Manino as he slowly made his way to the DU bench flailing his arms, or the Pioneers chances, it was fitting. I was ready to see the Tigers drop a 7 spot on their rival. Instead we got something resembling the old Gold Kings games. DU decided that since they couldn't score, they would simply fight...a lot. The rest of the game was marred by chippy play and a whopping 110 minutes of penalties on 43 calls...and Shepherd missed half of them. His calls were erratic and didn't make much logical sense. Behind a play, a Tiger was grabbed and hauled down at the blue line when the play was deep in the other end. Instead of interference on DU, Hillen got a hooking call that none of the 7,780 in attendance saw. That's the way the rest of the game went, chippy with no real flow. Between the 19:00 mark of the third period and 40 seconds left, there were at least 4 whistles which prompted me to yell out "just finish the game!!" which elicited laughter from he entire section.
The trophy presentation was cool to watch, way better than the presentation of the Big XII North trophy to the Huskers 2 years ago I saw. The Gold Pan seemed to be a quick "um, cool, where's the big one?" to the players, but still cool to see. It was great seeing the players take turns hoisting the MacNaughton Cup, each one getting his own roar from the crowd. If the Tigers can survive this physical onslaught (something that plagued them in losses to DU during the Tigers last McNaughton Cup season) they should be set for an amazing run.
Fun notes from the game:

• Drew "I never smile for pictures" O'Connell got the start in net tonight and played extremely well. He made numerous saves that made me look twice to see if it was number 30 who had snuck back into net. Great game by the junior.
• Best noise at the game: had to be the air horn that one fan had and blasted after each Tiger goal
• Best moment: the Arena cameras caught a young fan holding up the "WCHA regular season Champions" t-shirt, which resulted in a standing ovation from the packed arena. Pretty cool.
• DU who? All of us in the Springs know that there are far more DU alums running around showing off their colors that CC alums but you would not have known it last night. Aside from the DU students that came down, Pio fans were scarce. I think I saw 2 while grabbing a beer at intermission. Who woulda thought?
• Best sign: a girl in the CC student section had a sign "We got the better Testwuide!!!"
• Students alive and well: The CC students were loud, rowdy and jumping around like the old days for the entire game. So much so that we caught at least 2 students being escorted out by security. Personally, I think unless someone is a physical danger they should let them be, they are isolated from the rest of the fans but whatever, it was fun to see the whole section jumping around.
• Unified crowd: After the second, no third, fourth? round of fighting instigated by DU, every fan in the arena joined in a "DU SUCKS!" chant that was almost eerie it was so loud.
• My pics from the game came out freaking awesome so take a look at the slide show in the post below, I was impressed with myself, haha.
• Milo Bryant had a great article about the game in the paper today. Maybe it was great because he noticed the same things I did? Either way, he is by far the best writer at that paper and I'll make sure to drop him some props in his article comment section. Read his article here
• And finally: the throwbacks were back again!! I'm not sure if it was planned before Sunday or not but it was a great treat for the fans. Judging from the merch in the stands, those are by far the biggest seller. I may be temped to shell out for one myself, they are just so freakin sweet!

That should be enough reading to keep everyone occupied for a while. Great finish to the season and now the Tigers turn their attention to Alaska Anchorage. A team Owens says is tough in the playoffs and he sounded like he was ready to battle a 3 game series. We'll see. UAA is arriving in the Springs Tuesday to get acclimated so altitude shock won't be a factor. Should be a great series. Hopefully the Tigers can bring the Broadmoor Trophy back home and win the WCHA Tournament!