Tigers Dominate for 45 minutes, survive frantic finish to win 2-1

CC came out flying full speed tonight, determined to get the early momentum and take Air Force off their high from last night's stomping of DU. CC looked faster and more skilled through the first 2 periods, swarming pucks and peppering AFA goalie Andrew Volkening and his white helmet with quality shots. Anytime there was a loose puck, two bright yellow streaks were right behind it.
The Tigers got a first period goal from Bill Sweatt and led in shots 16-4. Second period was more of the same, Air Force playing well but CC was a step ahead. The Tigers registered only five shots to AFA's 8 in an up and down battle. The Tigers notched their second goal when former Lincoln Star Steve Shultz smacked a loose puck into the back of the net. The third period was a battle from the start but the Tigers held the advantage until Falcon star player Eric Ehn was taken down by Sweatt and slammed into the board hard. We were sitting on the opposite end of the arena and you could just feel the crunch. His left left was crunched awkwardly and after about 10 minutes of being examined and stabilized by trainers, was taken off the ice on a stretcher. More on that when I find out, hopefully nothing too seriously. When play resumed, the World Arena crowd was so silent you could hear the coaches yelling from the benches, eerie. The Falcons finally got something going as you could see the Tigers begin to let up. AFA got their first and only goal by Scott Kozlak at 8:22. The two teams battled back and forth with the Falcons now a step faster. With 37 seconds on the clock (after another loooong delay in which the timekeeper forgot to start that clock on the play before) the Falcons swarmed the net, only to be denied by the nation's #1 goaltender Richard Bachman. The Tigers survived and kept the streak alive against the northside rivals with their 25th consecutive win and a record of 29-0 with one tie over the past 23 years.

Notes from the stands:
The officials made 2 painfully obvious errors in game management tonight. The first came with CC in the offensive zone and Steve Shultz passes the puck to the center of the zone, where not Tiger resided, and the puck flew down to the other side of the ice. The Tigers went to retrieve it but it was blown for icing. Last time I checked, you can't ice it in your own zone so, unless they made another call that we didn't hear, the blew it (in the Tigers favor).

With under 1 minute to play, the Tigers took a shot at the empty net. The puck was deflected by a Falcon defender's stick at the blue line(almost into the net) and it hit the wall and was blown dead for icing. Problem was, it was touched at the blue line by a Falcon, which should have just kept the play going.

The last error tails on the previous one. After the poor icing call, the clock was reset to 50 seconds remaining...the exact amount of time that was there on the previous face-off. So we sat through a long delay and the ref vanished into the replay booth and came out to report 37 seconds remaining. Usually fans argue that home ice advantage will tick a few clocks off. In this case, the Falcons almost gained back 20 seconds. The ensuing flurry proved that extra time could have been costly.

Fun note: there were two U18 teams sitting our section tonight. The Chicago Fury was all around us and was mostly CC or neutral fans. At least until Air Force scored and the kid right behind me decided to go 5-year-old and started yelling "CC sux! Colorado sux!" for about 5 minutes. As the final minutes wore on, any chant from the students to my left was followed by a yell in my ear. "Let's go Tigers!" "Tigers suck!". The kid was just looking for a fight and the kid sitting next to kept warning him "dude you need to watch yourself" and looked at me. I really didn't feel like spending the cold night in jail for smashing a little kid's nose in so I kept my eyes on the ice, wondering if the kid behind me wasn't hugged enough as a child.

Official Game Recap From Friday Night

CC rallies in third period to beat Beavers
Testing its exciting new habit of living on the edge, third-ranked Colorado College survived by the skin of its teeth on Friday. The Tigers scored three times in the third period, roaring back from a two-goal deficit to defeat Bemidji State University, 5-4, in non-conference action at the World Arena. In winning six of its last seven games, including five in a row, CC has struck for 16 tallies in the final 20 minutes of play. Its unblemished record on home ice, now 10-0, looked to be in serious jeopardy on this snowy night after sophomore forward Chris McKelvie recorded a natural hat trick for the visiting Beavers heading into the second intermission. McKelvie’s third red lighter, off a shorthanded breakaway, put BSU up 4-2 at 19:19 of the middle frame. But Chad Rau pulled the Tigers back to within a goal, clicking on the same power play just 24 seconds into the third period. It was Rau’s second goal of the game and 19th of the season. Sophomore defenseman Brian Connelly tied things up at 9:42, whistling a low wrist shot through traffic from the left point after Andreas Vlassopoulos, who earlier struck for CC’s first goal, won a faceoff in the Bemidji State zone. Bill Sweatt netted the game winner at 13:01, finishing a quick rush with Vlassopoulos after defenseman Kris Fredheim broke up a Beavers rush and turned the puck up ice. Junior goalie Drew O’Connell, who set up the first-period goal by Vlassopoulos with a long outlet pass, finished with 28 saves to backstop the triumph. Senior defenseman Jack Hillen also collected pair of assists.

US Junior Team heads to semis against Canada

photo by Melissa Wade, USCHO

Our US Junior team finished the preliminary rounds undefeated for only the second time and posted a 5-3 victory over Finland to take the top spot in Pool B and will take on Canada tomorrow
(Jan 4) for in the semi-finals. The winner will play the winner of Sweden Russia for the Gold Metal, the losers of each game will play for the Bronze.

Recent Tiger News for the holidays

Hope everyone is having a great December! Even though it is a dead-period for the college hockey season there is still plenty of interesting news.

As if Minnesota's struggles weren't enough already, they learned this week that they have seen the last of sophomore Kyle Okposo as he chose, in a rare move, to bypass the rest of the season and collegiate career to sign with the NY Islanders. He was the team's 1st overall pick in the 2006 draft.
Read the Full Story

In CC news, Kate Crandall wrote a great article about Billy Sweatt joining the US Junior National team for the second time around and the oddities of being teammates with some of your fiercest WCHA rivals.
Complete Story

Also, Jack Hillen earned the weekly WCHA honor (story from CC Athletics Site)
Senior defenseman Jack Hillen, who had an assist in both games of last week’s split at St. Cloud State, has been named WCHA Defensive Player of the Week. After setting up sophomore defenseman Nate Prosser’s early go-ahead tally in Friday’s 3-1 victory, Hillen helped Colorado College hold the Huskies to just 22 shots on goal in Saturday’s 4-2 loss. He currently is CC’s top-scoring blue-line specialist with 12 points (2g,10a) for the season, and his 10 assists represent a career high. He is the third Tiger to win league POW honors so far in 2007-08, joining freshman goalie Richard Bachman and junior center Chad Rau, who have combined for five earlier awards.

And finally, I hope everyone is enjoying the seasonal blog colors. I decided to have a little Christmas fun with it last night and tweaked it, banner and all! I'm debating about the background though, that white tree has rendered the text unreadable so it's very likely that, by the time you all are reading this, you will have no idea what tree I'm talking about. Also, look for a new blog color scheme in 2008. I've had the black background for a full year now and am looking for a slight change. Don't worry, nothing drastic! As always, any inputs to the future and the blog itself are always welcome!

NHL draft updates

Holy crapy I'm writing a new entry! I've been busy enjoying summer so I haven't really had the motivation to sit down and write an entry but I'm making myself do it in light of some recent big news over the weekend. If you haven't already heard, Mr. Quiznos himself Billy Sweatt was drafted 38th by the Chicago Blackhawks in the second round of the draft. I still find it crazy how the NHL draft works, drafting young kids and then sending them off for 2-6 years to college or the minors. ESPN put it best in their headline "There wasn't any chest hair among the NHL draftees". Anyway, there was a fun article about Sweatt in the Gazette Saturday talking about his minimum wage job for the summer. I can't find it on the website because the search function sux on gazette.com (just like most of the rest of the site). Here's the rundown of the draft as a whole.

As far as the blog goes, I'm working on an actual website for all the content so that the links and vids and such can have their own pages. I'll still keep the blog for opinions and my rantings about hockey and then use the website for more formal things about the team and links to all the news releases around the WWW. If you guys have anything specific that you would like to see added, please let me know. As I've said before, blogs and websites work best as a 2-way conversation instead of some webmaster guessing what people care about! One thing of note, I apologize in advance if my coverage of the Tigers is a little weak the beginning of the season. Football season is what I live for so I will be following that more than anything, but I will make sure to give you all something to read weekly!