Mike Guentzel to be named assistant coach

Fellow blogger Goon has reported that former Gopher assistant Mike Guentzel will be named CC assistant coach this afternoon (wed.) after resigning from Minnesota in April. No official word on the CC website but I'll be sure to post when I find out. Here's the current report

DU Wins Broadmoor Trophy

At least it stayed in Colorado. DU battled to beat Minnesota to win the 2008 Broadmoor Trophy leaving the two Colorado rivals each champions of the league this season, CC got the regular season and DU with the post-season. However, neither of those matter as the battle for the national championship will begin this week.
It was an entertaining game, one that featured Minnesota getting some payback from last night when a centering pass hit their defenseman and went in their own net.
Game story here

Goofy Goal Leaves Tigers Broadmoorless Again

A centering pass deflects off Nate Prosser's glove, rolls down Bachman's back and into the net giving the Gophers an OT winner and a place in the WCHA title game tomorrow against Denver. The Tigers didn't play poorly, but a brick wall was in place for the Gophers and the Tigers were left in a position where anything could happen, and it did. You could watch the entire NCAA Tournament and probably not see a goal as awkward and laced with fate as that one. The Tigers will play surprise loser North Dakota tomorrow in the consolation game-a game completely meaningless to arguably the two best teams in college hockey. Conference tournaments are always strange and give the underdog the chance, and this year's is no exception. One good thing about this game is that the Tigers will save up some effort for the NCAA Tournament, although they are left without their own trophy once again.

CC Athletics
Broadmoor Trophy remains elusive for CC
If there really is such thing as playoff magic, it continues to fall in the University of Minnesota’s favor. The Gophers got the lucky break of the night on Friday, scoring a fluke goal at 4:47 of overtime to claim a 2-1 victory over Colorado College in their semifinal match-up at the WCHA Final Five. The defeat at the Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul, Minn,, sticks regular-season champion CC into Saturday’s third-place game against North Dakota, a 3-1 loser to Denver on Friday, with the winner likely to receive a No. 1 seed for next week’s NCAA West Regional at the World Arena. The Tigers simply did not get the job done in their first appearance at the Final Five since 2005. They launched a season-high 20 shots on goal in the opening period, and finally took the lead on a power-play tally by Andreas Vlassopoulos early in the second, but then let Minnesota back into the game less than a minute later. Freshman left wing Mike Hoeffel burned CC twice, first on a rising wrist shot from the slot to tie the score at 1:38 of that middle frame, then in overtime when his centering attempt from the left faceoff circle deflected into the net off Colorado College defenseman Nate Prosser. Meanwhile, at the other end of the ice, Alex Kangas won the duel of freshman goaltenders, finishing with 37 saves. Richard Bachman made 33 stops for the Tigers, who were unable to take advantage of a Minnesota team that started post-season play as a seventh seed and was playing its fifth game in the last eight days.

Gophers Prevail

University of Minnesota photo















The Tigers will take on Minnesota Friday night in a rematch of the Tigers season-opening sweep. UM knocked off St. Cloud in front of a whopping 19,232 fans. Even though Minnesota is coming on strong, I personally feel more comfortable facing them than the Huskies, a team that beat us twice and smothered us in our first home loss of the season. The battle between the WCHA #1 and #7 will begin at 6:07 Mountain Time Friday night with radio coverage on 103.9FM and a special treat, on TV local NBC affiliate 5/30 in the Southern Colorado viewing area.

St. Cloud-Minnesota Box Score Here

UM official recap here

In Case You've Missed It

There was some excitement up in Minnesota Saturday night as the Gophers and the Fighting Sioux went at it, literally. Between a coach flipping the bird and a wild post-OT handshake there wasn't much hockey to be remembered. Thankfully, internet enthusiasts have captured everything for the enjoyment of those of us who were still gloating about demolishing the ECAC leaders. Enjoy!

UPDATED: North Dakota coach Dave Hakstol has been suspended 2 games for his now famous screen shot above.

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!

DU impressed with Tigers?!

The Tigers were being made fun of and mocked by our rival blog LetsGoDU last week due to the whole blackface fiasco. This week, however, dggoddard seemed to be pretty impressed with the Tigers' sweep of the Gophers over the weekend. Could there be a little respect building?? Ha, I doubt it! But at least they have taken notice and realize that we may have something special brewing. How big are the games going to be over Thanksgiving with these guys?!!!

Tigers Sweep Minnesota

Chad Rau scores the game winner in OT to complete the sweep of the Gophers

CC flattens Minnesota 3-1

On the first night of the season, the Tigers looked to be ready to start the WCHA tournaments. The Tigers out-skated, out-hit and out-played the Gophers who looked worn out after the first period. Although they struck quickly after the Tigers first score (the PA announcer wasn't even through announcing the goal) they looked over matched the rest of the way. CC has always been know as a finesse, speedy team but there were numerous hip-checks that send gophers flipping faster than Eddi Murphy chase the rodent in "caddy shack". I was impressed with the team all the way around. The only downfall of the night was the World Arena was probably only at 75% capacity. The annoying old Minnesota fans behind me (that kept saying, "c'mon Gophs, SKATE!" something they didn't do well all night) was even surprised-he got his ticket the day they went on sale. Welcome to Colorado Springs, home of individuals. It also doesn't help that we have 2 D-I teams in the same city. But back to the game; by the third period, the Tigers were skating circles around Don Lucia's team...literally! Did anyone keep track of how long the Tigers were in Minnesota's end in that third period?!! Great game, great team, if they keep this up the 07/08 Tigers are going to be something special.

Season starts in full force

Well the 2 "pre-season" exhibition games are over and now the season starts in full force with national powerhouse Minnesota charging into town for the weekend. Should be a good opportunity to see what our Tigers are made of right out of the gate. Regardless of the outcome, this can't be a disaster for the Tigers, even if they are swept. Having an opponent of this caliber the first week will start them out high and prepare them for the rest of the season. Also, being the first weekend, there is plenty of time for the Tigers to come back if disaster strikes and they don't win a game. It will be a great battle and I'm sure there will be plenty of Minnesota fans descending on the Springs this week. I have never had the opportunity to be at one of these games so it should be a blast, great atmosphere and great hockey!
The Tigers won their two warm-up games and the young kids seemed to do pretty well.
You can find the quick recap of the games at the CC hockey page.

Look for a feature this week regarding the recent history between the Tigers and the Gophers. Thanks for your support of this blog and I'm looking forward to hitting the regular season strong!

Frozen Four Set

The 2007 Frozen Four is all set to begin Thursday night in St. Louis. The WCHA is left with one surviving team out of 3. North Dakota took out regular and postseason WCHA Champ Minnesota in OT on Sunday night to return to the Frozen Four once again. They are joined by Michigan State (who took out Notre Dame), Boston College and Maine. North Dakota is the clear powerhouse here with 7 national titles (all the rest each have 2) and coming out of a conference that was won the last 5 National Championships and 6 out of the last 7. BC and Maine won in 2001 and 1999 respectively. Michigan State is the underdog of the 4, last winning a title in 1986 but having been to the Frozen Four last in 2001. It will be a great final 3 games beginning Thursday afternoon at 2pm MST on ESPN2 followed by BC and ND at 6pm MST. Personally I am pulling for ND because of the WCHA conference and I hate the east coast teams, if you can believe that I could hate a team from the east haha. I'm excited that the games will be on ESPN2 and aren't going to be in the middle of the day like when CC and DU played a few years back. The final will be Saturday night at 5pm MST on ESPN and hopefully help give college hockey more exposure!

Gophers come back to spoil Falcons upset bid

Air Force came out in full force in their first ever NCAA Tournament appearence and almost got away with a win against the Minnesota Gophers at the Pepsi Center Saturday. It looked like it may happen when AF took a 3-1 lead 5 minutes into the 3rd period until the Gophers woke up and scored three goals to finish off the Falcons and avoid a 2nd straight 1st round loss in the NCAA Tournament, nonetheless to another AHA team. This was an interesting game for a fan of CO hockey simply because it pitted a home town team against the WCHA powerhouse from the north. Personally, I would have liked to see AF win since it was their first time ever in the tourney, but I really like to see the WCHA do well, even if Minnesota has dominated almost everyone this year. At least it's not DU right?!

In other conference news, St. Cloud State was eliminated in the first round, falling 4-1 to the Maine Black Bears on Friday night, leaving the WCHA with 2 surviving teams. When I wrote this entry, North Dakota was up on evil Michigan 7-5 early in the 3rd period.

AF gets a taste of the WCHA

In a little twist of fate, Air Force has won their conference and will be heading to the NCAA Tournament up the road at Pepsi Center. The "crappy" team of the area has beaten out the two powerhouses and gets the pleasure of playing against none other than Minnesota in the first round (a team that won the Broadmoor Trophy and was knocked out in the first round last year.) AF will get a taste of our conference and it will be interesting to see what they are made of. I'm all for the power of the WCHA, but it would be fun to the the team from N. Colorado Springs take out one of the best teams in the country.

Back to the grind

I am back in cold Nebraska after 10 days enjoying the sunshine and blue skies of Colorado Springs and Las Vegas. There have been numerous things of note that have happened in the WCHA and CC world over the past week that are of note and that most of you know. Minnesota won the Broadmoor trophy with a cray OT winning goal. The Gazette had a sweet piece about the National Champion CC team from 50 years ago and another former CC player made some news in the NHL. I hope everyone is enjoying the vids and the pics and will continue to the rest of the summer until next season. If anyone has a any media they would like to add, don't hesitate to let me know!

Weekend swept away

The only positive that can come out of this weekend was that Minnesota is probably the best team in the country, however, being swept at home is never ever a positive thing. The Tigers held it to 0-0 until near the end of the 2nd period when they let in 2 goals in under 5 minutes. However, the Tigers scored 2 quick goals in the first 8 minutes of the 3rd period to tie it but Minnesota got the win with a goal 22 seconds later that proved to be the game winner. It's too bad that CC missed a chance to gain points this weekend. A win against Minnesota would have given them a quality win and better placement in the PairWise rankings but instead they are now facing the strong possibility of not making the NCAA tournament. We are going to need nothing less than a sweep this next weekend against Minnesota State or we can kidd the post season goodbye. The Tigers are now (16-13-3).

As far as attendance and my goal of creating fan interest: the Arena had 7809 fans tonight which is a good jump over the 7790 the night before (both were sellouts so it's nice to see it over capacity). I need to do some digging into season tickets since it looks like Saturdays are consistently higher in number which alludes to Sat. only packages. The one thing I'm worried about is how many of these fans were Gopher fans. I've been to games against those teams from the North and have often felt outnumbered. If anyone has any stories from the game I would love to hear em! (either side)

A quick look at the next games

As most of you know, the Tigers are taking on the rival Minnesota Golden Gophers this coming Friday and Saturday nights. Of course coaching is the underlying theme of this series since Minnesota's Don Lucia was the Tigers coach from 1993-1999. In that time the Tigers won the regular season WCHA title 3 times (his first three seasons). After Don's first season, the Tigers made the NCAA tournament every year for the rest of his tenure, they finished 2nd in 95/96 and 3rd in 96/97. The second place finish was the heartbreaking loss to Michigan. He has had even better success at the helm in Minnesota as the Gophers won the national title in 00/01 and again in 01/02. They have reached the NCAA tournament in all but his first season as head coach and have also won the WCHA tournament 02/03 and 03/04. Only this past season has he won the regular season title with the Gophers. Currently, the Gophers are riding a 2-game win streak after sweeping Alaska Anchorage 8-2 and 2-1. According to the USCHO poll, Minnesota is currently #2 in the nation with a record of 23-5-3. The Tigers dropped to 14th after coming off a 1 point weekend but do have the leagues best home record on their side. As far as conference standings, Minnesota is #1 with 33 points, followed by St. Cloud with 29, Denver with 27 and CC with 26. This weekend's games are extremely important in both the Pairwise rankings as well as the conference race for the MacNaughton Cup.

Monday work

As you can see I've given the site a bit of a cosmetic makeover. I was hoping that the left justified links would help with readibility since my entries are ragged on the right. I went hunting for CC videos on both google video and youtube and didn't find a thing. Even the cstv site didn't have anything CC, their college hockey highlight video had Air Force but no CC, what the heck?! As you know, I'm on a mission to find video of the Tigers so I'm still hunting. I did find a cool video about Marty Sertich from a few years ago hidden in the video highlights from USCHO, but the highlights are all over the place, no real nightly recaps. I did, however, find a fun video of a cheap goal by ND against the Gophers. Granted, it's not CC in the video, but hey, maybe it could happen this weekend!