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!

Going out in Style

The Tigers rocked the throwbacks once again and netted a 3-1 win over rival DU to finish out the season. CC got 3 early goals, chased Manino from the net 2 minutes into the second period, then weathered 37 minutes of cheap-shots, fights and random penalties and blatant misses (Sweatt was tackled twice in the same spot and blind referee Shepherd even tackled one of our players) to get the win. I've got the pics up followed by the CC Athletics Summary of the game. I'll put up my observations about the game sometime Sunday, peace!

CC sweeps Pioneers behind O’Connell
Led by the goaltending of Drew O’Connell, Colorado College put an exclamation point on a remarkable regular season Saturday in front of a very appreciative sellout crowd at the World Arena. O’Connell frustrated the University of Denver with 27 saves, backstopping a 3-1 victory that gave the WCHA champion Tigers a sweep of their weekend series against archrival DU. Sophomore wingers Mike Testwuide, Matt Overman and Bill Sweatt provided all the offense O’Connell needed, with Testwuide and Overman scoring just 1:40 apart in the opening period to give CC an early cushion. Sweatt also assisted on Testwuide’s power-play tally at 12:09 of that first frame, while another pair of sophomores –Addison DeBoer and Brian McMillin – combined to set up the game winner by linemate Overman at the 13:49 mark. With the triumph, their third in four games against Denver this season, the Tigers recorded their 21st conference victory of the campaign and continued to build momentum heading into next week’s first-round playoff series against Alaska Anchorage. And, after clinching the MacNaughton Trophy and Gold Pan a night earlier at Magness Arena, they were officially presented with both in front of the home fans. Colorado College, which will serve as host of the NCAA West Regional in three weeks, heads into the post-season with a 16-2 mark at the World Arena.

Throwback Blowout

The Tigers took any fight out of Clarkson early tonight en route to a 6-1 thrashing of the ECAC leaders. The Tigers weren't completely cruel as they gave Clarkson their only goal when Prosser knocked a dump in past Bachman by complete accident. It was great to see him just look at Bachman like "oh sh*t!". The shutout was lost on that play but not much else. Clarkson looked competitive for the first 5 minutes of the game and it was all Tigers after that, and it seemed like the entire 3rd period was played in the Clarkson end.
Even freshman goalie Tyler O'Brien got to play for the first time as a Tiger in the last 8 minutes of the game. He had a couple pucks shot his way and was mobbed by teammates after the game, good stuff.
As for the throwback jerseys, they were freakin sweet. The picture in the Gayzette Friday made them look ugly and boring. Very sweet and if you were willing to shell out $100 bucks, fans could have gotten one with the 70th Anniversary patch put on along with their choice of number, right there at the merch. stand. Sweet deal. Except that Clarkson had the same yellow on their shoulders and at first glance you could never tell what team the puck handler was passing to. Maybe that's why Clarkson was stomped to bits this weekend?
Pics will be coming shortly. We got several shots of plays seconds before a goal and some good shots of the sweet unis. Great weekend for the Tigers. Oh and if you're keeping track, DU was swept by Minnesota State tonight.

Here's the USCHO recap
by Theresa Spisak/WCHA Correspondent

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (Feb. 2) — On a night alumni from the 70 years of Colorado College hockey wore throwback jerseys to celebrate Tigers’ hockey, the Tigers put on a show of yore, scoring six goals to defeat the Clarkson University Golden Knights 6-1 Saturday night at World Arena.

“It feels real good to [win] at home, and alumni weekend, with the special occasion jerseys, you always want to come out and put on a good show when you got former players in the stands,” said CC coach Scott Owens.

“It was [exciting] ,” said sophomore forward Mike Testwuide. “Those jerseys, they look really snazzy, I mean, we look really good, I’m not going to lie, and having all them here, the tradition they put forth for Colorado College, we wanted to show them a good time and we did that.”

The Tigers started off the scoring good times 11 minutes into the first period when Brian Connelly caused a Clarkson turnover, skated down the right side boards, cut in towards the net and flipped a wrist shot over David Leggio’s (9 saves) right shoulder.

CC went up 2-0 three minutes later on their first power play of the game. Mike Testwuide tipped in a Jack Hillen blast from the top of the ice after a pretty tic-tac-toe passing play.

“[Testwuide] was fluid, moving, he had confidence,” said Owens. “He’s a big rig and once he gets going, he can move pretty well.”

4:45 into the middle frame, Testwuide scored again to get his second goal of the game and put his Tigers up 3-0.

“[It was] a weird bounce as they tried to clear the zone,” he said. “[Chad] Rau picked it up, went wide, and Billy [Sweatt] was driving to the net, he took the ‘D’ with him and Rau gave me a really nice pass in the slot and I shot it five-hole.”

“They’re opportunistic,” said Clarkson coach George Roll. “The third goal; we got an odd-man rush going one way, it hits the glass funny and goes in our net. But they earned it; they were certainly the better team this weekend.”

About four minutes later, Testwuide fed Sweatt, who walked through three Knights en route to the front of the crease and deked Leggio for the 4-0 lead. Scott McCulloch added another goal to the lead on a power play two and half minutes later, chasing Leggio from the net in favor of back-up goaltender Tim Potter [18 saves] .

“David wasn’t on his game tonight,” said Roll. “At that point, Timmy’s worked hard and deserved the opportunity.”

The Golden Knights managed to get on the board less than a minute into the third when the Tigers’ Nate Prosser deflected a Tyrell Mason dump past Richard Bachman [21 saves] .

CC got the goal back eight minutes later as Tyler Johnson knocked in a rebound past Potter, padding the Tigers’ lead.

Both teams suffered a rash of penalties starting eight minutes into the third, but neither team converted on any of the man-advantages.

With about five and half to play, Colorado College put in their third-string goaltender, freshman Tyler O’Brien, for his first game action all year [4 saves] .

“It’s kind of a reward for him,” said Owens. “He works hard in practice and it’s tough being the role that he’s at and it was a good situation there to get him six minutes. Even though it’s six minutes, it’s still a nice situation for him as a reward. You saw the way the team kind of rallied around him and he had to make two or three saves, so that was kind of nice too.”

Despite the sound defeat, Roll was still relatively optimistic after the contest.

“I actually thought we played better tonight than last night,” he said. “I thought we did a better job of limiting their grade A’s.

“I thought they got bounces tonight, but I’m proud of our effort tonight. I thought we competed for 60 minutes against a very good team.”

As for the Tigers, the weekend gives them confidence going into the WCHA home stretch.

“We got off the schneid in scoring, so we got other people involved and we’ve gone through those three straight games where we only scored two goals and we were able to get other people involved in the scoring so I think it helps us a little bit,” said Owens. “It was a positive.”

The Tigers host St. Cloud State next weekend for a pair of games, while the Golden Knights head home for a pair of games against Cornell University.

Game Day

I got a look at the Unis the Tigers will be wearing Saturday night and I must say, I'm disappointed. If any of you get the actual paper version of the Gayzette, there is a pic of the "thowbacks" in the sports page. To give you a preview, they are the bright yellow of the 3rd jersey (a jersey I would love to see replaced by the gold and black of a few years ago) and features the Colorado College font on the front in an oval with the player number in the middle. Not bad but I prefer the sweater shown in a story inside the sports section depicting the white jersey, the same Colorado College oval but with a cartoony, full-sized stalking Tiger in the center. Cheesy? Yeah. Throwback and fun? Definitely. I love analyzing Unis, I think they are great. So much so that I'm forgoing my usual Friday night game in favor of Saturday night just to see these things. As far as the Tigers Unis go, I personally loved the Gold and Black, love the current home White (even with the Nike Swoosh on the knees)and I like the all-black road uni's, I wish we had the chance to see those once-in-a-while. I found some good media pics of the best recent jerseys below, enjoy and leave some comments on which is your favorite.
The Tigers will put their undefeated home record AND 7-0-1 record against Clarkson on the line tonight and tomorrow. I'm hoping the offensive gets rolling again in the sweep.

GO TIGERS!