Tigers Sweep in OT Thriller

Photo by Kevin Kreck


Sorry about the delay to all of you who faithfully hop onto the site after the games. I had to abandon the game after the second period and head over to Meadow Muffins (in that random freak blizzard) to hang with some old co-workers. Thankfully, I ran into Roger at the bar who was sporting a really old school Tigers' jersey and hat, so I moseyed on over to inquire about what I thought would be news of a close loss and tried to contain my look when he said they had won in OT thanks to a goal by Mike Testwuide (Roger, thanks for all the fun hockey info and for proudly sporting that sweet throwback-times-2 jersey!). This team has all the makings, and luck, of a championship team. I remember I wrote about it after we swept Minnesota to start the season. Roger and I talked about how sweet it would be for the Tigers to get all four trophies this season (McNaughton, Gold Pan, Broadmoor and National Championship) and they have a great chance. From the 40 minutes I heard of Ken Landau's assessment of the game, the Tigers played much better than last night; it was the Seawolves goalie Jon Olthuis who pulled a Patrick Roy act tonight to almost steal a victory. Box Score here
The Tigers now get to rest an extra day as the rest of the league decided to battle it out longer, with the exception of DU. The Pioneers swept Minnesota Duluth with a 1-0 win to complete the series against a team that has the worst luck scoring of all 10 teams. Just like how last night had a theme of home teams winning, tonight was OTs. Aside from DU, every game went extra time. Minnesota took out Mankato 2-1, St. Cloud swept Wisconsin (St. Cloud could be a scary opponent in Minnesota next weekend) and the biggest surprise was Michigan Tech getting a win over North Dakota. Now with the game threes, anything can happen. Can you imagine the Final Five being CC and DU with St. Cloud, Mankato and Michigan Tech?? Sounds odd but it could happen. Tomorrow night will be crazy and extremely fun to see what happens. As for our Tigers, they will play March 21 at 6:07MT against the lowest seed.

CC Athletics Game Summary
Testwuide powers CC to overtime victory
Thanks in no small measure to sophomore wingers Mike Testwuide and Bill Sweatt, Colorado College is returning to the WCHA Final Five for the first time since 2005. Testwuide’s second goal of the game, at 2:58 of overtime on Saturday, lifted the Tigers to a 3-2 sudden-death victory over the University of Alaska Anchorage at the World Arena that completed a two-game sweep of their best-of-three first-round playoff series. The dramatic tally capped a come-from-behind effort that saw CC rally twice from one-goal deficits, tying the game on red lighters by Sweatt at 4:22 of the second period and by Testwuide at 5:54 of the third. Unlike Friday’s 4-1 triumph, in which the last-place Seawolves finished with a 28-20 advantage in shots on goal, CC was able to create a number of scoring opportunities throughout Game 2 of the series. But Alaska Anchorage, which got 27 saves from netminder Jon Olthuis, used a pair of nice goals from Kane Lafranchise and Josh Lunden to build its 2-1 lead after 40 minutes of play. Testwuide, who combined with Jimmy Kilpatrick to set up Sweatt’s goal, took a pass from Chad Rau and beat Olthuis low on the short side to pull the Tigers even for the second time. He then took Sweatt’s feed from along the right boards in overtime, cut into the slot from the left side and ended the game with a quick wrist shot just inside the far post. Colorado College will play in one of two WCHA semifinals on Friday at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minn., against an opponent yet to be determined, starting at 7:07 CDT.