UND Fighting Sioux Playing for the Broadmoor Tonight
Tonight we win the Broadmoor. Watch it on Fox Sports North at 7 pm North Dakota time.
The UND Fighting Sioux have had a lot of success. They beat the University of Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs Thursday night two to nothing in a well fought game. It appears that Duluth’s chances of making the national tournament are pretty thin.
That victory gave the Sioux the chance to play the number one team in the country, the Denver Pioneers. That game didn’t look that promising as they had beat us in all four meetings we had with them. The consolation is that we did play them very close in three of those games.
Last night was a different story. The Sioux dominated the game more so than the 4-3 score showed. The player of the game was Evan Trupp from Anchorage Alaska. Prior to this week he had been playing well but had only scored 5 goals. He put one in against Duluth and two more last night against the WCHA’s Goalie of the Year. He also picked up a beautiful assist where he beat a Denver player to the puck, although the Denver guy had the advantage. Trupp then spun around backwards and put the puck right on Brad Malone’s stick for a beautiful goal.
Trupp also shined when it came to playing defense. Time after time he intercepted a set-up pass that would have been dangerous to our team. He’d turn up the ice and create a rush going the other way.
Tonights game is against the St Cloud Huskies. They overachieved a bit in my opinion by beating the Wisconsin Badgers last night. One of their top scorers went down in the game and was hauled off in a gurney. The announcers at the Sioux game said that the tests came back clear but I haven’t heard if he’s going to be able to play tonight.
The Sioux are a better team than St. Cloud in my opinion. Still we split the season with them, losing a couple one goal games against them and winning the other two decisively. The last game we played them in their barn was an 8-1 drubbing.
The game tonight will come down to two things. The Sioux need to play up to their potential and we need to not take stupid penalties.
In other news, Virg Foss had another blistering column about the WCHA leadership. In this case he blasted WCHA commissioner (and well known crook) Bruce McCLeod for having no standards about how he administers discipline.
Tags: North Dakota News, SportsDear Bruce McLeod:
College hockey isn’t a child’s game, where you make up rules as you go. Yet that’s how you continue to operate in your role as commissioner of the Western Collegiate Hockey Association.
I perhaps can buy the 5-minute major given to North Dakota’s Matt Frattin for charging for his hit on Minnesota’s Kevin Wehrs recently.
But for you to step in and add a one-game suspension makes no sense. Frattin didn’t leave his feet in making the hit, and didn’t bring his arms up to initiate contact to the head.
Earlier, you gave UND’s Mario Lamoureux a one-game suspension for dropping his gloves and challenging St. Cloud State’s Aaron Marvin to a fight, though none took place.
In the aftermath of Frattin’s hit, looks to me from the video replay that Gopher defenseman Seth Helgeson has his gloves off in his effort to get after Frattin.
So once again your seat-of-the-pants rulings have no consistency or much logic, either.
That so many calls or non-calls by league referees are changed by the league office after the fact highlights my view that league officiating overall isn’t very good or very consistent in the first place.
I sense a growing feeling that a change in league leadership is needed — and soon.
