Author Archives: Geof F. Morris

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Editorial: Widespread conference schedule exemption

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It is time for a new exemption in college hockey: If you play in a geographically diverse conference, all non-Alaska members can play one home series each season that can be exempted from the visitors’ schedule maximum.

The Alaska Exemption

College hockey fans generally know about “the Alaskan exemption” if you schedule games at either Alaska or Alaska-Anchorage, those games do not count against your 34-game maximum, and as such you can schedule 36 games against Division I opponents.  For men’s ice hockey, the relevant section of the 2017-18 NCAA Division I manual is 17.13.5.3 Annual Exemptions, item (i).

(i) Hawaii or Alaska.  Any games played in Hawaii or Alaska, respectively, against an active Division I member institution located in Hawaii or Alaska, by a member located outside the area in question;

which is to say that UAA and UAF can’t exempt their four games against each other.

This rule exists to maintain NCAA member school viability in far-flung locales (Puerto Rico is often included in these exemptions despite its geographic proximity to Florida).  The thinking goes that a team that makes the trip to Alaska, Hawaii, or Puerto Rico can then schedule an extra home game (or weekend), allowing it to recuperate some or all of the cost of the travel.  For the remote schools, it allows them to play a fuller Division I schedule without saddling them with a travel budget many times what their continental counterparts would require.

The Alaska Concentration

College hockey fans generally know that both UAA and UAF are in the same conference, which wasn’t the case as recently as five years ago, when the CCHA still existed and hated biscuits.  Now the WCHA has the worst far-flung travel schedule of all of the conferences, and it’s frankly not even close.  Behold:

Atlantic Hockey’s geographic midpoint is in Allegany, NY.

Atlantic Hockey Geographic Midpoint

The Big Ten’s geographic midpoint is in Climax, MI.

Big Ten Geographic Footprint

The ECAC’s geographic midpoint is in Rensselaer, NY.

ECAC Geographic Footprint

Hockey East’s geographic midpoint is Windham, NH.

Hockey East Geographic Footprint

The NCHC’s geographic midpoint is in Webb, IA.

NCHC Geographic Footprint

The WCHA’s geographic midpoint is Falcon Beach, MB.

WCHA Geographic Footprint

The Far-Flung Problem

The WCHA has all three of the longest road trips in the country: Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Huntsville.  Furthermore, all four Michigan schools are far from well-traveled airports, and Bemidji State is equidistant from Winnipeg and Minneapolis.  Only one WCHA member school — UAA — is served by a large airport with regularly scheduled flights capable of easily carrying a full hockey team and their gear.  If you travel to most any other school via air, you’ll be riding a bus for a couple of hours at minimum to and from the airport.  (Yes, this is true of Huntsville: despite being the conference’s largest metropolitan area, proximity to Atlanta, Nashville, and Birmingham means that HSV is pretty small.)

In theory, each non-Alaska WCHA school can exempt two games a season, and in some years, you get to exempt four. WCHA schools have had an issue getting home dates to make use of the exemption, largely nullifying the value of being in a conference with UAA and UAF.  The WCHA will have 63 (up to 65) non-conference games in 2018-19, and just 25 of those are at home.  The breakdown of those 25 games are: AHC (3), ASU (2), Bi7 (5), ECAC (2), HE (4), NCHC (9).  Just four of those (SCSU @ UAA 2x, CC @ UAF 2x) are exemption-sourcing games.

The availability of WCHA schools to schedule two or four extra games hasn’t proved to make it easier to get home dates.  Furthermore, the current constitution of the WCHA as the leftovers thrown into one western conference means that seven schools are saddled with the difficulties of traveling to three programs, costs that are difficult to offset without an incentive for schools to visit them (or to offer lucrative pay dates).  For the three eastern conferences: the three AHC games are with teams in the western half of the conference (MC, RMU); the HE trips are BU and Merrimack, and the ECAC trip is Cornell to NMU, which isn’t an arduous journey.  It’s telling that the two top-flight trips — BU-MSU, CU-NMU — are to teams at the top of the WCHA last season.

Proposed Solution

Simply put: Rather than a state-based solution, make it a geographic-based one.

  1. If you are at least 1,000 miles from your conference’s geographic center, you can award all visiting schools a one-series, two-game exemption from their schedule maximum.
  2. If at least half of a conference’s member schools are at least 500 miles from that conference’s geographic center, all non-Alaska schools can award one visiting school a one-series, two-game exemption from their schedule maximum.

The net effect of this proposal is as follows:

  1. Air Force and Alabama-Huntsville would additionally be able to enable visiting schools to exempt games as long as conference affiliations are in their current configuration.
  2. Atlantic Hockey and WCHA schools would become able to designate one home, non-conference series as eligible for exemption each season.
Rationale

If the goal is to increase the amount of teams playing Division I sports in general, including supporting programs outside of the traditional geographic footprints of those sports, schedule exemptions are a great way to increase travel to these far-flung member schools.  Adding Air Force and UAH to the list of schools that grant exemptions not only allows them to schedule more home games, but it allows members of their parent conferences to offset the costs of having a distant member in their midst.  The costs of travel to these distant destinations can be offset with a home weekend, but if your program struggles to get home weekends — and AHC and WCHA schools do — this gives you another arrow in your quiver.

Let us again consider this season.  Would WCHA schools be seeing just 18 games against top-four leagues, most of those between in-state teams that are long-standing foes?  If you’re Ohio State, don’t you consider a two-and-two rather than a one-and-one with BG because you could pick up another three home games out of the deal?  If you’re Western, don’t you try to play Ferris State every year?

Exemptions for all WCHA and AHC members allow them to get bigger schools to schedule them for games.  While these two leagues are pretty widespread, the hearts of each league are near hockey hotbeds, so getting exempt games generated locally will help these schools.

As for Air Force and Alabama-Huntsville, they both benefit greatly.

Air Force would cement its place in AHC, because it moving somewhere else collapses the league into a footprint centered on Binghamton, NY, one that takes the exemption away from all of those schools.  Air Force would be virtually guaranteed home games with in-state foes DU and CC every season, and it’s likely that some schools would make a Colorado trip and do single games with Air Force and either Denver or Colorado, using the exemption on the other in-Colorado game and keeping a home seris in pocket.

Alabama-Huntsville has historically struggled to get quality home opponents; its best such series came only when local boy Nic Dowd was a senior at St. Cloud and got Bob Motzko to bring him down.  A full-exemption home non-conference slate would likely see the team playing 18-20 home dates a season, which would greatly help attendance and send a message that Huntsville is a home for hockey.  UAH could even have seasons where its only road series were in conference play.

Atlantic Hockey members would benefit as well, as many of these schools are short bus rides away from HE, ECAC, and Bi7 schools, who would be much likelier to schedule road dates to those schools.

A Survey of the Distances of Each School to their Conference’s Geographic Midpoint

All distances courtesy of Daft Logic’s Distance Calculator.  They are direct-line distances between each and do not reflect road availability or travel times.

In short, four schools (Air Force, Alabama-Huntsville, Alaska-Anchorage, and Alaska) are more than 1,000 miles from their league’s geographic midpoint, and two conferences (Atlantic Hockey, WCHA) have at least half of member schools playing at least 500 miles from the geographic center.

Atlantic Hockey (average distance 648 miles, standard deviation 333 miles)

  • Air Force, 1,398 miles
  • American International, 302 miles
  • Army, 239 miles
  • Bentley, 372 miles
  • Canisius, 763 miles
  • Holy Cross, 402 miles
  • Mercyhurst, 825 miles
  • Niagara, 769 miles
  • Robert Morris, 855 miles
  • RIT, 700 miles
  • Sacred Heart, 507 miles

Big Ten (206, 157):

  • Michigan, 82 miles
  • Michigan State, 55 miles
  • Minnesota, 431 miles
  • Notre Dame, 61 miles
  • Ohio State, 199 miles
  • Penn State, 400 miles
  • Wisconsin, 215 miles

ECAC (108, 52):

  • Brown, 132 miles
  • Clarkson, 153 miles
  • Colgate, 92 miles
  • Cornell, 141 miles
  • Dartmouth, 104 miles
  • Harvard, 136 miles
  • Princeton, 165 miles
  • Quinnipiac, 97 miles
  • RPI, 6 miles
  • St. Lawrence, 153 miles
  • Union, 15 miles
  • Yale, 101 miles

Hockey East (65, 59):

  • Boston College, 33 miles
  • Boston University, 32 miles
  • Connecticut, 84 miles
  • Maine, 195 miles
  • Massachusetts, 69 miles
  • Massachusetts-Lowell, 12 miles
  • Merrimack, 11 miles
  • New Hampshire, 30 miles
  • Northeastern, 32 miles
  • Providence, 68 miles
  • Vermont, 150 miles

NCHC (398, 183):

  • Colorado College, 586 miles
  • Denver, 563 miles
  • Miami, 584 miles
  • Minnesota-Duluth, 301 miles
  • Nebraska-Omaha, 126 miles
  • North Dakota, 358 miles
  • St. Cloud State, 185 miles
  • Western Michigan, 482 miles

WCHA (877, 733):

  • Alabama-Huntsville, 1125 miles
  • Alaska-Anchorage, 2207 miles
  • Alaska, 2138 miles
  • Bemidji State, 155 miles
  • Bowling Green, 804 miles
  • Ferris State, 623 miles
  • Lake Superior, 552 miles
  • Michigan Tech, 357 miles
  • Minnesota State, 387 miles
  • Northern Michigan, 425 miles
What about realignment?

Discussions of the effects of this proposal on realignment (or realignment on this proposal) might be done at a later date.

Give It Up for Alabama’s Favorite Fighting Frenchman

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“Why isn’t Carmine Guerriero playing?”

This is a common question to Michael and me, and since we’ve never addressed it here, let’s do this:

  1. Carmine Guerriero told me back in September that he didn’t think that he’d play Division I hockey.  He was bound for D-III or CIS hockey.  UAH needed a third, and they knew the truth as well as anyone: with our favorite fighting Frenchman (okay, French-Canadian) having been born on 1992-02-20, would be ineligible for a year of NCAA hockey for having played 12 games for the CCHL’s Hawkesbury Hawks in his final year in juniors.
  2. Carmine came here anyway and has had a couple okay games along the way.  True, last year’s campaign was not what he or anyone else wanted, but he’s a fine young man, a valuable part of the team, and a good student.
  3. UAH and Guerriero appealed to the NCAA in the offseason for Carmine to get some eligibility for this season.  The argument was effective, but Guerriero’s grant of a fourth year came at the cost of missing 12 games at the beginning of the season, one for each of the games played over age.

UAH was never at risk of forfeiting games, as some have feared — Guerriero was simply awarded more eligibility than would otherwise have been afforded him by NCAA rules.  All parties involved recognized this: giving Carmine another year of hockey eligibility allows him to hone his skills for play at any further level but far more importantly gives him a chance to complete his degree on time.

I’d say that Jordan Uhelski earned the Friday start based on his body of work during those 12 games, but I expect that we’ll see 35 soon enough.  This isn’t a situation where the NCAA missed the ball (that one still completely boggles me because hockeydb is right over there, bro) but is one where everyone went in with clear eyes and good intentions, both in the past and this summer.

See ya soon, Carm.  Don’t throw away your shot.

NCHC: No to Minnesota State, Arizona State

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The NCHC said no today to expansion bids from Arizona and Minnesota State.

The word on the street is that the Alaska situation is a concern, although not a primary one.

This obviates the recovery for a 7-team WCHA that I proposed the other day, but an 8-team WCHA would have some travel issues as well.  The question is going to be very simple: if the Alaska schools drop Division I athletics at both campuses, will the WCHA be comfortable with an 8-team scheduling matrix?

Eight teams drives you to play your seven opponents home-and-away: Huntsville every year, Bemidji every year, everyone every year.  Do you add two teams to ameliorate that travel?  You’d consider it, but who could come aboard?  The exit fee to leave the NCHC is $1.5MM per Brad E. Schlossman, and that means that you’re not going to see Western Michigan and Miami come back to a league that would look increasingly like the old CCHA.  [Also not happening: WMU and MU for BSU and MSU.  This isn’t a Yahoo! college hockey fantasy league.]

What about Arizona State?

Good question!  I know that the WCHA really wanted to get a name school into the league, and even with an uncertain arena situation (see the first link up top from CHN), it may be a good fit for the league.  I noted earlier today that the WCHA may want to get them and make it hard for them to leave.  While it may look bad to add a geographical outlier like the Sun Devils, the matter of fact is that a 9-team WCHA that loses the Alaska schools but adds Arizona State can easily put in a system where you generally don’t play in Tempe and Huntsville every year, the biggest flight for most schools.

Would the WCHA want to add Arizona State and another team to go stay at 10 teams?

That’s a big maybe.  Robert Morris is probably the most sensible option, as you can make UAH-ASU a scheduling pair and make BGSU-RMU a travel pair.  From Sunday:

BGSU-RMU: The two schools aren’t terribly far apart, and Ohioans largely hate Pittsburgh.  Also, losing the pairing with UAH keeps their travel costs down.  Keeping BGSU is key for the health of the league — probably moreso than any other team.

The resulting geographic pattern isn’t a terrible one:

WCHA - Alaskas + ASU + RMU

What if the Alaska schools survive?  Will Arizona State get in anyway?

I’m going to bet yes, and I think that they’d look at add a 12th (e.g., RMU) to keep a core in the arc of the Midwest in order to keep travel costs down for schools that aren’t far-flung.

There’s a lotta ins, a lotta outs, a lotta what-have-yous.  I did a lot of work on this the other night, and I’m sure that I’ll do more. But I’ll probably be pulling it off this site and onto another one.

What Comes Next — Will Some Come West?

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Now to be clear, we want none of these things to happen, but it’s entirely possible that Minnesota State may leave the WCHA (a stronger bet now that Arizona State is angling for a slot in the NCHC) and that the Alaska schools don’t survive the chopping block.  What comes next?

At that point, the WCHA is a 7-team league: four teams in Michigan (Michigan Tech, Northern Michigan, Lake Superior, and Ferris State), and one each in Minnesota (Bemidji State), Ohio (Bowling Green), and Alabama.  That league looks something a bit like this, geographically:

Midpoint, 7-team WCHA

The only thing that league would have going for it would be a killer postseason tournament on a frozen Lake Michigan (or, failing that, one of those crazy Space-X rocket-landing barges flooded with an ice sheet).  A 7-team league would be a hard sell, because the only sensible scheduling mechanism, a 24-game league schedule where you play each team home-and-away, would be brutal on travel for six small schools and Bowling Green.  That’s a league that the Falcons would try to quickly exit if no new teams come in.  It’s also a modestly-upgraded College Hockey America.

But what if another shift in tectonic plates involves some Eastern teams on the western edge of things?  I’m specifically thinking of three schools who have had success in Atlantic Hockey, two of whom were previously in the CHA: Niagara, Robert Morris, and RIT.  Here’s what a geographic footprint with those teams looks like:

Raiding Atlantic Hockey

Now Niagara has been down on its luck the last three seasons, losing 20+ games in each of those campaigns.  RIT has faded a little bit, too, but they’re consistently a solid team.  Lastly, RMU has been scorching hot since the demise of the CHA, winning at least 17 games in every campaign.

Here’s how you make that setup work.  Remember that the WCHA has had a 28-game league schedule for 10 teams: one team you play as a travel pair, and the other eight alternate in a two- or four-game fashion.  Here are your sensible pairings:

  1. UAH – Bemidji.  Neither team has another WCHA team in their state or a neighboring one, the two are rivals, and the Beavers aren’t going to horn in on a rivalry with Tech, the team closest to them.  This is the toughest travel pairing in the league, but someone is going to lose out in any deal like this.
  2. Tech – Northern.  This is an established pairing from the current WCHA setup.
  3. Lake – Ferris.  This is also an established pairing.
  4. BG – RMU.  The two schools aren’t terribly far apart, and Ohioans largely hate Pittsburgh.  Also, losing the pairing with UAH keeps their travel costs down.  Keeping BGSU is key for the health of the league — probably moreso than any other team.
  5. Niagara – RIT.  The two NY schools make sense to put together, especially for those snowy upstate winter weekends.

Pairing UAH and Bemidji also puts teams into a situation where it’s rare that a team will have to make both trips in a season — just once in every four seasons.  Even better, you can do your two-game/four-game flip on the pairings: UAH plays Tech four times and Northern twice, then flips the next season, etc.  That lowers travel costs pretty significantly for everyone save Bemidji and UAH, who unfortunately (for them) don’t fit into any other league.

Let’s do a thought experiment with Bowling Green as the key.  Say it’s the Falcons’ year to travel to Pittsburgh, Huntsville, Tech, Niagara, Ferris, Rochester, and the Soo.

Bowling Green Travel 2018-19

Those all look like bus trips to me.

Losing Minnesota State, Alaska, and Alaska-Anchorage while adding Niagara, RIT, and Robert Morris moves the WCHA from WCHA Lite to CCHA Lite.  Better still, Bowling Green owns the rights to the name of the CCHA.  If we’re going to lose Mankato, I propose that we sell the NCHC the name WCHA and revive the CCHA name.  Half of the league’s teams have a CCHA pedigree (counting Tech’s brief presence in the league), and the CCHA is strongly associated with Michigan and Ohio, if not these schools.  Playing closer to the middle of the country may allow the W(C)CHA to get non-conference games with the schools in that area.  (Emphasis on may.)

If the WCHA loses the Alaska schools, they are on the knife edge of being able to schedule a far-flung league, even one without the long trips to the 49th.  Playing a 28-game league schedule with eight teams means that everyone travels everywhere else in a season.  The Michigan and Ohio teams have to be unenthusiastic about that.  Yes, you travel to Huntsville three years in four, but that’s better than going to Alaska three years in four and twice once every four.

If you’re interested, I’ve developed the CCHA Lite Schedule Format (PDF) of my thinking for this.  I used the template of the home / away / home & home setup of the current WCHA, substituting UAH and BSU for UAA and UAF (figuring that the schedule had worked out for the long travel), RMU for UAH (making the shorter trip for the Falcons), and NU and RIT for BSU and MSU (keeping an in-state pair of schools a bit removed from the rest of the league paired together).  I think that this works pretty well, at least for a start.

There are two pretty big IFs here, but they’re realistic, and if they come to fruition, the WCHA needs to be ready.

Trying times in Alaska remind us of our recent past

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These are grim days for college hockey in Alaska, as UAA and UAF hockey look to be on the chopping block in a period that UAA athletic director Keith Hackett called “very, very trying times” on Thursday.  The University of Alaska system released a report on Thursday that seeks to confront the potential complete general fund cut in athletics across the system.  The report’s options aren’t crystal clear, but I’ll give the rundown as I best understand it:

  1.  Athletics at either Fairbanks or Anchorage could have a complete cut — or both could be cut altogether.  These cuts are driven by a $50MM shortfall in the UA system that would likely cut General Fund contributions to Athletics by 50% in FY 2020 from FY 2016 levels and remove those contributions altogether by 2025.  College Hockey News reports that UAA will have to trim $1.7MM from its budget by July 2017 after already absorbing a $1MM cut last year.  UAA’s hockey operating budget is $1.9MM per Hackett, while the News Miner reports that UAF hockey costs are around $2.1MM.
  2. The UA system might approach the NCAA with a consortium model for athletics, with some sports playing in Fairbanks while others play in Anchorage.  This would allow UAF to keep skiing and rifle while UAA could keep basketball.  The issue with this is that teams would play under the Alaska banner, but students seeking to play these sports would have their academic choices limited by their sport assignment.  The two schools are 300 miles apart, so one can’t argue that playing and studying could be separated easily.  The two schools field teams in 23 sports, and the cuts would be down to “10+”, the NCAA minimum for Division II.  Ice hockey, skiing, and rifle are not sanctioned at the Division II level.
  3. Both schools would drop to Division II, ending the Division I-only programs and having all competition in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference.  The expensive sports — mainly hockey — would be replaced by less-expensive ones (1/3 – 1/2 the cost) per the Alaska Dispatch News.

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All is not bleak:

Hackett, though clearly frustrated by the impact budget cuts handed down by the Legislature will have on athletics, was quick to say that nothing in the report is finalized and actions by the Board of Regents aren’t limited to just those options.

“Everything is on the table, but there is no decision about programs at this time,” he said.

UA President Jim Johnsen released a statement:

“There is a lot to think about here with the options presented, but I am particularly pleased that these groups have stepped up, stayed with the charge, and generated not only what I asked them to evaluate, but they have put forward some innovative ideas to realign university resources.”

Graeme Strukoff looks toward the net from the point with Doug Reid low in the slot. (Photo credit: Chris Brightwell)

Graeme Strukoff looks toward the net from the point with Doug Reid low in the slot. (Photo credit: Chris Brightwell)

If there’s a school that understands this situation, it’s UAH.  Alabama doesn’t have the same kind of fiscal problems that the State of Alaska does, but a $25MM cut was levied for the most recent budget by the Alaska state legislature and signed by the governor.  That decision is driving these cuts, which are not limited by any means to just athletics — academic programs are on the block as well.  All of this reminds me of a lot of the rumblings that I’ve heard from Tuscaloosa about how the programs shouldn’t try to compete and that UAH should keep athletics costs down.  I don’t think that this attitude has prevailed — UAH has added lacrosse, so cost containment overall wouldn’t appear to be an issue — but dividing and conquering has always seemed to be the way of the Alabama system.

It’s also very clear that state apportionments to education have steadily dropped over the last 20 years.  I remember when I was an undergraduate at UAH (I started 19 falls ago) that UAH’s general fund was sourced around 50% from money from Montgomery; for FY 2015, it was 21.3%.  (Note, that page is a rolling entry, so if you look at this in three years, the numbers will be different.)

It’s a difficult time for public higher education.  Our three schools have high travel costs due to being geographic outliers. We nearly lost our program; it would be a tragedy if UAA and/or UAF lost theirs.  With two of the three options ending hockey for at least one campus, this is pretty grim.  I don’t really see a reading of this where neither program is lost unless the general fun cuts come from other areas.  It feels very much like one program will go down, and I honestly expect both to be axed.

Public comment on Pathways has been sparse, especially in support of athletics.  Alaskans who love hockey, get out and make your voice heard — don’t confine your frustration to the USCHO Fan Forum.

What Mankato Leaving the WCHA Might Mean for UAH

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Minnesota State announced on Wednesday that they have applied to join the National Collegiate Hockey Conference, known variously as “the National”, the “NCHC”, or the “NaCHo”, both in terms of hoping for tasty, fatty calories or regret that it’s “nacho league”.  Either way, it was a bit of a surprise unless you’re an enterprising reporter who bet that he saw it coming and sniffed around and outed the truth.  It certainly seems that everyone knew that this (leak-cum-)-announcement was coming, because both the WCHA and NCHC had prepared statements: the WCHA sounded pretty disappointed and the NCHC’s public response was, I think, responsibly tepid.  Lastly, a public records request has elicited the publication of Mankato’s letter of interest.

Both Shane Frederick of The Free Press (Mankato) and Jack Hittinger of the Bemidji Pioneer have weighed in over the last couple of days.  Shane is predictably and responsibly sanguine about the Mavericks’ chances, noting that it is a benefit for the program.  Jack is a bit more phlegmatic, and he rightly points out that there are a lot of steps left to take for everyone.

Brad Schlossmann does note that the NCHC doesn’t have to add anyone.  But count me with Drew Evans at BGSUHockey.com: the Mavs are very likely to go to the NCHC in two seasons.

But what does all of this mean for UAH?

We’re on the outside looking in, again.  UAH tried to jump to the CCHA when the CHA diaspora happened and Bemidji grabbed a hold of a Maverick tail and rode along with Omaha into the WCHA.  We all know that the CCHA told UAH no, leading to three independent seasons that very nearly killed the program.  The Chargers knocked on the WCHA’s door only after the NCHC was fully realized.

The best thing out of the Big Ten expansion mess may have been that the NCHC formed, as I think that it was far less likely that the other nine teams in the WCHA would want the Chargers’ blood on their hands than, say, the remaining eight CCHA schools who might have been okay with that number and would have been unlikely to jump at the chance to add a flight/long bus trip to a bus league that already had an Alaska problem.

Make no mistake: the 2013 mess showed us that extant league structures mean nothing when conference plates shift violently.  Will our folks be talking to people?  Sure.  But we’re at the mercy of the winds and tides here along with a number of other WCHA schools.

I’ve got a lot of thoughts about realignment options and how UAH would fit into these plans, but those are for another day.  Bring on Realignment 2016.

Chargers lose point to extra-attacker goal; 3-3 (OT)

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I think that this game was best summed up in our Slack chat tonight:

Could have won. Probably should have lost. Got a tie. All the mixed emotions.

Indeed, that’s a fair assessment.  UAH was out-shot 49-21 on Friday night in Big Rapids: sour sixteens in each of the regulation periods and just one in OT, thanks to Ferris having to kill a penalty.  But junior goaltender Matt Larose (Nanaimo, B.C.) was razor sharp, stopping 46 saves, a season-high for Charger netminders, and UAH got enough puck luck to push it to three goals for the third straight game.  But a fluky extra-attacker goal by the home squad

The Chargers sent a steady stream of white jerseys to the box, including a rare appearance by sophomore forward Max McHugh (Seattle), his first since November 7th.  In all, UAH was whistles for nine penalties taking 21 minutes, the one major a facemasking call against junior defenseman Brandon Carlson (Huntington, Beach, Calif.).

UAH returned to form with its fine penalty killing after a stumble last week against Alaska, stopping all eight opportunities and potting a shorthanded goal, as junior forward Matt Salhany (Warwick, R.I.) picked up a loose puck for a Stealhany to knot the game at 2-2 and deflate the home side.

BOX SCORE

For the Chargers, tonight’s game was all about sustained effort.  McHugh started the Chargers’ scoring off with his sixth of the season, banging home a backhander low past Ferris State freshman goaltender Darren Smith (Barrie, Ont.) after mucking and grinding down low with sophomore forward Brennan Saulnier (Halifax, Nova Scotia) to know bring the game level at 1-1.

After junior forward Jared VanWormer (Traverse City, Mich.) shocked the UAH defense by scoring :34 into the third and :09 after Saulnier’e penalty expired.  A cross-checking minor penalty committed by freshman forward Madison Dunn (Calgary) just :45 later spelled doom for the Chargers, who looked to be reeling.  Instead, Salhany’s quick reaction and fleet feet were combined with the right move to light the lamp.

UAH couldn’t capitalize on a couple of Ferris penalties, all on the route to go 0-for-6 with the man advantage on the evening.  But the Chargers then shocked the home crowd and pulled ahead when Marooney, Wilcox, and Poulsen brought tons of pressure, with freshman forward Tyler Poulsen (Arvada, Colo.) picking up the goal after finding the puck on a Ferris State stick and pushing it past Smith (18sv).

Sadly for the Chargers, the Bulldogs kept strong pressure in the UAH end, pulling Smith for an extra attacker and eventually getting senior forward Kenny Babinski (Midland, Michigan) his sixth goal of the year to dash the Herd’s hopes of pulling even with Alaska in the standings.  Neither team did much in the extra five minutes, even with the Bulldogs taking the penalty.

Larose moved to 3-4-1 on the season, his GAA edging up to 2.28 but his SV% moving to .927.  Smith is now 6-4-4.

As the Chargers seek to move out of the WCHA basement, they got no help from last week’s foe, Alaska, who won in overtime in Marquette.  The Chargers are still in last place with 9 league points, three behind 9th-place Alaska-Anchorage, who have three games in hand on the Chargers.

NMU 4, UAH 3: Wildcats’ Shine Corrals Chargers

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HUNTSVILLE — Northern Michigan (5-5-5, 4-4-3 WCHA) rolled into Huntsville and pressured the Chargers into costly mistakes, coming away with a last-minute goal to snatch victory from the UAH Chargers (3-9-1, 2-8-1 WCHA) by a 4-3 margin.  The Wildcats were powered by junior alternate captain Dominik Shine (Pinckney, Mich.) scoring his first collegiate hat trick.

BOX SCORE

I’ve spent the last three hours trying to figure out what to say about this game.  I’ll say this: when UAH was clicking, they were clicking.  They put 22 shots on goal in the first period, netting one of them, and put 47 on all told, a mark that the Chargers hadn’t met since March 14, 2009, the last time the team had poured on 40+, in a season-ending tie in the 3rd-place game in the 2009 #CHAForever tournament.

But then there were the ghastly, ghastly turnovers in their end.  There were some real head-shakers — the WCHA video cutters left them there for you to see.  Puck security was often there, but when it leaked a little, it was like Niagara Falls.

Max McHugh had a solid night on the score sheet, and at a number of points his steadiness with the puck made the offense really click.  UAH had one long 1:00+ sustained offensive possession that had NMU scrambling so hard that I actually checked to make sure that I hadn’t missed a penalty.  It was that kind of quality execution that we’ve come to expect after having lacked it for so long.

But the turnovers … man, yeah.  The first was a forward trying to hold the puck in and blindly making a pass that Shine saw coming and intercepted with a full head of steam.  The next, he and a teammate flummoxed retreating UAH defensemen so much that they put the puck right on Shine’s stick.  And while you can’t see it in the video, Shine again was the thief, jumping a play and drawing a penalty on his shorthanded breakaway.

All hats are off for Shine, and the bareheaded among us can now be left to shake those heads at our side.

UAH v. NMU: Excitement and Dread

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[Note: This originally appeared on the USCHO Fan Forum, and I’ve modified it slightly for publication here.  —GFM]

I’ve gotta admit that I’m going into this weekend’s series with Northern Michigan with equal parts anticipation and dread. Which UAH team is this, really? Is it the team that started 3-2-1, or is it the team that’s run 0-6-0?

Well, let’s look at it:
· Home split with Connecticut: currently 53rd in CHN’s KRACH at 21.1 (UAH is 51st at 23.5)
· Home loss and tie to Anchorage: 30th at 98.3 (essentially NCAA average)
· Road sweep at Lake Superior: 48th at 31.4

· Home swept by Tech: 22nd at 149.9
· Road swept at BG: 26th at 128.8
· Home swept by Bemidji: 41st at 51.8

While it’s a little reductive to say that we’ve had success against the teams that are roughly on our level (per KRACH) and, well, nada against teams above us, the thing is this: is Bemidji really that much better than UAH? They came into town without a defined #1 goalie, weren’t scoring outside of Gerry Fitzgerald, and are still struggling with the loss of their three top D. And the UAH team that started out scoring 3.0 goals/game —*remember, last year’s team was 1.63 G/GM, and 2013-14 was 1.08 — scored two goals on Bemidji.

Then there’s the fact that Carmine isn’t at the level he was last year and Matty Larose has rounded into a solid 1B, shedding nearly 1.5 GAA in this his junior season.  Last year’s team knew that Carmine was their guy, and that they could trust him to handle the 35+ shots a night.  Now that they’re not giving up that many, things have changed.  Why?  I do not know.

Shots on goal against are down from 41.1 a game (!!!) two years ago and 37.6 last year (!!!) to just 28.9 this year, and the margin is just 4.4 a game. But again, UAH has been outshot 40-18, 30-18, 28-18, 24-20, and 26-17 in five of their last six games (out-shooting BG 36-28 in the second contest).

After starting off the 2015-16 season as a disciplined team (less Saulnier, who’s pretty much still good for one head-shaker a game), the penalties are piling up. UAH has been near the top in penalty minutes per game for their entire time in D-I, and we’re earning that reputation again this season (14.1 PIM/GM, 11th nationally). It’s come lately, too: 27, 23, 10, 33, 4, and 8 in their last six games.

(Hey, if you want one nice takeaway from the Bemidji series, it’s that we took six penalties all weekend.)

So what team shows up this weekend? Is it the team that plays within itself, trusts the system and the people in it, and tries to play smart hockey? Or is it the team that lacks discipline and can’t maintain possession?

I think that they need smart hockey, short passes, good pressure, and being willing to take the shot when it’s even sorta there.

This team is too damn good to be 3-8-1. Are they as good as they were in those first six games? Maybe not. Are they as bad as they have been in the last six? I don’t think so. As I harp on those six games, it’s important to note that the second Tech game and both BG games were one-goal losses, including an OT on Friday night in Ohio.

But the results just aren’t there, and my enthusiasm after that emphatic effort in the Soo — and from the beginning of the season — has really waned.  Split with BSU and the Chargers are 4-7-1, and sweeping the Environmental Terrorists would’ve made the boys 5-6-1.  In this WCHA, .500 hockey is enough to scrap for home ice.  I thought that we were there. Maybe we’ll get there, but man, it has to start tonight.

Michigan Tech 4, UAH 2

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HUNTSVILLE — Four Michigan Tech Huskies (4-3-0, 4-3-0 WCHA) scored goals on Friday night, relying on a speed advantage that kept the homestanding Alabama-Huntsville Chargers (3-3-1, 2-2-1 WCHA) scrambling to keep up at times.  The visiting Huskies maintained their tie atop the WCHA standings with a 4-2 win over UAH.

BOX SCORE

If you’re a UAH fan, you loved the first ten minutes of the game.  Sophomore forward Josh Kestner (Huntsville) led off scoring his second goal of the season just 1:21 into the game, feeding off of the energy of a back-in-the lineup Brent Fletcher (New Westminster, B.C.) and the freedom of moving freshman forward Hans Gorowsky (Lino Lakes, Minn.) over to left wing.  Tech looked off-guard from the event.

Sophomore forward Joel L’Esperance (Brighton, Mich.) knotted the game at 1-1 just 3:14 later, taking a smart pass from sophomore Alex Gillies (Vernon, B.C.) and flashing some speed and hands to move the puck past UAH junior goaltender Matt Larose (Nanaimo, B.C.), who had little help on the play.

The struggles for UAH began after junior forward Cody Marooney (Eden Prairie, Minn.) took a slashing penalty at 10:40.  The infraction, one of five called on the night, gave Tech the chance to take the lead, and they did so.  Junior assistant captain and defenseman Shane Hanna (Salmon Arm, B.C.) rifled a shot towards Larose (36sv) that was tipped by senior captain and forward Alex Petan (Delta, B.C.).  Junior forward Tyler Heinonen (Delano, Minn.) got the secondary assist for finding Hanna at the point.

Special teams continued to be the bane of UAH’s existence on the night.  UAH would go scoreless on all five tries on the night, never getting much sustained pressure with the advantage.  Worse yet, the Chargers gave up a short-handed goal at 15:14, falling behind 3-1 when junior forward Brent Baltus (Nanaimo, B.C.) broke free and pushed the puck past Larose (1-1-0).

From there, the Chargers never really recovered.

Sophomore defenseman Brandon Parker (Faribault, Minn.) finally netted his first collegiate goal.  Parker appeared to just be making a long dump toward Husky senior goaltender Jamie Phillips (Caledonia, Ont.), but Phillips did not properly track the puck, which ended up in his net after 120 feet of travel.  But Parker’s puckish pasty was the lone bright spot.

Negatives from the final two frames:

  • Anemic work from the power play, including making Larose stop more than one shorthanded attempt.
  • Ending their own man advantage on a bench minor for too many men.  I think that this one was silly, because both teams had too many bodies on the ice for the brief second where it looked that Larose was going to leak the puck to a teammate for a press up the ice on the left-wing boards (opposite the benches).  But it just goes to a core weakness for UAH over the last few years, and that’s picking up this bench minor time and again.
  • Fletcher’s checking-from-behind major penalty that saw him removed from the game and freshman defenseman Cam Knight (North Reading, Mass.) given a holding minor on the same infraction.  I was very surprised that Messrs. Langseth and Elam took two UAH players yet no Tech player from that fracas.  UAH is to be commended for a strong kill of the penalty.
  • Getting outshot 14-3 in the third when they needed to be giving the pressure, not receiving it.  The major penalty does not completely explain the disparity.

Phillips (4-3-0, 16sv) got an assist on the final goal of the game, as sophomore forward Mason Blacklock (White Rock, B.C.) netted his second of the year at 13:59 of the 3rd.  Senior forward Malcolm Gould (North Vancouver, B.C.) got the primary assist.

The questions for UAH on Saturday are these:

  1. How poorly will the game be attended opposite BAMA-LSU?
  2. Who starts for UAH?  Larose had some strong stretches, and he did stop 36/40, but the fact of the matter is that he gave up four or more goals in all but two of his starts last year (at Air Force on November 8th and at Bowling Green on March 7th).  Saturday’s shutout against Lake Superior was fun to see, and it was an exemplar of the goalie that he can be.  But which is the real Larose: tonight or last weekend?  One figures that a non-dominant performance from the big man opens the door for junior goaltender Carmine Guerriero (Montréal, Qué.) to get a start.
  3. It’s hard to know, though, what’s in the minds of either of those two men or, for that matter, the coaches’ minds.  It’s still too early to call this a goalie controversy — maybe it would’ve been one if Larose had been dominant tonight.  That I’m even writing about this surprises me, because 1) peak Carmine is a sight to behold 2) I always thought that it was going to be Larose to pull away, not Carmine 3) c’mon, really, this felt settled.  But it’s here.
  4. Who shuffles in and out of the lineup?  Will Mike Corbett try to slow the pace down or simply tighten his system up?  It feels to me that he had the right 21 guys dressed tonight.

Here’s a final note: what is with goaltending in the WCHA this year?  It’s early, small sample sizes, etc., but:

  • WCHA had five goalies in the top 20 in the nation by GAA in 2014-15: MSU’s Stephon Williams (#2, 1.65), MTU’s Phillips (3, 1.74), BSU’s Michael Bitzer (4, 1.80), UAF’s Sean Cahill (8, 1.98), and CJ Motte (18, 2.07).
  • Through tonight (with NMU-UAF ongoing and UAF up 3-1): Chris Nell at BGSU is 3rd at 1.09, and Atte Tolvanen came into tonight at 1.99, a total that will rise.  Past that it’s freshman Darren Smith at Ferris State at 2.40 (even after giving up four goals tonight).
  • You have to get to Bitzer at 2.55 and Phillips at 2.56 to get to guys that are full-time starters.  That’s a big, big drop.  Could it be better scoring in the WCHA?  Phillips’s mark actually came down tonight.

All of this occurred to me when I saw a 7-4 box score come out of Big Rapids.  The Bulldogs scored just four goals against Mankato last year, dropping 2-1, 3-1, 5-1, and 5-1 results in the span of fifteen days in January.

It’s something to watch.  Back at you tomorrow night.