Friday, November 20, 2009

Friday-morning skate

Minnesota State is in Anchorage today, but PucKato is in Mankato. I'll probably be listening to Mike Sullivan's radio call of the games, starting around 10 p.m. both tonight and tomorrow. That doesn't mean the coverage stops, though. Here's a look at this weekend's matchups around the WCHA.

MSU at Anchorage: Tonight's game will be a homecoming of sorts for Mavericks freshman Eli Zuck, an Anchorage native who spent four years playing for Shattuck-St. Mary's in Faribault. One of the reasons he got a spot in the lineup, though, is coach Troy Jutting's decision to sit the team's penalty leader, Mike Louwerse, for a game. ... As for the Seawolves, junior forward Tommy Grant knows a little something about what Kael Mouillerat's going through. Grant had 15 goals last season but has no goals in Anchorage's last 11 games.

Duluth at Minnesota: The Bulldogs have had plenty of scoring from the likes of Justin Fontaine, but they're 4-0-1 when defenseman Brady Lamb scores. ... Meanwhile, Minnesota is also relying on a defenseman, Brian Schack, who has to play for the Gophers' struggling and depleted lineup.

Wisconsin at St. Cloud: Sticking with the defenseman theme, the Badgers' Ryan McDonough doesn't know his own strength. ... For the Huskies, forward Tony Mosey has displayed his skills this season, scoring four times on the power play.

North Dakota at Denver: This is the league's marquee matchup and might be every year in recent history. However, some key players are likely out for both teams, including UND's Chay Genoway and DU's Marc Cheverie. ... One guy who will play is Pioneers forward Rhett Rakhshani, who has taken an unusual route to college hockey.

Robert Morris at Colorado College: Fresh of of their sweep of Minnesota State, the Tigers will step out of WCHA play for the weekend. But with the parity in college hockey this season, CC is not overlooking the Colonials.

In other WCHA news, the Grand Forks Herald takes a closer look at some of this year's illegal hits, and Inside College Hockey looks at how WCHA officials got a chekcing-from-behind call correct -- eventually.

Here are weekend previews from USCHO and This is the WCHA.

2 comments:

RedHeadZeb said...

Shane, you can try watching the FREE UAA video feed which is *usually* available at http://www.gci.net. I've done this successfully over the last few years (for games not just with MSU). The UAA commentary is also their radio broadcast; I feel they do a pretty fair job.

I'm not sure of the exact bandwidth constraints; I do know it gets pretty choppy when they play UND and UM--i.e. larger fan bases.

I do not really complain because, hey, it is free after all :)

Shane Frederick said...

Thanks Zeb. I was going to try to look for that tonight, but didn't see any info about it on the Seawolves website. But you're right, I have watched that in the past.