Just a few things...
First, Scott Greenham was honored this morning by the CCHA, earning All-Conference Second Team honors. Scott sits behind Ferris State's Pat Nagle, who has slightly prettier stats. The aggrevating part is, the only other guy from the Nanooks' roster that was mentioned at all was Joe Sova.
When you look at overall scoring leaders, and you look at strictly defensemen, Joe was 2nd among all defensemen in the conference with a 4-20-24 line. Aaron Gens was tied for third with Second Team selection Jon Merrill from Michigan. Granted, Jon had more goals, but Jon also got 3 first place votes. How many votes did Aaron Gens get? 0. Granted, Sova got 3 first team votes, and essentially was the number one honorable mention, but only two players got votes at all? That's kinda shady. Granted, Miami's top forward line that's combined for about 3,203,634,784 points kind of hog the page, albeit deservedly. Here's the full release if you haven't checked it out yet.
Also worth nothing, freshman forward and the Nanooks' top scorer Cody Kunyk earned an honorable mention for the CCHA All-Rookie team announced on Monday. Cody just missed the list, with the final forward spot going to WMU's Chase Balisy. Full release.
Earlier this week, Nik "Yaremclutch" made his way on this week's episode of Inside the CCHA, chatting it up with CCHA Associate Commissioner Fred Pletsch. During the interview, Fred coined the nickname "Nik Yaremclutch" after his back-to-back OT game-winning goals this past weekend against Michigan State. I found it post-worthy. Download this week's show and listen in.
Lastly, I've gotten a few emails over the past week asking for my take on the whole Rick Comley situation from last weekend, and I've got nothing to say, really. I wasn't at the arena, I didn't witness it, all I know is what's been posted elsewhere. I do know that the conference is reviewing the situation, so I guess we'll see where it goes from there. My esteemed cohort Danny Martin over at the News-Miner has a few write-ups regarding the situation, and in my opinion, he documents the scenario just as well as I could. I've already written a little bit about this from last week's game recaps, but hopefully this additional reading will shed some additional light.
Retiring Michigan State coach Rick Comley under scrutiny for alleged shoving match
Michigan State hockey coach allegedly shoved fan after Friday's game
3 comments:
Paula Weston said she wasn’t there either and could not speculate on what happened...then proceeded to speculate on what happened for about a page. You're a slacker. :)
INTheSky had the weekend right, under your March 4th post. The weekend saw two perfect storms coming together at once.
On the one hand there was Coach Comley who always wanted UAF out of the CCHA and made no bones about it. Constanly accusing our team of a "clutch and grab" style of hockey that was unbefitting to the league. He was forced to make two trips in three weeks, only to face elimination and early retirement from his arch nemisis.
On the other hand you had a seasoned Nanook fan who was aware of the history of Coach Comley. Who perhaps attended the earlier series with Michigan, where Coach Red Berenson tuned up the officials after his team didn't show up on Friday and the Nooks couldn't get a call on the following Saturday. Combine that with the fact that Coach Comley contested not just the winning goal on Friday as reported in the press but rather E V E R Y goal. Thus delaying the game and perhaps taking away the Nanooks momentum in the process. This was compounded by the history of the official on the ice (McInchak) who gave Miami a phantom goal in the waning minutes of a game a few years back which led to an overtime loss by the Nooks. When Coach Gadowsky confronted the official to "tune him up" like Red or Rick do, MacInchak filed with the leaque and Coach Gadz was required to sit out a CCHA series. There appears to be a serious double standard in this league as far as the officiating and the basic respect afforded certain coaches.
I believe this incident was a powder keg in the making and had been brewing for a very, very, long time. I honestly believe that the two participants probably regret that the incident ever occurred at all.
As Paul Harvey would say "and that's the rest of the story" So can we please put the incident behind us.....
I would however like to make a modest proposal as a fan of the CCHA. I would like to see a thorough review by the lead official, to ferret out the refs who cannot be neutral with certain teams and coaches and stop assigning them to those games. For visual proof see film of Michigan @ Alaska November 6, 2010 and Michigan State @ Alaska March 5, 2011.
Is basic equality in the league to much to ask for? I doubt that Alaska is the only victim of this lack of neutrality and respect accorded teams and coaches from the officials. It might simply be a case of intimidation of the officials from the big name schools who they feel drive the league. An investigation seems pretty straight forward and I would request it be done PDQ before another possible powder keg erupts.
This league has always been geared towards the two big Michigan schools. If there is one silver lining to the Big 10 hockey conference, it is going to force a reboot of sorts in the CCHA, assuming the league even survives.
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