The beginning of the season is a beautiful thing to behold. It's Wednesday as I write this, the first day of the NHL season as I flip back and forth between Calgary/Vancouver and San Jose/Los Angeles it's just finally setting in.
The 'Nooks dispatched the Western Ontario Mustangs pretty efficiently in a 3-1 win. Didn't have 8 goals up on the board as our ugly sisters in green put up, as a lot of them were quick to point out on USCHO's fan board. But Western Ontario's starting goalie was pulled about half way through, and their backup was put in and surrendered the last 6 goals on 9 shots against. So really, the Seawolves weren't any sharper than the 'Nooks. The stat sheet only shows 41 shots combined for both teams in that affair, which leads me to believe either miscounting, or there was a lot of back and forth skating. I watched a bit of the first period of that game before the Ice Dogs game got rolling, and all I saw was Anchorage getting called for a bunch of penalties. Not a lot of shots either way. ACC's new goalie, Olivier Mantha, saw just 3 shots in the first 30 minutes!
That said, the 'Nooks looked pretty good. I think there is still some line juggling to do to get some line combinations for our guys that will work well. Tyler Morley was notably absent from Friday's exhibition, which seemed to leave that top line missing something. But Peter Krieger, wow is he a good player. He has that same awareness and swagger that Kunyk had, but with the same drive and understanding of the game as Colton Beck. He will be a game changer.
During the Blue/Gold game, I announced before the second half that the most improved player coming into this season was Marcus Basara. And the proof is on the ice. Marcus was a stud in juniors, and a lot of those guys have a mentality that their ability is still at the top of the league when coming into college. I noted that about Marcus last year a few times. I know we've only seen a scrimmage and an exhibition so far, so not a lot of real game situation but he will be a player to keep your eye on as well. 2 goals for the sophomore winger on Friday certainly caught my attention...
This weekend starts the first of two back-to-back tournaments to start the season. First up in Anchorage with Wisconsin and Maine, then back to Fairbanks next weekend for Air Force and Penn State. 4 teams to scout, a lot of hockey to watch. It should be a good one. Let's look at this weekend...
Wisconsin is up first on the agenda Friday afternoon. The big elephant in their locker room is a notable exit in scoring. The team as a whole scored 120 goals last season. The players that are responsible for 90 of those goals... Are gone... Just gone. Either graduated, or moved on to bigger and better things. A lot of folks that follow Wisconsin have read or heard this in the media a lot over the past few weeks, and I'm sure they're annoyed by it. I would be. But despite the departure, USCHO voters still polled them 10th in the country in their pre-season polls. The Badgers do have a star that shines pretty bright for their team in senior goaltender Joel Rumpel. Hard to vote against a guy that went 21-6-1 for them last season, with just over 2 goals allowed per game. The Badgers were the 10th highest scoring team in the country last season (Nanooks were 9th), but paired with a top 20 defense helped push the Badgers over the edge.
That said, you know the Badgers are going to have to skate some freshman. Exactly half of their 26 man roster are rookies... There's no getting around it. 6 seniors skate on their roster, which leaves just 6 juniors and sophomores combined. Very oddly balanced roster, should be interesting to see how this goes for them this weekend. But again, I'm not betting against Joel Rumpel. Except when he's up against us...
Maine is a different story. The Black Bears return 10 upperclassmen, but are young in goal. 3 sophomores and a freshman. And 3 of them have never played a single minute of then-1st year coach's Red Gendron's system. Sophomore Matt Morris seems to be the early named starter for the season. The Black Bears struggled from an average offense, especially late in the season, winning just 1 game of the last 6. The team's top scorer a year ago, Devin Shore, returns as a Junior after being named second team All-American alongside Cody Kunyk. 14 points ahead of returning defenseman Ben Hutton, its safe to say that both will be on the Nanooks' wanted list.
Aside from the above info--which is kind of the obvious--I don't know much about them. The team is far different than the 2008 iteration when the Nanooks hosted them in the 2008 Goal Rush when Hobey Baker finalist Gustav Nyquist was just heating up in his sophomore year. The Black Bears didn't finish as high as they were expecting after starting 7-3-0 that season, but very different this year. Regrouping the team, 2nd year coach, young goaltending. Tough to call...
The 'Nooks need to play their game, strong positional defense and a disciplined offense to maintain puck possession and create some scoring chances. Simple enough saying it, but systems have a hard way of sticking sometimes, especially early in the season. I don't know yet who is making the trip, nor who is in the lineup for Friday. The team can only travel 24, so 4 guys will stay behind. Last I was talking to coach Ferguson he didn't have an answer for which 2 goalies he was going to take and left the possibility open to take all 3. All of them looked good thus far. I thought John Keeney had a bit of an edge after Friday, but we will all have to wait and see this weekend for it all to unfold.
Go 'Nooks!
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