December 9th, and what a long, strange season it has
already been. Several strange but true things have been
happening around the CCHA this season, and I can't
help but comment on the most recent pair.
1. Western Michigan at Michigan, Wed, December 4:
With 2:51 remaining in the third period, a decent sized
fracas/melee took place in WMU's defensive zone.
At the time, Michigan was leading 3-1 and the teams
were playing 5-on-5. The altercation began with UM's
Brendan Morrison being manhandled by a WMU player,
and Morrison responding in kind. A second Bronco
joined in and, well, you can see the situation escalate
from there. As a result, six players, three from each team,
were awaiting their fate to be decided by referee Jeff
Shell. IMO, Shell made a reasonable decision in giving
each player a 2-minute minor and 10-minute misconduct.
This sent all six to the showers, but didn't result in any
suspensions. So far, so good. What happened next
is what puzzles me. Shell had three other players from
each team serve the penalties and proceeded to play
3-on-3 for two minutes then finish with 51 seconds of
4-on-4. I don't get it. Why weren't the penalties coincidental?
Why didn't the game resume with 5-on-5 play?
Btw...it anyone surprised that the two WMU players working
Morrison over were Chuck Mindel and Tony Kolozsy, the
bobsy twins WMU inherited from UIC?
2. Michigan at Ferris State, Sat, December 7:
Flash back to UM's Wednesday game with WMU. Midway
through the second period, UM defenseman Blake Sloan
delivered a vicious hit to a WMU player near the boards. I
immediately turned to a friend and commented that the
Wolverines would be shorthanded for five minutes. He
agreed. But, Shell only handed Sloan a minor for checking
from behind. We were surprised, but kind of shrugged it off
saying, "Jeez, we (Michigan) got the benefit of that call. How
often does that happen?" (Almost never.) A couple of days
later I spoke to another friend that was at the other end of the
rink. We talked about the game and Sloan's hit came up.
He thought that Blake deserved five and a game. Bottom
line? It was a bad hit and the game referee saw fit to only
call a minor penalty.
Fast forward to UM at FSU. It's Friday night and Michigan is
already in Big Rapids at their hotel. They've brought only
the players that will dress versus FSU on Saturday. This
includes the only six defensemen available at the moment.
(UM carries eight defensemen. One was given the week off
to catch up on his course work, one was injured in the WMU
game.) Someone from the CCHA office phoned UM coach
Red Berenson at the hotel and informed him that the CCHA
had reviewed Wednesday's game and suspended Sloan
for one game, effective immediately. What the ____!? Since
when is the CCHA in the business of reviewing game tapes
and making supplementary discipline decisions? What's
with notifying a team in a situation were they obviously cannot
replace the suspended player? (Michigan played the game
one player short as there was no simple way to get another
player and his equipment from Ann Arbor to Big Rapids on
Saturday.) I just don't understand this entire situation. Was
the hit worth more than a minor? Yes. But, where does the
CCHA get off reviewing the play and taking action? And,
why such late notification? The whole situation smells bad.
If the CCHA is going to make a policy of reviewing game
film and making disciplinary decisions (which they obviously
have), might I suggest that they review the Dan Price-Bubba
Berenzweig "fight" in the November 9th BGSU-UM game.
Of course, we all know that won't happen, don't we.
OK, complaints and puzzlement off for now. I'll add a couple
of random bits to this post as well.
CCHA OFFICIATING
Yes, it is getting considerably worse. Nonetheless, there
will always be relative merits. Taking that into account, I'd
put the six referees I'm most familiar with in this order (best
to worse):
TOP LEVEL
1. Matt Shegos -- AKA "The Good Shegos." He's become
a cult figure, no?
2. Steve Piotrowski -- Some posts recently cited Pi for losing
control of a game. IMO, this is unlike him. My beef would be
that he sometimes showcases himself, exerting too much
control. However, if an upcoming game looks to be a heated,
physical "grudge" match, Pi's the man I want handling it. (Or
Matt Shegos.)
MID LEVEL
3. Jim Sotiroff -- Based primarily on his decent performance
to date this season and the fact the those below him are more
visibly scary.
BOTTOM LEVEL
4. Jeff Shell -- Missing one rule book and thousands of hair
follicles. Learned from Brent Rutherford, which explains some
of his deficiencies.
5. Mark Shegos -- AKA "The Evil Shegos." Possibly judged
too harshly because (A) he is one of the newer of the orange
armband wearers, and (B) he just isn't Matt. He'll get better.
(He has to!)
PLANKTON
6. Roger Graff -- Should do the world a favor and remove
himself from the gene pool.
Fwiw...if you see enough CCHA games, you can actually
distinguish among the linesmen as well. (I know, get a life.)
Without ranking them all, I'll simply says that John Dobrzelewski
is among the best and Dave Kronenberg is undoubtedly the
worst.
TOP MICHIGAN LINES
For the few of you still reading this, here's an update of the
top two UM lines (hard to distinguish which is the first line
and which is the second) heading into the GLI (Dec 27-28):
THIS LINE
NAME YR GP G A PTS PIM +/-
LW Jason Botterill SR 16 12 8 20 51 5
C John Madden SR 16 9 25 34 10 15
RW Warren Luhning SR 17 10 15 25 44 14
THAT LINE
NAME YR GP G A PTS PIM +/-
LW Matt Herr JR 17 16 13 29 36 14
C Brendan Morrison SR 17 9 24 33 34 16
RW Bill Muckalt JR 16 12 10 22 47 8
Happy Holidays...
John Haeussler ([log in to unmask])
Just the opinions of one self-proclaimed CCHA nut, so
don't take any of the above too seriously.
HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to
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