Note: Niagara kicked UNO's butt, no doubt about that. This is established
and even with better reffing UNO would have lost by 2 or 3. But I'm still
gonna bitch about the reffing because it was some of the worst officiating
I've seen since the 1993/1994 Orange Bowl(whichever was Nebraska/Florida St.).
 
Youch...This game was bad in all aspects for UNO. Mitchell and Sidoruk gave
up 4 goals a piece, Mitchell gave up at least 2 extremely soft,
Shegos-the-ref-coulda-stopped this shot type goal, and Sidoruk gave up at
least one of his own of that variety. That accounts for 3, I'd say at least
3 more of the 8 goals were stopable on even an average night, and the other
2 I can't really remember but I don't recall Niagara having more than 1
really unstoppable goal.
 
Speaking of Matt Shegos, I now understand why all you CCHA fans hate his
guts. This guy made some atrocious calls, at one point, with UNO already
killing a double minor - which was a bad call in itself - he called a fairly
weak half-hearted check along the boards by UNO a check from behind. It's
hard enough to win when your goaltending is in the crapper for the night,
but give the #1 power play unit in the country 10 powerplays on some cheap
calls and you're making it a massacre (Niagara went 3-10, UNO went 0-6).
Plus he took forever to start play on faceoffs and drew a thunderous ovation
when he got knocked down in the third.
 
Oh I saw something I've never seen before. UNO's down 4-1, Sidoruk had just
replaced Mitchell halfway thru the second, and UNO's ont he powerplay. All
of a sudden Sidoruk skates to the bench, and UNO puts 6-men on the ice. This
wasn't that odd, I mean we had a power play and we weren't doing much
anyway, why not. Then Sidoruk justs skates back out like nothing happened.
Niagara screams at the ref, ref takes a quick count of the players while a
UNO player makes a mad scramble for the bench...too late, too many men on
the ice. I wish I knew whose fault that was - Sidoruk, the coaches, was it
intentional (our power play sucks but we're fairly good 4v4)? It was so f'n
stupid it almost had to be.
 
Lone highlight for the Mavs, their first goal was beautiful. Slap shot
tipped right into the corner of the net. Their second goal was a garbage
goal in a  scramble in front of the net, and game was pretty much done by
that point.
 
Niagara had goals 15 seconds into the first(1-0), 21 seconds into the
second(4-1), and 5 seconds after UNO's second goal(6-2). Talk about some
momentum swingers.
 
Same two teams tomorrow night, hopefully the reffing and UNO's goaltending
will be 100x's better.
 
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