From my perspective, Michigan State dominated UNH.  They were faster,
stronger, more physical along the boards and played better as a team.  Yet,
UNH could have won the game and have no one to blame but themselves for the
loss.  The Spartans scored an early goal that should have been a routine
save.  Time after time, despite being outplayed, UNH got quality shots from
the slot but either shot them wide or put them right into the MSU goalie's
pads.  This game could easily have gone to UNH but didn't.

Why, if Maine are the Black Bears, do they dress in blue?

Maine goalie  Ben Bishop is so big that when he goes into a crouch, there's
no net to shoot for.  When this kid stood up in front of the net, the
crossbar was waist high.  And he's only a freshman??

Attendance in Albany for day 1 was just over 5000; very disappointing
turnout.  It's understandable I suppose since the two closest teams are a
3-4 hour drive away (Cambridge,MA and Durham,NH).  However, the majority of
the crowd in the Pepsi arena (and the only school bands present) wore the
blue of Maine and the green of Michigan State.  On the way inside, there
were charter buses present with Maine and Michigan license plates.  There
were a number of New Hampshire jerseys present but far less than the other
two schools.
Then there was Harvard.  Less Harvard fans this week for a national
tournament than last week for the ECAC's.  Harvard doesn't have to feel
ashamed going back to Cambridge after their loss.  It's doubtful anyone on
campus even knew their team was playing hockey today.

That brings up a troubling thought.  Harvard blew into Albany last week and
totally dominated first place Dartmouth and Cornell.  Harvard looked super.
Today, they were totally dominated by Maine. I'd like to think Harvard just
had a bad day today because the alternative is that the best of the ECAC can
no longer compete with teams from other leagues.

I truly appreciate the fact that the regionals are being televised and am
especially appreciative of my local Time Warner cable for broadcasting the
northeast regionals in the Albany area.  However, when I'm at the Pepsi,
it's really annoying how many TV timeouts there are and how the breaks
interrupt the flow of the game.

Speaking of the Pepsi, the contract between Pepsi and Albany County expires
this year.  Prior to that, the arena was known as the Knickerbocker Arena.
Albany County has publicized this big contract to see who will win naming
rights for the arena for the next 10 years. According to this morning's
newspaper, they've received  no bids.

My congratulations to those wonderful media people of the NC$$ who force the
venues to cover up all advertising signs and then fill the overhead
televisions with self-promoting ads and ads for corporate America who
support the NC$$.  Their NCAA snippets are wonderful.  My favorite was:
"Every NCAA ice hockey championship has been broadcast live on TV for 11 of
the last 12 years."   Huh????

Finally, I have to comment on a broadcast I listened to last night.  Anyone
who knows me knows that I am a longtime fan of RPI hockey. However, I truly
enjoy college hockey in general. I haven't missed an ECAC tournament in
Albany nor an NCAA event in Albany ever, even though RPI hasn't been there
in years.  Yesterday, after watching both northeast semifinal games on my
cable network, I decided to catch up on some work on my PC.  While sitting
there, I decided to link to the North Dakota link to listen to the
UND-Michigan game. I was struck by the totally unprofessional effort on the
part of the UND announcers.  This was not a school radio station and these
were not student announcers. These were supposed professionals. I'm not
naive enough to believe that local sports announcers should act impartial.
These announcers were pro UND and that's fine. Where I thought they stepped
over the line was when they started belittling anything that wasn't UND.
They made a point of questioning the competance of the eastern referees by
belittling eastern referees in general. They went on to promote a UND
freshman as the legitimate WCHA rookie of the year by stating that the
actual WCHA rookie of the year wasn't nearly as good as the UND candidate.
They stated that the Grand Forks regional was sold out but there would
probably be plenty of tickets available for the regional finals the next day
and to just look for the people with the big M on their jerseys.  They went
on to refer to Minnesota several times as the Golden boys or the Golden
Goofs and topped things off by stating that Minnesota should be ashamed of
embarrassing the rest of the WCHA by losing to an Atlantic Hockey team.  I'm
sorry. You can root for your team all you want, but if you have a microphone
in front of you, you are representing your team and your community and you
should make some effort to be dignified and professional.

Tonight, I'll listen to the final.  I'll be listening to the Holy Cross
broadcast.

Maybe I'm just getting ornery in my old age!!!