Well, its thursday, and I still haven't provided a recap of last
weekend's Minnesota-Wisconsin series.... so I'll give a brief
summary.
 
FRIDAY NIGHT
============
Friday night, Wisconsin was without Dan Plante (sitting out a DQ from
the saturday before) and Barry Richter was played at less than 100%,
due to a shoulder injury. Plante isn't a big goal scorer, but a very
hard worker and hard hitter, who gives the team a big emotional lift
when he makes things happen.
 
Wisconsin's strategy was to play a very tight defensive game against
Minnesota -- but it didn't really work. Wiscosin came out flat, and
played without a lot of intensity. Missing Plante hurt, plus the ice
was bad (more on that later) and the badgers just weren't "up" for the
game -- and Minnesota was.
 
Minnesota dominated the game, but not in a blow-out fashion -- first of
all, Derksen was fantastic, and kept the badgers in it (he had ~37
saves, to Stolp's 12). Minnesota's defense was also dominating --
Wisconsin got only 13 shots on goal, tieing the record low set in 1965.
Despite all that, Wisconsin could have won the game -- they had several
really good chances on which they hit the pipe, wiffed, or just missed
the wide-open net. Stolp wasn't great, but was good when he had to be,
and his defense really did a job.
 
Minnesota is a very impressive team -- as always, they can skate
and pass and shoot. This year's Gophers are also big and strong.
 
I was not thrilled with the game Greg Shepard called, but everyone else
said it was pretty good, so I must have been out to lunch myself. I
thought he was a bit inconsistant, but he didn't miss anything (or call
anything bad) that changed the outcome of the game. The linesmen, on
the other hand, were having a bad night....
 
The final score was Minnesota 2, Wisconsin 1.
 
SATURDAY NIGHT
==============
Saturday Wisconsin went with a totally different strategy -- and it
worked. First, they were a lot looser, joking around before the game,
and played with a lot of intensity and emotion.  Plante was back in the
lineup, and Sauer juggled his lines, trying for 4 more-or-less balanced
lines with 2 hard-working diggers with each center.
 
Instead of playing "wing-back" to help the defense, the Badgers sent
both wings hard into the zone, with the Center holding the blue line,
and the defense not pinching in the zone.  Instead of trying to skate
the puck around Minnesota's defense, they dumped the puck past them,
pretty successfully.
 
Derksen came up big again, and Wisconsin got 2 short-handed goals to
win 4-1.
 
Shepard had a good game, "letting the teams play" but never losing
control -- this was one game that showed why many consider him the best
ref in the WCHA -- he balanced very well on the fine line between
control and taking over the game. In a very emotional game with lots of
big hits, there was still lots of "flow" to the game and no fights.
 
NOTES
=====
Duane Derksen became the all-time Wisconsin save leader
this weekend.  I don't remember the exact number.
 
Wisconsin is idle this weekend. They have a good schedule in terms of
who they play down the stretch and where, but since the home sweep of
Northern Michigan, have had two weekends off -- after Northern and this
weekend, which is both good (they can rest up) and bad (they lose
momentum and continuity), as schedules always are.
 
The ice at the Coliseum was terrible last weekend. It had been put in
only the monday before the game, and was really soft.  Unfortunatly,
there was nothing that could be done at the time, other than take long
intermissions in order to give it a chance to set up.
 
As reported by others, Hockey Wisconsin and the NCAA have reached
agreement on the 1992 NCAA Hockey Tournament, to be held at the Bradley
Center in Milwaukee.
 
 
	--david
 
--------
david parter				university of wisconsin -- madison
[log in to unmask]			      computer sciences department