Responses to a few recent posts about the regionals:

> Oh well, a western linesman called Maine for icing late in the
> Maine/BU game when the Maine player was several FEET over the
> red-line.
>
> What was particually irritating is that his cohorts didn't overrule
> him and face it off at neutral ice.  Instead, BU got an offensive zone
> face off down 1 goal late.

I think the call here was not icing but intentional offsides, since
none of the officials made the normal icing signals.  Maine dumped the
puck in with one of their skaters still in deep in the zone, and the
whistle blew when it crossed the goal line.  I would have expected a
delayed call, though.

> Not a great day for the 'linesman' position in Worcester today -- in
> the 2nd game, there appeared to be a clear-cut
> too-many-men-on-the-ice situation against UNH that wasn't called,
> which had the Cornell bench screaming (it happened with 48 seconds
> left in the 3rd, Cornell down a goal with the goalie pulled) --
> maybe, since that call was made 4 times Saturday, it had reached its
> quota.

> Then, with the clock ticking down to 2 or 3 seconds, what also
> appeared to be a clear-cut icing by UNH went unwhistled, as time was
> allowed to run out -- again with the Cornell folks protesting.

I didn't really catch the first, but I thought it was ridiculous that
Cornell didn't get one last offensive zone faceoff.  There was a good
3 seconds left when the puck crossed the goal line.  Does anyone know
if icing was waved off or if the officials just thought time was up?

Other comments from Worcester:

I thought Harvard was going to pull it off on Saturday, having so much
OT experience this postseason.  At least we had one decent game.
Cornell-QU was horrible.  After each Cornell goal, hundreds more
people would run for the exits.  It was pretty sparse by late in the
third when Quinnipiac scored their goal.  I guess the good part was
that we had one game where you could actually walk in the corridors
and find only short lines at the rest rooms.  Worcester beats Albany
big time on food selection, but the Centrum really can't deal with a
full house for hockey.  Cornell seemed to shut it down early on - they
were dropping 4 men back on defense by the second period.  The sad
part for QU is that it might have been a different game if they hadn't
given Cornell two gift goals in the opening minutes.  I doubt they
would have beaten Cornell, but they might have kept it interesting for
more than 60 seconds.

Then we had the two close games on Sunday.  I thought we'd end up in
OT at least once.  I was already pulling for Cornell to have one ECAC
team to St. Paul, but any doubt about who I wanted to win was taken
away by an obnoxious UNH fan who seemed to want Cornell in the box
every time they made contact with a UNH player.  I really thought
Cornell would tie it in the final minutes.  The UNH defense looked a
bit slow to the puck in the defensive zone all night, and Matt Carney
didn't look strong at all.  But late in the game, UNH defenders tied
up Cornell players just enough.

--
Jim Teresco - [log in to unmask]
http://www.teresco.org