First of all, I love hockey and it's great to see all the different schools
and fans - even schools that aren't playing at Yost at all, like Minnesota,
Wisconsin, Bowling Green (coach Powers).  All 4 schools had pep bands which
really helps.  All fans from each school were loud and vocal which is always
great fun.  OSU was the only team that saluted its fans at the end of the
game. I've never understood why Michigan doesn't do that, it's a pretty easy
thing to do, takes about 15 seconds, makes everyone happy and feeling part of
the whole team.  LSSU also does it when they are the visiting team.
 
OSU had its mascot and its' cheerleaders.  As long as every team does NOT have
cheerleaders, it's fun to see them once in a while.  It would be very old very
fast if every team had cheerleaders.  The first Yale person I saw looked like
a preppie straight out of "Love Story" which made me laugh.
 
We season ticket holders were not able to get our season tickets for this
show.  Hey, Chad Alban was in my seats when the MSU team watched the first 2
periods of the OSU-Yale game.  Why did they leave after 2?  All the fire works
started in the third.  It was fun seeing the other team's players hanging
around the arena.
 
GAME TIME:
I missed the first period but everybody told me that Yale outplayed OSU but
had nothing to show for it.  It seemed like a 0-0 tie with over half the game
played and then slowly but surely OSU started scoring.  1-0 seemed like it
might be the final score.  After OSU scored their second goal, you could see
Yale just give up.  The third and fourth goals came late, one an empty netter
and one on a power-play or 3on1 break (memory??).  Yale ran out of gas and
slowed down as the game progressed.  OSU controlled the game the whole second
half.
 
This sets up the rematch of OSU and MSU.  As much as everyone says they don't
want rematches, this may be the most exciting game of the day in all of
college hockey and I look forward to seeing Michigan's biggest rival MSU and
Michigan's biggest football rival OSU go head to head.
 
As much as everyone will say that Michigan only beat Princeton 2-1 and that
Michigan's winning goal was a lucky one (the luckiest goal I've seen in 10
years), Michigan outplayed Princeton big-time for many stretches of the game.
Michigan came out flying and buzzing and Princeton was lucky that it wasn't
3-0 in the first few minutes.  I can't tell you how many pucks came within
inches of going in.  A bounce here, a stick there, and it's 3-0 after three
minutes.  So luck goes both ways and I don't begrudge Michigan's lucky goal.
As Kosick was shooting it, I was saying to my wife that Kosick is maybe the
best stick handler we've seen in our 10 years here, he just doesn't like to
shoot ( he has about 40 assists).  I think this was Michigan's 14th one point
victory this year - the heart attack team.
 
Turco was very lucky on a couple of shots that could have gone in and didn't.
He was spectacular on several.  The one he gave up, he would give up 9 times
out of 10, it was a great shot.
 
The Michigan-UND game should be very exciting and I think that Michigan is
going to pull this one out.  Tossing out any empty netters, this should be a
one goal game.
 
Steve Bartley
 
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