Wayne T Smith wrote:
> Rowe, Thomas wrote, in part:
>
>
>> You also had to be impressed with the spunkiness of Michigan State.  In
>> the final, BC clearly outplayed them for two periods, but they hung in
>> there and finally started to get scoring chances in the third.  It had
>> to be thrilling and hearbreaking at the same time to get the winning
>> goal with only 18.9 seconds to play.  Altogether, unless you were
>> rooting for BC, a thoroughly enjoyable game.  Congrats to the Spartans
>> for never giving up.
>>   
>
> I agree, Tom!   This Frozen Four had 3 tremendously interesting 
> games.  Excepting the first 5 minutes against Maine, MSU had one of 
> the best fore-checks I've seen.  I kept thinking BC would get more of 
> their lightening quick or overpowering goals, but the MSU defense was 
> up to the first task and goalie Lerg controlled or gave no rebounds at 
> key times.
>
> Everyone was talking about MSU's Justin Abdelkader and Tim Kennedy, 
> and justifiably so, but I really liked some of their other players 
> such as #25 Jim McKensie (Wow, did he look strong!) and #16 Tyler 
> Howells. 

One of the things that I found interesting is that BC is very fast, and 
very skilled, but is also one of the least physical teams I've ever seen 
at the Frozen Four.  I don't mean just checking.  For the whole weekend, 
they lost just about every battle for the puck along the boards, and, 
once an opposing player could catch them, it was fairly easy to pull the 
puck off their stick. 

Also, as a Gopher fan, I'm getting a bit tired of teams playing really, 
really well to beat us in the tournament, and then going out and playing 
poorly in their next game.  Last year, you had to expect that from Holy 
Cross, but it's become a trend.  On Thursday, I thought North Dakota put 
forth a very sub-par performance.  Had they played as well as they did 
in either the quarterfinal in Denver, or the WCHA final, they would have 
beaten BC.  Instead, they were really sloppy and went long stretches 
without hitting anybody, which is their game.  The Toews/Oshie/Duncan 
line was very good, but everyone else diappeared.  Not at all like two 
weeks ago, when Chris Porter's line was a wrecking crew.  As an aside, 
the Hobey process got screwed up somewhere along the way.  The eventual 
winner wasn't the best player in the country; he was the third best 
player on his own line.

-- 
J. Michael Neal
http://idonotlikeyoueither.blogspot.com/

"Tonight your beauty burns into my memory
the wheel of heaven turns above us endlessly
this is all the heaven we got, right here where we are in our shangrila."

-Mark Knopfler