Glen in his post on I-H-L announcing MSU's debacle in Kalamazoo brought up
a point about a penalty called on Chad Alban in the first period when MSU
was down 1-0 (WMU made it 2-0 on the ensuing power play).  When a 2-minute
penalty is called on the goaltender, which team gets to choose who serves
the penalty for the goaltender?  It is (or was) my understanding that the
team whose goaltender was penalized gets to choose, but they must choose
one of the skaters they had on the ice when the penalty was called.  From
the radio broadcast, it appeared that Western Michigan got to choose which
Spartan served Alban's penalty.  It was real tough to figure out who they
would choose (Hint: he led the nation in shorthanded goals last year, is
the Spartan captain, and wears #22).
 
In the long run, it didn't matter that much anyway, since the Spartans got
pounded (and were under the curse of the Weauxf, anyway).  If you're going
to lose, you might as well get blown out, because then you don't have to
sit there and go "What if we had done this?" or "If the puck had bounced this
way...".  When you lose by 6, there's no questioning of what few things
went wrong, because pretty much EVERYTHING went wrong.  Blowouts also help
to remind you that you're human and it helps to make some others grow over-
confident about their chances of beating you (re: Alex's comment on I-H-L
about BG going 6-1 down the stretch and only losing to Michigan when they
play at Munn two nights earlier).
 
G. M. Finniss
Michigan State University 20-4-0, 24-7-0
 
To paraphrase Jeff Foxworthy (substituting Spartan fans for Southerners): "It's
not that all Spartan fans are stupid.  We have doctors, lawyers, accountants,
etc. just like the rest of the country.  We just have a problem keeping our
most ignorant Spartan fans off the Internet."  (substituting Internet for
television)
 
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