On Fri, 14 Mar 1997, Charles Bell wrote:
 
> One word:
>
> WOW!
>
> An absolutely great game to watch.  The player of the game without a
> doubt was Brian Leitza with around 50 saves (and most of them were very
> good saves).
>
> For those of you who were there, did you notice how many times the
> defense for SCSU appeared to just give up when UM was going to the net?
> If it had not been for Leitza, this would have been a blow-out.
>
 
I agree, completely.  It was an excellent game, to bad that wasn't the
championship game, huh?
 
SCSU has a young defense, and they made a lot of errors last night.
Especially on the GWG, they just let the gophers march in and score.
Leitza made the initial save, but didn't cover in time.
 
It appeared that the first period belonged to the Gophers, but they walk
off the ice in a 1-1 tie.  The second period started off by the Gophers
being in the drivers seat with a goal 26 seconds in.  But SCSU came back
and scored a goal about 90 seconds later.  Then SCSU scores two short
handed goals 20 seconds apart, to take a 4-2 lead.  I thought that would
give SCSU the win for sure.  And I think they did as well.  In the third
period SCSU just wasn't there, if it wasn't for Leitza SCSU would have
been blown off the ice.
 
One thing that upset me was the fan reaction when Leitza went down after
getting a stick in the neck area behind the net.  Upon initial hit, I
wasn't sure what had happened.  But the good guys at MSC get all the
angles, and to me it looked like a stick had just clipped his neck or
possibly even his face.  When he got up, there was a chorus of boos.
Frank Mazzacco and Tom Reid were very critical of the fans, and you could
tell that they were trying to be as impartial as possible.  They seemed
to be concerned about Leitza going down.
 
bill
 
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