Having read a couple of posts regarding Blaine Lacher's omission from the All-
CCHA team including honorable mention, I felt it was sort of time to hopefully
clear things up a bit (if I screw up something, I'm sure John in A2 will help
me out :-) ).
 
The All-CCHA team was picked by the 11 CCHA coaches.  Coaches were not allowed
to vote for their own players, therefore, for example, David Oliver's 10 first-
place votes was considered a unanimous selection.
 
As regards to Blaine Lacher, I too was surprised to see (esp. since I posted
the teams and thus saw it first) that not only was he not on either team but
had not received enough votes to be considered honorable mention.  In fact,
Lacher was voted fourth best goaltender in the conference behind Shields, Buzak,
and Shulminstra.  The coaches may have taken into consideration that: a) Lacher
was out for a fair amount of the season; b) the recent string of success (298
shutout minutes and only one goal in 360 minutes) came against the weakest 3
teams in the league; and c) Buzak and to a slightly lesser extent Shields have
been workhorses for their respective teams.  As to the charge that Shields has
a much better defense in front of him, one must remember that at the beginning
of the season, one of the big criticisms against UM was that they were somewhat
green on the blue line and Shields was going to have to come up big to keep the
kind of success Michigan has had recently.  As John has noted previously, Buzak
may be the surprise success of the year in the CCHA, since last year he had
split the task somewhat evenly with Eric Kruse.  While the Spartans are strong
on defense, they are also prone to fatal errors at the worst times.  One of the
main reasons MSU is in contention for an NC$$ bid is that 9 times out of 10,
Buzak has come up with the big save after a defensive mistake that could cost
the game.
 
Despite all that, I do think that Lacher did not get the recognition he de-
serves.  Lacher, like Buzak, is only a junior and should be back between the
pipes next year in the Soo, where he will contend for All-CCHA honors next year
with Buzak and probably Bob Petrie at BG (who is only a freshman) and
potentially Paul Spencer at UIC (freshman) and Tom Askey at OSU (sophomore).
Whether Lacher or Shields will ever make the NHL is an entirely different
question.  Lacher, as far as I know, has not been drafted by any NHL team,
a situation which I'm sure will be rectified over the summer.  Shields was
drafted by Buffalo, which has always had some problems with goaltending, so
he could make an impact faster than one would expect.  Buzak was drafted by
St. Louis, which at the moment, appears to have a stable goaltender in Curtis
Joseph, so his chance at the NHL may be a few years down the road.  All three
are excellent goaltenders (though I haven't seen Lacher play this year since
Sass played against MSU in the Lakers' only trip to East Lansing this year).
Why Lacher did not get more votes than he did is still somewhat of a mystery
to me, but I can see where the coaches rated Shields and Buzak 1-2.
 
G. M. Finniss
Michigan State University
WVU '87, UTenn (plays tonight at home in the Women's vs. NC A+T) '92, MSU who
the hell knows when?
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