Due to a system crash last Friday  (don't look at me, my roommate's the one
that bought this silly Macintosh thing), I'm only now getting back into the
swing of things.
 
A couple of things I found in the time I spent reading through almost a
week's worth of postings at once:
 
I have to admit that I'll miss Sinhue Wallinheimo as well.  Usually his kind
of antics bug me, but with him they never really have.  I guess goalies are
different.  The problem, though, is that he did not impress me at all this
year.  I'm not just refering to the late season tailspin.  Even back in
December when DU visited Mariucci and the rest of the team was playing very
well, I noticed that Wally didn't frighten me at all.  I'm not sure what
happened to him, but he was not the same goalie this year that he was last
season.
 
On the penalty given to Jason Godbout mistakenly, I can understand the
mix-up.  The linesman was probably going by nothing more than the number and
mistook #29 for #26.  On the whole, I thought he did a fine job catching this
infraction, which the refs missed.  (More on this in a moment.)
 
As to the games this past weekend, I thought Minnesota looked much better on
Saturday than they had recently (I didn't get to see the Friday game; our TV
blew a tube sometime that afternoon before the VCR turned on.  Not a good day
for 20th century technology in our household.)  Most of the problems I've
complained about were addressed and a solid game was played by almost all.
 Before I get too excited about it, though, I want to see if they can do it
outside of Mariucci and against an opponent that has won a game outside of
Alaska this year.
 
The big part of Saturday's game was the disgraceful show put on by the
Seawolves.  It wasn't just the 3rd period when the game was out of hand,
either.  Very early, Darren Bradley was given 2 minutes for roughing when he
had delivered two solid punches to the head.  A brawl a little later in the
period started when an Anchorage player checked Andy Brink into the boards a
good second and a half after the whistle.  (UAA wound up with the power play,
too, though that was for a Nick Checco slash before the whistle.)  The
Seawolves took nearly every opportunity to run Gophers from behind into the
borads until they finally got called for it late in the third period.
 
The spearing call on Dan Hendrickson was absolutely deserved and a fine piece
of work by the linesman (except for the numeral inversion).  However... the
two players were locked up and jawing well before the puck dropped on the
face-off.  The infraction would never have happened if the refs would have
taken charge.  Which pretty much sums up the whole night's action.
 
Anchorage convinced me that they are clearly the worst band of goons in the
league.  Much the same set of events happened on our trip up there: a close,
hard-fought game on Friday night followed by a Saturday game in which UAA is
only interested in fighting hard.  After all the accolades given to Brush
Christiansen in the last week, this was a shameful performance to highlight
his ride into the sunset.
 
J. Michael Jackson
 
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