Mark McCullen responded to the questions about Piotrowski and why play at Joe Louis Arena, but I would add a couple of things. On the second question first, Mark's description of the size arenas and the presence of many fans from both schools in Detroit was accurate. Of course, the real answer is MONEY. I don't know what JLA's cut was, but they sold twice as many tickets as they could have sold at Munn and Yost in the standard home and home format, and the price of the tickets was double what MSU charges and 3 times what UM -- in these sticks UM means University of Michigan -- charges. Hockey tickets are the only item in the entire operation of the two universities where UM charges less than MSU. But the only time Yost sells out is when they play MSU, and until this year MSU Spartan fans bought more of the Yost tickets than the UM fans. This year it was about even. Back to the issue, MONEY, even with a fairly stiff rental fee, the U's probably cleared $25K each over what they cleared with their November series. I have the feeling it would be hard to get the athletic department to tell the exact figures. Even though these are publicly assisted universities, the athletic departments seem to get away without answering some of these questions. Piotrowski probably is the best ref in the CCHA. He ran an excellent game Friday night except for the blunder on the penalty at the end of the third period. The delayed penalty was to start at 18:02, and at 19:00 the guy -- number 5 Ward, I think -- is out of the box and UM is full strength. I haven't found anyone here who heard what the announcers said about that delay. Did they know what was happening? I would like to have someone tell us about it who watched the PASS feed. MSU's problem with Piotrowski is he has done too many of the MSU games this year. I estimate he has done over half, and the league must have at least 5 officiating teams. It's not just geographic, because he had the games at Sault Saint Marie one week and at Miami of Ohio the next. That's the greatest traveling extent in the league. With the same official showing up every week, the fans don't get a chance to forget what they don't like about the guy, and they don't get enough of a chance to see how much worse it could be with some others. I suspect that an official that sees the same team in the same building a lot must have to work to keep sharp. It probably is good to give the official a chance to forget what that team was up to last week, just like the fans need to forget. Even with Piotrowski's familiarity breeding contempt, I think he has delivered a lot of good games for MSU this year. Unfortunately, MSU didn't win enough of them. You might argue that if the MSU players had done as consistently well at their game as Piotrowski did at his, MSU wouldn't be worried about whether they will have home ice for the first round of the league championships.