I had hoped for box scores in the Sunday newspaper to post, but once again I was disappointed by the Detroit News. I won't try to recreate them from memory so I will just give my impressions. It did however have the AP article on Minnesota recruiting. I will try to post that today. I listened to the Friday night game between Michigan and Minnesota. It was painful. Outside of some small stretches, Michigan appeared to control the game. The game was really over by the end of the first period which showcased David Oliver of Michigan and a natural hat trick. Michigan did a good job on special teams matching up against a poor job by Minnesota. Problems from last year seem to be worse for Minnesota, at least that night. Michigan made Minnesota pay for the mistakes they made. Errant or intercepted passes in the defensive zone were turned into goals by Michigan. Final score was Michigan 6 - Minnesota 0. I did not hear or even see a score for the Michigan State - Wisconsin game. I understand that it was Michigan State 4 - Wisconsin 3 (or 2?) I did attend the Saturday games. Michigan State got off to a quick 2-0 lead in the first period before Minnesota and in particular the Minnesota goalie, Moen, settled down. Up to that point it was looking like a repeat of the Michigan game the night before for Minnesota. The game, however, did turn into an exciting one. Minnesota made it unnecessarily exciting by having difficulty with passing and in particular with breaking out of their zone. Fortunately for Minnesota, Michigan State was not able to capitalize on the mistakes like Michigan had. In the end Minnesota was able to a good job of passing in the offensive zone as well as had many outstanding individual efforts on the way to beating Michigan State 6-5. The Wisconsin - Michigan started out similar to the earlier game in the day with Michigan going up 2-0. At that point it looked like Michigan might give another WCHA team a drubbing. Wisconsin, in the role of Michigan in last year's NCAA regional, was able to struggle back and eventually take the lead for the win 4-3. Shields and Carey were both good in goal, as always. Shields was only fooled once but it was costly. A Wisconsin player took the puck around the goal on a wrap around. Shields and a defenseman cut him off. The Wisconsin player started skating back the other way but managed a very nice pass back, before getting too far behind the net, to a team mate coming into the faceoff circle. Shields didn't see this and followed the first player behind the net to the other side leaving a wide open target which wasn't missed. The whole game was well played by both sides. I think Michigan played the more consistent game but Wisconsin was able to play with more intensity at times. A final word on attendance, it was good for college hockey (7-10,000 per day) but sparse for the Palace (seating around 19-20,000) The numbers that get announced at the Palace are misleading. The total tickets "sold" for the games was announced as more than 25,000 (I can't remember the exact number.) However, this includes all the boxes (and there are a lot of them), whether or not anyone was there, etc. The announced numbers probably overstate the real numbers by 5-10,000. Doug P. --+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-- Douglas J. Peterson Have _--____ ____ [log in to unmask] you ` / ---- / Safety Laboratories Department driven -/- __ ____ _ / Ford Motor Company a . / / \--/___/ \/ (313) 390-8089 GO GOPHERS!!! \_/ ,\_/ / \_/_ lately? --+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+--