Well, better late than never. Tonight's game was everything (well ALMOST everything) you could want. It was hard fought, clean, and between two pretty even teams. The Gophers came out hitting hard and skating like demons were after them. We had Moen in goal for the Gophers and he played fairly well. Lacher for LSSU was very good in goal, he was cool and stayed calm. The Championship game was very exciting and kept the relatively small crowd on the edges of their seats and cheering on their teams. The announced attendance was somewhere around 8,800, but that was the paid attendance. The actual count of bodies in the seats was closer to 5,000. Many people actually left after the first OT (5:00) I guess they expected it to go a lot longer than it did. The Lakers scored at 35 seconds of the second OT. Coach Doug Woog was quoted in the Star Tribune this morning: "The only thing that bothers me about it is that they won when we made a mistake. They threw the puck in, hoping we'd make a mistake and we accomodated them. When the puck went behind the net, our goalie (Jeff Moen) went back to stop the puck, but our defenseman (Wasley) went to the front of the net instead of behind to get it." Matteucci got the goal from the point after it bounced off a couple of Gophers. Kind of ironic that he got the goal, he'd been gooning it up all night, hoping for a fight (or so it looked to me). It was good experience for the Gophers to play against such tough competition. Will come in handy this next weekend when we see the Badgers of Wisconsin. I've been hoping to upload the articles from the Minnesota Daily, but the GOPHER server is having problems. Here are a few notes/comments quoted from the article that was in today's MN Daily (1/4/94). Gopher hockey coach Doug Woog was disappointed with his team's 4-3 double OT loss to Lake Superior State in Sunday's Mariucci Classic finals. But he believed the team played its best game of the season in a losing effort. "It was our most versatile game, where we sealed up in our own end and played physical," Woog said. "Maybe it was our best overall performance against a good team." <I agree, it was the best game I've seen in a long time - a total team effort!!> Co-captain Jeff Nielsen agreed. "They're the most mature, physical team we've played. Physically, you know you have to be involved in the game. We shut a great team down." The disappointment stems from not putting the Lakers away. end quotes How true. After the Lakers scored the game winner, all but a handful of fans left and did not wait for the all-tournament team to be announced and for the award ceremony. We all (Erik, Paula, Pam, Lisa, William and Kurt) all stayed and were rewarded with getting three Gophers on the all-tournament team. After last year, that was really something! The Gophers seem to be getting more accustomed to their "new" home, and that's good news. Maybe after we play the Badgers here this coming weekend, it will REALLY feel like home. Glad we got to get together with the hockey-l'ers who came. It's always fun to talk some hockey and see the faces that go with the e-mail addresses!! ;-) -Carol Carol S. White BITNET: c-whit@uminn1 University of Minnesota internet:[log in to unmask] Office of the Registrar (612) 625-8517 GO Gophers!!!