Friday's game from certainly spectacular for this Lowell fan. What was rewarding was the constant praise for the Lowell effort from the broadcasters. Having Joe Bertagna doing the color on FOXSN games certainly can lead to a possible conflict of interest and this indeed happened much to the chagrin of Bertagna I'm sure. He's got to remember that as the commisioner of the league, he's not as free to comment on the officiating as other color man might be. He caught himself making some remarks that he immediately retracted once he realized what was going on. :) There was also some considerable commentary during breaks in the play that concerned the ongoing discussions on the net. Bertagna was careful not to step on any toes nor mention any specific net resources but he did mention all the Hobey Baker discussions between the fans of unnamed schools who are all promoting their hometeam favorite. He mentioned Krog, Drury and Reasoner and how some school fans are really promoting their own. When talking about UNH and how some of their fans feel Krog is the man ... he speculated that a case could very well be made for Matile ... which makes a lot of sense to me and I'm surprised no one has brought this up yet. I'm still not sure whether Bertagna was talking about Hockey-L or the message board on USCHO. On the Lowell goals on Friday night, Boulanger scored the first ... whacking the puck home from about 2 feet off the ice...over a sprawled Noble. Rooney scored the second on a nice two-on-one play where he was left alone on Noble ... and pulled the goalie sideways before slipping it real nicely between his pads (very similar to a Drury goal the next night and I wouldn't be surprised if Drury hadn't remebered that move from watching the game films from Friday night ... no, I do realize that its a common goal-scoring move, its just nice to speculate that Rooney could be showing Drury something). Tormey got Lowell's third goal through a screen on the power-play, I believe. Nick Carso scored a big goal a few minutes later on a play made by Shannon Basaraba. "Bass" took the puck down deep on the left side and fed a pass to Carso who was charging the net. Carso had only one hand on his stick and deftly redirected the puck up high past a stunned Noble. Basaraba scored the fifth which was an unbelievable display of the prowess Lowell had that night. It looked like a 5-on-3 Lowell powerplay for a good 50 seconds before Basaraba put it home. :) On BU's final goal to make it 5-2, O'Connell absolutely mauled Lowell defenseman Mark Fontas to steal the puck and score. It was an incredible two-handed trip that just took Fontas' legs right out from under him ... and left O'Connell all alone on Fillion's doorstep. How in the hell the BU offical scorer every credited Sylvia and Drury with assists on that goal is absolutely beyond me!!!! Drury seemed incredibly frustrated all night again and was constantly retaliating without being called. I'll grant that he gets an awful lot of attention but it also seems he's getting way too much leniency from the refs. His temper is getting worse as he keeps getting away with more and more. I think he's the greatest talent in HockeyEast but he seems to be frustrated as of late and maybe all this Hobey pressure is getting to him somewhat. Well, if Hobey Pressure is hurting Drury, you would never know it on Saturday night. He truly was pehenomenal and played one of the best games I've seen him play. What a rebound! Great scoring touch, great forechecking and strong disciplined play. That Lowell loss might be a real catapult to his Hobey drive. What a pleasure it was to see Libett back on the Lowell blueline. It'll make a world of difference to have Libett and Nicholishen both healthy. Doug Nolan returns to the forward ranks and continues to get stoned. Anyone see that two-on-one where he shot from the side of the net instead of feeding an open teamate out front. Nolan is a very hard-working forward who just doens't have that scoring touch. Koehler tipped home a great power-play putting him once again in reach of the nation lead in powerplay goals. Quite an ironic feat considering his predecessor at #11 in Lowell history. When Koehler first broke in with Lowell as a rookie, I kept making observations at how he strongly resembled Jeff Daw who last wore his number and led the nation in power-play goals while setting HockeyEast records for career powerplay tallies. I wonder how Lowell would have fared on Saturday if Fillion had started the game? Fankhouser certainly deserved the start though but Fillion should get both starts this weekend. He's the stronger goalie and more experienced. Fankhouser seems to do really well against average opposition but doesn't have that big game confidence yet. He would do fine against Merrimack but personally I'd like to have a hot Fillion ready for BC and UNH. I'm looking for Northeastern to handle Maine this weekend ... which will sadly greatly diminish Lowell's chances for home ice ... BUT, will help Lowell in two ways. 1.) It'll put us up against Northeastern in the quarter-finals, where we are 2-0-1 against the Huskies this year. 2.) It'll gauarantee we don't go to Alfond. I'm not so sure Lowell would be best off with home ice this season. Tsongas isn't actually the homey-familiar surroundings that the Riverhawks had in the Tully Forum, although a quarter-final series would really go a long way in solidifying the Tsongas as their new home. The home-ice advantage could be a bit decieving at the Tsongas...unless of course we ended the seaosn with wins over Merrimack, BC and UNH at home!!! :) HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.