SCSU Game 1

[dagies]

Was at the game tonite and had a good view of the action on the end SCSU defended twice.

Bochenski IS an animal out there. Man among boys. Watching him play tonite reminded me of when athletes say "the game is slowing down for me". He knew what he wanted to do with the man or the puck at almost all times, and usually got it done.

Fylling - awesome game. Made plays, handled the puck....again, he's caught up with the speed of the game. Maybe he's even playing a little faster than most of the rest.

Genoway, good solid game, made some nice passes, missed a few. Did great on faceoffs it seemed to me.

McMahon - didn't show up so much on the stat sheet but made a large number of very important plays. Small things (things that looked small but made big differences) while forechecking to break up SCSU's transition game, that sort of stuff. A real "unsung hero" type of effort. A different game if he's out of the lineup.

Massen - still looking for his game I think. Seemed to come on some near the end of the game but didn't seem to play with the same aggressiveness and confidence we saw in the past. Seemed tentative. Hopefully he can work through that.

Canady - excellent game. Played aggressive and fast, smart hockey. I didn't think his goal was a soft one (maybe it was). It looked to me like it was good hustle hockey where he used his reach to put the puck around Coole. Didn't make too many mistakes that this neophite could tell.

Prpich - good game but not one of his best.

Schneider - not one of his better games. Seemed to have difficulty handling the puck. I remember seeing that in one game in Mankato last year too. Of course, the puck was bouncing all over the ice for everyone tonite.

Lundbohm - excellent game, really made some great plays, and helped out backchecking. Had difficulty keeping his skates under him. Bad ice???

4th line - Palmo, Hale and Marvin did their job effectively. Didn't give up much, often kept the puck in the offensive zone, and allowed the other lines to rest. Coach seemed to have confidence to keep rolling the lines.

Fuher - excellent game, really looked good out there.

Jones - best D man on the ice tonite. Jumped in to the play at the right times, played VERY physical, and good smart hockey in the defensive end.

Parise - Jordan, please, please use more caution when leaving the net. Later in the first he needlessly(seemed to me) left the net to play the puck and fortunately made the pass past the SCSU player but had it been picked off.....

I haven't mentioned everybody who played but these are the ones where I had specific thoughts or comments.

Power Play - looked really good. They got set up, created chances, and could have had a couple more PP goals.

Penalty Kill - looked dang good almost all night. Blais seemed to play several pairs of killers.

The beginning of the game did look ugly. I was comforted with how well the team seemed to respond to JP. After the second goal they all really seemed to go out of their way to prop him up a bit, show him that they were still behind him. Lots of really positive body language. The team responded, even after the 3rd goal was given up. That was more of a team goal vs. a mistake by JP. Anyway, after that the boys got on a roll and dominated SCSU for the rest of the period. It was really fantastic how well we played, and encouraging to see how well some of the individuals performed. While I am disappointed to end up in a tie, when it is a game we could have won, after starting down 3 goals I'm pretty happy.

If this team can play this well without the 3 WJ players, well, you just gotta smile. Hopefully tomorrow we can cut out a few of the mistakes. If so, should be able to bank a couple of points. Let's see if they can do it.

[747Guy]

dagies, nice observations. I too was at the game; I felt the Sioux played well after the first 5:00 of the game. Looked like the Sioux really attacked the play well. Look GREAT shorthanded, I think I heard that stat of only 2 shots for SCSU on 5 powerplays!! Nice! It looked like the ice was a bit soft, pucks were bouncing all over the place, wierd hops. Player wise,Bo was the MAN tonight no dobut, would have been the full deal had he put that snapper a few inches lower off the draw in OT to win it! One point is good, but I think SCSU stole a point from the Sioux, because in my opinion UND is a much much better team than SCSU even without Parise, Murray and Stafford. I will not be at the game tommorow (wish I were); I really think the Sioux can pull three points out of this series. The Sioux need to get on Coole early and often and get the first goal of the game and take control of the flow for 60 minutes. I think the 4th line could be the determining factor Sat. night. As no doubt SCSU will key in on Bo and Co.

[PCM]

Thanks for your comments, dagies. It's good to read the impressions of those who actually saw the game. If the Sioux get the win Saturday night, Friday's tie won't look bad at all. Blais said in the pre-game that he'd take a split. I'd be happy with 3 of 4 points, and I'm sure Blais would, too.

[sprig]

The only play Blais was unhappy with in the postgame was Greene's whiff on the 2 on 2 that resulted in the tieing goal.

[CoteauRinkRat]

Thanks dagies for your insight.

[01grad]

I was there also, thanks Dagies. It was my first time in an opposing arena other than Mariucci and I had a blast. Our defense looked a little shaky at times, but once we started playing more physical and with the body we were okay. That last goal for St. Cloud to tie was tough. I can't remember who was on defense but he looked as if he was going to pick the guy up but didn't, which allowed him to shoot and gather his own rebound.

Brandon did play excellent out there. He does a great job on both ends of the ice just like Parise and Murray. They all kind of remind me a little of Jeff Panzer and Jason Blake as well as the many other past forwards we have had that were always hustling. Brandon is a great stick handler just like Roche. He has it all. When we had the 5-3 power play it was obvious that we were trying to get Brandon the puck to sniper it home and I think that St. Cloud caught onto this right away, which made it tough even for him put home after three attempts. This is when it would have been great to have a few more go to guys out there to draw more attention to themselves.

Adam Coole reminded me a little of Karl G. the way he made some of those great saves to give them a chance and after they tied it he was doing a little dance and showing some emotion. That was fun to see, too bad it was against us though. He did make many great saves, glove and on sprawling on his back for one. We applied great pressure once we were relaxed.

FACE-OFFS!!! This was a major key to the game. I don't know any of the percentages but we definitely had the advantage in this category. This was huge for controlling and setting up the puck, as was showcased with Bochenski's blast that clanged off the cross-bar with 8 ticks left.

I was surprised that Ziggy was the back up last night, anybody hear why? I was thinking either Brandt wasn't healthy or Dean wanted to give Brandt a birds eye view of the action to prepare for Saturday or possibly give Ziggy a last chance to shine if needed.

I think the penalties were called pretty fairly. We took some stupid ones and brought the pressure on ourselves. We need to stay out of the box tonight because though the Huskies power play didn't do much against our tough defense, they might in time.

?? I have a question. When the referee calls a penalty and we pull our goalie for an extra attacker, how long does the opposing team specifically the goalie, need to control the puck for? The reason I ask this is because we had a very quick whistle to stop play after we were in this situation and the puck just glanced off of the goalie and he didn't have control. Is it if it just touches the goalie or does he need to control or cover it? Coole clearly didn't have control of the puck in this situation and he benefited by a quick whistle.

I hope that Brandon has enough left in the tank for tonight because he was everywhere. Hopefully others will step up again and play to their full potential and then some. We need to dig deep as we did last night.

Plenty of Sioux fans at the arena which made for a great environment. I am very proud to be a Sioux fan the way we show such great class in an opposing venue. Every Sioux fan is so nice and outgoing it makes it very comfortable and enjoyable to watch a game.

Tonight they won't be dissapointed. (Sioux win 3-2)

[dagies]

When we had the 5-3 power play it was obvious that we were trying to get Brandon the puck to sniper it home and I think that St. Cloud caught onto this right away, which made it tough even for him put home after three attempts.

We noticed this too. However, the other option for Genoway to pass to on the other side of the "box" from Bochenski was Matt Jones, and while no one can complain about his contributions offensively this year or his play last night, it's pretty obvious SCSU is going to focus their attention on Bochenski rather than Jones. Bo still got off some shots but I think traffic was a bit heavier than it could have been in front of him. Genoway just kept passing it over to Bo. I think if they would have moved it to the other side from time to time they might have caught SCSU moving and created a little more space.

But that's splitting hairs. From my perspective it would be difficult to be critical of the team after the first few minutes and that's been well documented. The key is to come out with the same sort of fire tonite and if so I believe the Sioux will bank the points unless Coole plays out of his mind.

I'll be there again, but not sure if our seats will be as good.

[redwing77]

I only listened to the overtime (Darn family) but I noticed that a lot of Sioux players were falling down. Could someone give me an idea of what was up with that?

I also heard Anderson was the ref. How'd he do?

Dagies, thanks for the recap. It made it a lot more worthwhile to those of us who were unable to listen or watch the game.

[01grad]

It was a really fast paced game the entire time so everybody's legs were probably very tired. The main reason that players were falling down though was that the ice looked very chipped up and snowy even at the start of overtime, especially around the nets and by the benches. The puck got stuck a bunch of times along the boards, but nothing like the time last year that the puck came to a dead stop in the Gopher game right at the start of a period, that was great! They had two zamboni machines and they still missed a strip in front of the benches the entire length of the ice before the start of the 3rd.

[PCM]

Hennessy commented Friday night on David Lundbohm falling down a lot and speculated that maybe he needs to get his skates sharpened more often. I can't remember if it was against Wayne State or Findlay last weekend, but I thought Lundbohm was falling down quite a bit in one of those games, too.

[diggin42]

I sat right behind the Sioux bench and they seem to be a really loose group. Even after the 3rd goal, the guys coming back to the bench were smiling while shaking their heads. I couldn't really hear much, but the timeout seemed to be more about settling Parise down than anything else cuz the coaches were all yelling for him to come over to the bench. They were all pretty juiced to see Canady score. Bochenski talked to Blais a lot during the game, usually right when he came off the ice on a shift change. I didn't really notice anyone else doing that.

There's a guy about 55-60 yrs old that's always talking to the Sioux coaches and players. During the Sioux power plays, he constantly yells "PASS!" whenever our guys were moving the puck around the blue line and along the sides. Berry and Hakstol would yell out stuff like "UP" or "GO," and this clown would yell "DOWN" or "BACK." More than once he even had Blaiser chuckling. Doug Woog once commented about this guy (I think he said his name is Wayne) during a televised UM-STC game, saying he loved him during his coaching days.

Massen and Schneider seemed a little disconnected from everything. Massen made a couple of nice plays, but as everyone else said, he wasn't consistent. Schneider simply struggled. Fylling's eyes were always wide open, like he was defining concentration. Genoway oozes confidence and you could see that he was really enjoying his time w/ Bochenski. Jones was the leader of the D. Greene is, well, huge. Smaby has some great guys to learn from.

It was fun to experience the hush over the drunk Husky fans sitting behind me as the Sioux took over the game and methodically came back. Hopefully they can put together 60 solid mins tonite. If they do, I don't think STC has the horses to keep up.

[Smoggy]

01grad,

I always thought that the goalie needed to have control of the puck for the ref to blow the whistle for a penalty. Maybe I'm wrong, because in Saturdays game the Huskies were getting a penalty, we took a shot that hit Coole and went out to a Sioux players and Anderson blew his whistle to stop play. Does anyone know the rule for goalies and stopping play when their team is getting a penalty?

[CoteauRinkRat]

Hennessy commented Friday night on David Lundbohm falling down a lot and speculated that maybe he needs to get his skates sharpened more often. I can't remember if it was against Wayne State or Findlay last weekend, but I thought Lundbohm was falling down quite a bit in one of those games, too.

He commented on Saturday night also

[TheSiouxFan]

He commented on Saturday night also

I believe it was Lundbohm who fell down right before a breakaway Saturday against SCSU.