Thanks pipes, no thanks refs

[01grad]

The iron really saved our butts tonight. Granted Parise made some really good saves, but it was nice to have a little luck on our side again.

There is no flow to the games anymore. I switched between our game and Denver/St. Cloud and every flip showed penalty time at the top of the screen. I wish they would have shown Dean Blais's reaction on camera more to the missed passes and penalty calls. He is probably glad he got out when he did.

The game is being ruined by so many penalty calls. Players will get used to those cheap calls and dramatize every contact because they know a penalty will be called. We saw it tonight with the trip/dive and another time a player was grabbed they went down so they would get the call. The game won't be cleaner with more calls, it will only get sloppier with more guys trying to draw penalties. Records will probably be set for penalty kill and power play percentages since everything is so upscaled and different from the past. Everybody was probably so tired from the penalty kill tonight, that they probably won't have anything left for tomorrow.

Just my take on the changes in the game. Things have become a little out of control if you ask me. It's tough to go from calling only certain penalties every once in awhile to calling everything. I think the players are having a tough time adjusting and need to be more disciplined than ever.

By the way, maybe we were too quick to credit Mankato with great defense and goaltending. Look at what Duluth did to them tonight. Which means we really need to find some offensive leaders on our team because we should be able to score like that as well.

Hopefully we don't need luck on our side tomorrow and we will sweep straight up!

[UMDDogz]

To your defense, Kyle Nixon started in goal tonight, and he seemed really sloppy, coming off the post early on a couple goals, and just seemed uneasy in the crease. The Dogs got a shorty from Stapleton at 14:28 of the second, and a couple of quick goals at the end of second to turn a 4-2 game into a 7-2 blowout. Nixon seemed really deflated after many of the later goals, ripping off his chinstrap after on of them. The Dogs pumped in 7 goals on 34 shots, and carried the play from the first intermission on.

I the first period, we saw the Mankato team that you had up at REA last weekend. The ice still seemed tilted, but they were able to neutralize the Dogs forecheck with a lot of chipping off the glass. When they did get an opportunity, they buried it.