Thursday, December 28, 2006

Tigers Prepare for OOC Showdown

Tommorrow night the Tigers will take on the Bemidji State Beavers in their second real non-conference series of the season. Their last, against now #2 New Hampshire, didn't go so well, with CC getting swept at home. That series sparked a four game losing streak for the Tigers, who had to travel to Minnesota the week afterwards. Bemidji State should not present as much of a challenge for the Tigers, but could still provide a tough series - especially since the Tigers will be missing star freshman Bill Sweatt, who's at the World Junior Championships in Sweden. The series could have important implications when it comes time to make NCAA tournament selections. Out-of-conference games are always important, and a loss in this series could hit the Tigers hard in the pairwise rankings. On the other hand, if Bemidji State ends the season as a TUC (team under consideration), some wins this weekend could give the Tigers a nice boost come selection time.

Speaking of the World Juniors, the US team isn't doing so great. They dropped a heartbreaker in their first game, 2-1 to Germany. In the second, the US was beaten by Canada 6-3. CC's lone representative at the tournament, Bill Sweatt, however, is doing fairly well - notching two points in the first two games. He'll have to keep playing well if the US wants to redeem their medal hopes in the following days.

I haven't updated in awhile because there hasn't really been much going on in the college hockey world. Aside from a bunch of PC crybabies at Dartmouth whining about their upcoming game against North Dakota, things have been quiet. One link of note is INCH's midway all-WCHA team, which includes our own Scott McCulloch. There's some other notes about CC in that article, including a nice mention of McCulloch's emergence with the graduation of Marty Sertich and Brett Sterling, and also a little buildup for CC's home series for Minnesota that's coming up in a month or two. Lastly, there's a nice article on USA Hockey's website about Bill Sweatt.

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