After missing much of the Final Five last season because of a family vacation, I am exceedingly happy to be back for its entirety this year. Afterall, there is only one of these left after this season before we can expect major changes — not only in the teams, but in the look and feel as well as the locale of this tournament starting in 2014.

If you are not in town and want to follow along, please follow me on Twitter @MyersHockey. I will be providing updates from here all weekend long.

If you’re interested and haven’t yet found my WCHA Final Five preview, please check it out here.

Anyways, we are just minutes away from Denver and Michigan Tech. St. Cloud State and North Dakota get going at 7. This winner of this game plays Minnesota-Duluth tomorrow at 2. Tonight’s winner will play Minnesota on Friday night. Those winners play in Saturday’s championship. No more third place game, thankfully. Instead the Minnesota Wild play Carolina at 1 p.m. Saturday.

Michigan Tech’s story really is something. This team has been on the road for 15 days. They flew from Colorado Springs to the Twin Cities on Monday and decided to stay here, something Mel Pearson told me they had planned on doing. It was a delicate situation when it was, because at the time, the Huskies still had home ice aspirations.

Denver is finished with exam week and here in St. Paul, playing the part of the favorite today. That didn’t work out well for CC last weekend.

Predictions for today? I’ll take Michigan Tech and North Dakota.

Thursday, March 15th, 2012 - 3:05 pm | Blogs, Commentary, Notes, Thoughts, Ramblings, Postseason, WCHA