After the game against RPI (photo: Mark Anbider)

It’s easy for non-Cornell fans to look at Mike Schafer’s one-game suspension tonight — following his Friday rant about the officiating — and call it a “tirade,” or accuse him of “whining,” etc… But that’s only because they don’t understand.

Schafer, yesterday, criticized the officiating for changing the way it was calling the game in the postseason — not calling it tight enough with the interference, as has been the directive for years. And, he said, this doesn’t help the ECAC in the national scene. Schafer has a history of making these kinds of pointed comments, but if you’ve seen him in action, you know that he is far, far from the type of coach that pisses and moans behind the  bench all game — and he is not the kind of coach that berates officials all game, and so on.

When Schafer makes these kinds of comments, he a) knows exactly what he’s doing; b) is very measured in his comments – he is not flying off the handle; c) is willingly taking the risk of getting suspended; and d) is telling the truth.

And, apparently, it’s effective. Saturday’s game resulted in a couple dozen power plays, and Cornell won 4-0. But that’s not here or there. What’s important is that he was right. Well, let me take that back … I wasn’t there. But I did see the Princeton-Union game Friday, and with ECAC Director of Officals Paul Stewart there, I did make a comment during the game that I felt a lot more was being let go — both ways — than usual. From what I’ve heard, same was true in Ithaca. So, assuming that was the case in Ithaca too, then Schafer is right.

But let me digress for a second. I had to laugh when I read Schafer’s comment about him making similar remarks seven years ago, about hitting from behind penalties. He was right then too. But I laugh because I remember it clearly — I was doing radio for Cornell at the time. I remember Schafer specifically waited for me to get off the radio so that I could be there to record his comments. He wanted to make sure that everything he said went online verbatim. He wasn’t flying off the handle, far from it. If he was, he wouldn’t have been cool enough to wait that long. He knew exactly what he was doing.

So I could picture the same thing taking place last night — and that’s why I know he doesn’t just rant half-baked. It’s purposeful. And in 2003, the league did crack down more on hitting from behind. In fact, I ran an article that year explaining how hitting from behind calls — throughout the league — had gone up dramatically in the months after Schafer’s comments compared to before it.

Now, back to the comments themselves. His point about calling the game differently, and how it affects the league in the national sense, is dead on. The league is never going to say this, but it wants its top teams to go through to Albany — because this means more ECAC teams will make the NCAAs, and get better seeds. To do that, it has to make sure it sticks to the officiating standards that have been set in recent years in relation to interference, and not back off just because it’s the playoffs. It might be old school to say “let them play” in the playoffs, but that is exactly the wrong approach that we need anywhere in college hockey.

The goal is not to have a waltz to the penalty box all night — because, that may increase scoring, but it doesn’t increase the quality of the game. The goal is to call the penalties so that the players won’t take the penalties in the future.  That opens the game up, and allows the more skilled teams to be more effective.

So we’ll see what kind of effect Schafer’s comments have. But so far, it’s nothing but positive for everyone, it seems to me.

Sad news comes to us today out of South Bend, where Notre Dame play-by-play man Mike Lockert passed away in his sleep this morning.

Mike was one of those people who was just thrilled to be working in and covering the game. He talked last year in Denver at the Frozen Four about how much he enjoyed college hockey, after having spent time in the past with other major sports, so he brought an interesting perspective. It was fun to see how someone relatively new to the game had come to see and appreciate the things we have enjoyed about it. His enthusiasm for the game and Irish hockey was infectious. You couldn’t help but smile being around him or listening to him call a game.

I remember talking to him after the championship game, and how disappointed he was at Notre Dame’s loss. And saying to him that the way things are going, he’ll get more chances to call a national championship — and might be right back here again next year. I never would have thought this would have happened.

So it is with much sadness that we at CHN remember Mike today and ask you to keep his family and friends in your thoughts and prayers.

Someone sent me a link, tipping me off to a press release from a company in Kansas City that does architectural work for athletic arenas. Here is the link:

http://www.crawfordarch.com/pdfs/Penn_State_Hockey_Study.pdf

Don’t bother clicking, it doesn’t work anymore.

It was a press release, saying that the company had been commissioned to do a study, with the purpose of building a 6,000 seat ice hockey arena for Penn State’s campus. The release also specifically said the arena’s purpose was to house a Division I men’s and women’s team.

As you probably know, the idea of Penn State — a seven-time champion at the club level, and a team that packs its tiny arena — becoming a full-fledged Division I program has been dreamed about for a long time. The idea of a school like that starting a program is a nice feather in the cap for college hockey. It’s also something many people fear, since it could start the wheels in motion for a Big Ten Hockey Conference to form, which would have widespread ramifications, most of them negative, in many people’s opinion.

In any case, it would be big news.

So I made some calls. I called Penn State’s athletic department. I spoke to the athletic director’s office, and a spokesperson in the office of athletic communications. They never heard of the release.

They sent me to their facilities person, Amy Mann. She never heard of it.  She said that, if there was such a plan in the works, she definitely would have heard of it.

So I e-mailed the club coach. No response.  I called the old club coach, Joe Battista, who now runs the Nittany Lion Club. No response.

So I called the name of the person on the press release.  She said she was just someone the architecture company hired to do some marketing. She gave me the number of someone at the company, David Miller.  I called him. He didn’t answer. I left a message asking about the release, and wondering what the status and nature of the project was. No response.

This was all around early afternoon. By 3 p.m. (ET) the press release link no longer worked. Still no return calls from anyone.

We, however, have grabbed the Google cache version of the release, and you can view it here.

Dare I speculate on what happened here?

It reminds of the time, oh, about seven years ago or so. There was an ad in The Hockey News saying Hofstra University was looking for a men’s hockey coach for its “soon-to-be” Division I program. There was a whole lot of chicanery and wishful thinking involved with that one.

My guess is, this was a combination of the club program trying to push the ball forward, and the architectural company trying to embellish reality.

Penn State screwed up when it built the Bryce Jordan Center, and didn’t put ice making facilities in it. That was a dozen years ago. At this point, don’t expect D-I hockey at Penn State any time soon.

UPDATE: A local State College, Pa., paper was able to get someone at the university’s physical plant to admit that a “what if” study was done. The guy indicates that they’ve done a number of these studies over the years. So the bottom line is, it appears that people at the architecture firm severely jumped the gun with the release — embellishing reality a bit, as we first suggested — and when people started sniffing around, they pulled the release (or were ordered to).

Adam had an interesting post about hits from behind.

He mentioned some comments over the weekend by Alaska-Anchorage head coach Dave Shyiak, who was peeved over a major penalty issued to one of his players.

While I understand Shyiak’s frustration, and I agree that the NCAA mandate is kind of dumb, I don’t share his take that it’s “ruining the game”. In fact, I think we have a problem in that we aren’t getting enough of these major penalties called.

Mat Robinson clearly didn’t mean to hit Nico Sacchetti from behind. Sacchetti turned his back at the last second, and Robinson had already committed to what would have been a clean shoulder-to-shoulder check. Sacchetti wasn’t necessarily turning to draw a five-minute major, but those last-second turns sure do seem to happen a lot these days.

To me, the problem is twofold.

For starters, too many officials are finding a way around the five-minute major mandate. Instead of labeling obvious hits from behind as such, they call minor penalties for boarding, cross-checking, charging, elbowing, or whatever. Until all officials are following the mandate at all times, instead of almost applying it when they feel like it, there is no reason to continue with the mandate. If the problem is that “five and a game misconduct” is too much, how about just assessing a five-minute major and not taking the offending player out of the game?

The other problem is that we are seeing a ton of these last-second turns. I can’t imagine players are intentionally trying to take hits in the back so they can fall into the boards and risk a serious injury. Nobody is that stupid. However, how can you tell Mat Robinson not to hit Nico Sacchetti because the latter turns his back at the last second? It makes absolutely no sense, if for no other reason than the fact that it’s probably physically impossible to pull up in many of these situations.

I’m all for eliminating hits from behind in our game. I think it’s an important component toward restoring respect for the game from all who play it. But I think we need to take a serious look at how it’s being done, and realize that it’s not working the way anyone intended.

Did you see Anchorage coach Dave Shyiak’s comments after last night’s game? Hmmm…. Shyiak was upset about a hit from behind call that created a 5-on-3 and Minnesota’s game-winning goal.

“Too many players are turning their backs. Hitting is part of the game. I think [the checking from behind call] is ruining the game,” Shyiak said. “As coaches we gotta make up our minds. Do we want to allow hitting? Otherwise we should just the say no checking and play women’s hockey. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”

Ruining the game? I wouldn’t go that far. In fact, I think the hit from behind call is very important. However, I happen to agree with him about that call. It was a lousy call. It was a borderline 2-minute penalty at best, and in no way deserved a 5-plus-game DQ.

So maybe it was just Shyiak’s emotions getting the better of him, but the hit from behind call is important — but we need to get it right.

The ironic thing is, this comes in the WCHA, where things are relatively laissez-faire. The league took a couple of extra years than the other leagues to install the officiating mandate to crack down on obstruction. And the league has seen more flat out fights — or something closely resembling them — this year than probably the rest of the leagues combined. And the WCHA office does very little about it, choosing to allow a certain level of this stuff without making fighting Game DQ calls, and without suspensions. The general policy of the WCHA is to allow the teams to suspend players before they take any action, and usually the league just goes along with it.

So the irony is clear there, and I think the WCHA officials should be more pro-active, not less. Though, again, in this particular case, Shyiak had a right to be upset.

Rick Comley

There were some swift reactions today to two incidents that everyone was talking about this weekend.

On the one hand, Denver reacted to coach George Gwozdecky’s on-ice tirade and subsequent ejection with a statement that said his behavior was not “condoned.” It took no further action. The WCHA then sent out a statement saying it endorsed the “serious tone” Denver took with its coach. “We appreciate the rapid response the University took in addressing the issue that occurred on January 24 and now consider this matter closed.”

In the other case, Michigan State — and the CCHA to some extent or another — suspended Corey Tropp and Andrew Conboy for the rest of the season for their malicious hit from behind and slash on Michigan’s Steve Kampfer near the end of Saturday’s game. That means 10 games, plus playoffs.

I’m not saying either one was right or wrong, but the difference is interesting.

Denver will get some criticism for not suspending Gwozdecky, the way North Dakota did when coach Dave Hakstol was caught on camera making an obscene gesture at officials. Hey, who hasn’t made obscene gestures at officials — especially the WCHA ones.

But what Gwozdecky did was not going to hurt anyone, so not by any means am I suggesting that what Gwozdecky did warrants a suspension like MSU’s. It’s just … interesting.

On the other hand, no one is really going to argue much with Comley’s decision to suspend his players. But taking a contrarian position — while not defending the play by any stretch — it is a very lengthy suspension when compared against other similar plays. Those things happen frequently, and it was just plain stupid. But as Comley said, it wasn’t pre-meditated. It doesn’t make it right — so please don’t anyone think I’m defending it … it just seems like a lot of games for something like that.

However, let’s say this: kudos to Rick Comley for showing yet again he is a man of integrity and of his word. He has always been quick to discipline his own players swiftly, and not deal kindly with “problem childs.”

I would say the MSU suspensi0ns are more about Comley sending a message to his own team, and keeping control, than it is about the “correct” punishment for the crime.

Which again, is fine. Neither way was right or wrong. It’s an inexact science.

Ironically, Gwozdecky has always been the type of coach similarly respected for doling out quick punishment to his players. He famously suspended Lukas Dora for the 2004 NCAA final, although that’s only the most well-known episode.

Yes, I have broadcasted 128 Minnesota-Duluth men’s hockey games.

Yes, I am continuing to support the program as a season-ticket holder.

Yes, I despise the Minnesota Gophers with every fiber of my being.

However, I am not an idiot. My respect for Don Lucia’s work as a college hockey coach is as high as it gets. Evidence can be found here and here.

The fact that he is a great coach and a wonderful ambassador for the sport doesn’t change the fact that he is capable of being dead wrong.

Evidence of that can be found here.

“I have never discouraged or encouraged [playing football], but that may change now in light of what happened to Zach (Budish, Gopher hockey recruit who suffered a torn ACL playing football) and what happened to Garrett, too,” said Lucia, who also watched recruit Garrett Smaagaard of Eden Prairie miss his senior year of hockey after tearing his ACL in the 2000 Prep Bowl.

Budish’s injury and Lucia’s stance underscore a growing conflict between the two sports. Overlapping schedules, competition for varsity spots and the growing trend of specialization have the relationship between football and hockey, as Hill-Murray activities director and hockey coach Bill Lechner said, “at an uncertain point.”

Kim Nelson of Edina and Vince Conway of Hill-Murray, who coach football at schools where hockey is king, worry that Budish’s injury might make hockey players — particularly elite-level players — reconsider playing football.

Their concerns have merit. Just weeks after Budish’s injury, Lucia received a verbal commitment from an athlete who played both football and hockey.

“We had a talk,” Lucia said. “I said, ‘It’s time to be a hockey player, not a football player.’ He agreed and he’s not going to play football next year.”

I’m all for coaches advising their recruits. I’m not all for coaches telling their recruits not to play football. High school is a time for enjoyment, a time for hanging out with friends, and a not a time to be specializing in one sport over anything else.

To me, coaches who try to steer their recruits to a single sport are afraid. They’re afraid that the kid will start to like a different sport and want to play that instead.

Such fears didn’t overcome anyone in the Minnesota-Duluth program after Matt Niskanen committed there in 2004. Niskanen was a three-sport athlete in high school, playing hockey for the co-op Virginia/Mountain Iron-Buhl program, and playing football and baseball for Mountain Iron-Buhl. He continued to play football and baseball in his senior year, and was a top-notch player in all three sports.

Listen, I’m not trying to hold up Niskanen as some sort of evidence to a greater rule. And I’m not trying to make Scott Sandelin out to be automatically smarter or a better coach than Lucia because he didn’t try to keep Niskanen from playing those sports in his senior year.

But if you ask Niskanen, and I have, the fact that he played all three sports made him a better hockey player and a better person. And you can’t argue with the outcome in either realm. Not only is he one of the better young defensemen in the NHL, but he’s also one of the nicest people you could ever meet, and he truly hasn’t forgotten his roots.

And Lucia is not alone. Around the country, there are coaches trying to dissuade their kids from playing other sports as they grow older. For every Don Lucia, there is a college football coach practically begging his recruits to stop playing hockey or basketball or baseball. And there are high school coaches who go so far as to demand their star players not play any other sport.

These things happen. And they need to stop.

We can’t be in such a hurry to get kids through the developmental stages of sports that we don’t allow them to be kids. Yes, there will be kids like Aaron Ness, a Gophers freshman defenseman who accelerated his high-school education so he could graduate and join the Minnesota program as quickly as possible. But Ness didn’t do that because Lucia told him to. He did it because he wanted to.

And that’s how this should be done. Not with pressure, threats, or even subtle requests from college coaches. If a high-school kid wants to play three sports and star in all three, that should be his decision and no one else’s.

Yes, there is risk.

But there’s also risk in letting that same kid drive to school every day. You don’t see coaches banning their players from driving, do you?

Silly? Absolutely. So is a hockey coach worrying about a potential star recruit getting hurt while playing football, or any other sport.

I’ve always been pleased as punch with the fact that the NCAA doesn’t incorporate polls into the selection process for the NCAA Hockey Tournament.

Of course, it means that the polls are nothing but discussion fodder. But that’s a good thing. Polls should never be more than that. The opinions of human beings should mean nothing when you’re determining who the best hockey teams are. Same goes for football, basketball, baseball, tennis, volleyball, bowling, and any other sport.

We have tournaments and postseasons so we can decide these types of important things on the field of play.

This week, college hockey pollsters are faced with an interesting, difficult, and nearly-impossible dynamic when it comes to WCHA teams (and others, mind you, but I’m going to focus for a moment on the WCHA).

Minnesota State is now 8-5-3. They have impressive wins over Colorado College and North Dakota, but lost twice over the weekend to St. Cloud State, and they also have a loss and a tie against Minnesota.

St. Cloud State sits at 10-6, just swept MSU, but has lost twice to Minnesota-Duluth by matching 5-1 scores.

UMD is unbeaten in their last five. The Bulldogs, now 7-4-5 on the season, chased Colorado College star goalie Richard Bachman with a five-goal second period explosion Saturday. The 7-4 win follows a three-point weekend against North Dakota and a second four-goal win over St. Cloud State.

Who gets ranked where?

Thankfully, it doesn’t really matter. These three teams settle their differences and decide their rankings with their play on the ice. In January, various sites will start to publish their guesses on what the PWR looks like. CHN has already started publishing the KRACH ratings (waiting until everyone has lost one game).

The only day the PWR matters is on Selection Sunday, but it’s always interesting to watch the ebb and flow over the course of the season’s second half. While there are always quirks with logic involved, they aren’t nearly as bad as the quirks with logic that are involved in the polls.

Of course, it’s always easier to except the quirks when you realize the polls don’t matter one lick. It’s nothing but blog and message board fodder to keep us interested until another full slate of games on Friday night.

The NCAA is once again talking about restricting travel during the NCAA tournament of most sports, thanks to concerns over the economy. The last time it did this was in the aftermath of 9/11, forcing the hockey tournament to take travel into consideration in ways that caused unbalanced brackets. While seemingly with pure intent, the restrictions really did nothing to limit travel as a whole, and instead just messed with the brackets unnecessarily, and the whole thing was scrapped the next year.

This time around, it’s because of the economy and not terrorism concerns. But again, the hockey community is hoping to convince the NCAA it’s unneccessary. So reports that this will affect hockey are a bit premature. It’s only gone past one phase of NCAA legislation and still needs to be approved at the January convention. Before then, hockey commissioners are hoping to do some lobbying, and I have high hopes they will be successful.

The hockey tournament makes money, unlike many of the other NCAA sports, so it has that on its side. And with only 16 teams in it, it leaves very little wiggle room when creating brackets. This risks some really unbalanced brackets, something hockey doesn’t want since it’s been so religious about sticking to a Pairwise-strict bracket integrity even since going to the 16-team field in 2003.

So breathe easy for now, and hope the lobbyists can make some headway.

As Denver Post writer Mike Chambers pointed out in his blog post after last night’s 4-3 win by Ohio State over the Pioneers, Denver coach George Gwozdecky got very upset when J.P. Testwuide was forced to stay on the ice despite an injury. That’s because the new rule in college hockey this year states that a team can’t replace the players on the ice after an icing call. The rule, as the NHL implemented a couple of years ago, is supposed to further penalize a team for icing the puck.

But the NHL rule, as you can see here, makes an exception for injuries:

81.4 Line Change on Icing – A team that is in violation of this rule shall not be permitted to make any player substitutions prior to the ensuing face-off.  … However, a team shall be permitted to make a player substitution to replace a goalkeeper who had been substituted for an extra attacker, to replace an injured player or goalkeeper, or when a penalty has been assessed which affects the on-ice strength of either team. The determination of players on ice will be made when the puck leaves the offending player’s stick.

The college hockey rule doesn’t appear to include that language. This seems like something that needs clarification. But as far as I can find, the college hockey rule book did not add language on injuries. If so, that’s a bad oversight.

Other observations from the weekend: Did you see where Alabama-Huntsville defeated Tennessee 13-0 in an exhibition game. The shots were 64-8. Yeah, Tennessee — a club team, obviously, since the Volunteers are not playing varsity hockey. Why did UAH bother playing this game? They may as well have played the Delaware Valley Midget team from down the road. It would sure be great if Tennessee had varsity hockey … but I don’t see this as being a stepping stone to that.

Of course, as one astute observer pointed out — and, it’s funny, but he wasn’t kidding — this game will draw more in Huntsville than a game against Colorado College. … Also, it seems UAH lost to Tennessee when it kicked off its program in 1979. So this was revenge. Ha.