From: Colorado Springs Gazetteby David Ramsey
This isn’t what Colorado College needed.
Top-ranked Denver trashed the Tigers on Saturday night while a bewildered crowd watched at World Arena.
The Evil Empire of the North manhandled the Tigers, 7-3. The Tigers surrendered six goals in the first 30 minutes. In one long blur of humiliation, CC was buried by its archrival.
The Tigers listened most of the night while Denver fans chanted nice things about the Pioneers and mean things about CC.
It was ugly.
No, let me correct that. This game traveled to realms far beyond mere ugly.
CC captain Mike Testwuide shook his head.
“Down 6-0 in your own building,” he said in a quiet voice, “that’s pretty embarrassing, to say the least.”
It was, more than anything, bizarre. One night after the Tigers played their best game of the season, they delivered their worst game of the 21st century.
“I feel bad for our fans who were here,” CC coach Scott Owens said. “I feel bad for our seniors.”
The Tigers have five days to recover as they seek to salvage their season. They battle at Minnesota-Duluth on Friday night in the opening round of the WCHA playoffs.
CC will journey to Minnesota hoping for resurrection, and, yes, I know death is associated with resurrection. This Tigers have been on life-support in recent weeks, losing five of their last six by a combined score of 24-12.
Perhaps the Tigers began that resurrection on Saturday. After falling hopelessly behind, CC rallied with three unanswered, if meaningless, goals.
Maybe the Tigers can give meaning to those goals. Maybe they take a touch of momentum on the trip to Duluth.
But taking anything worthwhile from this defeat will be a challenge.
With 15 minutes left in the second period, the Tigers had a brief glimpse of happiness. The Pioneers were down two men, and CC seemed certain to brighten the gloomy night.
Instead, this turned into some of the worst minutes of the game. The Tigers never made a serious attempt at scoring.
The DU crowd roared, mocking those CC fans wondering if it could get any worse.
And, yes, it could have been worse. In 1960-61, the Tigers lost all five meetings with the Pioneers while allowing 47 goals. On March 4, 1960, just over 50 years ago, the Tigers lost at home to DU, 13-3.
That loss is among the four or five worst nights in CC history.
This loss wasn’t that bad. It was only almost that bad.
“We have to put this game behind us,” Testwuide said. “It’s over.”
The Tigers have been tumbling since late November. They’ve been unpredictable. They’ve often baffled their fans.
Saturday night, the Tigers hit bottom.
Let’s see how they respond after sinking to the depths.
Top-ranked Denver trashed the Tigers on Saturday night while a bewildered crowd watched at World Arena.
The Evil Empire of the North manhandled the Tigers, 7-3. The Tigers surrendered six goals in the first 30 minutes. In one long blur of humiliation, CC was buried by its archrival.
The Tigers listened most of the night while Denver fans chanted nice things about the Pioneers and mean things about CC.
It was ugly.
No, let me correct that. This game traveled to realms far beyond mere ugly.
CC captain Mike Testwuide shook his head.
“Down 6-0 in your own building,” he said in a quiet voice, “that’s pretty embarrassing, to say the least.”
It was, more than anything, bizarre. One night after the Tigers played their best game of the season, they delivered their worst game of the 21st century.
“I feel bad for our fans who were here,” CC coach Scott Owens said. “I feel bad for our seniors.”
The Tigers have five days to recover as they seek to salvage their season. They battle at Minnesota-Duluth on Friday night in the opening round of the WCHA playoffs.
CC will journey to Minnesota hoping for resurrection, and, yes, I know death is associated with resurrection. This Tigers have been on life-support in recent weeks, losing five of their last six by a combined score of 24-12.
Perhaps the Tigers began that resurrection on Saturday. After falling hopelessly behind, CC rallied with three unanswered, if meaningless, goals.
Maybe the Tigers can give meaning to those goals. Maybe they take a touch of momentum on the trip to Duluth.
But taking anything worthwhile from this defeat will be a challenge.
With 15 minutes left in the second period, the Tigers had a brief glimpse of happiness. The Pioneers were down two men, and CC seemed certain to brighten the gloomy night.
Instead, this turned into some of the worst minutes of the game. The Tigers never made a serious attempt at scoring.
The DU crowd roared, mocking those CC fans wondering if it could get any worse.
And, yes, it could have been worse. In 1960-61, the Tigers lost all five meetings with the Pioneers while allowing 47 goals. On March 4, 1960, just over 50 years ago, the Tigers lost at home to DU, 13-3.
That loss is among the four or five worst nights in CC history.
This loss wasn’t that bad. It was only almost that bad.
“We have to put this game behind us,” Testwuide said. “It’s over.”
The Tigers have been tumbling since late November. They’ve been unpredictable. They’ve often baffled their fans.
Saturday night, the Tigers hit bottom.
Let’s see how they respond after sinking to the depths.
16 comments:
ummm...correction. CC did NOT score three unanswered goals. Rakhshani scored in the third to give DU seven.
Front page story about the DU student section on Friday & then two prominent mentions in the opposing team's fishwrap on Sunday.
Thats a lot of good ink in a couple of days.
unanswered as in consecutive.
Good to see DU fans travelling more.
DU fans made am impact last night at CSWA.
I love how CC calls us the evil empire of the north. Maybe we should start rolling the Darth Vader outfit next season. Or better yet Darth Boone.
That's OK, they will have until this fall to think about how they were humiliated by the evil empire of the North. As an added bonus, unless they have a Miracle on Ice in the tournament this should be the beginning of the end of their season.
As I told my someone before the start of the game Saturday night, you can never score enough goals against CC.
CC ended up exactly where everyone thought they would....in the bottom 5 of the WCHA. No one should be surprised....CC is not a great team this year.
He meant "consecutive", but he wrote "unanswered". They were not unanswered. Even though we did give up those three, it's cool to score the last one!!
Hope to see a lot of DU fans taking a ride on the UMD bandwagon!
GO UMD!!!!
:-)
I like UMD, but they could really give DU trouble in the Final 5. Certainly they took DU to the woodshed when Stalock got hot in St. Paul.
Then again a UMD sweep gives the "57" chant another year.
Hmmm. Go UMD!
I love that Chambers made Testwuide a star of the game but not Chevy. What game was he watching? Mike remains a homer. CC Sucks and so does Mike Chambers.
Cheverie for Hobey!
Mikey Testuide is one Tiger that I'll be glad to see graduating. He certainly filled the Pio-Killer role vacated by Chad Rau.
I remember meeting JP's dad when JP was a freshman. I asked if his little bro was coming to Denver and he said that he hasn't been offered a scholarship so probably not. And if he didn't, we'd regret it. Boy, was he right
Mikey seems to have quite a mouth on him. He thought he could get into the heads of the Pios as a way to beat them since he knew his team were mediocre at best. Much the same way a couple of the Seawolves did at Magness.
Maybe losing out on Mike Testwuide was the best thing that happened to DU. Gwoz sure hasn't passed on too many brothers since then..
Gwoz did pass on Ruegsegger's sister (goaltender) who went off to Wisconsin instead. I hope Murray doesn't make us regret that decision next season. :-)
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