That huge sigh of relief emanating in Colorado Springs last night was Coach Montgomery. The University of Denver finally didn't lose a game in overtime.
DU scored in the final two minutes of regulation after lifting goalie Sam Britan to knot the score at 1-1. Joey LaLeggia tallied the lone Pioneer goal.
After suffering four 3-2 overtime losses to start the season, including two last weekend against Nebraska-Omaha, DU managed to "win" the game via a shootout. Nationally & in regards to the Gold Pan, the game will count as a tie, but Denver picks up an extra point in the NCHC standings.
Jim Montgomery has heard stories about the intense and bizarre Denver-Colorado College hockey series. Heard about the frozen chickens and the black swan and the legion of black mice tossed from the stands. Heard about the full cup of soda recently thrown at Denver coach George Gwozdecky.
So it makes sense for Montgomery, Denver's new coach, to ponder this question:
"Do I need to wear a helmet?" he asked in his fourth-floor campus office [read entire article].
(above) DU students at World Arena during a wild third period
The University of Denver hockey team scored three times in the last six minutes of regulation to force overtime on Saturday night at World Arena. But its was Colorado College who scored with 10 seconds remaining in overtime to steal the victory.
(above) Nolan Zajac gives Jordan DiGiandothe business
“It was a good, road playoff-type game for us, and I thought we competed
hard and won more puck battles. I liked
our level of competition and effort tonight, and the only thing missing
was a W. That was a really good goalie we were playing against who’s
been unbelievable since Christmas.”
- Colorado College Head Coach Scott Owens
The University of Denver secured the annual Gold Pan Trophy over rival Colorado College with a 1-1 tie on Friday night at sold out Magness Arena. The tie handed the season series to DU with a insurmountable 2-0-1 record against CC.
Larkin Jacobson scored for DU and once again Juho Olkinuora was fantastic between the pipes.
The Pioneers will face the Tigers on Saturday night at the World Arena in Colorado Springs.
In the past 47 games, CC has won just 17 times. That’s all. Last season
ended with nine wins in the last 25.
The Tigers are winless in their past seven, and last weekend’s 8-4
loss at Nebraska-Omaha ranks among the worst performances of the Owens
era, which started in 1999. This is a lost team wandering
through a mind-numbingly awful season.
The immediate future does not look promising. The Tigers tangle with
North Dakota this weekend in a deafening, hostile arena. North Dakota
has scored at least four goals in four of its past five games. The
Tigers have allowed 55 goals during their 12-game tumble [read entire article].
(above) After completing the hit on CC's William Rapuzzi, DU players discuss where to bury the body
At World Arena on Saturday night the University of Denver held on for a 6-5 victory. There were long stretches of the game that looked like it would be a walkover for the Pioneers. But Colorado College fought back to make things exciting for the fans and players alike at the end of the game.
DU is in first place in the WCHA, 1st in the Pairwise Ranking and in control of their own destiny in pursuit of the Gold Pan.
(above) DU's homegrown heroes receive a little facetime in the Denver Post today
The front pages of the Colorado Springs Gazette and Denver Post sports sections had fantastic articles today about college hockey.
The Gazette focused on the matchup tonight between #14 ranked Colorado College and #2 ranked DU. The Post looked at the Colorado Thunderbirds hockey development program and the inroads that have been made in youth hockey in Colorado in recent years.
"Of course, CC hasn’t won a national championship since 1957, nor has it taken home the Broadmoor Trophy, awarded to the WCHA Final Five champion, in the 30 years that it has existed. Critics of Owens – there are a lot more than you’d think for a program that’s routinely a national power – were fired up on Internet message boards before CC lost at home this month against Michigan Tech in the first round of the WCHA playoffs. Now, a few fans are demanding CC rescind the long-term contract it gave Owens in December." [Read entire article]
Colorado College hockey coach Scott Owens is resting in a booth at Wooglin’s Deli. He chowing down on a ginormuos artery clogging pastrami sandwich on Rye and sipping a Diet Coke and staring straight ahead as he tries to explain the 2011-2012 CC hockey season.
One problem:
It’s difficult to explain the inexplicable.
The abrupt conclusion to the Tigers season has left CC fans puzzled and hurting. The season-ending sweep to Michigan Tech has left Owens down, too.
“It’s been constant,” Owens says. “I’m still not over it. It’s still tough to sort through it. Why were we not better that last weekend?
“It still eats away like this pastrami sandwich. There’s no doubt. I’m preoccupied with it and I’m using it as a motivation.”
It was a strange season. On Nov. 25, the Tigers were roaring with nine wins, two losses and the nation’s No. 4 ranking. They had scored four or more goals eight times. The SchwartzSticker brothers, Jaden and Rylan, led what appeared a fully loaded team.
Then it all fell apart. On Nov. 26 at North Dakota, the Tigers rallied from a two-goal deficit to take a 6-5 lead. It was all so dramatic.
But North Dakota sneaked its way to a 7-6 victory, and the Tigers were on their way to another patented collapse.
CC won only nine of its final 25 games, and the season that started with such promise ended with a shocking elimination by Michigan Tech at World Arena. Tech’s two-game sweep ranks among the worst moments in Owens’ 13 seasons.
That’s why he’s sitting here, eating a huge sandwich, trying to understand what went wrong.
“We had a great first half, but the schedule got tough and we became inconsistent,” Owens says. “We had good goaltending but couldn’t score. We had good scoring but not good goaltending. We had untimely injuries and we lost momentum.”
Recovering from the late-season tumble will not be easy. A year ago, the Tigers were roaring. They had demolished No. 1 seed Boston College in the first round of the NCAA Tournament and were blessed with the versatile presence of Jaden SchwartzSticker, one of the nation’s top college players.
Now, Jaden has skated away to St. Louis, where far away from the "CC Curse" he's scoring goals in bunches for the Blues. Rylan might join him in jumping to the pros.
If you’re one of the half dozen CC fans who is reading this, don’t get too depressed. If there was a bright spot in the often miserable 2011-2012 season, it was sophomore goaltender Josh Thorimbert. He was often brilliant.
The most destructive moment in the Tigers’ season came Feb. 4 against the University of Denver when a violent collision in front of the net left Thorimbert crying like a baby.
The collision doomed CC’s season. Thorimbert never was as crisp and stingy after he returned.
“He lost momentum,” Owens said. “He came back, and he was not quite the same.”
Here’s the hope for 2012-2013. Thorimbert will lead a more defensive-oriented team that will seek to win games 2-1 instead of 5-4. The Tigers will seek to will their way to another 20-win season. As usual they won’t overwhelm anyone with talent.
Owens hopes to soon step away from his blues and focus fully on the sandwich...er...season ahead. Right now, he seeks to understand the season that just ended. He’ll fail in this attempt. The season was, is and always will be baffling.
“It just didn’t come together,” Owens says. “There are a number of reasons for that last weekend but nobody cares. It just didn’t work out.”
Owens makes it clear that he’s down, but he remains sensible.
“The season and the finish are just something that eats away at me,” he says. “But I’m not one to, you know, throw a TV through a window at home or kick the dog.”
Do you have a dog, Scott?
“No,” Owens answers, a slight smile coming to his face.
DU defenseman and crowd favorite John Ryder would have considered Colorado College. If the Tigers had considered him.
“I was not recruited by CC at all,” Ryder said. “They didn’t give me any looks.”
The 2007 Rampart High School graduate, a defenseman, carries no regrets about a five-year career with Denver in which he has appeared in 128 games and been around for 116 wins, four NCAA Tournament berths, a Western Collegiate Hockey Association regular-season title and a WCHA Final Five title. He has played just 15 games in a redshirt senior year, recently returning from a fractured left kneecap that he suffered in November.
“When you play for Denver, you don’t like CC,” said Ryder, who will graduate with two degrees in the spring. He added, “Everybody knows those games are at a different level. No matter how each team is doing, they’re big games. And I try to play at my best.”
In a cost saving move and a sign of the times, the Colorado Springs Gazette has supposedly let go Colorado College's beat writer Joe Paisley. Joe did a great job updating the Eye of the Tiger Blog daily as well as covering CÇ hockey in great detail.
It looks like Joe will be replaced by Brian Gomez who covered the DU game on Friday night. It remains to be seen if Gomez will cover the Tigers in the same detail.
CC fans are pretty upset about the changes if you read the "comments" in the last blog posting made on Thursday.
Chaos could soon arrive in the long placid world of college hockey, but Air Force has no plans to join the frenzy.
The Big Ten hockey conference will begin in 2013-2014, which means the Western Collegiate Hockey Association will lose Wisconsin and Minnesota and the Central Collegiate Hockey Association will lose Michigan, Michigan State and Ohio State.
An eruption of change seems likely with a frenzied chase to reorganize conferences.
In a Colorado College hockey season full of long and weather-delayed road trips, Sunday’s 21-hour bus ride from Bemidji, Minnesota, to Colorado Springs surpassed them all.
Shortly after boarding the bus in Bemidji at 6 a.m. Sunday (local time) to drive to the Minneapolis airport four hours south, the team’s 11:20 a.m. flight was canceled because of a blizzard that hammered the Twin Cities with eight inches by Sunday evening. Up to twelve more inches of snow were forecast for southern Minnesota by Monday night.
Shortly after the first cancellation, the 5:40 p.m. replacement was scrapped, leaving the 26 players and staff, loaded down with equipment, with two options: riding a bus until 2 a.m. Monday to make the start of a new block of classes that morning or waiting until Tuesday for a flight.
“We contacted (athletic director) Ken (Ralph) and he approved of getting back in time for classes,” Tigers coach Scott Owens said when the bus passed by Des Moines on Sunday afternoon. “The prospect of spending 2.5 days at the Minneapolis airport hotel didn’t appeal to us.”
There’s good reason for that. The team spent 10 hours at that airport getting back from St. Cloud because of storm cancellations. Factor in a connecting flight through Atlanta from Michigan Tech and two trips to Alaska and the Tigers have plenty of frequent flyer miles.
“We’ve had a tough travel year,” Owens said. “We’re getting by on the bus. The bus is equipped with Wi-Fi. With 22 and 23-year-olds, that’s all they really need.”
When the Pioneers and the Tigers met in the 2005 Frozen Four, it looked as if they were ready to take over college hockey. DU was on its way to a second straight title, and CC boasted an electrifying scoring combo in Marty Sertich and Brett Sterling.
But the dominating ride ended that season for the Pioneers and Tigers, who have failed to win an NCAA Tournament game in the past five seasons. Air Force Academy is the lone Colorado school to claim an NCAA victory [read rest of article].
DU Alum Rhett Rakhshani had a goal and three assists in the Eastern Conference's 11-8 win over the Western Conference in Monday night's AHL All-Star Game in Hershey, Pa.
----------
The Colorado Springs Gazette says that Colorado College sophomore goalie Joe Howe is hopeful he can play this weekend against DU despite suffering a knee injury Saturday night against North Dakota. He still hasn't skated since the injury occurred.
(left) CC Captain Ryan Lowery is confident this week
“We’re looking forward to going out and winning back the Gold Pan Trophy.” Colorado College hockey Captain Ryan Lowery said in Monday's Colorado Springs Gazette.
(left) Colorado Springs Gazette columnist David Ramsey tried to light a fire under the ass of the Colorado College hockey team today by recalling past DU thrashings of CC
You could say Colorado College’s Tigers did a nice job of sleepwalking through Saturday’s 6-0 loss to North Dakota, but that only insults sleepwalkers.
This was a disturbing, humiliating surrender by the Tigers on a silent night at World Arena.
And yet …
This defeat, if handled correctly, could serve as the perfect warmup for the University of Denver. Yes, the Evil Empire of the North invades World Arena Friday night, and it will be excessively ugly if the Tigers play with anywhere close to this level of apathy [read rest of article].
For the first time since the 2005-06 season, season ticket sales for Colorado College hockey have gone up.
As of Friday morning, the Western Collegiate Hockey Association member had sold 232 more season tickets than the previous season with several weeks left before the Tigers open exhibition play against Lethbridge on Oct. 2.
CC sold 4,294 season tickets for 2009-10 with 4,526 sold this offseason after a price drop was announced this spring, said Scott Lowenberg, assistant athletic director, marketing.
Lowenberg said the ticket prices and incoming freshman Jaden Schwartz, the No. 14 pick in the 2010 NHL draft, were the two factors buyers mentioned.
There are only 30 lower-bowl seats left out of the 1,500 CC season tickets remaining at the 7,343-seat World Arena. Most are available along the upper bowl sides, which cost $229. Only 125 of the cheapest ($149, upper corners) remain, Lowenberg said.
“It’s very exciting to be ahead,” he said. “We think the sales will improve even more in the next couple years.”
(left) Colorado College's Athletic Director Ken Ralph responded to Colorado Springs Gazette columnist David Ramsey this evening
From: Ken Ralph Director of Athletics, Colorado College
It is my understanding that a quote attributed to me in a recent article has caused concern with members of this group [DU hockey fans]. My response when asked to comment in recent e-mails was to respond that I did not believe that quote was correct. The author of the article, Dave Ramsey, insists that the quote is accurate and should be attributed to me. He reminded me that during our phone interview he was the one writing things down and taking notes, not me. On this he is accurate, I did not take notes during our interview so I have no defense as to what I did or did not say during our exchange.
In preparing for the interview, I knew the question of Scott Owens's bench demeanor would be called into question. Mr Ramsey has criticized him before for being too passive on the bench. In speaking with people in the department prior to the interview we talked about several coaches with loud bench demeanors, most frequently mentioning Frank Martin (BB coach at Kansas State). Mr Ramsey called about 15 minutes early and I left this conversation to take his call.
Mr Ramsey did indeed ask about Coach Owens's bench demeanor. My recollection is mentioning Frank Martin but Mr Ramsey insists from his notes that I mentioned George at that time. That is true as well but the context and initiation has me confused. What made me think that the quote could not have been accurate is the description if the incident. As I remember it, George mouthed the words "really?" when he realized he'd been ejected, walked across the ice to speak with a linesman, and then walked back across the ice to the bench and eventually the locker room. When I saw the words "race across the ice" it didn't look right because that is not how I remembered it. I may be wrong. I only saw the tape once and that was a year ago. That being said, Mr Ramsey insists that his notes are accurate as to our conversation. Since I do not have any notes, I'll have to take him at his word. Since, from Mr Ramsey's notes, I made such a statement, I alone must bear the brunt of any criticism. I am willing to do that.
What this teaches me is that I should ask to see any copy of my quotes that will be used in future newspaper articles prior to publication. That is my fault. In my heart I do not believe that Mr Ramsey would ever intentionally misquote someone. I have seen him enough and read enough of his work to feel this way. That being said, in the future I will ask to see what quotes of mine will be used in future articles. I believe that Mr Ramsey is reasonable enough to accommodate such a request. He is a professional and would want accuracy at all times.
I hope everyone understands by now the deep respect I have not only for George but for the entire DU staff. They have done the toughest thing in sports, not only build a championship program, but also maintain it.
Everyone should be talking about the tremendous season the Pioneers just accomplished. Earning more than 40 points and the MacNaughton Cup this year when the WCHA was at the top of its game is an amazing accomplishment and should be celebrated. Both fans bases should be proud that year after year each school manages to put a highly competitive team on the ice, allowing us to have this wonderful rivalry. Certainly we are both fortunate to have outstanding coaching staffs and vibrant fan bases.
Also, please know that I will speak with George personally about this situation as I do not want anything to put a rift in our relationship.
Thank you for taking the time to read this message. I appreciate your passionate support of the DU program. I'm already looking forward to November 5th when the Tigers will head to Magness to renew our rivalry.
Have a wonderful summer.
Sincerely,
Ken
Ken Ralph Director of Athletics Colorado College (719) 389-6945 ken.ralph@coloradocollege.edu www.cctigers.com
I spoke with Colorado College athletic director Ken Ralph yesterday about his assertion that he had been misquoted. I told him I had a typed transcript of our conversation and reminded him that it was him, not me, who brought up George Gwozdecky. I had to do some research to find out when and where George took his walk across the ice.
After our conversation, which was friendly, Ken Ralph agreed the quote was, in fact, accurate.
I take accuracy seriously. I’ve never met a journalist who didn’t take accuracy seriously. I’ve covered CC hockey for seven seasons. Coach Scott Owens and I have had our disagreements about my opinions – that’s inevitable – but he has never questioned my accuracy with facts or use of quotes. The same is true of my working relationship with Air Force’s Troy Calhoun and Fisher DeBerry and many, many others.
Ken Ralph’s quote about Coach Gwozdecky was accurate and was taken in context.
And, no, I’m not going to talk to any lawyers about this incident. And for those who have commented on earlier posts, I appreciate all your thoughts and observations about my work. Those observations were good for a few laughs.
Thanks for this opportunity to clarify this matter,
David Ramsey Sports Columnist The Gazette of Colorado Springs
