Pretty Darn Good Official Screws Up Again

Here's the latest WCHA officiating controversy, courtesy of Todd Milewski:

Referee Derek Shepherd blew his whistle just before Andy Bohmbach slid a rebound past Jase Weslosky in the third period, with the Badgers down 3-2. The puck popped up on Weslosky, who extended his glove in front to try to catch the puck. It was out of his reach, however, and fell to the ice.

Shepherd, who was trailing the play, must have thought that Weslosky grabbed the puck out of the air. Eaves' issue with the call was Shepherd's positioning.

There's also YouTube evidence. I wonder if Shepherd will face any consequences for blowing such an important call in such a critical game?(No, I couldn't type that with a straight face.)

Bubble Hockey Showdown

So it turns out the Dean Blais vs. Doug Woog bubble hockey match was way more interesting in theory than in practice.

But in case you were curious, here's the YouTube video of it.

The Ruegsegger Goal

There's been a lot of clamoring to get this video up on the internet, especially from the Let's Go DU Blog, and now, it's up on the interweb for all to enjoy.

Here's the video.

Random Linkorama

Thank you for keeping me safe, Mark Buehrle.

Kelowna radio announcer Regan Bartel makes a big deal about Luke Moffatt "verbally" committing to Michigan, though I'm not really sure what else Moffatt could have done, since he isn't eligible to sign a letter of intent until November 2009, and even then, he could back out of that at any time to play in the WHL.

USA Hockey's college notebook looks at the WCHA. Apparently there was an 1100 word limit because MSU, UMD, and UAA don't get much play.

USA Hockey also had a nice article on Notre Dame recruit Pat Gaul.

Kamloops Blazer forward Juuso Puustinen scored a highlight reel goal, in overtime no less, against fellow Finn Riku Helenius. Kamloops Daily News writer/editor Gregg Drinnan has more on the goal.

Steve Downie is still a punk. I still maintain that Jack Johnson would have done the hockey world a favor if he had really hit Downie at the World Juniors.

I'm not even sure what to say about this, other than that I'm glad Comrie didn't lease the vehicle, because I'm sure the lease would have lasted longer than the relationship.

YouTube Videos

I'll pass on embedding the videos here, since I think it significantly increases the load time for this page, and I know some people have had problems with that, but there's a couple solid videos out there.

First up is some video of the training regiment of Omaha goalie Jeremie Dupont. If you search, there's about 10 different videos showing some of the different training exercises done by Dupont.

It's been a rough season for Minnesota-Duluth defenseman Matt Niskanen. It probably reached a low point on Friday night when he shot the puck into his own net. Yeah....he probably wasn't supposed to do that. He must have been intimated by The Scoring Machine Us Mortals Call James Gaulrapp.

There's still no YouTube of the Colorado College/Anchorage fight from two weekends ago, nor if there a video of the fight between Minnesota State and Duluth on Saturday. It's a shame that Zach Harrison has to sit out a game because Alex Stalock took a ridiculous cheap shot at him. I'd say Stalock should have to sit a game too, but given the way each of UMD's goalies played this weekend, if UMD wants to play him over Josh Johnson against Ohio State, they can be my guest.(Though the WCHA should probably look at Jeff McFarland taking a blatant run at Nick Canzanello well after the game was over. That was a very ugly hit and there's no place for that in hockey.)

Cat on Cat Violence

So probably one of the best plays you're going to see all season happened in the NHL last night, and in a weird coincidence, three of the major players all hapened to come from the same college hockey team.

The play started when former Vermont Catamount Eric Perrin, of the Tampa Bay Lightning, forced a turnover in the Boston Bruin end of the rink. He made a pass to teammate Brad Richards along the sideboards. Richards and teammate Martin St. Louis, also a Vermont alum came in on a two-on-one against Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas, who also happened to play with St. Louis and Perrin at Vermont. Richards made a nice feed across to St. Louis, and well, I'll let YouTube pick up the rest:



That's a pretty amazing save.

Perrin, St. Louis, and Thomas are forever linked as the trio that led Vermont to their only ever NCAA Frozen Four in the 1995-96 season, where they lost to Don Lucia's Colorado College team in overtime at the Cincinnati Riverfront Coliseum. That game lives in college hockey infamy due to the conditions the game was played under. Hours prior to the game, an arena worker who was drilling holes in the ice for the net pegs accidentally punctured one of the arean's refrigeration units. This caused the ice conditions to be less than ideal by game time, and they eventually became worse as the game went on. The slushy ice helped negate Vermont's speed advantage(Imagine that, a world where a WCHA team doesn't have a speed advantage), and many feel like the Catamounts would have won that game under more normal circumstances.