thought (or two. Or three).
The micro thought, UMD simply did a better job much of the night playing without the puck. You typically have five skaters on the ice, and at no time does more than one possess the puck. And that's when you are the team on offense. UMD had better positioning and spacing -- better puck support -- than the Irish for good portions of the game.
Our dumps were less effective because of this, theirs led to offensive zone possession. Their stretch passes were more effective, ours, while moving the puck away from our goalie, which is never a bad thing, nevertheless did not lead to extended possession in the attack zone. And even when we were attacking, breakdowns (blocked shots, potential rebounds, shots off the mark that we could not hold in the attack zone, etc) led to the end of possession at worst, or at best necessitated a regroup 100 or more feet away from their net. I could freeze the video before each of their two goals and point this out clearly and how it led to the chances on which they scored their goals.
Some of our poor positioning was bad play, some of theirs was absolutely perfect execution on their part, and by the third period, I think our extra chasing UMD and the puck around caught up with us and we didn't have the oompf left to mount an effective threat.
The macro thought is the winner and loser of last night's game, and virtually every other one of the other 14 games of this tournament is simply how the game is played today. In the immediate aftermath of the loss, many here reminded all of us that we played a ton of close games and perhaps we were a little more offensively challenged than we needed to be, and perhaps lucky. But don't forget that UMD also played 4 one goal games in this tournament (and like us needed OT to get the winning started). There were a total of only 5 games won by teams that failed to score first, and we had 3 of them all on our own (UMD and OSU had the others). The fact that we won 3 games to get to Saturday night after giving up the first goal was pretty remarkable, because that is definitely contrary to how anyone wins a game in the NCAAs for the last few years. In the 7 games UND and the Irish played, there were a total of 31 scoring plays. There is simply virtually no margin for error, and when you give up the first one, it basically means that margin has evaporated.
As I posted last night, I think it sucks that we begin to feel like a season with 40-45 games comes down to one or two missed opportunities, one leaky goal or one mistimed pass. This team had a great season. Basketball suffers from Final Four-itis and hockey is starting to as well. I've even caught myself coming down with it sometimes in the last few years. I don't post frequently on the basketball board but I used to hate how people chastised Mike Brey for early exits in the NCAA and Big East tournaments after really good regular seasons. Yeah, winning in March and April is great, but why does it sometimes seem like winning from October to February has no meaning? Maybe I enjoy the regular season as much as I do because for 30 years of going to games the NCAAs seemed a million miles away.
Early on we got to watch the team and wonder which skaters were going to step up and replace Anders Bjork. Well, Jake Evans did just that, even leading the NCAA in scoring for a good portion of the first half of the season. Bjork's leadership was replaced as well. We had great leadership on and off the ice, and believe me, this program has suffered sometimes when leadership was given to the wrong players.
We got to guess which goalie was going to wrestle the number one job from Jackson and claim it as his own. Not only did Cale Morris do that, he became the best goalie in the game, the winner of the Richter Award and a true Hobey Baker candidate.
We got to see a 16 game winning streak, the best this program has ever reeled off. We got to dominate a league we all (or at least we all better) hate. At the same time we played 6 conference foes that frankly most of our fans want to see us play, myself included. We won the regular season and the league playoff as well, just to show them who is actually the boss of the league.
We got to watch 5 post season games that we will remember for a long time. It was a unique experience, and the final one of those five games was as good a win as the program has ever had.
While there is one thing that would be better than all of that, there is only one thing that would be better than all of that. My way-to-early prediction is it is going to happen next year. You heard it here first.