Hobey Hat Trick Finalists
Cam Atkinson - Boston College
Matt Frattin - North Dakota
Andy Miele - Miami
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News & Notes From the Frozen Four
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UMD's Justin Fontaine Flying High Under the Radar
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Bryan & Matt Rust Going After Same Goal, On Different Teams
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Minnesota-Duluth defeated Notre Dame 4-3 and Michigan defeated North Dakota 2-1.
The Bulldogs and the Wolverines will face off on Saturday night live on ESPN for the National Championship.
Now that I've had some time to digest what happened last night, I'm still in a state of disbelief.
If you had told me at the beginning of the year that Michigan and Duluth would play for the National Championship, I wouldn't have been surprised. These are two teams that had a lot of upperclassmen with skill and leadership and were projected to do well this season, but it wasn't smooth sailing and both teams hit more than one rough patch, yet here they are...preparing to play for the National Title.
So how did they get here?
Duluth won on the strength of their power play. Notre Dame played a very undisciplined brand of hockey and the Bulldogs made them pay. We knew the Irish didn't have the best defense in the world and we knew the first semifinal match up would be a run-and-gun high scoring affair and it didn't disappoint. Things were fairly even in the first period, but then the parade to the penalty box began for Notre Dame, Duluth took advantage and the Irish couldn't recover. They poured it on in the third with 15 shots and pulled within one with 18 minutes left in regulation, but it was too little too late.
Michigan won on the outstanding play of their goalie, Shawn Hunwick (yes, brother of Matt). Hunwick was a walk on who worked his way up to a back-up and helped the team win the CCHA Championship last year when Bryan Hogan went down with an injury. Same thing happened this year during warm-ups at the Big Chill and Hunwick filled in for the win and finds himself giving his team more than a chance to win the National Championship. North Dakota gave everything they had last night outshooting the Wolverines 40-20, but they couldn't get anything past Hunwick. The biggest problem is everything they shot, Hunwick saw. There wasn't much traffic in front of the net for second and third opportunities.
Stats and Quotes:
- North Dakota's Pony Express Line - Evan Trupp, Brad Malone and Matt Frattin combined for 20 of North Dakota's 40 shots on goal last night.
- Notre Dame went 0 for 5 on the power play and only managed 2 shots with the man advantage.
- North Dakota captain Chay Genoway: “This is not the way the team envisioned things. I am just proud of every guy in the locker room here. It is a special group of guys. I am just proud to be a part of this team this year. It is fun to have a chance to play again and wear this logo for another year and spend it with these guys. But this is definitely not the way we envisioned things ending.”
- North Dakota's Derrick LaPoint: "It's been a dream of mine to play for the Fighting Sioux, and I just really wanted to add to the tradition of that program. And to not win a national championship is heartbreaking. You just don't want to do it, and it will definitely take a long time for me to take this jersey off because it's something I've worn with pride my entire career."
- More LaPoint: "We failed at what we were trying to do. We were trying to win a national championship, and we didn't do it. We can look at what we've done and, yeah, it's great, but this is the biggest stage and you want the biggest trophy. And to not do it is a failure, at least in my
mind. I think I gotta give credit to our guys. We had an outstanding season and we won those
games and those championships. But to not win the national championship is a failure, in my mind."
- Michigan's Scooter Vaughan: “That’s why we came here. No one expected us to win, but everyone in this locker room knew we could. We had no doubts in this room. It’s good being the underdog. I mean, no one expected us to win, no one gave us a chance, and we proved everyone wrong.”
- Michigan's Jon Merrill: “Coach always said whatever team had the best goalie is going to win this thing and I think for sure we have the best goalie right now so it’s a lot of weight off your shoulders when you have a guy back there for sure.”
- Michigan's captain Carl Hagelin: "Usually I'm pretty bad at scoring those empty netters, so I just tried to give away the puck. My foot was hurting pretty bad at the time, so I just gave it to Louie, and he's not great either at scoring empty netters, so he gave it to Scooter. So Scooter obviously put it in."
- Michigan's head coach Red Berenson: "Our team had to play more in our own zone tonight than we have all year. And that was a great team in North Dakota. And they proved it. They just couldn't score. It reminds me of our team in '97 where we were the best team and everybody knew it, and we got upset too. So that can happen. The best team doesn't always win."
- Notre Dame's Calle Ridderwall: "I thought a lot of calls were questionable, especially in the first period, to be honest. Obviously we took some penalties, but I thought there were a lot of penalties that were questionable and a lot of calls we didn't get."
- Notre Dame's TJ Tynan: "I've never been a part of a team that's been as close as ours. And
unbelievable what we did this year, obviously people didn't take us to go as far. I think it's because of our team chemistry and how close we were as a team that got us this far and obviously our great senior class leading all the freshmen the underclassmen."
- Notre Dame's head coach Jeff Jackson: "I thought we took some bad penalties. I thought we took some uncharacteristic penalties. I don't think Riley Sheahan has had six minutes in penalties all year. I don't know what happened tonight. But we took some bad penalties."
- Duluth's Jack Connolly: "Our power play has been huge for us. Like you said, we got down there early in the game tonight, battled back. J.T. got a big power play goal for us there and, you
know, going down 2 1 and then Schmidty got a big goal for us as well. But then we drew penalties by moving our feet. It was hard work that drew those penalties. And we take it upon ourselves to try and capitalize for our team. We're out there for a reason, and that's to get some momentum and try to put the puck in the net when we can. And fortunately we were able to do that tonight. And hopefully we can carry it proudly into the championship game."
Julie
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