Andy Baggot has a real nice interview up from last night with Wisconsin Hockey play by play announcer Brian Posick (pictured left). Posick, besides his play by play duties is also the sports director at WIBA Radio in Madison.Baggot talks with Posick about his duties as a voter for the Hobey Baker Memorial Award. Posick is also a voter for the Heisman Trophy and the John Wooden Award. Posick didn't tip his hand in the interview, but I could sense he was leaning towards Brendan Smith. Just my opinion though.
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Joe from the Gross Misconduct Hockey Blog has a primer for the NCAA Hockey Tournament up on his blog. In the article he talks about how since the tournament has grown from 12 to 16 teams, the number of upsets has continued to grow. He's got a great point. Last season we saw two number 4 seeds, a number 3 seed, and a number 1 seed in the Frozen Four. You can't expect that to happen this year but with the way things are going, you just never know.
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United States College Hockey Online is doing a live chat tomorrow with a bunch of their writers at noon central time. It doesn't say exactly who will be there to do the live chat, but I would assume that former Wisconsin beat writer Todd Milewski will be involved in there and probably Jayson Moy, bracketologist extraordinaire as well.
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Another good link from USCHO is an article written by Dave Starman talking about the 16 reasons to cheer this season. Basically Starman has written a paragraph about each team. When talking about Wisconsin he notes that he feels Johnny Ramage is probably our unsung hero this season. I think I would have to agree with him.
I also loved this quote, "Wisconsin winning a national title in hockey is like Alabama winning a national title in college football. It might ruffle a feather or two but it’s good for the business."
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Keeping with the USCHO trend, Jim Connelly has put together a preview for the West Regional in St. Paul. Connelly does a pretty spot on job assessing the Badgers if you ask me. He mentions that they offense and defense are dynamic but it's the goaltending that is going to determine how far the Badgers can ultimately go.
Connelly also has quotes from Eaves and the familiarity of playing at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, "We’re excited to be going back to St. Paul; there’s a certain familiarity [and] we’ve been there two out of the past three weekends so hopefully that’ll be a plus and everybody’s very excited to go,” said coach Mike Eaves. “We have a little familiarity with the Xcel [Energy] Center because we hold the Final Five there and secondly, is because of the big fan base; our fans will be able to travel.”
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Andy Baggot has a nice article up on Freshman winger Craig Smith from Madison. He talks about how much the freshman has grown up in his first year on campus. Smith has always had a bit of a penchant for taking too many penalties but he's toned it down as the season has worn on. Baggot points out that in his first 16 games he took 21 penalties. In the 21 games since, he's only taken 7.
Smith has had a very nice freshman season which led to him being named to the All-WCHA freshman team. The Nashville product has exceeded my expectations this season and has really developed into an elite forward early in his career.
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