Rivalry Week

Welcome to Rivalry Week here at tSBFitW.

Following a weekend off which saw SCSU slip into a tie for the rock bottom of the WCHA after a Denver sweep, and Wisconsin continue to languish in the bottom three after a 1-point weekend at Mankato (no tears shed by this blogger), we find ourselves almost at the midway point of the collegiate hockey season. Hell, even Minnesota nearly blew a 4-1 lead to earn a split with the Sioux and they remain in the bottom half of the league.

A look at the standings, however, shows the incredibly amount of parity within the WCHA at this point in the season.

Colorado College -------- 10-2-0 -------- 20 pts.
Denver ------------------ 9-3-0 --------- 18 pts.
Minnesota-Duluth ------- 5-6-3 --------- 13 pts.
North Dakota ------------ 6-6-0 -------- 12 pts.
Michigan Tech ----------- 5-6-1 -------- 11 pts.
Minnesota --------------- 5-7-0 -------- 10 pts.
Minnesota State --------- 3-6-3 -------- 9 pts.
Wisconsin --------------- 4-5-1 --------- 9 pts.
Alaska-Anchorage ------- 2-5-3 -------- 7 pts.
St. Cloud State ----------3-6-1 --------- 7 pts.

A mere four points separate 8th place Wisconsin from 3rd place UMD. That's a single weekend sweep folks, and a surprisingly tough UAA squad is now only another game behind that group following a three-point weekend at Duluth. There's no doubt that SCSU still has the guns necessary to get on a hot streak and improve too, with quite a bit of offensive talent.

At this point, the only thing certain is that CC and DU appear to be running away with the league's top-tier this season, but there's still plenty of time for that to change during the second half of the league schedule.

At any rate, Tech now has six non-conference games to prepare for, the first of which is coming up this weekend. It's the annual slugfest against Not Much Upstairs, eNeMa U, STD U, etc.

There really isn't a lot I can say about this series. As Jamie Russell himself has said, there is essentially no worthwhile pep talk you can give a Tech squad regarding the rivalry - if they aren't totally fired up to play their archrivals, words won't help. I would love nothing more than to pick up two, well-fought wins this weekend, and try to get some momentum going into the MSU game at the GLI. Besides which, we still have that loss from the beginning of the season to avenge, and I don't expect that the team has easily forgotten that either.

Regarding this stretch of non-con games, naturally I'd love to see a 6-0 record and a GLI championship. Realistically, I'd like to see 5-1 or 4-1-1. A win at the GLI, a sweep of Mercyhurst, and at least a win/tie against NMU. We need to use these games as a springboard for a good second half.