Wednesday, March 11, 2009

The Awards Keep Rolling In

Aaron Palushaj and Louie Caporusso were named to the All-CCHA First Team today. Chris Summers and Chad Langlais were honorable mentions. They're joined on the first team by Ocho Cinco, Carter Camper, Erik Gustafsson and Ian Cole.

Like MHNet, I think it's hilarious that Jeff Lerg was named to the Second Team. I recognize that he had like no help this year and that it's probably just them throwing him a bone as a "Career Achievement" type thing, but it's still a joke. He was 14th in the conference in goals against this year and 7th in save percentage. Hogan had an identical save percentage, a GAA that was a full goal better, and was 2nd in the country in winning percentage. Jordan Pearce was 2nd in GAA and save % in the conference and backstopped ND to a runaway CCHA title. Jeff Lerg? Are you kidding me? Maybe MSU found a way to pad his numbers in the voting the same way they padded his save stats. I do have to give him his props on a great career and for being, by all accounts, a really classy kid. And he played the CCHA Tournament with a torn ACL. But yeah, ohhhh cya.

Edit: I'm not done yet. Check this out. Here are the GAAs of the goalies on the All-CCHA First and Second Teams going back to 99-00: 2.22, 1.72, 1.58, 2.31, 2.22, 1.83, 2.07, 2.89, 2.35, 2.24, 1.77, 2.42, 1.32, 2.29, 2.40, 1.36, 2.35, 2.33 (Note: These are the national stats, not the conference numbers.) So in the last decade, there has been one goalie with a GAA above 2.45 that has made all conference. That was Jordan Sigalet, who was 16-12-3 on freaking Bowling Green, and had MS to boot. Lerg was 9-20-3 on the worst FYS team in recent memory. It's not like he took them on his back and brought them to great heights. He was 14th in the conference in GAA and won 9 games for the 11th place team, who got swept in the first round of the playoffs. There is no rationale for putting him on the All Conference Team ahead of Pearce, Hogan, and Carlson. None. I respect the hell out of the kid, but if you're going based on body of work this year, he's not even close to All-Conference caliber. What Lerg did this year was basically on par with Morgan Cey's season for that gawd-awful Notre Dame team a few years back. Cey was 3-17-5 with a 2.99/.912. And to be perfectly honest, this year's FYS team probably would've killed that ND team. Their leading goal scorer was a defenseman. With 6. They didn't go making Cey All-Conference.

Carl Hagelin was named to the CCHA Scholar Athlete Team. I'm calling that a win since last year we didn't have a player that was eligible.

I also had a similar reaction to HSR when I read INCH's bit about how it would be nice to see Michigan have to take on North Dakota in Minneapolis to make up for us beating them in 98. Uhh...what dude? Sure there would be more Sioux fans there than Michigan fans, but I can't imagine the residual Gophers would be rooting for them (unless they're on the usual WCHA-Power!!! trip, which kind of got blown the eff up this year). It wouldn't be NoDak's home rink (been there, done that), they've hosted since (and made the Frozen Four in the process), and that game happened over a decade ago. Time to let it go. But don't forget, Michigan is the only team that has ever hosted. And we're definitely the only team that has ever hosted and won.

Lee Moffie netted a pair in a 3-2 OT win over Lincoln on Friday. He has 7-25--32 in 44 games (4th on the team in scoring), with 20 of those points on the PP. Waterloo is 4th in the Eastern Division and 5th overall.

Lindsay Sparks's Oakville Blades tied up their series against the Georgetown Raiders at 1 apiece with a 2-0 win. There were some fun penalties in that boxscore, including a 2 and 10 for Sparks for "Head contact/Checking". The best one is a misconduct for "Inciting an Opponent". One kid got a game misconduct for checking from behind, on a two-minute penalty. Wow.

Oakville is up 1-0 in the first period of Game 3.
Edit: Oakville ended up winning 3-2 and leads the series 2 games to 1.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't know why Nodak is still upset about '98. They had a title fall into their laps in '97 and ambushed Michigan twice in the NCAA regionals since 1998- once on their home ice.

Anonymous said...

Gordon would have resold his soul to the devil to have Lerg for 4 years.

Packer487 said...

Anonymous Sparty: We would likely have at least one more national title if he had come here. But that still doesn't mean Lerg should've been All-CCHA. The guy is a great great goalie. But he didn't do anything special this year.

Anonymous said...

The question that I have, and am getting clarification on, is what is the criteria. If it were strictly about numbers (GAA, SV%, record), there would be no need to have a vote. Just run the numbers through a formula and get first team and second team players.

Packer487 said...

It's not strictly about numbers--Galivan wasn't first-team and he led the conference in scoring--but the coaches just vote on their picks.

They threw a bone to a guy they respect the heck out of. And in the process cost Jordan Pearce a chance to possibly be an All-American.

FTR, I would've voted Johnson and Pearce. But I would've voted for Hogan, Carlson, Gill, possibly Stewart (who was 4th in the voting amongst CCHA goalies) and one of the Miami goalies before I even thought about Lerg.

It's hilarious that Lerg got all those votes and Gill got ONE. He took WMU to a 7 seed, making 30+ stops in like all their wins. And I don't think you could accuse WMU of out-talenting FYS.