Sunday, March 15, 2009

Michigan to Face Alaska

NMU upset Miami by taking game 3 of the series by a 3-1 score. NMU will move on to face Notre Dame, leaving Michigan to take on the winner of the UA/OSU series.

The shocking thing is that at this moment in time, Miami has dropped to 15th in the Pairwise ranking, meaning that they would miss the tournament if it started right now. Things can change--hell, they may even change tonight--but it's never a good thing to be on the outside looking in with no more games to play before the field is announced. Is it possible to have a hockey dynasty when you miss the tournament?

Can I emphasize once again how big it was that we caught the RedHawks in the standings, avoiding the possibility of playing NMU in the second round? I'd have faith in Michigan against anyone in the country, but clearly playing Western instead of a HOT Northern team was a nice perk of finishing second in the conference.

Edit: Alaska defeated Ohio State 1-0 and will advance to Joe Louis Arena. Michigan will play the Nanooks at 8:05 on Friday. The game will air on the Big Ten Network. I'm sure we'll find out more later in the week, but I believe I saw last night that the game will be streamed on Fox Sports's website, and will later be run on tape-delay on FSN as well.

After the results tonight, Miami has moved back into the tournament as the #14 team in the PWR and Ohio State has slipped to #16, with no further games to play.

If NMU or Alaska doesn't end up winning the CCHA Tournament, it's entirely possible that the CCHA will only send two teams to the Big Dance: Michigan and Notre Dame.

1 comment:

Becky said...

Anyone have any experience with streaming on the FSN website before? What are the odds it will work on a Mac? (I see it's now an msn site, so if it uses Silverlight I might be okay.)