There Are No Cinderellas: Nathan Gerbe, Boston College End Irish's Championship Run

by CW on Apr 14, 2008 11:09 AM EDT in News Comment 1 comment

After knocking off two number one seeds and the defending champ without their leading scorer from the regular season, the Irish finally fell to the Eagles, who were in their third consecutive Frozen Four final. Notre Dame kept things knotted up at zeros into the second period, but Boston College eventually stormed out to a 3-0 lead.

Still, the underdog Irish kept coming, knocking in one goal and then seemingly pull it within one on a very controversial kicking call. As has been stated before, I'm no hockey expert beyond the NHL playoffs and the occasional Pens regular season game, but there didn't appear to be any kicking motion. Notre Dame would have still been down a goal, but with a lot of time left and a whole lot of momentum in their favor. Instead, the ref with the phone took the goal away, broke everybody in gold and blue's hearts and BC scored a few seconds later to put the game away for good.

All in all, a pretty memorable run, starting with seeing the New Hampshire score roll across the bottom line ("We're killing them!") and enjoying that amazing victory over the hockey demigods of Michigan before things ended Saturday night in Denver. Just like the men's basketball team that preceded them in playing in the Pepsi Center by a month, the Irish pulled out the first game before finding their offense firing blanks in the second.

I think this sums things up pretty nicely as far as looking ahead goes:

"We were meant to be here," Thang insisted after Fighting Irish's 4-1 loss to Boston College on Saturday night. "We deserved to be here."

From now on, the Irish expect to be here, too.

"We're going to be so hungry now," Thang said. "We're not going to settle for anything less than a championship next year. We've taken this program to new heights. To lose, it's devastating. But we've set the bar high for everyone."

...

"This is a start," senior captain Mark Van Guilder said. "We're trying to build this program into what they (Boston College) have. We want to be like the Boston Colleges, the Michigans, the Minnesotas, the teams that come to mind when you think of hockey. I'm proud we've started that."

Respect, recognition, that's all good. But Thang is hoping the team can parlay their recent success into something else: a new rink.

"If someone wants to give us one, we'll gladly accept it," Thang said. "Hopefully, we can build a new rink around this."

Perhaps with the money the University saved on the commencement speaker they can hurry up the JACC renovations and the new hockey arena construction?

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On the goal that wasn't...

There was a pretty pronounced kicking motion by Lawson's right skate. The only catch is, I can't see that it connected.

There was a slight kicking motion by Lawson's left skate. The only catch is, Shepherd's note to the press box said that the decision was based on the right skate.

If Shepherd had said that he was disallowing the goal because the left skate deflection involved a distinct kicking motion, I would have bought that. It's a borderline call, but "distinct kicking motion" is never defined (not in the NHL rules, either, as far as I can tell), and there's a clear motion of the skate into the puck.

The trouble is, that's not what he said. He said it was the right skate. And while there was a blatantly obvious kicking motion with that skate, it didn't connect, and it takes a really tortured reading of the rule (which is admittedly poorly written to allow such a reading) to conclude that an attempted kick after the puck has already deflected in a non-kick off the skate, is enough to disallow the goal.

My conclusion is that Shepherd is incompetent, to which fans of ten WCHA schools respond, "Duh!"

by Mr Wednesday on Apr 14, 2008 3:28 PM EDT reply actions