Just a Little Stitious...

I almost wrote about this yesterday but I didn't want to jinx anything. See last time Michigan had a really talented team in the Frozen Four they played Denver in the semifinals and lost in OT. They played Denver in the semifinals again last night. I'm not superstitious, but I'm a little stitious...

So anyway...

College Hockey. The Frozen Four. It's all very exciting. And it's been interesting to me to watch. The announcers keep talking about the freshmen goaltenders. How each of the final four teams in the tournament are led by freshman. Which yes, technically, that is true. But also, North Dakota's Freshman is Jan Spunar. You might have heard me mention his name before. He played for the Winterhawks. He's not your 18 year old straight out of high school freshman. He's a 21 year old who has been playing major juniors for 4 years. Infact, all of the goaltenders were out of the major juniors. None of them were kids fresh from high school.

You're going to see more of that since the NCAA finally relaxed the rules and decided their couple hundred dollars a month stipend didn't really mean shit anymore in the era of NIL money. So kids can go play major juniors for their high school years and first year or so of college then still go play for a US college if they want to. Before they had been going up to Canada and doing it.

But it was fun to see Jan out there doing his SpuUUUUuuun thing.

Then last night when they announced the lineup for Denver I saw that Kyle Chyzowski was playing for Denver. Kyle was also a Winterhawk. Also being called a freshman, but also 21 years old with 4 1/2 years of major juniors behind him. He opened the scoring in the game and I told Brent I've never been disappointed to see Kyle score before so that was new.

And then the Denver coach. In a way I've known him since he was a teenager. But more accurately I've known about him. When I was in advertising I would see his dad at conventions. He owned restaurants in Alaska. When we would get together we would talk hockey, which was his favorite thing to talk about. He loved the sport and he had one kid playing for Denver at the time, and David was playing in high school in Minnesota. This was the first time I was introduced to the fact that kids who are REALLY good at sports leave home as teenagers to go play in other places.

The kid playing for Denver ended up for the Hobey Baker award. (None of this means anything to you if you aren't a hockey fan, but trust it's a big deal) I like to think I had a hand in him winning. See it was the early times of the internet where you could mobilize people more easily. I mentioned to friends of ours who also follow college hockey and were in a chat group with a lot of other people who loved college hockey that I'd love it if they would vote for Matt Carle. And he won. He also won Defensive Player of the year, and San Jose signed him to an early contract at the maximum amount to get him to skip his senior year.

I mean, okay, it might have just been that Matty was an outstanding hockey player, but I still feel like I helped.

And it is still kind of fun to see David out there coaching. Knowing how proud his dad is of him. And also knowing that even if he had never coached a single winning season he still would have been. His dad was proud of all of his boys and loved to brag on them for not just hockey but for just who they were as people. It was really lovely.

And so last night Michigan with an incredibly talented team with a real shot of taking the title met with Denver in the semifinals AGAIN.

And they did not lose to them in overtime.

They lost to them in double overtime.

Denver's freshman goalie faced 52 shots and stopped 49 of them. As a freshman...can you believe it?

sigh