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January 19, 2010

Hockey games shouldn't be meant to be marathons

By Shane Frederick The Free Press

MANKATO — The University of Wisconsin band often plays the song, “The Time Warp,” during its routine at Badger hockey games.

The tune would have been appropriate for Saturday night’s game between Minnesota State and Minnesota Duluth at the Verizon Wireless Center.

Not only did you feel like you were in a time warp that night, but there would have been ample time to bring back the MSU pep band to play the song during the game.

Actually, the band could have played the rest of the soundtrack from the “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” and still found time for a few more jock-rock standards.

The game lasted a whopping 2 hours and 58 minutes.

When all was said and done, Duluth’s 4-3 victory came down to two big plays — Jerad Stewart’s game-tying goal with 18 seconds remaining in regulation and Mike Connolly’s game-winning goal with 77 seconds left in overtime.

In that span of 4 minutes, 1 second, the Mavericks went from the highs of their first comeback of the season to the lows of yet another not-quite-good-enough one-goal loss — their eighth such loss of the season.

The thrill of victory — or at least a tie — turned to the agony of defeat in a hurry.

“It’s frustrating,” MSU junior defenseman Kurt Davis said. “It eats you up inside when you come up short.”

That was the only thing short about that game.

The second period basically featured two intermissions.

Referees Don Adam and Chris Welker twice spent nearly 15 minutes trying to sort out a pair of on-ice incidents.

After MSU’s Kael Mouillierat laid out UMD defenseman Scott Kishel in the corner, the conference turned a no-call into a five-minute major for elbowing, then a game-misconduct, then a game disqualification (Mouillierat will now miss the Mavericks next game, Jan. 29 at Michigan Tech).

Later, after about five minutes of game time, it was time to “do the time warp again.”

A skirmish involving at least six players broke out on the rink. It was nothing out of the ordinary, but the officials went back to meeting mode, finally coming up with 12 minor penalties and putting the Mavericks on 5-on-3 power play.

The ultimate goal, of course, is to get the calls right. But it also must be done in an expedient manner.

Why did it take so long to sort out the penalties? No one seems to know.

With the Western Collegiate Hockey Association adding three one-minute media timeouts per period, game times are stretching.

On Saturday, the referees also went to the video replay twice — once to confirm Nick Canzanello’s first-period goal and once to confirm that Michael Dorr’s two shots missed during the second period.

The refs seemed to take an especially long time to look at Dorr’s chances. His first shot hit the left post and his second hit the right. Perhaps they were so amazed that Dorr didn’t score that they couldn’t help but watch it over and over.

Folks like hockey for the back-and-forth play, the slick skating and the hard hits. And they like that all of that action is done in almost-constant motion.

On Saturday, there was a lot more stopping than starting.

At least the two teams saved the game’s best plays for the end.



Shane Frederick is a Free Press staff writer. He also writes the blog Puckato.

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