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Roman Augustoviz spends Minnesota's winters covering college hockey, specifically the Gophers, and other University of Minnesota sports. During the summer, he writes about the WNBA's Minnesota Lynx, with a dose of U sports sprinkled in. Follow him on Twitter @RomanStrib.
Posts about WCHA news
St. Cloud prep star picks North Dakota over Gophers, SCSU
Posted by: Roman Augustoviz Updated: December 19, 2012 - 8:52 PM
Junior forward Austin Poganski of St. Cloud Cathedral has committed to North Dakota.
The Gophers and St. Cloud State also offered him scholarships.
He is almost 6-1, 194 pounds. He has 10 goals and seven assists for 17 points in eight games this season.
A story on him in the St. Cloud Daily Times is here.
CAPTAIN LEADING SCSU
Senior forward and team captain Drew LeBlanc is a big reason St. Cloud State is in first place in the WCHA.
LeBlanc, out all of last season with a broken leg, leads the nation with 19 assists and the Huskies with 24 points.
He had three assists as SCSU swept Colorado College last weekend. LeBlanc owns a seven-game points streak and has 34 goals and 87 assists for 121 career points. That puts 14th on the Huskies career points list just behind Dave Paradise (122 points from 1993-97).
He ranks sixth in the SCSU career assists with 87 behind Joe Motzko (90 from 1999-03). SCSU's Garrett Roe is the all-time SCSU assists leader with 113 from 2007-11. Roe is playing for Adirondack in the AHL this season.
FINISHING FROSH
Perhaps even more surprising is what SCSU rookie forward Kalle Kossila is doing.
Kossila, from Finland, leads the nation's freshmen with 10 goals. He had two goals against CC. David Morley, another freshman forward, has six goals and six assists for 12 points.
ETC.
* Junior defenseman Nick Jensen, a Detroit draft pick, is tied for first among Division I blueliners with 13 assists this season. He had two assists in the Huskies' 5-3 win over CC last Friday .
* The Huskies have outscored their opponents 62-45 this season and outshot them 532-472 this year.
* Sophomore defenseman .Andrew Prochno leads the Huskies with 18 blocked shots.
* SCSU leads the WCHA on the penalty kill in conference games at 87.8% and on defense at 2.36 goals given up per game. The Huskies have not allowed a power-play goal in its last five games, killing off 10 in a row.
WCHA awards rare for Gophers so far this season
Posted by: Roman Augustoviz Updated: December 19, 2012 - 4:45 PMThe Gophers have a pretty impressive-looking record at 11-3-3, but they haven't really been a dominant team. They have yet to sweep anyone in six WCHA series.
There's always a loss or a tie every conference weekend. So taking a look at the weekly WCHA awards, it is not all that surprising that in 10 weeks they have had only two weekly winners:
* forward Nick Bjugstad, picked to be the the WCHA's player of the year, won the offensive player of the week award on Oct. 16 after the Gophers swept Michigan State
* goalie Adam Wilcox was named the rookie of the week after a win and a tie in Alaska Anchorage in early November
That's it. Four WCHA have earned more than two weekly awards.
So who leads in the awards' category? Guess again. ... It's Minnesota State Mankato. The breakdown:
Minnesota State Mankato 7 (one offensive player of the week, three defensive, three rookie)
St. Cloud State 5 (one O, one D, three rookie)
North Dakota 4 (three O, one rookie)
Colorado College 3 (two O, one D)
Bemidji State 2 (two D)
Michigan Tech 2 (two rookie)
Minnesota 2 (one O, one rookie)
Minnesota Duluth 2 (one O, one rookie)
Nebraska Omaha 2 (one O, one D)
Wisconsin 2 (two D)
Denver 1 (one D)
Alasaka Anchorage 0
* Three players have won weekly WCHA awards twice this season: Bemidji State sophomore goalie Andrew Walsh, the defensive player of the week this week, Minnesota Duluth freshman forward Austin Farley and Minnesota State freshman goalie Stephone Williams.
FORMER BLAINE FORWARD HONORED
Jonny Brodzinski of St. Cloud State is the WCHA's rookie of the week. The 6-1, 200-pound right winger who played for Blaine High School, had two goals and an assist as the Huskies swept Colorado College 5-3 and 3-1 last weekend.
He had 10 shots on goals and was a plus-2 in the series.
With the sweep, SCSU took first place in the WCHA by one point over Denver and North Dakota.
Brodzinski had seven goals and four assists for 11 points in 18 games.
OTHER AWARD WINNERS
North Dakota's Corban Knight is the offensive player of the week. The senior center had three goals, including one game-winner, and three assists as UND swept Michigan Tech 6-1, 4-1. He is from High River, Alberta.
He had seven shots on goal and was a plus-5 in the series.
Knight is third in the WCHA in scoring with eight goals and 15 assists for 23 points. He has a career-best points streak of 13 games, too.
Sophomore goalie Andrew Walsh of Bemidji State is the defensive player of the week. He was in the nets when the Beavers tied Denver 1-1 and beat the Pioneers 5-1. He had 33 saves in the first game, 24 in the second.
DU was one-fot-11 on the power play in the series.
Walsh, of Dawson Creek, British Columbia, is 4-4-2 with a 2.17 goals-against average and a .929 save percentage.
The Gophers were the only WCHA team idle last weekend, so they had no chance at any weekly honors.
How did Howe do it? CC senior goalie from Plymouth stars
Posted by: Roman Augustoviz Updated: December 1, 2012 - 1:53 PMNorth Dakota has a pretty good goalie. A fellow who transferred from Alabama Huntsville, junior Clarke Saunders.
He stopped 26 shots on Friday at Colorado Springs World Arena, but the guy on the other end was much better.
Joe Howe, a senior from Plymouth who played for Wayzata High School back when, stopped 47 shots as Colorado College beat No. 7 North Dakota 5-3 with a big third period.
Senior center Scott Winkler scored his ninth and 10th goals --- 87 seconds apart -- and had one of his two assists in the third period for CC. His linemates had a good night, too.
Alexander Krushelnyski, whose dad plays in the NHL, had a goal and three assists. Charlie Taft, a sophomore wing from Edina, had three assists. So that's 11 points for CC's second line.
Drake Caggiula had two goals for UND, one in between Winkler's two tallies in the third period.
UND attempted 84 shots, 47 were at the net, 17 were blocked and 20 missed. So the team formerly known as the Fighting Sioux were the aggressor much of the night.
But two CC players from Minnesota -- Howe and Taft -- helped control them. And Winkler? Well, he just has a hot stick. He had 14 points in nine games in November.
A door to stories from Grand Forks and Colorado Springs media on this game can be found here. Thanks Joe Paisley.
Gophers sleepwalked through loss -- nothing new
Posted by: Roman Augustoviz Updated: December 1, 2012 - 3:35 AMLast season was a strong bounce-back year for the Gophers. But it was not that long that performances like they had on Friday in a 3-2 loss to Nebraska Omaha were pretty typical.
Remember until last season they had a four year stretch during which they finished seventh, fifth, seventh and fifth in the WCHA. There's a lot of losses in there.
At times, they showed little spark at home. Hopefully, that team is not back again.
But Saturday's game should tell us something about the Gophers. Can they bounce back well? Can they make adjustments? Can they beat a tough foe? Both the Gophers and the Mavericks have played two of the softest schedules in the country until this series.
One team knew it had to pick up its intensity for this series. Maybe the other has learned that.
The Gophers' shots against UND, 10-4-7--21. The Mavericks had 27 shots, 11 in the third period.
UNO was 1x3 on the power play, the Gophers 0x4.
The stars of the game were:
* First star: Josh Archibald, a UNO forward from Brainerd. He had a goal and two assists. He had five shots on goal.
* Second: Ryan Walters, the left wing on Archibald's line. Walters had five shots on goals and two assists. He went to St. Thomas Academy, then left his junior season to play in the USHL. At one time, he had committed to the U, but changed his mind when the Gophers asked him to play a third year in the USHL.
* Third: Nate Schmidt, the Gophers defenseman.
UNO's record is now almost identical to the Gophers. The Mavericks are 9-3-1 and in second in the WCHA with 11 points, the Gophers are 9-3-2 and tied for third with 10.
* Visitors were 3-2-1 on Friday. ... In this week's WCHA picking contest, I had 5-1/2 games right, 1/2 wrong (ties count as a half point) and so did blogger Matthew Semisch from Omaha.
Two Mavericks from MSU Mankato honored by WCHA
Posted by: Roman Augustoviz Updated: November 27, 2012 - 10:14 PMMinnesota State Mankato stood tall last weekend, kicking Wisconsin when the Badgers were already down.
The purple Mavericks beat the Badgers twice at Kohl Center -- their first sweep there ever -- both times by 4-2 scores.
And on Tuesday, the WCHA named two MSU players among it players of the week.
Sophomore forward Matt Leitner from Los Alamitos, CA, was named the league's offensive player of the week. He had two goals and three assists in two games and was a plus-2.
He has three goals and 12 assists for 15 points this season.
Also nominated for that award were forwards Kyle Rau of the Gophers and Ryan Walters of Omaha.
The rookie of the week was goalie Stephon Williams of MSU. He is from Fairbanks, Alaska.
He stopped 32 shots the first game, 33 the second. So he was busy. He is 2-3-1 with a 2.46 goals-against average and a .910 save percentage.
Freshman winger A.J. Michaelson of the Gophers was another nominee for the rookie award. He had his first goal and first assist again Vermont last weekend.
Named the defensive player of the week in the WCHA was St. Cloud State goalie Ryan Faragher. He stopped 59 of 62 shots as the Huskies split with Minnesota Duluth. UMD won the first game 2-1, SCSU won the second 5-1.
Faragher is 6-5-0 with a 2.14 gaa and a .927 save percentage.
Other nominees for this award were Gophers goalie Adam Wilcox and UNO defenseman Bryce Aneloski.
ETC.
* Freshman forward Joey Benik, who broke his leg during the Huskies first practice, is skating this week. There is a chance he could play for SCSU when they play Colorado College on Dec. 14-15.
* Also according to the St. Cloud Times, the Huskies recently received a commitment from Brendan Harris. The 5-7, 140-pound center plays for the California Titans, a AAA midget team. He is 16.
* Notre Dame coach Jeff Jackson got fined and reprimanded by the CCHA for critciizing officials after the Irish lost 2-1 to North Dakota last Friday. According to the Grand Forks Herald, Jackson was upset the officials blew the whistle early, thereby disallowing what would have been a late tying goal by Anders Lee. "It was just an awful call," Jackson said. And he paid the price for speaking out.
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