Home sweet home.
If somebody who knows nothing about hockey were picking WCHA games this season and he or she just went with home teams, his or her record would be 12-2.
That's right. In seven conference series, the home team has swept six of them. The one exception was two weeks ago when the Gophers went to Duluth and swept the UMD Bulldogs 5-4 in overtime and 5-4 in regulation.
UMD easily could have won both games. The Gophers scored in the last minute of the third period (Erik Haula) and the last minute of overtime (Nate Condon) to tie Friday night's game that weekend and then win it. In the second game on Saturday, the Gophers were outshot 3-1 but UMD goalie Ken Reiter went to sleep a couple of times and the U won anyway.
So will this trend of home dominance and nothing but sweeps continue? Doesn't seem possible.
Here is a look at this week's games:
WCHA
Gophers at Alaska Anchorage: Don Lucia's boys are 13-3-2 in their nine visits to the 49th state. Impressive. But UAA has won four of last five meetings. Impressive. The Seawolves have sophomore goalie Chris Kamal, the Gopher killer. He was 3-0 against the U last season and shut them out twice. Coach Dave Shyiak has been rotating his sophomore netminders, Rob Gunderson and Kamal, but it's hard to imagine he is not tempted to start Kamal the first night.