Shootout decision merited boos at Mariucci

The Gophers' 2-2 overtime tie with Ferris State ended on a sour note.

Most of the people were booing when the two teams lined up for handshakes after the scoreless overtime. They expected a shootout.

And why not? The PA announcer told the crowd there would be a shootout if neither team scored in the overtime. "That's why I'm sure the crowd reacted like they did," Gophers coach Don Lucia said on Monday during his weekly show on WCCO-radio.

The reaction was loud boos. How embarrassing for the players shaking hands on the ice, who were not at fault at all.

The PA announcement was not the only reason that the fans booed. Some season ticket holders and holiday tournament regulars -- if there are such people -- probably remember the 2008 holiday tournament. It was only three years ago. The Gophers and Air Force tied 2-2, then played a shootout which the home team won 2-0. That was the third-place game!

Ironically, Bemidji State and Union, the two teams who met for the Mariucci Classic title this year, also were involved in a shootout in the 2001 tournament. After overtime, the game remained a 1-1 tie and BSU won the shootout. That shootout also was in the third-place game.

Lucia said he did not hear the PA announcement on Saturday: "You are so zoned in" on the game. Quite believable.

And nobody seemed to have gotten the word out on the change -- or got the wrong word out. The PA announcer was confused, the referees were confused. The media was confused. The Mariucci Classic news release clearly read: "games will not end in a tie. ... If the teams are still tied at the end of overtime then the game will be decided by a shootout."

Ferris State coach Bob Daniels said one of the referees told him there would be a shootout, then returned and said there would not be.

Said Lucia, referring to the end of OT: "Our players came over to the bench, we were done, we thought the game was over. There was no point to do it. Normally we've done [shootouts] to advance and, when we have had a championship game in our tournament, we have all played it to a finish. We have always played 20-minute overtimes.

"You get into a tournament, you have an option. You can play five [minutes], you can play shootout, just the five or you can go right to resurface and play 20 minutes and keep playing until you have a winner.

"Like next year we will go back to the first round -- the semifinals will be a five-minute [overtime] and a shootout -- and the championship game will be played to a winner."

So best record was going to be used this year to determined the Mariucci Classic champion, with goal differential the first tie-breaker.

But it didn't have to come to tie-breakers. Friday's winners, Union and BSU, met in Saturday's first game for the championship, and the losers, the Gophers and Ferris State, in the second game. All nice and neat except for the finish to the third-place game which ended with 40 college players being booed.

There was an easy solution after the PA guy's foot-in-his-mouth blunder: Play a shootout. It would have taken what? Four, five minutes.

Players like shootouts, fans like shootouts. And, if nobody has noticed, there are fewer and fewer fans coming to Gophers games.

Sure the announced attendance is always 9,000-plus. But fans are staying away. The crowd for the Ferris State game was announced as 9,132, but it was probably closer to 5,000. Why irk 5,000 fans who show up on a cold New Year's night by telling them there will be a shootout and then nixing it?

FSN's announcers had no clue either about why the shootout was scuttled, telling viewers to wait for Lucia's postgame interview.

Trying to make sense of this public relations fiasco, I asked what would have been so wrong to switch gears, to conduct a shootout?

One Gophers insider said, What if Kent Patterson got injured? That would put Lucia in a tough spot.

It sure would have. Alex Kangas, the Gophers other goalie, seems to have some kind of lingering medical problem. He "tweaked something" on Dec. 11 in a practice and was still out last weekend.

Realistically, the chances of Patterson getting injured in a shootout are pretty slim. Ferris State is in the CCHA, which uses shootouts in conference play, and Bob Daniels, the Bulldogs' coach, had no concerns about going to a shootout on Saturday.

There are risks everywhere, but you can't stay in bed all the time. Bottom line: A shootout after the third-place game would not have exposed Patterson to much of a risk.

UNION TOUGH

Lucia said there is a lot of parity in college hockey and teams build their programs in different ways.

"Union is an example of [a program] going out and recruiting 20-year-olds, and your best players become 23- and 24-year olds," Lucia said. "They had some good players. Their goaltender was very good. We are disappointed we didn't win, there is no question about that.