Just a few quick notes this afternoon.

The Puck Daddy blog over on Yahoo has long been a good source of information and a few laughs for all things NHL.  Well this season they’ve added a college hockey contributor to give exposure to hockey at this level and help introduce the game to those diehard pro fans.  Weekly he’ll explore some of the unique aspects to the college game like last week’s blog about the traditions you’ll only see in the NCAA.  He’ll also does a Q&A every week with a college hockey blogger from around the country.  This week Fear The Triangle was lucky enough to be  featured in the latest Puck Daddy blog.  Be sure to check it out.  You can see me set a new record by using the word “certainly” for what seems like five sentences in a row.  That certainly doesn’t speak well for my copy editing skills. 

He also discusses some of the issues with swearing at college games which I really wish would be addressed at UMass.  As a fan and alum it’s gotten to the point where it is flat out embarrassing.  It is possible to be loud, raucous, and have class all at the same time.  I think the UMass students are capable of finding a way to do so.

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Wait, what’s that?  Could it be?  No way!  Yes, it is!  Not only did the Boston Globe wise up to the fact that Massachusetts extends beyond 495, but they realized there’s a hockey team out that way that’s doing pretty well so far this season.

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Lastly, just a quick Mike Pereira update which is that I basically know nothing.  USHR posted a Gunnery roster on their site that doesn’t have him on it despite the fact that they said he was likely transferring there.  Could he be heading to Nebraska to play in the USHL?  Did he decide to stay at South Kent (which does not have a roster posted yet)?  No idea.  When I know, you’ll know.

I like this team.  They’re certainly not perfect and still have some aspects to improve upon but they are finding ways to win and more importantly they are not giving up even when they go down late.  Tonight they pretty much dominated play for most of the game yet a combination of too many penalties and some bad turnovers in their zone resulted in a 2-3 deficit during the third period.  But T.J. Syner, who was a ball of energy all over the ice tonight, was able to tie it up and send it to overtime where James Marcou scored the 4-3 game winner.

Toot shook up the lines quite a bit with Carzo and Syner’s return, choosing not to reunite T.J. on the first line with Marcou and Casey Wellman but instead putting Brian Keane there and putting Carzo and Syner together with David Boehm.  It worked.  That line was everywhere tonight and Syner himself was able to get a number of opportunities on breakaways or near breakaways.  The first line played well obviously as well accounting for two goals.  Mike Marcou continues his impressive development.  He’s really starting to get a knack for knowing when to jump into a play, when to shoot, etc.  Dan Meyers got the surprise start in net and played pretty well.  He seemed to be fighting the puck a bit throughout the night but it’s hard to fault him for the goals.  The first was a tough shot that came straight off a faceoff, the second was a Yale power play, and the third was a complete defensive breakdown.  Overall he certainly did well enough to keep UMass in the game.

Yale was a better team than I expected.  Every time UMass made a mistake they were right there to do their best to capitalize upon it.  The forwards were pretty tenacious and the defense was solid.  Nick Maricic looked pretty good in net and with help from his defense was able to stifle a lot of quality chances that UMass had through the game.  It was close, probably a little too close, but in the end I’ll take an OT win over a top ten team on their ice any time.

Fear The Triangle Player of the Game – James Marcou
An assist and the game winner, can’t argue against that, even if it was in off a Yalie.  All that despite getting roughed up a bit as the Yale defense was certainly locked in on trying to shut him down.  It didn’t work.  Syner was a close second for the award with his all out play.

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Here’s a recap from Inside Hockey and one from the Daily Collegian as well.

The Republican has a recap as well as a feature on the team by Ron Chimelis.  Oddly Ron talks about T.J. Syner being a local product on the squad without mention Kevin Czepiel whose hometown of Holyoke is actually closer to campus.

Ok, that’s it for tonight as I’m pretty drained after a long day of driving, watching hockey, and enjoying a very good drinking establishment that will be making it onto the road trip page in the next couple days.  I apologize for any major spelling or grammatical errors but I am totally toast and need to get up to go to work in the morning.