Hockey: Feeling a draft

What a draft for the Wisconsin hockey program. A total of seven Badgers or soon-to-be Badgers were selected in the NHL draft, including five of the first 51 picks.

They were: Jake Gardiner, Cody Golobef, Patrick Wiercioch, Justin Schultz, Derek Stepan, Patrick Johnson, and Nick Pryor. Gardiner, and incoming freshman defenseman, was the top pick of the group, going 17th overall to Anaheim.

In his State Journal blog Andy Baggot compares this draft haul to other collegiate classes. Pretty impressive.

The question is: will this lead to conference titles and postseason success? Last year's team featured a bunch of high draft picks and, while it finished one goal short of the Frozen Four, it finished with a losing record.

Kudos to Baggot and Todd Milewski for great work previewing this draft, reporting on it, and providing perspective.

A word on hockey

Good news on the hockey front: the Badgers went undefeated in their weekend series against Minnesota. The kicker: Minnesota isn't very good right now, at least not as good as they've been since I've been paying attention.

Both Todd Milewski and Andy Baggot did a good job in their Saturday gamers describing why these teams have fallen off a bit from their pace at the beginning of the century. The reason: the NHL's collective bargaining agreement has made it more logical for teams to sign their draftees, which keeps them out of the college game.

I'm not an expert on these things, but off the top of my head I can think of these guys who have left Madison prematurely in the last couple years: Robbie Earl, Joe Pavelski, Jack Skille. The Gophers have been hit just as hard, if not harder. It's even money that Kyle Turris, who Wayne Gretzky made the #3 pick in the last NHL draft for Phoenix, will leave after this season.

So why is this hitting the Badgers and Gophers harder than, say Colorado College, Denver, or North Dakota? I can't say for sure, but it's probably a parallel to college basketball programs that recruit Kevin Love, O.J. Mayo, and Michael Beasley types - you hope to get one great, transcendental year out of them a la Carmelo Anthony. Meanwhile, programs recruiting three- and four-year guys are just consistently solid, like Badger basketball.

It seems that the Badgers, for all their struggles this season, are still in good shape to make the tournament, where anything can happen. Here's hoping Turris gets to raise a championship banner in Madison before putting on a Coyotes jersey for good.

Denver clock operators beat Badger hockey team

We haven't talked as much about the Badger hockey team here as I had anticipated, partly because their games aren't on TV as much anymore, partly because the team isn't as good as I thought it would be. But this morning at Pick 'n Save in Waupaca, where Will and I go every Saturday morning to read the Journal Sentinel, drink coffee, and eat muffins, I ran into John, a fellow Badger fan and Focolare Cafe regular who follows the hockey team much more closely than I do.

(To reference an early post, John is the one whose son was agonizing over committing to a holiday trip to Puerto Rico with the family or holding out to follow the Badgers to a BCS bowl. He chose his family and they all had a nice time over Christmas - good call.)

I had just got done reading about how the Badger hockey team got had a game-tying goal at the buzzer overturned last night in Denver. Apparently the refs looked at Matt Ford's goal and said it happened after the period had ended. John said that UW coaches immediately received text messages that it was a blown call, just as he had. This after the home-ice clock operators at Magness Arena had apparently shaved seconds off the clock twice in the final minute.

There was talk Wisconsin would appeal the decision and try to force an extension of the game preceding tonight's game, but it seems like it will be fruitless. Our friend Todd Milewski has done a nice job following the situation on his Cap Times blog.

Hopefully this doesn't end up costing the Badgers home-ice in the WCHA tournament, or an NCAA bid. The more you look at it and read about it, the bigger the travesty it is.

Here's another slow-mo look of just the final part of the sequence.



-In Badger hockey news local to me, a Waupaca kid, Craig Johnson, has started getting some playing time for the Badgers on defense. In true college hockey fashion, Craig is a 21-year-old freshman after playing a couple years in the NAHL. It's a testament to the job Bob Johnson and Jeff Sauer did building interest in the program around the state that there are now so many Wisconsin natives on the roster. When we first got good, it was mostly Minnesotans and Canadians doing the heavy lifting. Now there are a lot more home-grown players, which only builds more interest when the team has success.