The Other Sweet 16- the NCAA Hockey Tournament

We had problems finding suitable images for college hockey teams, so we just went with Peter Puck, the cartoon character who was featured on NBC broadcasts of NHL games when I was a kid in 1970s. Amazingly enough, the games were broadcast in Roanoke, Va., in those days, but they were preempted in many Southern markets. Ironically, today there are several NHL teams south of the Mason-Dixon line, including the Carolina Hurricanes, the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Florida Panthers.

But, our focus today is on NCAA college hockey, a sport I have just started to try and follow in recent years. One thing that is confusing about college hockey is the conference alignment, the major conferences include the Central Collegiate Hockey Association (CCHA), which includes several Big 10 teams, including Michigan and Michigan State, two teams which also made the NCAA field of 16, and the Hockey East Conference, which includes the number-one team in the country, Boston College.

In total, five CCHA schools made the field, including Ferris State (Grand Rapids, Mich.), Miami (Ohio) and Western Michigan, which actually upset Michigan for the conference tournament title. There are four schools from the Hockey East Conference; the other three that are in the field are Boston University, Maine and Mass-Lowell.

On Saturday, in a game that will be broadcast on ESPN-U, the Boston College Eagles will face another team with a bird nickname as they face the Air Force Falcons, a team that is ranked 16th in the country.

That game will take place in Boston College's home state as the two teams are in the Worcester, Mass.-region. The other game in that region pits the defending national championship Minnesota-Duluth against Maine.

The winner of the Worcester-regional will then face the winner of the St. Paul, Minn.-region for the Frozen Four, which takes place in (of all places) Tampa, Fla., starting on April 5th.

In the St. Paul-region, Minnesota will face Boston University, and Western Michigan will face North Dakota.

Though I am not an expert on college hockey, by any stretch, I am going to 'predict' that the Frozen Four will be between Boston College and Minnesota, and the other game will be between Miami (Ohio) and Denver University.

We will have more coverage of the other regionals on our sister blog "Politics, Culture and Other Wastes of Times."

Boston College won its third straight Hockey East Conference title in the conference tournament in Boston when they beat Maine 4-1; the two games could meet in the quarter-finals if the Black Bears upset Minn-Duluth. For BC, the team got two goals from freshman Johnny Gaudreau (Carneys Point, NJ) and goal-tender Parker Milner, a junior (Pittsburgh, Pa.) made 41 saves.

The Falcons won its fifth Atlantic Hockey Association Conference title in six years thanks to senior Paul Weisgarber (Fargo, N. Dak.) and sophomore goal-tender Jason Torf (Hermosa Beach, Calif.).

Boston College has won two hockey titles in recent years (2008 and 2010).

It should be an amazing journey to the Frozen Four, irregardless of which team wins.

Weekend Road Trip- Connecticut to Colorado (5 of 20)

Today, we continue our time-consuming series on road trips across les etats unis (French for USA) by looking at the time it would take one to get from New Haven, Conn., 06510 to Colorado Spring, Colo. 80903. As one might expect, it is a long drive.

We chose these two zip codes because both Yale University in New Haven and the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs have outstanding men's hockey programs (we know Yale has a women's hockey program too, alas we didn't get to see if that sport was offered at AFU).

Yale actually defeated Air Force in a NCAA tournament game that went to overtime. But, the Bulldogs fell in the final eight. Tonight, Minn-Duluth and Notre Dame face off in the Frozen Four, followed by the University of North Dakota's game with Michigan. The event is taking place today in St. Paul, Minn.

Both schools also have women's gymnastics teams, a sport that I am a huge fan of. We found out that for the Bulldogs' gym team, captain Sherry Yang from Maryland had a 9.3 on vault at a meet at Towson University in here home state on March 11. The team also has two (we presume twin) sisters from Singapoer in Nicole and Tabitha Tay, both of whom are freshman.

As for the Falcons' women's gym team, senior Brittany Dutton, a 5-1 gymnast from Georgia, has been among the stand-out gymnasts as she competed in NCAA regionals in Denver. Her teammate Linnaea Hance has a pet cornsnake! And, her fellow Falcon Jen Larsen likes "Scooby Doo," a cartoon which is a year older than me (we believe in debuted in 1969).

As for the hockey teams, Jimmy Martin, a senior from St. Louis who was captain for the Bulldogs had an outstanding year as did Falcons' stand-out Jacques Lamoureux from North Dakota who amazingly enough cites the Edmonton Oilers as his favorite team (a member of the U.S. military roots for a Canadian hockey team!).

We found out the mileage by checking out the distance from Ibiza Restaurant in New Haven, a Spanish diner that offers chipirones, baby squid braised on its own ink, and Jack Quinn's Irish Ale House and Pub in Colorado Springs which offers Irish strout beef crostini.

We concluded that the distance was:

A) 26 hours

B) 28 hours

C) 30 hours

D) 32 hours

The answer to last week's question was A). Durham, NH, and Norman, Okl., would amount to a 28 hour drive presuming one does not stop at a Burger King in Kentucky along the way.