The Frozen Four Is Set And We're Off To Fucking Tampaah, Tampaaaaah Yeah
If you followed my lead last week and hopped aboard either the Quinnipiac, North Dakota and/or Denver bandwagons, well then you had yourself a pretty good past 4 days of college hockey. Because those three schools along with Boston College will be making their way down to Tampa to play in the Frozen Four next Thursday. I’ll be honest, the gap between the first two rounds and the Final Four kinda sucks nuts. A whole week and a half away from the action kinda takes away any momentum these teams have built up over their past few games. But I guess it’s just because there’s no way the Frozen Four could ever compete with the Final Four in the ratings department so hockey had to take a backseat this weekend. But regardless, there are still 3 more games to be played so let’s make some early predictions that will most likely be completely wrong and I’ll end up looking like an idiot by the end.
1 Quinnipiac vs 2 Boston College
Heading into the tournament, Quinnipiac was the best team in all of college hockey. And if you look at their scores from last week, it would look like they had a pretty easy road to the Frozen Four. Which is true, but they just haven’t looked impressively dominant. I get that the competition in this tournament is too stacked for one team to absolutely roll another for a full 60 minutes but I guess I was just expecting Quinnipiac to do that anyway. They’ve had some slow starts, especially against UML yesterday. but when you’re scoring goals like this, I guess you can afford to dig yourself out of a hole.
I had to take a cold shower after that Scott Davidson snipe. Now the Bobcats will take on the Boston College Eagles who make it back to the Frozen Four on their every-other-year cycle. 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014 and now 2016. Now lucky for BC, Minnesota-Duluth did their heavy lifting for them and knocked off the defending champion Providence Friars in their first round match up. Obviously kids like Colin White, Ryan Fitzgerald and Alex Tuch are gonna be tough match ups for Quinnipiac. But the real X-factor in this game is going to be Thatcher Demko between the pipes. He’s a Hobey Baker finalist and led the NCAA in shutouts this season. But if there’s anything that we learned from last year’s tournament, it’s that you can’t trust goalies from Boston to always make the easy saves. I’m thinking Quinnipiac advances to the championship game but it’s going to take overtime. (Make sure to follow our boy @BarstoolBrosh who will be in Tampa calling the game for the Quinnipiac Bobcats Sports Network).
1 North Dakota v 2 Denver
I’ve said it once. I’ve said it twice. I’ll say it 69 times. The North Dakota Fighting Sioux are the most entertaining team to watch in all of college hockey. The CBS line of Drake Caggiula, Brock Boeser and Nick Schmaltz are on video game mode and UND’s 11 goals in the past 2 games goes to show what type of hockey they play. There may not be a lot going on in the state of North Dakota, but they know how to put some fucking pucks in the back of the net. The most impressive part of North Dakota’s run so far? They’ve basically had to play 5-on-6 the whole time since apparently the refs have it out for them.
But yeah, North Dakota killing Michigan was huge because every time Pres loses, we all win. Now I firmly believe that whoever won yesterday’s Denver vs Ferris State game was playing for the right to lose to North Dakota next Thursday in the semifinals. As you can tell, Denver went on to win that honor.
I still think Denver comes up a little short next Thursday, especially considering the city of Denver already hit their championship quota for the year with the Broncos winning the Super Bowl. But this is Denver’s 10th trip to the Frozen Four. And before this, they’ve won 7 national championships in 9 Frozen Four appearances. These fuckers just know how to win and like I said last week, if there’s a team on that side of the bracket that can beat North Dakota, it’s the Pios. I’ll go ahead and give North Dakota the win in regulation but there’s gonna be a lot of nail biting going on.
National Championship
We’ll get an actual Natty Championship preview blog once the match up is actually set but my way-too-early prediction right now is that North Dakota wins off a game-winning goal from none other than Drizzy Drake Caggiula. Hi h8ers, bye h8ers
Hope the Puck Bunnies are out in full force in Tampa next week.
