Episode 7 of the Chasing MacNaughton Podcast from Tech Hockey Guide; “We Are The Champions.” This week Tim Braun, Rob Gilreath, Dustin Lindstrom discuss (times are approximate):
- Review of the Great Lakes Invitational (2:14)
- Review of WCHA non-conference results (11:07)
- WCHA predictions for the second half (17:55)
- MTU makes changes to Captains (31:06)
- Questions (36:04)
- Arizona State Series Preview & Predictions (44:02)
As liner notes to this week’s episode, we’ll include highlights from Michigan Tech’s championship performance at the Great Lakes Invitational.
We didn’t have a guest this week as the plan was to talk about the Mariucci Classic but Minnesota State and Bemidji State dropped the ball in their semifinal matchups and faced each other in the third place game so there wasn’t much to discuss. Instead, we started with the GLI, Michigan Tech’s annual tournament in Detroit. For just the second time since 1980, the Huskies won the tournament. It was also the first time ever that MTU defeated Michigan and MSU in the same GLI.
Michigan Tech has played 7 of their 9 non-conference games. All they have left is their series with ASU. A couple weeks ago, we talked about the WCHA’s December/January non-conference games as a whole. During the podcast, I mentioned that there were only 4 games left for the conference, MTU’s series at Arizona State and UAH visiting North Dakota. However, I missed a couple series. UAA travels to Arizona in February and Northern Michigan takes a trip to Ithaca, New York to face Cornell in 2 weeks. Hopefully the conference gets some help with those 8 games, but I wouldn’t think there is much of a chance for the conference to go .500 in those games.
We also made a bunch of predictions for the second half of the WCHA season. Dustin did a great job of coming up with questions while Rob and I took a stab at what we think will happen from who will finish top-4 in the league, who will lead the Huskies in scoring, and will Minnesota State lose another conference game. We touched a little bit on an all-decade MTU team and the top ten moments of the last decade, both topics that I’ve been working on and you’ll see more about those later this month.
Cut for Time
We only cut one segment for time this week. It was about 15 minutes long and it was a deep dive into how Michigan Tech and the other perennial participants plus Olympia Entertainment promote and produce this event. There has been much disappointment over the quality of the video feed on Flohockey.tv when it was basically a straight copy of the scoreboard. It’s also frustrating to hear that there are two years left on the contract and Suzanne doesn’t sound convinced that it will all go smoothly. This event deserves better, from FSD carrying all for games again to Detroit and the two B1G schools promoting this event. If you’d like to hear this segment and others like it from past episodes, sign up to be a patron at patreon.com/techhockeyguide
Tim is a 2004 graduate of Michigan Tech. He is a co-founder of both Mitch’s Misfits and Tech Hockey Guide. With recent additions to the staff, Tim is again able to focus on his passion, recruiting. He currently works as an environmental engineer and resides in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Area.
