Chasing MacNaughton S2E8: Merry Christmas

Season 2 Episode 8 of the Chasing MacNaughton Podcast from Tech Hockey Guide; Merry Christmas. This week, hosts Tim Braun, Dustin Lindstrom, Rob Gilreath, and special guest Ryan Stieg, sports College Hockey Writer for the Mining Journal. We took the time to discuss (times approximate):

• NMU series (5:39)
• Joe Shawhan’s comments on officials (26:07)
• Joe Shawhan Hour (50:50)
• Alabama-Huntsville series Preview (1:07:44)

This week, all listeners get a Christmas gift from the staff: the entire 96 minute podcast usually only available to Patreon supporters. Please enjoy the extra Huskies content as our gift to you and a means to survive the off week from play.

First, an update on the jersey order. We here at Tech hockey Guide definitely have the interest and numbers to make it happen. All that is left to do is work out a couple of kinks with the University. If you have interest in a cream, gold, or 100th season jersey, please continue to sign up. If all goes well, we should hopefully have an order ready to fly in January. Stay tuned! Please don’t forget that we support this platform through our Patreon page, which gives you access to monthly zoom chats with former and current players, coaches and more! Tech Hockey Guide is a volunteer-based labor of love and we’d love to continue doing it.

Weekend Recap

After our first series with Northern Michigan was cancelled, we finally got to play a home-and-home weekend against our archrival Wildcats.

NMU @ MTU Friday, December 18, 2020

MTU @ NMU Saturday, December 19, 2020

The shortest summary of the weekend is that Michigan Tech came out strong for both showings and Northern Michigan showed their rust. Northern Michigan has a variety of reliable goal scorers that can keep them in games, but they have a shaky defensive core that continues to keep games interesting for them. Michigan Tech fan favorite Griffin Loughran’s 5 minute major and the resulting power play are discussed. Tim has reached out to the league as to whether or not Loughran will be suspended as a repeat offender, but neither him nor Ryan have heard anything. This could mean the League is finalizing their punishment, or it could mean that the league felt the 5 minute major and Potulny’s pulling him for the rest of the game as sufficient punishment.

Loughran is a very gifted player that plays with an edge, the key to his success in college and beyond will be learning to understand when this aspect of his game is an asset and when it is a hinderance. Lately, it’s been much more of the latter than the former.

In the words of the Huskies Pep Band, we take our own time to “b*tch at the refs,” much like the coach of the Huskies. We think that our 5 minute major for boarding on Friday was quite questionable. It was definitely a 2, but a 5 felt egregious. We also felt as though the penalty shot on the same night was the wrong call. Again, this call warranted a 2 minute minor for sure, all of us have seen much more clear breakaways with a guy dragged down get called for 2 with no penalty shot. Even Ryan, our guest from Marquette, was dumbfounded.

Ryan also takes the time to break down how distancing measures are going down at the Berry. In the Joe Shawhan hour, Dirk talked about how he was calling the game from a suite on Saturday night instead of the press box. This hindered his view of a corner. Ryan discussed that the same thing is happening for their play-by-play guy, as well as where the media is permitted to be in the rink.

Speaking of b*tching at the refs…

Joe Shawhan Hour Recap

To begin our discussion on the Joe Shawhan hour, we begin with his rant against the game one officiating at the MacInnes Student Ice Arena on Mix 93 (thanks, Rob). Whenever the concept of officiating comes up in press conferences, Joe noticeably restrains himself from speaking his mind about officials so this outburst seemed a bit out of character. What is even more curious is that the WCHA still has yet to comment on matters after taking such a firm “you cannot talk badly about officials” stance. This may be because the league is in a lame duck season, but it is interesting nonetheless.

The guys definitely agree that the too many men on the ice call was ridiculous. The call was made with 4 of our guys on the ice, and that made no sense at all. We do want to take a look at the rulebook, but from past precedent, the penalty shot call seems really bad. While we’re not as sure there’s an anti-Tech conspiracy, we do feel that Joe is correct in saying that the officiating is awful in this league.

in regards to his comments, we don’t necessarily know if there will be much of a change in officiating going into the new edition of the CCHA. Going forward, we would like to see the refs mic’d up like they are in the NCHC so they have the opportunity to explain calls and add clarity. Across the board, the officiating standard just needs to be better. We all want to see a game played safely played by a consistent set of rules announced with clarity for teams, timekeepers, statisticians and fans. Because refs in the NCAA are part time and because fans will always be fans, there is always an extent to which referees will have a thankless job. We’re just hoping to see less egregiously bad calls with no rulebook explanation.

Michigan Tech head coach Joe Shawhan unloaded on the officiating after a 4-3 win against NMU. His comments before Dirk asks a question: pic.twitter.com/bLTTKxplFQ

— Adam Niemi (@AdamNiemi) December 19, 2020

Joe Shawhan Hour Discussion

The biggest takeaway from this week’s Joe Shawhan hour is that Joe recognizes that Bantle isn’t going to be a 4-year player. Ultimately for recruiting and increasing our compete level, this is a good thing. Bantle is going to be an NHL-caliber player and the fact that he went to Tech will draw more kids toward the program later. It’s not necessarily great because it doesn’t quite play into the paramount of the NCAA model of getting an education, but if he follows the blueprint of most Tech hockey players, he will likely finish his degree at a later date.

We also found it humorous that Joe made the Lipe could probably play the whole game how effortlessly he skates. In our discord we’ve had some less than enthusiastic talk about Buckley, but the reality is that he leads the team in +/-, has no penalties and has started to find his footing in the NCAA. Everybody seems to be contributing evenly and the lines seem to be rolling. Even with 3 majors assessed on the Huskies this year, we’ve only allowed 1 power play goal and none of them were on majors. It was cool to hear him talk about players with such confidence this week.

Huntsville Preview

Huntsville has only played 4 games so far and they have yet to notch a win and they’ve played all their games on the road. They will be on the road once again for their series against Michigan Tech. Overall, Huntsville has been playing as expected for having their program canned, losing players and rebuild mode over the summer. However, never count the Chargers out. Last season, one of their handful of wins did come against the Huskies. Every host has predicted a Tech sweep. After sweeping Northern, anything less than a sweep against the Chargers at home would be disappointing.

Despite what the CHN app says, the games will be played Saturday-Sunday, not Friday-Saturday.

Cut for Time

Nothing. Enjoy the ordinarily exclusive content as our gift to our viewers and listeners. Enjoy!

Learn More

For additional information and more episode liner notes, check out our episode overview on Tech Hockey Guide. To make sure we can afford all our fancy equipment we purchased for the podcast and the THG website in general, please check out our Patreon page and consider joining. Patrons at our Black Level or above receive an authentic MTU jersey patch and access to extra podcast content including extended versions of our other episodes. This week’s extended version is nearly 84 minutes.
Follow us on twitter at ChasingMacPod and you can submit questions through our email address, ChasingMac@techhockeyguide.com. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Please rate and review which will help us reach more people, and tell your friends. Please check out Jonathan Zamaites series previews every Friday and Mike Anleitner’s Old Dog in Texas column every Wednesday. Also, keep an eye out for new recruiting articles on Tuesdays. As always, special thanks to our patron saint Doc McResin for his generous donation to get this thing running, we hope you enjoy. Also, thanks to The Thank You Notes for all the bumpers in today’s episode. If you like what you hear, check them out at thethankyounotes.bandcamp.com