Season 2 Episode 21 of the Chasing MacNaughton Podcast from Tech Hockey Guide; “390 Days.” This week Tim Braun, Dustin Lindstrom, Rob Gilreath, and Matt Cavender discussed the NCAA Tournament Bracket, WCHA playoffs, MTU news, the Joe Shawhan Hour, Your questions, St Thomas vs Colorado Colllege and predicted who would make the 2021 Frozen Four.

  • WCHA Playoffs (5:24)
  • NCAA Tournament Bracket (13:20)
  • MTU News (23:19)
  • Joe Shawhan Hour (31:27)
  • Listener Questions (48:59)
  • St. Thomas vs. Colorado College (57:13)
  • Frozen Four Predictions (62:02)

As of the release date of this podcast, it has been 390 days since Michigan Tech has lost a hockey game to Northern Michigan. We thought that would be a fun stat to give our followers in order to stay positive for next season.

WCHA Playoffs

Northern, in the words of Rob, gave a Mankato a “behind the wood shed beating” that nobody was expecting. It was pretty crazy how bad of a performance Minnesota State managed to put on, coupled with the level to which Northern was ready to stick it to them in order to make it to the WCHA championship game. Because of this game, Mankato ended up being a 2 seed in the national tournament.

The Lake State vs. Bemidji series on the other hand offered little surprise. Congratulations are in order for the Lakers, especially since it really wouldn’t have sit well with us Tech fans if Northern ended up being the conference champ after sweeping a 6 game season series against them.

NCAA Tournament Bracket

Well, what a mess this has shaken out to be. To begin, we’d seen projections of possibly 3 WCHA teams making the tournament, but we didn’t see any member of the media create a mock bracket in which that scenario was predicted. Despite what we all thought, the conference will have a stronger showing in its final season than we expected.

St. Lawrence had to have had the saddest story all season. They captured the ECAC championship over Quinnipiac, but the very next day, their head coach tested positive for covid. Because of that, the Skating Saints had to give up their autobid to Quinnipiac. Brutal.

The team that was almost undoubtably the beneficiary of St. Lawrence’s unfortunate situation was Notre Dame, as they seemed to be the most off-the-board pick to make the tournament. As of Thursday, March 25th, Notre Dame is also unable to compete in their regional. Their game against Boston College has been declared no-contest and Boston College is the beneficiary of a first round bye as a result.

We found it kind of interesting that in the final bracket, the committee decided not to care about travel, balance, or basically anything we’ve spent the past month discussing with guests that we thought would be factors. Go figure, I suppose. We more or less agree with the teams picked, but some of the regionals are a little head scratching to us. The good news is this though: only one team out of Minnesota Duluth, North Dakota, and Michigan has the chance to go on to fight for a title. You could also just be me and call for American International to come out of that regional, but it’s probably for the best that I’m not in charge of your sports betting accounts.

MTU News

We had about five bits of news to talk about regarding Michigan Tech that we decided to roll into one segment. The first is that Matt Roy just signed a healthy extension for the LA Kings, which we believe makes him the highest paid former Tech player of all time. He’s been a really important piece to their team and it’s really cool to have some Tech guys to follow in the NHL. For a lot of our fanbase, we know that it’s the only reason they might entertain watching an NHL game. Congratulations to Matt and your friends at Tech Hockey Guide are cheering for you the whole way.

Second, Tanner Kero scored a pretty sick goal for his first as a Dallas Star. As a Red Wings fan, this one’s pretty tough for me to swallow, but if the Wings are going to get kicked while they’re down, I’m happy it was from the foot of a former Husky. Well done Tanner!

It was also brought to our attention that Jujhar Khaira was featured in Sports Illustrated back in January. He’s just the third player of southeast Asian descent to make it to the NHL, and he’s really enjoyed being a role model for that community and is hoping others may follow in his footsteps. He may have only been a Husky for a year, but that’s enough to make you a Husky for life. Check out his article from Sports Illustrated here.

Of the NCAA hockey teams generating the most traffic on Twitter, Michigan Tech ranks #8. In terms of social media interactions this year, Tech beat out teams like BU, Penn State and our rivals down the road in Marquette. This is firstly a huge nod to the incredible work by Calvin Larson, but also to the Michigan Tech community for staying so engaged with the team online. This is a badge we can all wear. A big reason this podcast works is because we have an extremely active fanbase, so we thank you as well.

Our cup floweth over with great news to share, so be sure to tune in this week to hear the other topics discussed.

Joe Shawhan Hour

Joe made it clear that SOME of the seniors are returning. This year doesn’t count against eligibility for anybody, so we took some time to speculate which seniors may be coming back. Overall, we found the answer to this to be pretty obvious and whoever comes back will likely be unsurprising if they do. The biggest question is what’s the biggest priority in terms of team needs. We’ll be keeping an eye on the situation and keeping you updated as we know more.

Speaking of keeping you updated as we know more, according to Joe, Michigan Tech has secured the commitment of another Swedish kid that is about 6’4″. At this point, the player is not publicly known, but we speculate who it may be. We have suspicion that the player may be a former teammate of Caderoth, but at this point we don’t have anything further to report in terms of what is known for sure. We’re excited that Tech is expanding into the European marketplace in order to find players, as it’s more or less an untapped source of great players.

St. Thomas vs. Colorado College

Earlier this week, Dustin’s least favorite college hockey pundit took to twitter with an interesting tweet that we discussed on the podcast.

We take some time to think about what we would do if we were a head coaching prospect with our pick of either. If you had your choice, would you choose the historic program in a dominating conference in desperate need of a rebuild, or would you like to take everything- program, conference, team, building- from square one and build from the ground up with a pretty steep pool of resources. Listen in and feel free to let us know which you would pick!

Listener Questions

Andy Bordeau asked if Tech would actually play its 100th year schedule next fall. The short answer: no, go listen to last week’s podcast. The long answer: no, but we’ve got a lot more out of conference games scheduled so the opponent matchups have the potential to be much more interesting to watch.

We had another question about whether or not we believe any of the three current coaches will not be on the team next fall. The only scenario in which we see a coach leaving the program is if one of the assistants gets a coaching job elsewhere.

We answered several other questions on the podcast, and by joining our discord chat you can ask us whatever you like! Patreon members get question priority and their own chat channel, so be sure to join today.

Frozen Four Predictions

Bear in mind we made these predictions before we knew about the whole Notre Dame scenario, but we took our time to make our predictions for who we think makes the Frozen Four. Dustin bullied me into picking AIC to win their regional, but at this point I’m going to go with it. Go Yellowjackets!

If you would like to enter Tech Hockey Guide’s bracket challenge to compete alongside the podcast hosts and other staff members for a chance at $50 off an authentic MTU jersey, pick your teams here. Just don’t pick Notre Dame because that would be stupid.

Cut for Time

This week’s cut content for Patreon subscribers only is about 24 minutes long. This week it included discussion about how crappy our first merch quality test ended up being, some jabs at North Dakota’s fanbase, where Grant Potulny may end up by puck drop of next year, and more. Join today to find out more!

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 about 100 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 (you should definitely read this week’s column). 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

Matt Cavender
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Matt Cavender graduated from Tech in 2018 and is a former President of Mitch's Misfits, serving two terms. Matt serves on the Tech Hockey Guide staff as Editor in Chief. He currently works as a Digital Marketing Specialist in Grand Rapids, MI

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