Season 3 Episode 8 of the Chasing MacNaughton Podcast from Tech Hockey Guide; “Shirtless without Shirtless Guy” This week Rob Gilreath, Dustin Lindstrom, and Matt Cavender were joined by Drew Evans from BGSUHockey.com They spent the show talking about BGSU’s season, the CCHA, Michigan Tech’s series with LSSU, previewed the NMU series and they continued the fantasy college hockey challenge.

BGSU Hockey

BSGU has gotten off to a great start with only a single loss, with their series against Bemidji ending in a split. The series against St. Thomas resulted in two wins. The weekend upcoming is the so-called “measuring stick” against Minnesota State. Austen Swankler and Nathan Burke are both new players that have been contributing very well this season. BGSU has also lost a good bit of talent this year to the transfer portal. BGSU has not lost a non-conference game yet this season, which has been a net positive for the conference. The guys also discussed how BGSU is in the middle of the pack for the media and coaches’ polls. This used to indicate a lower score in the WCHA, but with the CCHA being so strong this year, it means that BGSU is in a better place this season.

Non-Conference Play

For BGSU’s future non-conference games, there is a series against Ohio State and the holiday tournament in Wisconsin where they will play Providence, Wisconsin, and Yale. Rob indicated that this was a real holiday tournament, unlike this year’s edition of the GLI where Tech will not play who wins or loses. The crew also took time to talk about how the CCHA is stacking up nationally to this point. The CCHA is 5-0 against Hockey East teams, which is unexpected to this point, but great news nonetheless. Dustin believes that the ECAC (Eastern College Athletic Conference), which is comprised of the Ivy League schools, has been just as competitive as Hockey East so far this season. Atlantic Hockey has been in the lower end of the play this season.

Bowling Green Jerseys

Matt asked Drew about the new jerseys this year. Matt said that they looked more classic and simplistic style with just the diagonal BG on it. There is also an Ohio shoulder patch with a star where Bowling Green is. Drew said he was not originally a fan until he saw them in person. He explained that they tried to incorporate the brands from all the different teams into one look. They have the logo with the BG with the “peek-a-boo falcon.” Everyone was a fan of the shoulder patches with the state with star; Rob said that every school should have the state with start patch.

CCHA Overall

Rob asked Drew what he thought of the CCHA overall and if the league was meeting Drew’s expectations, along with what he thought of the front office so far. Drew said that he was impressed with the work that Don Lucia and Dom Hennig have done for the league so far. He thought it was a night and day comparison from the WCHA. He thought the WCHA was constantly looking to the past and holding on whereas the CCHA is looking to the future. Rob said he was happy he could hop online and catch up with everything on Twitter and the highlight clips. Matt agreed that it was a night and day difference. He mentioned that they had Kevin Langseth on an earlier episode where Langseth talked about his points of emphasis and things he was going to be working on during the season, especially his selection process for officials. One thing that Matt has noticed is that he has not seen any Tech fans complaining about officiating in any significant way this season. Dustin agreed that he has not heard anything either. He has not heard any officiating gaffs this year, compared to last year in which there seemed to be egregious missed calls every week. One last point that Matt made was that he loved having mic’d up refs at games so you can hear the thought process behind a call and why a call was made. Rob said that mic’d up refs makes the game seem more modernized.

The guys also talked about the video production value in watching games. They were still disappointed that ECAC is on ESPN+ but CCHA was still on Flo Hockey. They discussed how the advancement of the league could push it in that direction. Rob did have a complaint about the Tech home games: the ice is too bright or over-exposed and it makes the games hard to watch. When he switched over to the NMU game, the ice was not as bright. Matt said they might have something going on with ESPN for their sports journalism program, and Dustin is hopeful that thisis Tech’s “in” to switch over to ESPN.

Games around the League

Ferris beat Mankato at home. The guys have been hard on Ferris this season, but they took down one of the best teams in the country which is a huge boon for the team. Bowling Green swept St. Thomas. The guys have also been very hard on St. Thomas, with Matt saying pretty much weekly that any reputable team should take St. Thomas as an automatic win. When St. Thomas beat Ferris, he thought Ferris would have to take a long look in the mirror and try to fix their issues. They did this in a big way and split Mankato.

Matt had some breaking news. last week, he said if Ferris gets one win, he will do the podcast shirtless. Matt took his shirt off and continued the podcast shirtless. The guys discussed the importance of not taking a night off because you can lose to any team at any time. Matt then made the wager that he would do a naked lap if Tech lost a game to St. Thomas.

The guys talked about how they were happy that Northern swept Boston University at home. Northern wore jerseys with the ’91 team names on the back, which confused the guys while they were watching the game.

Fantasy Challenge

Last week was low scoring. but luckily the ghost got zero points. Dustin led the week with three points, followed by Tim and Rob with two. Matt trailed with one point. The overall standings have Tim in the lead with 25. Dustin has 14, Rob and the ghost have 13 and Matt has 2. Matt shared his woes about the guest picks getting him negative points while guests have put Tim well in the lead.

This week, Dustin chose the leading scorers from CCHA teams. He threw out St. Thomas and Ferris  because they are playing out of conference teams this week. He also threw out Mankato because it is an outlier. Bemidji State’s leading scorer is Alex Ierullo with 4 goals and 3 assists with 8 games played. Lake State’s leading scorer is Louis Boudon with 6 goals and 11 assists in 12 games played. Tech’s leading scorer is Brian Halonen with 5 goals and 3 assists in 7 games. Northern’s leading scorer is AJ Vanderbeck with 8 goals and 5 assists in 9 games. The Bowling Green leading scorer is Austen Swankler with 5 goals and 5 assists in 8 games. Drew picked Vanderbeck, Rob picked Halonen, Dustin chose Boudon. Matt chose Ierullo and gave the ghost Swankler.

Tech Series

The guys then discussed the Lake State series that happened over the weekend. Matt talked about how Tech played very well and outshot LSSU but ended up letting LSSU come back and win it. Matt said that Tech was the better team throughout the whole game and deserved to win the game. He was happy that Tech was able to reel it back in for the Saturday game. Rob said that there needs to be more scoring when they are dominating the game like Tech did. The guys all agreed that something is missing from a scoring perspective.

Other Teams

The guys discussed statistics in depth. Tech is the only school that has a 100% penalty kill still. Northern has 31% for goals on the power play; only Harvard, St. Cloud, and Arizona are ahead of them. St. Cloud went all in on their team this season by returning all eligible seniors and creating a backlog of younger players. Minnesota Duluth did the same thing in convincing their seniors to play again.

Dustin said the Northern series is scary because they know how to score. Matt thought when you stacked Tech’s roster against Northern’s roster, Tech shouldn’t drop a game. The guys were upset that Tech doesn’t end their season with a Northern series.

For the weekend predictions, Rob’s expert hockey analysis was that if Tech scores, they win and if they don’t, they lose. He later changed his mind to the weekend ending up as a split. Matt thinks that if Tech can keep Northern off the board and play a defensive game, they are likely to win both. Dustin thinks there will be a split. He wants Tech to prove they can do it. Dustin does not think the team is playing up to their capabilities. Matt referenced the Lake State series where Tech was clearly the better team, but still gave up a loss. The guys also discussed how much they dislike The Berry Event Center.

Following the discussion about the Northern series, Dustin did a deep dive into the stats, which cascaded into further discussion with Rob and Matt.

Cut for time

This week’s cut for time segment is approximately 17 minutes long. The guys discussed the beer advent calendars they’ve had. Rob talked about how he was excited that he finally got the first IPA. Rob talked about how he didn’t like black beer but did like dark beer. Matt talked about how he had dark beers with his dad and grandfather. Dustin said he liked stouts but did not like Guinness. Rob, on the other hand, loves Guinness. Matt talked about how Eastern Market Brewing became the official beer of the Detroit Pistons. He was looking forward to having beers with Dustin and Rob at the “real” GLI next year when it is allegedly back to tournament format. He hoped the final game would be played at Little Caesars Arena. Dustin demonstrated his beer knowledge by discussing the differences of the East Coast, West Coast, and Midwest IPAs. Dustin expressed desire to have a true Great Lakes Invitational that had only schools that were on the Great Lakes. Rob referenced the Lake Superior Showcase as a past tournament that was exactly that. The guys discussed Northern’s non-conference schedule. They have two games against Boston University at home, a game against Notre Dame at home, two games against Minnesota Duluth at home, two games against Colgate at home. Matt pointed out that the CCHA is trying to become a premier league where teams want to come and play against CCHA teams. Dustin thinks for the future of the league, the CCHA needs to be on par with the B1G.

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.

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Ben Weyland
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