Season 4, Episode 3 of the Chasing MacNaughton Podcast from Tech Hockey Guide; The Melephant in the Room. This week, Tim Braun, Dustin Lindstrom, Rob Gilreath and Matt Cavender were joined by the voice of Ferris State Bulldog hockey Harrison Watt. In this episode they discussed last weekends games within the CCHA, Ferris State’s season outlook and previewed the upcoming weekend’s slate of games for Tech.
Weekend Review
Harrison started with his thoughts on how Ferris’ weekend series again Miami (OH) went. He said Ferris dominated the face-off circle and scored on the power play twice. He also talked about the mindset of the Ferris players during the weekend. Overall he said it was not too bad of a weekend for the Bulldogs.
Switching to Michigan Tech’s weekend, Rob talked about being happy at how the Lake Superior State series went. Tim commented that it was nice to see and feel the “dirty work” being done by the Tech players, as well as the good passing that happened all weekend. Matt agreed with Rob and talked about Tech asserting their will against LSSU. Matt also talked about Tech showing up and playing hard against a lesser opponent on Monday against Lakehead University. The guys wondered if this was due to Lakehead getting lost and taking eight hours to drive from Madison, Wis. to Houghton, Mich.
The guys all agreed that the refereeing was good during the Lakehead game and the discussed the Lakehead penalty which caused a goal to be disallowed due to goaltender interference. Later discussion revolved around Max Vayrynen playing in goal during the Monday night game. The guys all agreed that there is little concern with Tech’s goaltending situation this year.
Harrison mixed it up a little took a turn to ask the guys what they thought of LSSU after Tech played them. Tim said he didn’t invest much time in watching LSSU as he was too focused on Tech. Matt thought that LSSU was playing hard and trying to win the game. There was also a conversation about LSSU being a “one line” team. The guys then changed gears a little to talk about a couple other teams within the CCHA who played this past weekend. The consensus was that no one knows what to think of the conference outside of Minnesota State winning the conference. Matt thought Bowling Green and Northern Michigan were going to be close in the standings at the end of the year, and the guys talked about Northern having a high offensive ceiling but a very low defensive floor.
How happy is Harrison?
Matt asked Harrison to talk about his “optimism index” for Ferris State this season. Harrison thought that Ferris could end up as high as fourth in the conference and didn’t see them dropping below sixth. He thought they’d be fighting for home ice in the conference playoffs going into the last month. He also thought that Ferris State is better set up to put two good nights together in a weekend and win more games. The guys spent some time discussing how many points the bottom teams in the CCHA will have at the end of the league season.
Predictions
To conclude this week, the guys gave their predictions for Tech’s upcoming games against Ferris State and the US National Development Team. Starting with the Ferris State game, Harrison thought that it would be an overtime game, and his prediction was “dogs in OT” so that he was right either way. Matt thought Ferris State was going to remind viewers who they are and give Tech fits, but picked Tech to win a squeaker. Rob thought Tech would win outright and Dustin was prepared for disappointment and chose Ferris State to win.
Matt thought the USNDT game would be similar to what viewers saw this weekend and be a 5-2 or 5-3 win for Tech. Harrison picked Tech to win 4-1.
Cut for time
Disclaimer: Harrison mistakenly misidentified the writer of the email, which was Mike McMahon and not Jess Myers.
This week’s cut time for Patrons is approximately 10 minutes long. Harrison talked about an email he received regarding TheRinkLive article and there was a discussion on the article, and journalism in general, from the rest of the guys. The guys talked about the Detroit Lions for a bit.
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 71 minutes.
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Follow us on twitter at ChasingMacPod. You can submit questions through our email address, ChasingMac@techhockeyguide.com. Don’t forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Please rate and review to 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
