UMD Women skate to fifth NCAA puck crown

By John Gilbert

UMD's players joyfully hoisted their trophy for winning the 2010 NCAA women's hockey championship.

Something called the “USA Hockey/USA Today” weekly rating of women’s college hockey teams came out on the week of March 22 with the bold proclamation that it had named the University of Minnesota-Duluth No. 1 — by unanimous vote of all its voters. Nice try, folks. A little late, but nice of you to notice.

UMD (31-8-2) outlasted Cornell (21-9-6) in a championship game worthy of a time capsule, skating through almost two full games before freshman Jessica Wong’s deflection goal gave the Bulldogs a 3-2 victory in the final minute of the third overtime period.  Coach Shannon Miller’s amazing Bulldogs captured their fifth NCAA championship, after outshooting Cornell 64-51 in the extremely close, up-and-down duel.

It extended WCHA mastery over all 10 NCAA tournaments, because along with UMD’s five, Wisconsin has won three and Minnesota two national titles. But Miller said this one stands above all the others, which were won by exceptional teams that often overran foes with great talent. This team was a youthful underdog from the start.

“I told the players this was the most special team I’ve ever coached,” said Miller, who also predicted to a staff member between overtimes that she figured Wong would score the winner. “I thought getting into the top eight in the country, and staying there, would be a great goal. And if we could make the NCAA field, we’re really good in one game. We’ve upset good teams all season.

“I know Cornell had never been to ‘the dance’ before, but we’re the Cinderella story this year. With five Olympians gone from our team, we’re playing with 13 scholarship players against teams that have 18.”

A week ago, Mercyhurst was No. 1, for the 22nd consecutive week, and while UMD was second, Minnesota third and Cornell fourth — coincidentally, the four teams that made the Frozen Four.  Mercyhurst was the unanimous No. 1 on the ballots of all 19 voters. Two weeks earlier, Cornell had been ranked No. 8, but after the Big Red won enough upsets to reach the Frozen Four, the voters seek to avoid embarrassment by ranking the four finalists the top four spots. So Cornell was fourth, behind Mercyhurst, UMD and Minnesota.

Once the Frozen Four opened in Ridder Arena in Minneapolis, Cornell upset Mercyhurst 3-2 in the semifinals. Then UMD defeated host Minnesota, also by 3-2.

That created a UMD-Cornell final, and UMD defeated the Big Red 3-2 in a triple-overtime classic. Not “just” a women’s hockey game, to be ignored by all those macho men’s hockey fans who turn up their noses at the women’s game, but a fantasy game come to life in the NCAA Women’s final. As for the ratings folks, politics reigns supreme. Before the season started, Wisconsin was No. 1, only because the Badgers had won last year’s NCAA title. But one week into the season, Bemidji State beat Wisconsin and Mercyhurst rose to No. 1 and stayed there. The voters proceeded to ignore the fact that the WCHA is far tougher, from top to bottom, than any other conference, so it overlooked the stretch of several weeks when Minnesota was the best team in the country.

When UMD put together an incredible run that measured only one loss in its last 21 games dating back to the first weekend in December, and won its final nine consecutively, including two late-season victories over Minnesota, and another triumph over the Gophers in the WCHA playoff final, the voters acquiesced to put the Bulldogs up into second.

If the USA Hockey/USA Today types had any class, they would not insult our intelligence by coming out with a post-tournament “final” rating that assumes relevance for duplicating the finishing order of the Frozen Four. The voters should put the ratings plan aside until next fall, rather than display their own prejudices by having to rank the finalists 1-2 after not giving them any top-rank credit throughout the season.

But enough of that. The final game should be free of such petty politics while being put away in a time capsule.

UMD's freshman goaltender Jennifer Harss withstood a Cornell attack through the equivalent of two full games.

Cornell, a team that had never ventured so far into NCAA tournament time, went up against a UMD team that had 10 freshmen on the roster, seven skaters and all three goaltenders. Two Cinderellas, for very different reasons. The Bulldogs won the championship, but it wasn’t just another national championship game, or another 3-2 game. It was the longest game in NCAA Frozen Four history, and it was evidence of how scintillating high-stakes women’s collegiate hockey has become. It ended only when Wong deflected a right-point shot by Tara Gray past Cornell goaltender Amanda Mazzotta, who was trying for her 62nd save on the play, at 19:26 of the third 20-minute overtime. UMD won the 3-2 victory exactly 33.6 seconds short of what would have equalled two complete games.

UMD’s fifth national championship continues one of the more amazing stories in sports. Since starting the UMD program 11 years ago, a year before  the NCAA decided to sanction a women’s hockey tournament 10 years ago, coach Miller guided UMD teams to the first three NCAA titles, added a fourth in 2008, and now has won five of the 10 NCAA Women’s hockey championships that have been held. The first four UMD title teams shared a similarity — they were powerhouse outfits that had their sights on the NCAA’s big trophy all through those seasons. Superstars such as Jenny Potter and Maria Rooth and Caroline Ouellette led those talent-filled teams to those titles, and all three of them remain among the very best players on their U.S., Sweden, and Canada Olympic teams, respectively.

This season was markedly different for UMD, even though eight players from that 2008 title team were back. Five other returning veterans took a year off to skate with the Swedish and Canadian Olympic teams all season. Miller brought 10 freshmen aboard for this term, and she notified them from the start that they’d have to “play like juniors” to fill the void left by those centralized Olympians, who will return next season.

Miller might have established herself as, without a doubt, the craftiest coach in women’s hockey because she had something she might never have again — a  genuine underdog at the start of the season. An eternal optimist, Miller went at her task aggressively but with reasonably modest objectives.  They started 6-5, then 12-7, to get into December, deservedly behind those top-ranked teams up ahead, even though they split at Mercyhurst early.

It helped Miller that the four senior regulars — Saara Tuominen, Emmanuelle Blais, and defensemen Jaime Rasmussen and Sarah Murray — all turned into perfect role models for the freshmen. Kristi Hakala transfered back from Wisconsin-Superior for her senior year and helped, too, in a spare defenseman post. It helped further that the freshmen came of age rapidly, improving by enormous leaps all season.

UMD lost a game at Wisconsin on Friday,  December 4, to create that 12-7 plateau for the season, which was both mediocre and expected, by Miller.  The Bulldogs came back to tie Wisconsin on Sunday, December 6, in Madison, and won a shootout. Nobody, not even Miller, could envision what would unfold after that. The Bulldogs lost only one of their remaining 21 games, with the lone loss in that 19-1-1 stretch coming against an onrushing Ohio State team. By then, it only served as a rallying cry, as UMD regrouped to win its final nine games.

The Bulldogs had to conquer Minnesota 3-2 to win the WCHA playoff final, and beat the Golden Gophers for the fourth straight time in the NCAA semifinals, while Cornell eliminated Mercyhurst. In the finale, Cornell played its best, with Melanie Jue scoring both goals, and Mazzotta making 61 saves. Cornell proved to be a mighty foe, and held a 1-0 lead, but Miller herself came through to bring it all together.

She juggled lines during the game, she shortened the bench to two lines, and when it became evident that it would turn into an endurance contest, she went back to spotting her youthful third line, making sure that her most veteran defensemen, Rasmussen and Jocelyne Larocque, was out with that line at crucial times.

Defenseman Jaime Rasmussen moved up to convert a pass from Saara Tuominen for UMD's first goal.

Her seniors came through in the third period. Faced with the 1-0 deficit, Blais scored her third goal of the weekend, and her 32nd goal of a brilliant senior season, assisted by fellow-seniors Tuominen and Rasmussen. Then Rasmussen came through, moving up from the point the way Miller has always allowed her to do, and blasting in a pass across the slot from Tuominen for a 2-1 UMD lead. When victory seemed certain, Cornell came back for Jue’s second goal, with 3:30 remaining, and tied it 2-2.

When overtime started, UMD freshman goalie Jennifer Harss held the 2-2 tie, and nobody knew they would go on to play  three more 20-minute periods. Miller, always one step ahead of the fluctuating waves of game action, went to work with her favorite visual imaging bits — psycho cybernetics, some call it.

“After the first overtime, I told the players to imagine scoring the winning goal,” Miller said. “Imagine throwing your gloves and stick in the air and jumping into a pile of players. After the second overtime, I asked them to imagine carrying the trophy around the rink after winning, and ‘you’ll find strength you never knew you had.’ ”

I asked her, as the final minute of the third overtime ticked away, if she had anything cooked up for the intermission after the third overtime. “I was running out of things to say,” she laughed.

Wong, who scored her 13th goal of the season when UMD beat Minnesota 3-2 for the league playoff title, and scored her 14th goal of the season as the game-winner in the 2-1 NCAA quarterfinal victory over New Hampshire at the DECC a week earlier, saved her 15th goal for the moment when the Ridder Arena clock was ticking down, and Tara Gray was winding up at the point, with Blais and Wong both in front. “We had a double screen,” said Wong, “and I was saying to myself, ‘Tara, shoot the puck!’ I saw it coming all the way, and I got a piece of it with my stick blade.”

The puck glanced down and through Mazzotta’s pads, and UMD’s bench erupted. Exhausted or not, the Bulldogs had eclipsed the previous record for the longest women’s Frozen Four game ever, previously set by UMD beating Harvard 4-3 at 4:19 of the second sudden-death overtime at the DECC in Duluth in the 2003 title game. But this one, before 1,473 fans at Ridder Arena, may be a difficult record to better, being only 33.6 seconds short of being two complete games.

Jessica Wong (49) was engulfed after deflecting the puck into the Cornell goal in the final minute of the third overtime for UMD's 3-2 victory.

Cornell had three freshmen playing compared to UMD’s eight, but the Bulldog freshmen gave UMD enough depth to skate a third line, and Miller’s judicious use of that third unit wore down the Big Red, which relied almost completely on two forward lines. “It was a great game, and I want to congratulate Shannon and Minnesota-Duluth,” said Cornell coach Doug Derraugh, whose team broke a scoreless tie on Jue’s first goal, a power-play marker 13:44 into the second period. “I’m also very plesed with my team. We’ve had a blast here, and I played 14 yearrs of pro hockey, but I’ve never been prouder of a team or seen a team with more heart.”

Blais rushed from the left for a shot that was blocked, but she followed up with another shot for a power-play equalizer at 0:18 of the third. The goal gave Blais an astounding finish, with six goals and six assists in her last five games, and 32-33—64 for the season. She earned most valuable player awards for both the NCAA Frozen Four and the WCHA Final Faceoff tournament, and was first-team All-America. The only slight was another tradition for UMD — Blais was among the final 10 candidates for USA Hockey’s Patty Kazmaier award, but, joining such liminaries as Potter, Rooth and Ouellette, Blais not only didn’t win, she didn’t make the final three. It was won by Melanie Benduis of Mercyhurst.

For Blais, who transformed herself from a spectacularly skilled but individually focused player to a consummate team player this season, such an award would have been perfect justification. Instead, her own dedicated play through the playoff stretch was her Olympics, and her own Kazmaier.

“When we won the WCHA playoffs and I got the MVP, I obviously was happy, and now this,” said Blais. “But I am focused so much on my team. This has been the best year of my life.”

Before the game, it was interesting to watch the pregame introductions, and notice Tuominen, looking carefully up into the stands at the rafters, at the fans, at Cornell’s players, at her teammates. She appeared to be taking in all the sensory things that would fit into her memory bank about her last collegiate game. She would later talke about the special year she had, departing to help Finland win the Olympic bronze medal in Vancouver, and then coming back to assist on both regulation UMD goals in the championship game.

Cornell traded rushes with the speedy Bulldogs throughout the game, and had a 30-28 edge in shots when the third period ended. UMD had a slight edge, at 12-11, through the first overtime, then outshot the Big Red 10-4 in the second overtime, and 14-6 in the third. A pivotal difference was when Miller went from matching two lines against Cornell’s two lines, using Tuominen between Blais and Laura Fridfinnson, and an all-freshman unit with Katie Wilson centering Audrey Cournoyer and Wong. As the game went to overtime, and it was clear both teams were slowing down as exhaustion sapped their strength, Miller started inserting the third line of Gina Dodge between fellow-freshman Vanessa Thibault and hustling sophomore Kacy Ambroz.

“I gave them a clear job, to be good defensively on a very short shift, get the puck over the red line and get it in deep,” said Miller. “Then I told them, ‘OK, that was perfect,’ and I gave them longer shifts.”

Her players appreciated it. “I always want more ice time, but I was ready to be done,” said Blais, who had scored two goals and set up Laura Fridfinnson for the third in Friday’s 3-2 semifinal victory over Minnesota. “Thibault, Dodge and Ambroz gave us a tremendous lift, and I think that was a key in the game.”

Still, nothing was decided as the game went through the first, then the second, and deep into the third overtime. Lauriane Rougeau prevented a goal when she took down Fridfinnson to halt a breakaway, but she was penalized at 17:20. She came out of the penalty box and skated across the ice to the bench when UMD’s Mariia Posa, another freshman, worked the puck to Gray at the right point — 10 feet from the Cornell bench. “I saw her coming across the ice trying to get a change, and she got her stick under [Gray's] stick as she shot,” said Derraugh. As Rougeau fell, she nearly smothered the puck, but she got the shot away. And Wong deflected it into NCAA women’s hockey history.

“Even though we were freshmen, the seniors picked us up so much,” said Wong. “Every practice, I learned somethng new. Coach is amazing, and we improved so much.”

As for the visualization tactics, Blais said she was able to experience it, and she undoubtedly will remember the finish, after Gray’s shot zipped past her, and was then deflected by Wong. Then came the throwing of the sticks and gloves, and the pileup, just as they had visualized.

“All I remember is that there were a lot of people on me,” said Blais. “And my legs were really, really hurting.”

That pain will subside, and the sweet memories will remain forever. It’s a good thing the new DECC arena is being finished in time to open midway through next season. The UMD women’s Bulldogs need more room to expand the area where they can hang more banners — this time, the unexpected hat trick for WCHA season champions, WCHA playoff champions, and 2010 NCAA champions.