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Sometimes You Just Shake Your Head

Wisconsin and Minnesota were trying to get together to play an outdoor hockey game at Camp Randall Stadium next season, followed by an outdoor game at TCF High School Stadium in Minneapolis the following year. But as Todd Milewski of The Capital Times reported today, those games are on hold thanks to the WCHA. The event was being put on by the Herb Brooks Foundation, and the WCHA didn't want control of a league game going to an outside entity.

Here's WCHA commissioner Bruce McLeod on the reason for the veto:
"If they want to take an exempted game or something like that, we'll cooperate and do what we can. But with a regular-season game and somebody else running it, and you know how those points go -- especially Wisconsin the last few years -- that can be critical. So we're quite concerned about the circumstances under which these games are played.
Emphasis mine. That's an obvious reference to the blown video replay call that cost Wisconsin a game against Denver last season, and eventually ended up costing Wisconsin home ice in the WCHA playoffs.

Of course, the only problem with that logic is that the WCHA was in charge of those screw-ups. Basically what McLeod is saying is that if anybody is going to screw-up a WCHA game, Goddammit, it's going to be the WCHA. I'm not sure what the risk is here. Is McLeod afraid that if the Herb Brooks Foundation hires referees that completely blow a game-changing call, they won't issue a heartfelt apology letter like McLeod had to do multiple times last season?

In any case, it's a shame that it looks like Minnesota and Wisconsin won't be able to have a successful outdoor game like many NHL and college programs have had.