This one gets top billing because it's me. I listened in on Tuesday's Frozen Four press conference--BREAKING NEWS: All four teams are "excited to be here"--and I'll be having some articles go up on CH247 about it. The first one is up about RIT. The other three should be up sometime later this week or into next week.
Also for people that are members over there, there's a good write-up on some kids that impressed at the NTDP evaluation camp. There were some names I wasn't surprised to see on there, and some names I was pretty surprised to see.
The Hobey Hat Trick was announced today. Blake Geoffrion, Bobby Butler, and Gustav Nyquist are the three finalists. I had been leaning towards Nyquist, but I think Geoffrion has gained a lot of support over the past couple weeks, and he is probably the favorite. Geoffrion also has the advantage of being one of the rare players to turn down a pro contract to return for his senior year. It may have actually been a shrewd move by WCHA commissioner Bruce McLeod to make sure that was brought up at the end of Wisconsin's press conference after winning the West regional last weekend. Hey, I can be complimentary towards the Commish.
The NHL released the 100 players that will attend the NHL Draft Combine. I counted about 28 current or future college players on the list, which isn't all that bad.
Lots of fun facts about the set-up of the rink at Ford Field. The end of the article claims that 30,000 tickets have already been sold, which is getting pretty close to a sellout. If all those people actually sold, I think the event would end up being a success.
Speaking of the topic of dealing with the conditions of Ford Field, last weekend I joked about the difference between WCHA budgets and the rest of college hockey when Vermont handed out a 20-page stapled media guide for the NCAA tournament, and St. Cloud handed out an approximately 200-page spiral-bound tournament media guide. The same might be true in Detroit. On Tuesday, Mike Eaves talked about how he was consulting with team training staff about possibly cramping in a warmer arena, and had people working on the long walk between the rink and locker rooms for the goalies. RIT's Wayne Wilson basically said, "We'll figure it out when we get there."