After what I can only imagine was Teddy KGB saying, "Pay that man his money," Western Michigan obliged by raising Jeff Blashill's pay to $275,000 per year, and extended his contract another year, making it good through 2015-2016. Obviously it's a well deserved raise after Blashill took a pretty down-and-out Western program and got them back into the NCAA tournament in just one year. Though the tourney appearance was great, I would argue the even bigger accomplishment was getting the Broncos back to the CCHA tournament finals, and pulling off a win against Michigan, which probably did more to get a lot of fans and alumni back in the fold. The privately raised pay increase he's getting is likely just a small fraction of the extra revenue he'll start bringing back to Lawson Arena.
The United States U18 team prevailed over Canada 5-4 in overtime on a Tyler Biggs goal to advance to the gold medal game, which is good, because if they had lost, I might have suggested they walk home from Germany, after allowing two extra attacker goals in the closing moments of regulation to help blow a 4-1 third period lead. They'll go for a third straight gold medal against Sweden on Sunday.
North Dakota has had pretty good luck getting potential pro signees to commit to returning to school, including Danny Kristo last week(Surprising, but then again, consider how the Grand Forks media handled his snow stroll compared to how the Montreal media would handle it), but did lose forward Brett Hextall to the Phoenix Coyotes.
College Hockey News has done a good job following the Penn State coaching situation, and the latest is that Penn State will wait until after next week's national coaching convention before announcing their new head coach, so that they can potentially announced both a men's and women's coach.
Wisconsin women's coach Mark Johnson interviewed at Penn State last week. Johnson would be a fine choice, but I have a tough time imagining him getting the job if Scott Sandelin is legitimately interested.
Free Candy!(I'm legally required to tell you that there is no candy at that link). Actually, a local Mankato-area blog is attempting to get more visitors than Shane Frederick's Minnesota State hockey blog, which I fully endorse, unless Freddy ends up getting a ton of traffic from announcing a new head hockey coach at MSU.
Brendan Burke, son of former NHL goalie Sean Burke, had tried out for the NTDP team a couple weeks ago, but ended up signing with the Portland Winterhawks of the WHL.