From Friday night, here is Danny Kristo breaking into tears because he got kicked out of the game for a super illegal check from behind against Minnesota's Ben Marshall. Kristo was doing fine until he came back out of the tunnel for that final 'F--- you" screamed at the officials.
Meanwhile, the following night, Tom Serratore had a hit from behind on North Dakota's Andrew MacWilliam, that was only ruled a 2-minute charging penalty. I don't know that that hit was excessively dangerous given how close MacWilliam was to the boards, but given the current political climate in hockey, and the clamoring for "zero tolerance" on checking from behind, that has to be a five-minute major. It's probably better off for UND that it wasn't, since Minnesota ended up scoring shorthanded on the resulting penalty anyway.
Minnesota's Mark Alt did have a check-from-behind called a five-minute major but I couldn't find a video of it.
But on to the main event. In the closing seconds of Saturday's 6-2 Minnesota win, some pushing and shoving led to North Dakota's Ben Blood being tripped from behind and Blood retaliating by going after a Gopher player in the post-game handshake line.
Here's Blood being tripped by Minnesota's Jake Hansen. And here's Blood punching Kyle Rau in the handshake line.
First off, there are three things that are just absolutely fantastic about this.
1. Blood gets tripped from behind, doesn't see who did it, and just assumes it had to have been Kyle Rau. In his defense, I made the exact same mistake.
2. The North Dakota announcing crew. Not for their spot-on description of "Blood takes Ambroz down" as Blood is laying there motionless in a headlock. That's pretty much what I expect out of them. No, the best part is that they can't possibly fathom how teams could still show respect for each other by participating in a post-game handshake after something like that. Here's a protip: Just do what every other hockey team at every other level does.
3. Wally Shaver's call of the incident. I've always liked Wally Shaver. "I'm done with these guys. Go form your own league." is an instant classic.
As fallout, Ben Blood has been stripped of his role as North Dakota's assistant captain, but will face no further discipline because the WCHA league offiice is basically a high school teacher a year and a half from retirement that just doesn't care anymore, and really, who would want to deal with all those whiny emails?
If it were up to me, I would have handed out at least a single game suspension to both Jake Hansen and Ben Blood. Hansen's trip hasn't gotten as much attention, but I would classify that as nearly as dirty. That garbage seems to happen with every Minnesota/North Dakota, and ultimately, it ends up looking embarrassing to the sport.