It's been another rough season for Alaska-Anchorage. Last weekend, the last place Seawolves took on the team directly above them in the standings in Minnesota State in their last real shot at moving out of the cellar of the WCHA. Despite only allowing 17 shots on Friday and just 16 shots on Saturday, the Seawolves still lost both games. Here is the Anchorage Daily News description of the two game-winning goals that Anchorage allowed:
"Sproule just tried to whack it away but unfortunately it just caught someone," said Gunderson, who didn't see the puck after the ricochet. "Their guy (Louwerse) and (UAA defenseman) Austin Coldwell were tied up in front of the net. ... It must have gone off Coldwell."
Louwerse was credited with his second goal of the night -- he had just one in 22 previous games -- but said he didn't touch the puck.
"It ended up hitting one of (Sproule's) teammates' legs and bounced back in the net," Louwerse said.
"I was hoping that it was ending up in the corner or behind the net," Gunderson said about the play where he tried to poke the puck away from Minnesota State's Michael Dorr. "And sure enough it hit me in the back and rolled in the net."
Yikes. Those are two pretty painful ways to lose.
Here's a few other notes of sadness relating to Alaska-Anchorage:
-With 9 league points and only four games remaining, it's all but guaranteed that they will finish in last place this year. They can finish tied with Minnesota State if they win all four of their final games, and Minnesota State loses their final four. They're seven points behind 11th place Wisconsin, and the Badgers have an extra two games in hand on UAA.
-At 52nd overall in the RPI, #53 Vermont is the only major conference team rated below them.
-The two losses also dropped their overall record to a dismal 7-19-2 on the season. Assuming Anchorage doesn't win their remaining four regular season games, sweep the first round of the WCHA playoffs, win three games at the Final Five, and go on to win the national title--and I feel pretty confident in that assumption--this will mark the 18th consecutive season, every season that UAA has been a part of the WCHA, in which they will finish with a losing overall record.
-The goaltending duo of Rob Gunderson and Chris Kamal have save percentages of .877 and .866 respectively. The last time a goalie from Alaska-Anchorage had a save percentage better than .900 for the season was sophomore Nathan Lawson in 2005-2006 with a .908 save percentage.
-Anchorage's leading scorer so far this year is Mitch Bruijsten with 16 points. His 16 points would only crack the top 5 leading scorers on one WCHA team(North Dakota, strangely enough).