Minnesota athletic director Joel Maturi announced yesterday that he will be leaving his post this summer. Most people are either focused on his colossal failures at hiring football coaches, or his relative success at all the other nobody cares about. What's his legacy for hockey? A pretty good one from Minnesota's perspective. Though to me, he'll always be the guy that oversaw a system that allowed a team to make the NCAA tournament because they lost their last game, rather than tied, and allowed his own school to host more NCAA events than the entire CCHA conference over a five-year period.
Michigan Tech has rightfully been drawing some attention after taking three points in Duluth last weekend. While Mel Pearson is getting a lot of credit for the turnaround, Brad Schlossman points out that Jamie Russell deserves some credit as well. I'd like to take the opportunity to point out that some genius wrote this on the day Russell resigned:
It's true that Michigan Tech probably would have at least been competitive in the WCHA if they hadn't been hit by a freakish string of injuries. And with this year's large freshman class, next year's recruiting class with Tanner Kero, and the class after that with Jujhar Khaira, Tech is a position to have one of the most exciting, and deepest groups of forwards the team has seen in decades. But they were a program that needed to completely start fresh after such a terrible season. Whoever replaces Russell will have a lot more to work with than Russell ever had at Tech, and they'll have Jamie Russell to thank for that when they start receiving praise for turning the program around.
My weekly look at Minnesota high school hockey is here.
Former Wisconsin Badger Andrew Joudrey made his NHL debut this past week, marking the tenth member of Wisconsin's 2006 national championship team to play in the NHL.
INCH has a great profile on Michigan goalie Shawn Hunwick.
Shane Frederick rounds up all the WCHA stories I may have missed.