Notre Dame Preview : It's Us Against the World

The first thing all the haters are going to say when they read this title is "blah blah he isn't on the team". Yes I am aware that I am a D-1 hockey player for the soon to be 2012 national champs BU Terriers. I am, however, a finalist for the Blogger All-American team so get off my dick. Yes, I did just make that up. Now back to the game, tomorrow night's game leads off the second half for our BU Terriers (t4 Pairwise) and Notre Dame (t6 pairwise) at Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. The game will be the first college hockey game aired nationally on Versus at 7. Those are about the only non-opinionated words I am going to give you this post(read rant). If you want to a read an actual preview, here is a great one including some quotes from Coach Parker and captain Chris Connolly. Parker also gave his always straightforward opinion on former Terrier forward Charlie Coyle leaving the team to focus on only hockey up in Canada with the St. John Sea Dogs of the QJMHL. He also reveals how some of the slimeball recruiters with these teams have been after Clendening and Nieto as well but, that they would be staying put at BU. I'll give my opinion on the whole situation(it differs then my fellow bloggers) as quickly and concisely as possible. Canada sucks(except for Terrace,BC -gotta have Gill's hometown's back) specifically the CHL. Their recruiters are like a bunch of used car salesmen putting a bunch of wanna-be Cindy Crosby's out there most of which end up having middle of the road AHL careers and burning out with nothing to fall back on. Okay, that's over and I think I pulled the knife out of my back fully by now. It's time to move forward and onward with the season. You won't hear a mention of former players for the rest of the season unless it is Eric Gryba beating the living hell out of someone in the AHL or another past player doing something productive.

Now, all of the opposing fans and journalists are ready to write this BU team off after the end of the first half . I will always defend my team and make an argument why they won't miss a step but, I have been letting most(not all ) stuff go unanswered. I have full faith in this team despite everyone else's hating. We're just going to let them hate. Haters gonna hate, skaters gonna skate and bloggers gonna blog. I believe this team will come together even tighter than they already are and create a winning machine that wills themselves to victories that they have no business getting. Everynight that this team hits the ice, there will be 18 skaters and 1 goalie who will follow Herb Brooks' advice and care alot more about the name on the front of the jersey than the one on the back. They will play as a team and not as separate individuals. There is no reason this can't become a reality with the Hero from Canton(Wade Megan) along with others including Sahir Gill and Yasin Cisse following the captain's example for the forwards while sophomore, gritty d-man Garrett Noonan leads the defensemen into battle on a nightly basis to protect goalie Kieran Millan who has the ability to put this team on his back on a regular basis if he needs to anyway.

This team needs to adopt this personality and come together as one, with the strong support of the fan base and become a great team. Hell, they should just pull out a 2001 SuperBowl routine from the Patriots and get introduced as a team in introductions for a game to send a message. It certainly can't hurt. This team has the forward depth, defenseman, goalie, coaches, and fan base to win a national title. None of this one and done in the tournament bullshit. You set the goals high and you don't move from them no matter what. The second half will certainly tell us what the rest of the team is made of and how bad they really want to win and keep going what they had in the first half. If I was on the team, I certainly wouldn't want my season to be defined by two guys leaving the program instead of the 24 that stayed with it. Cue the Utah State chant! Let's go!