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Grad senior Reece Hunt flew in and beat Colgate goalie Hannah Murphy for a breakaway goal to clinch Friday's 3-0 UMD victory over the No. 2 ranked Red Raiders. Photos by John Gilbert.     

When is a win a win in a sports contest? Pretty easy to figure out, isn’t it? College hockey has made it easier, force-feeding us the rules for an abbreviated overtime, and then a follow-up shootout, so when you spend your money and invest your time, you will be entertained to a certain degree, and at least you will go home knowing you saw one team win by beating the other.

Now, it turns out, even that can be turned into an illusion. The world of college hockey would have us believe that our eyes deceive us, and what we see is not necessarily what just happened.

When UMD battled Minnesota to a 3-3 tie at AMSOIL Arena back on Nov. 4, it remained tied through the 3-on-3 5-minute overtime, then came the 3-round shootout drama, and the Bulldogs struck for goals by Quinn Olson and Ben Steeves, while Matthew Thiessen stopped the first two Gopher shooters, clinching the 2-0 victory and a 4-3 victory in the game.

The Bulldogs celebrated properly for having beaten their old rival in an emotional battle to split their series. Every player in both dressing rooms, and all the 7,345 fans in attendance, knew that UMD had won and Minnesota had lost. The Twin Cities reports all called it a win and a tie for the Gophers, as though a split was beneath their dignity.

And while UMD’s men have been struggling to find their rhythm, they have won all three shootouts they have been involved with, but seem hesitant to claim them as victories. We’re all adults here in the room, and we can handle the agony of defeat while we seek the thrill of victory.

It was the same thing back on Oct. 7 when UMD escaped with an exhibition 3-2 shootout victory against Michigan Tech, and one week later, the Bulldogs also won a 6-5 shootout victory over Northern Michigan.

UMD goaltender Hailey MacLeod yielded only one goal all weekend -- to Colgate's Allyson Simpson (10), short-handed, with 44 seconds left to tie Saturday's game 1-1.

By NCAA rules, of course, leagues can count shootout victories for an extra point in their standings, but for NCAA purposes, and in non league games, it counts as an official tie. So we have to pretend we didn’t really see one team defeat the other.

Personally, I hate tie hockey games, and they rarely occurred back in the old WCHA. They used to play one 10-minute sudden-death overtime, 5-on-5, and if was still tied, it stood as a tie. Both sides knew you couldn’t sit on a tie for 10 minutes, so they went all out, and usually games were won in the first three or four minutes of regular-shift, “real” hockey overtime. The NHL didn’t play overtime back then, but when it decided to, it went to a 5-minute overtime, 5-on-5, and then a tie stood. So college hockey, which had the better plan, wanted to please the NHL so much they cut back to 5-minute overtimes, which immediately led to a large increase in the number of tie games, because teams could then play over-cautious hockey to stay tied for only 5 minutes.

So going to the current plan had some merit, because many fans — much like me — want to see a game resolved on the ice, whether in the phony 3-on-3 replica of “real” hockey, or in the shootout afterward, which goes on until one side wins. I hate both of those concepts, but both are better than going home with a tie and the unsatisfying concept that you’ve wasted three hours and a fair amount of money.

Now we come to last weekend. The UMD men were idle, while the women faced a major non conference challenge with No. 2 ranked Colgate coming to AMSOIL Arena. This is a good Colgate team, good enough to make a run at a national championship which no Eastern team except Clarkson has ever won. Maura Crowell played college hockey at Colgate, and she has never won an NCAA championship either. We here in Duluth, however, watched in amazement as UMD won the first three women’s NCAA titles, and coach Shannon Miller finished with five NCAA banners for UMD before being replaced by Crowell.

Against Colgate, Hailey MacLeod got the chance to start in goal, after freshman Eve Gascon had carried most of the early load, and MacLeod stopped all 29 Colgate shots to record her first collegiate shutout in a 3-0 gem Friday night. Goals by Clara Van Wieren and Danielle Burgen in the second period lifted the Bulldogs above the scoreless tie, and Reece Hunt scored on a breakaway with 5:21 remaining in the third to clinch the total team victory, with all three lines and defensive pairings playing up to MacLeod’s perfection in goal.

Hailey MacLeod made a game-saving save in overtime Saturday, on Colgate's Katy Kaltounkova breakaway out of the penalty box.

The teams came back for a Saturday afternoon rematch, and while Colgate came out with more intensity, the Bulldogs matched the Red Raiders determined start. Again, MacLeod stood out in goal, despite facing more and more threatening shots, and the Bulldogs scored when Grace Sadura, a freshman from Chanhassen, scored her first college goal at 2:23 of the second period. It stayed 1-0 for the Bulldogs through a tight-checking second period and through almost the whole third period.

When the Red Raiders pressed for the equalizer, preparing to pull goaltender Kyle Osborne for a final push, senior center Kalty Kaltounkova, who left the Czech Republic to make her way to Colgate via Vermont Academy, was called for an untimely hooking penalty by the officials, who had let a very physical game go pretty much unwhistled. That meant a power play for UMD with 1:02 to play — virtually guaranteeing the 1-0 victory.

However, after a game and weekend of forceful play, the Bulldog power play turned hesitant behind its own goal after the ensuing face-off, and the Red Raiders pounced on the chance, feeding the puck out to the right circle, where defenseman Allyson Simpson had alertly moved in quickly, and she met the puck full force to drill her shot past MacLeod with 44 seconds left in the third period.

The teams played the 5-minute 3-on-3 overtime, with no scoring. Now it was time for the shootout, and the chance for the Bulldogs to sweep the weekend series from a quick, skilled Eastern foe. Instead, they gathered on the ice, then paired off for the handshake lines. Game over. No shootout! Did I mention I hate shootouts? But there is never a time when you want a shootout more than when you anticipate one and don’t get it!

In the post-game press conference, I asked Maura why there was no shootout. “We don’t have to have one,” she said. “It’s the choice of the home team, and I chose to not have the shootout. I didn’t like the way the game was going at the end, and felt they had the momentum.”

But in the shootout, only three players need to perform, and nobody has the benefit of momentum. I asked a couple of players, who had come out to greet visiting family members, if they’d have preferred to have the shootout. “Oh yeah,” one said. “As players, we’d have loved it. I was surprised we didn’t have one.”

Meanwhile in St. Cloud, the Huskies men’s team, leading the NCHC after having won two rugged, tense battles with UMD, were taking on Big Ten power Michigan, a talented outfit that had struggled to win while adjusting to an influx of new players, but are loaded with talent nonetheless.

The Wolverines spanked St. Cloud State 2-0 in the first game, and were off to a 3-0 lead in the second period of the second game.

“I thought we played really well,” said Huskies coach Brett Larson, the former UMD player, captain and coach who now runs the St. Cloud State program. “We hit three crossbars on Friday night, and we just couldn’t score, but we played really well.”

The next night, after trailing 2-0 through one period and 3-0 late in the second, Veto Miettinen scored shorthanded at 15:13 to cut the deficit to 3-1. Then Kyler Kupka scored a power-play goal at 1:05 of the third to make it 3-2, and with the goalie pulled for an extra skater, Kupka scored again, with 7 seconds remaining to tie the game 3-3. The 5-minute, 3-on-3 overtime came next, and it was still tied 3-3.

So it went to the shootout, and after each team had scored once, Kupka, of all people, scored on a deke at the crease, and the Huskies had won the shootout 2-1.

I had a phone conversation with Brett Larson on Monday morning, and he said, “Without a question, all of our players and fans left feeling good about having won the game — even though it doesn’t really count for anything. When there’s a shootout, both sides know who won and who lost.”

I mentioned to Brett how the UMD women’s game ended, and he was surprised.

“We were told there was no choice, we had to have a shootout,” he said. “And a couple weeks ago when we went to Mankato, their coach, Luke Strand, and I talked and we had the choice. We said if one of our games was tied, we would have the shootout. It turned out, one of them was tied, but we lost in overtime before the shootout. We’re 8-5-1, but two of our losses have been in shootouts, so we should be 8-3-3.”

So in the space of one month, we can look at college hockey and see the officials from one site saying the shootout is optional and the coaches must agree on it. another saying there is no option, there must be a shootout, and the third deciding that it is up to the home team whether to risk the tie or not have the shootout.

“Back when we as coaches voted on it,” Brett Larson said, “we voted 60-0 to have the 3-on-3 overtime and the shootout as long as it went into the books as an overtime win or overtime loss. So they put it in, but they don’t call the outcome an overtime win or loss, just a win or loss.”

Some in the media don’t help, declaring that one team rallied to gain a tie, and relegating the actual shootout outcome to secondary status deep in the story where it might be overlooked. That is the “glass half-empty” viewpoint, which I dispute. In my “glass half-full” report, I will say the game’s result was what you saw if you were at the game — with one team winning and the other team losing.

Or, from now on, it might remain a tie if the home coach chooses not to take a chance on winning, which means the full contents of the glass was spilled on the table.

Football, baseball news

College football has wrested the spotlight away from the NFL last weekend and this one, as conference standings were finalized and league playoffs will feature some fantastic matchups this weekend, not the least of which is Washington and Oregon, playing for the Pac-12 championship and a berth in the national playoffs. Georgia, Michigan and Florida State seem already secured among the top four, depending on this weekend’s playoff games, and the winner between the Ducks and Huskies will join them to make a highly competitive foursome.

If you’re a Twins fan, you may have overlooked the pair of news items that slipped out last weekend. After spending millions to build a starting pitching rotation capable of making it to the playoffs, Pitcher Sonny Gray signed a free-agent contract with the St. Louis Cardinals for $15-million, where another ex-Twin, Kyle Gibson is one of their key starters. Less than one day later, Kenta Mazda, the Japanese ace who came back from surgery to be a Twins mainstay, has signed a 2-year, $24-million contract with the Detroit Tigers.

What will the Twins rotation look like now? Don’t ask.