Colby vs St. Norbert 6:30 PM Video
Offense - 3.38 G/GM (22nd)
PIM - 7.76/GM (78th)
Power Play - 18/.75 % (36th)
Penalty Kill - 81.46% (46th)
Offense - 3.97 G/GM (11th)
Defense - 1.40 G/GM (1st)PIM - 11.13 (60th)
Power Play - 21.88% (20th)
Penalty Kill - 91.8% (1st)
The Lowdown: You were born to be hockey players
A David vs Goliath type match on Lake Placid ice, eh? Whuddathunk.
St. Norbert College in Dee Pee, Wisconsin is separated by a minimum of 1,147 miles from the campus of Colby College in Waterville, ME, and that expedited route is only if you cross international borders for the Trans-Canada highway.
Far more than a border between miles and kilometers, however, separates these two teams/programs. The Green Knights are a team that is #1 this season in the polls/a program that has had almost unparalleled success in DIII college hockey (well, except if you are Middlebury), including a remarkable twelve Frozen Four appearances and four national championships since 2003, while Colby is a team that was a sixth seed in its conference tournament/a program that has never been to a Frozen Four.
The disparity between the two squads regular season success was none more apparent than Thursday night when the Green Knights landed three players on the American College Hockey Association All-American West First Team, while the Mules failed to have any names appear on the three All-East teams.
Junior TJ Black, who also made the All-West team last year but lost to Trinity 3-2 in the semis, has a .940 save percentage and 1.39 GAA this season. Senior Tanner Froese, the Knights leading scorer, has 12-17-29 points for a balanced Green Knights team with six players at 20+ points, including NEHC all-freshman team members Peter Bates and Keegan Milligan. On the blueline, Norbert's is led by ACHA All-American senior Sean Campbell.
If the AHCA gave out All-Americans for the playoffs, Colby goalie Sean Lawrence would be the goalie of choice, and one need not peruse on this website or any other DIII site for very long to see why. While the Colby players got shutout, Blaise MacDonald took home the Ed Jeremiah award for the DIII coach of the year, the first time a NESCAC coach won the award since Amherst's Jack Arena in 2015.
The leadership of MacDonald has been well documented by Travis Barrett this week in some stellar coverage of the team, and you should check out his series of pieces up above if you haven't already with everything from Colby heading to Southern Maine to practice on the Olympic sheet to comparing Colby's run to part time assistant's Mike Latendresse's run to the D1 title as a player with Maine to everything in between.
While the teams are quite different historically and in individual accolades for the season, there are similarities in play between these two squads. In general, they both feature a solid defense (Colby since the midseason reset, all season for St. Norbert's), a team that uses the whole ice, balanced scoring (Colby also has six 20+ point players) and exceptional goaltending. As the D3Hockey boys noted in their Road To Plaid podcast, this might be a case of Colby running into a better version of itself.
In terms of the arena, the ghosts of 38 years ago may favor the Mules, but coach Tom Coghlin - who has the Knights to 22 straight seasons of 18 wins - and his St. Norbert squad have had their own triumphs at Herb Brooks Arena. St. Norbert's is 6-2 in Lake Placid with titles in 2008 and 2012 and finals apperances in 2010 and 2016, when they lost to UW-Stevens Point, who will play Salve Regina in the other semis Friday afternoon, and whom lost to Trinity in the 2015 finals.
The Green Knights have had trouble with NESCAC schools going 3-6 all time against the 'CAC due mostly to a 2-4 record vs Middlebury and the aforementioned loss to Trinity last season. Norbert's and Colby have never met, and even if they had, the matchups would be historical fodder, nice for discussion but little to do with what will actually happen on the large sheet of ice that is most famous, of course, for hosting the...first ever Winter Goodwill Games (no, not the fictitious junior goodwill games).
If you can't make it in person, enjoy the webcast call from Ralph Bednarczyk and D3Hockey.com editor Ray Biggs. May the best team in a blue jersey win.
The Luck of the... Scottish? The MacDonalds (Blaise and Cam) beat McDonald (Geneseo's Devin) on St. Patrick's Day to get here, but we are still going Irish here. We don't have the same clout as Sister Jean from Loyola Chicago, but we pray and implore, don't shut down this Mules Cinderella run tonight.
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