TJ Oshie will join Ben Bishop as the Blues prospects making it to the Frozen Four in St. Louis, after the Sioux beat Minnesota today in OT.
This was a thoroughly just result. North Dakota was by far the best team today, and they dominated the overtime period, so much so that it would have been unthinkable for the Gophers to have advanced. Although the game was close, like the Final Five championship game last week, it was nowhere near as entertaining a game. The teams played much closer to the vest, so it wasn't the high flying hit fest it might have been.
Oshie had a good game, but not a great game. His line was the best on the day, but that had more to do with Toews who finally had a very good game (after a couple of clunkers.) Oshie was very lucky that he didn't wind up being the goat today. With Radke earning a 5 Minute major penalty on a very dirty hit against Eric Johnson, Oshie while killing the penalty very clearly played the puck with a broken stick. The refs decided not to call it, for some inexplicable reason...they had to have seen it.
Barriball scored a nice power play goal late in the game to tie the score at 2 and set up OT, but he wasn't very visible for much of the game. Johnson played pretty well, although I got the feeling he was trying to do too much as the game wore on and the Sioux kept the Gophers pinned deep.
For the Blues fan, however, there was no way to lose this one. Which was a nice change of pace.
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