Elder The Magnificent

ATOMIZER: "I hold in my hand an envelope. As a child of four can plainly see, this envelope has been hermetically sealed. It has been kept in a #2 mayonnaise jar since noon today on Funk and Wagnall's porch. No one knows the contents of this envelope, but you, in your divine and mystical way, will ascertain the answers to these questions having never seen them before."

ELDER: "May the winds of the Sahara blow a desert scorpion up your turban."

(The Elder holds the envelope up to his forehead)

ELDER: "Mark Yost, Hugh Hewitt, and Sisyphus.

ATOMIZER: "Mark Yost, Hugh Hewitt, and Sisyphus.

(Sound of an envelope being ripped open)

ELDER: "Name three people supposedly wise in the ways of hockey who picked teams to appear in the NCAA hockey championship game that were eliminated in their FIRST game of the tournament."

Yes indeed, this weekend was a good time to separate the wheat from the chafe when it comes to college hockey wisdom. Mark Yost, columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and host of the Patriot Insider radio show, picked Minnesota and Harvard to meet for the title in Milwaukee. Hugh Hewitt, geriatric talk radio host and alleged "Hockey Commissioner of Minnesota", had Miami of Ohio (snicker) and Harvard playing in the big game. And Sisyphus, humorist and founder and sole member of the Barry Tallackson Fan Club, went with his heart instead of his head by predicted that his beloved Gophers would face off against the Colorado College Tigers. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Meanwhile, I had a bit of trouble of my own going 7-5 overall. I missed the winner of the battle of Boston (for some reason I wrote BC at one point and BU later in the same post) and the hated Black Bears of Maine stuck it to me by winning the East Regional after I predicted an early exit for them. Then there was the Gophers gacking and Cornell getting lucky and rallying to beat CC. This is the second year in a row that Cornell was one game away from the Frozen Four and lost it in overtime. Such a shame.

So I only have two of the Frozen Four. But those two are the teams that I have meeting for the National Championship in two weeks: North Dakota and Wisconsin.

One final note. Last week, I grudgingly allowed that the CCHA was the second best conference in college hockey. After the CCHA's pathetic performance this weekend (1 win, 4 losses), I amend my statement to say that, with two teams in the Frozen Four, Hockey East is the second best conference in college hockey. Not that it's going to matter much in a couple of weeks when we see another all-WCHA final.