Transcripts

PHIL PICARDI: It's Morning Edition on Minnesota Public Radio News. I'm Phil Picardi. In sports yesterday, the wild won. The Timberwolves lost. The Gopher men's and women's basketball teams advanced in the NIT, and the University of Minnesota women's hockey team lost to Clarkson, 5-4 in the NCAA championship game.

The loss prevented the Gophers from winning their third straight NCAA title. Joining me now with more on that is Howard Sinker, a digital sports editor for the Star Tribune. Good morning, Howard.

HOWARD SINKER: Good morning, Phil. How are you?

PHIL PICARDI: I'm just fine. Well, the Gophers came into the game on a 26-game winning streak. How did Clarkson pull off that upset?

HOWARD SINKER: Well, Clarkson first of all, is a pretty good team. They had the best player in the country this year. They had the nation's top goaltender. And I'm going to make the argument that as much as it might have hurt the Gophers not to win, it was probably a good thing for women's hockey that a team other than the Gophers won the National title.

It brings the Gophers back to the playing field a little bit, and it creates, I think, a little bit more excitement for 2015, when the Women's Frozen Four will return to the Twin Cities and be at Ridder arena. If the Gophers created a bigger dynasty than they already had, I think that some interest would be sapped because people would consider yet another national title a foregone conclusion. So yeah, there's some pain, but in the big picture, I think it's not a terrible thing at all.

PHIL PICARDI: So the logic is that competition is actually good for women's hockey.

HOWARD SINKER: Absolutely. I mean, I think this is why the Women's NCAA basketball tournament has picked up that much more interest in recent years, because it's not a foregone conclusion anymore that a Connecticut or a Tennessee or one of the traditional powers is going to win.

PHIL PICARDI: Now, it was the National championship game yesterday, and yesterday morning I looked at my Star Tribune TV Guide to see exactly what channel it was going to be on and what time. And that game was not televised yesterday.

HOWARD SINKER: You mean it wasn't on one of your 7,214 cable channels either?

PHIL PICARDI: Even with all the channels I couldn't get it any where.

HOWARD SINKER: I know and it's really a sore point. I noticed on Governor Mark Dayton's Facebook page yesterday, he said that he watched the game on his mobile device, and had eyestrain from watching it on little 4 by 6 inch screen and was very, very unhappy that nobody here in the Twin Cities saw fit to telecast the game.

There were certainly any number of opportunities for a local TV station or a local cable company to put the game on one of its unused channels, or even for the University to have advertised some community gathering where people could have watched it on a big screen.

Brad Frost, the Gopher women's hockey coach, talked about it a little bit with Joe Christiansen, our writer, who was in Connecticut. He pointed out that he has seen dodgeball, for example, on Fox Sports North, and yet no women's hockey except for one telecast during the season.

PHIL PICARDI: Well, the push for three straight national championships is over, but I'm guessing you don't believe that the Gopher women's hockey program is now going to hit a slump. They're going to be--

HOWARD SINKER: No, I suspect they're going to reload. And I suspect at this time next year, we will be talking about how the Gopher women will have won their third title in four years. And who knows, maybe it'll even be on TV.

[LAUGHS]

PHIL PICARDI: All right, Howard. Thank you very much.

HOWARD SINKER: Have a great day, Phil.