After beating St. Thomas last week, we didn't know what the outcome would be regarding national tournament seeding. We found out on Monday that we would end up playing River-Falls in a play-in game a week before the final four. I have to be honest that it was a little disappointing finding out the seeding results because there was a little glimmer of hope that we would host the tournament since we have been ranked #1 in the past few weeks. We were told by our coach that since only two teams from the west would make the top seven this year, it was likely we would have a play-in game because of the money issue. Even with this being said, I couldn't help but hope that all our hard work this season would pay off and we would get the chance to host. Anyway, now that we do have the play-in this week, we have spent a lot of time preparing for that game and getting ready to be at our top level. Hopefully everyone got a lot of sleep last night and is ready to go!

As far as practice went this week, we had a few really tough days on Sunday and Monday. We did quite a bit of skating in practice, but the attitude of everyone was awesome and it was great to see everyone working so hard. Wednesday night we had a film session to watch our regular season River Falls game. We tried to pick up on their strengths and things we could do to work to our advantage. Of course, sitting around in the living room watching the game provided for some good social time, laughing, and getting our hair french braided as we watched the tape. Sounds like a little girl sleepover, I know!

The past two years we have been disappoineted in this play-in game and I am bound and determined not to make this a trend of Gustavus hockey. I think each and every one of our players know what we have to do to make it happen and I am really confident that our team will come out working really hard.

Last night we had a pasta feed at my house. One of our senior parents and a junior parent put it on and it was absolutely delicious. The last time we put on a parent sponsored past feed, we beat River-Falls in the regular season. We are thinking it might be good luck for us, but we'll have to test that theory today.

I am very excited to play today! I actually had a tough time sleeping and I would keep waking up and looking at my alarm clock to see if I could get up yet. Hopefully we'll get some student fans to come over like they did last Wednesday. It's nice to see all that support from your school in such big games. Go GUSTIES!