I Didn't Know They Were Called The "Pipers"
(I Had To Look It Up ... "Pied Piper Of Hamelin", Get It?)

Patrick Reusse has a nice column about the Hamline hockey team's rise from worst to first in the MIAC. Hamline's coach is Scott Bell. Is that the same guy who captained the Gopher's in the mid-nineties? I looked up his bio at Hamline's website and sure enough, he is. I once penned this cheap shot about him and his Gophers:

Don’t count Minnesota out for the season, though. You will recall two seasons ago, when Colorado College was running away from the pack in the WCHA regular season race. The Gophers had a team meeting and decided that second place would become their goal. Their captain stood up and starting yelling that settling for second place was no way to play the game and that the team should fight for first place. The Gophers, inspired by their captain, rallied around his words and finished fourth.

Seems that his current team has a little Bell cause-and-effect in them also. A Hamline player recalls a game against Wisconsin-River Falls:

"We went down 3-0 in the first period," freshman Jared Hummel said. "In the locker room, Joe Long got up and said, 'I'm so sick of losing. We're not doing this again. We're not!'

"To me, that's what changed everything for this team. We came out and scored four goals."

But Hamline still lost the game.

In all seriousness, congrats to Scott Bell and the Hamline hockey team on their MIAC championship. Checking out a MIAC hockey or football game is something I think would be a cool thing to maybe check out, then a season ends and I have forgotten about it.