WCHA: SCSU Chose Not To Bring Trophy To Madison

Controversy swirled Saturday night when the University of Minnesota tweeted pictures of the men’s hockey team celebrating with the MacNaughton Cup as the WCHA regular season co-champions, along with SCSU.

The problem stems from the fact that St. Cloud State could have won the title outright if they had tied or beaten Wisconsin on Saturday in Madison. In this scenario, the Huskies would have had no trophy on hand despite being the league champion.

In an email sent Monday morning, Doug Spencer of the WCHA said:

“The Commissioner talked with SCSU last week about potential trophy presentation plans. Since they were on the road they deferred and chose to have the MacNaughton Cup, should they win it, presented in front of their home crowd during the first round of playoffs. That is usually the case as teams prefer to have the trophy presented at a home game,” Spencer said.

He continued, “Regarding the Cup being in Bemidji, we were unaware of that being the case until we found out through second-hand sources after the fact. The league office had nothing to do with that.”