The Western Collegiate Hockey Association unveiled its 2011-12 honor teams Thursday and the University of Minnesota Duluth not only was represented more voluminously (four selections) than any other school, but produced the league's Player of the Year award winner in senior center Jack Connolly.
Connolly was joined on All-WCHA first team by sophomore right winger J.T. Brown while senior goaltender Kenny Reiter earned second team recognition. Senior center Travis Oleksuk rounded out the list of all-league representatives from UMD by securing a spot on the third team.
Connolly becomes the first Bulldog to ever attain All-WCHA first team acclaim three times and the eighth to be chosen the circuit's Player of the Year. The two-time All-American reigned as the WCHA's scoring leader this winter (43 league points on 16 goals and 27 assists) and has topped the 50-point mark for the second year in a row (55 overall points). Connolly, the 2011-12 Bulldog team captain, currently shares ninth place on the UMD all-time scoring charts, racking up and NCAA-leading 192 points (64 goals and 128 assists) while skating in a school-record 161 consecutive games.
Picking up right where he left off to end his freshman year, Brown finished in a three-way tie as the second-leading scorer in conference play with 37 points (18 goals, 19 assists). The reigning Frozen Four Most Outstanding Player and a 2010-11 WCHA All-Rookie Team choice, Brown currently paces the nation in plus-minus rating (+30) and is tied for 10th in overall points (a career-high 44). Earlier this season, he became the first Bulldog to record multiple hat tricks in the same season (four goals at Alaska Anchorage on Feb. 3 and three goals at Nebraska-Omaha on Jan. 13) in three years.
Reiter, one of only two three-time WCHA Defensive Player of the Week recipients in 2011-12, owns the sixth best winning percentage in the country at the moment (.697 off a 20-7-6 record), is fourth nationally in victories (a career-best 20) and has logged the 11th most minutes of any NCAA puckstopper (1,962:27). Against league competition, he compiled a 2.58 goals against average, a .904 saves percentage and a 15-7-5 record in league play while backstopping the Bulldogs to their highest WCHA finish since 2003-04. Reiter started 27 of UMD's 28 WCHA engagements and earlier this season set a team record for consecutive shutout minutes (166:45 from Nov. 4-12).
Saving his best hockey for last, Oleksuk, who centered the high-octane line of Brown and rookie left winger Caleb Herbert, currently ranks fifth in the NCAA in scoring (a personal-best 48 points), second in plus-minus rating (+23), third in game-winners (six), and is tied for eighth in goals (21, another career-high). He also placed fifth in the 2011-12 WCHA scoring race with 36 points on 14 goals and 22 assists.
In addition, seven Bulldogs, including five previous honorees, earned WCHA All-Academic Team recognition for 2011-12. To qualify for this honor a student-athlete must have completed at least one year of residency at his present institution prior to the current academic year and have a grade point average of at least a 3.00 (on a 4.00 scale) for the previous two semesters/three quarters. A total of 146 players representing all 12 league institutions were named to this year's team.
The seven Bulldogs include Jack Connolly, sophomore goalie Aaron Crandall, junior center Keegan Flaherty, senior right winger David Grun, junior center Jake Hendrickson, redshirted freshman defenseman Luke McManus and Kenny Reiter.
Reiter is the first Bulldog to receive this distinction on four occasions while Connolly and Grun are three-imte honorees.
