OgieOgilthorpe

Okay Brad Berry...

These shots are garbage. They haven’t even tested this guy yet. No cross ice shots, no glove saves, no blocker saves....just easy chest saves and smothers.

Story of the year right here. Wouldn’t be surprised if they give this kid a shutout

Goodness Special teams kill this team

Based off the small sample size of GFC crushing EGF who lost in the semis and GFC crushing Orono the 2018 1A champs I think GFC would’ve been comparable with St. Cloud Cathedral but likely would’ve had a slight advantage. I think GFC would’ve made the AA tournament and maybe placed top 4, but not really sure they could’ve won it all due to goaltending.

So with the higher numbers of players at that age, they're essentially able to have a JV team (B1) and a C squad (B).

In the last "5-8 seasons" that you mention, GPR has been in the state title game 3 times. Since 2000 they have won the championship 2 times and have been in the championship game a total of 6 times. That's an average of making the state championship game once every 3 years. Those seem like pretty solid facts to me...and not exactly ancient! In the past five years GPR saw some issues of Park River leaving the co-op which caused noticeable problems for the program, but the co-op has now been reestablished so I expect them to continue their strong showings. On top of that, they play in the East, so their "struggles" of finishing 6th and 7th would surely place them in the top 4 of the West Region. Do I really have to explain all of this? Towns or programs having A teams and B teams is identical to high school programs having Varsity teams and JV teams so you're not really making much of a point there. There aren't A1 and A2 or B1 and B2 leagues or classes. There are just A2 and B2 tournaments at the end of the season which only exist as an overflow for teams who didn't make the A1 and B1 tournaments so they can play for some sort of championship. In high school, instead of playing for A2 or B2 tournaments, the teams just get sent home. So, overall the only differences I know of in ND youth hockey is the conference alignments, which are North and South vs East and West like High School. The three AA Bantam teams are the only high competition band in all of ND youth hockey. So no, ND youth hockey doesn't have different class levels, just different labels for the same set up. It's all the same I don't have tunnel vision, I've just been around all levels of hockey long enough to thoroughly understand how everything works and realize that the one and only way it could work is never ever going to fly, so it'll never happen anyway. If I could have my wish fulfilled, I would have ALL the JR GOLD teams flip to HS sponsored teams and have them be in class 1A. At that point you could add HB, Bott, and Mayville to join them because I'm assuming they would happily join. Then everyone else would be 2A with fewer conference games to open up more MN and even Manitoba games. I just don't see anything else working and even this plan that could probably work, will never happen because schools like Crosby, Langdon, Sidney and Richland county will never sponsor such an expensive sport. And changing existing varsity teams to a lower class will be fought to the death by those towns and schools because it would be program suicide.

I meant RR and GFC being more balanced instead of having 1 all-star team. I don't think adding another team or skimming off the top talent to play midgets is a good idea at all. I think once the GF teams get balanced, then 4-5 other teams will be in the mix every year instead of it just being one all-star GF team then everyone else 2 steps behind. There will always be a few kids here and there that'll leave early for no-brainer opportunities but I see no reason for a lot of these Grand Forks and Fargo kids to leave to join some Tier 1 team. They have plenty of competition in ND once the GF schools get balanced out, and creating a Tier 1 team would most likely overcompensate.

I still think the winner of this conversation was the comment by Frozen4sioux of throwing GraftonPR and DL down to a lower class with HB, Crosby and Watford. And to top it off, saying those two being irked about being put down to the lower class would go away once they heard mighty Langdon joined the class! LOLZ Grafton and DL's JV teams would win that state championship every single year and blow everyone else out of the water. All their varsity players would move to Grand Forks. DL and GPR play a lot of those small town teams in youth hockey and it gets ugly even though it's usually the B teams playing for DL and GPR. They don't belong in the same league. GPR has more state titles than FN, FS, Shanley, WF, WFS, FD, Jamestown, BHS, Century, Minot, Williston, Dickinson, Mandan, C.O.M.B.I.N.E.D....but sure they'll agree to play with Bott, HB, Crosby, Langdon, Mayville, Richland county, and DL instead.

None of them can come up with an actual problem...they just see the MN tournament on TV every March and get riled up about it for a few weeks on how we should copy it. They forget to take into consideration that MNHS hockey has hundreds of teams, and other ND sports have hundreds of teams to create two classes. There is a nasty spread in talent levels in every sport in every state and in every class, but when there are only 19 teams and 1 of them happens to be one of the top in the nation, it looks bad because it can't hide away behind tons of other teams. Splitting things up won't change any of that, and would only hurt more of the programs in my opinion. For as small of a population that ND has, and for how spread out a lot of the cities are, ND has it pretty dang good. High competition, good spread of competition and high % production of post-HS hockey players. ONE screwed up school system loop-hole in the biggest hockey town in the nation is the only problem I see. Grand Forks needs to balance things out by making a boundary. Whether people will admit it or not, the boundary should have hockey in mind, because realistically that's all anyone cares about there anyway.

This is becoming a joke. Travel is absolutely 100% an argument. This would increase the travel for all of these teams substantially. So on top of being kicked down to a lower class to kill their program, now they also have to travel 2x as much? It's not going to happen. The only teams that are going to be okay with this are the teams who are obviously hanging on by a thread and need something to save their program. HB, Bott, and Mayville. And the only way to create a class for them to play in is to have some or all of the JR GOLD teams join. Which they won't because their schools will most likely not sponsor a new expensive sport. WC may be the only possibility. Also, GFPR who has more state championships than all of the other schools and towns in the entire state COMBINED excluding Grand Forks, is going to be kicked down to a lower class? Good luck with that one haha! DL and Grafton have competed at a higher level in the east than FN, FSS, WF, and WFS in the last 10-12 years, so why kick them down a class? Enrollment? Dumb

GFC playing Warroad, Roseau, TRF isn't more of a draw than playing Grafton, DL, WF, WFS or FN a second time????? Exactly, they never play Moorhead, because everyone is tied up with 2 league games instead of one. If they got rid of one (following me here?) then they would have open slots to schedule teams like Moorhead. What's so wrong with Davies, RR or GFC playing Moorhead? No idea what any of their names are. How about you tell me since you're from there? Is it not true that Edina has open enrollment and several of their players every single season did not even grow up there? You chasing me about names on that team is missing the point of my comment. I used them as an arbitrary example of what happens in MNHS hockey. Good players from poor teams transfer to private schools and schools (like Edina) to play. MNHS hockey overall competition gets pretty lopsided because of this. Edina is the most talked about because they seem to be one of the main in-fluent teams of top talent transfers.

Exactly. None of these middle of the road teams are going to want to be forced to play in the lower class because it'll be a program killer. Their good players will always transfer out of town to different schools or even to MN, and competition and numbers will drop. If it ever did happen, the obvious schools would have to volunteer for the lower class, and essentially play JR GOLD with a new label. Long story short, this would just kick a few teams out of the NDHS hockey class and into JR GOLD with a new name.

I think the scheduling could be tweaked as well to help out with this. It could be adjusted as needed every single season, but there need to be more 6 point games for some of the obvious upcoming mismatches. That'll allow top end teams to schedule in some games with MN teams. GF and Fargo teams playing Moorhead, Roseau, Warroad, TRF and maybe a few others. Strange they don't all play more often, and it's mainly because everyone is tied up with 2 must-play games against teams like WFS.

1. Wrong, they would absolutely need the majority of them to join for this to make any sense 2. Agree, enrollment should not be used whatsoever 3. It'll never happen, but probably not because they don't care, but probably because it doesn't make sense with such a small pool of teams to work with. It's a completely different beast than all the other sports because of team numbers.

I see that now, sorry. Although I still completely disagree that kids need to be sent off to Tier 1 and other pathways to be developed into college players, even here in ND. Once in a great while you find a very special kid that has a blatantly obvious skill set that should leave early for some sort of opportunity, especially if it's the NTDP or something of that level. But 95% of the others end up missing out on some of the best years of their lives to play 4th line on some random team in some random town, and all of them end up regretting it whether they admit it or not. Every single year Minot and Bismarck has kids who come back to town after their short mistake, and have to sit in the stands to watch their lifelong friends play out their SR seasons. If there are kids out in Williston, Minot, and Bismarck who are playing through their SR seasons and are still making it D1...why on earth would anyone still go away from home for some of these other random teams? If anything, I'm willing to bet more often than not, going away early actually hurts or kills their opportunities and development.

All this 2 league talk is pretty unrealistic and silly for ND, IMO. Things will even themselves out on their own...and I think it'll be as soon as next year. Even so, for the future, I think the one and only fix that needs to be made is that GFC and RR have some sort of regional alignment for enrollment. The past 4 seasons of RR and GFC bouncing back and forth as an elite team has 100% stemmed from the GF Aviator kids wanting to stick together when they hit HS so they all transfer to the same school to play and essentially turn GF into a one HS team. If those kids had been split up the last 4 seasons instead of all on one team I see a GF team with 2 championship the last 4 years instead of all 4 and we wouldn't even be having this conversation. Century and Davies would each have one. Fargo and Minot now have AA bantam teams who don't seem to be too far behind GF. They faired much better against the GF team than a lot of the Winnipeg and MNPLS teams did this season. Bismarck can't be far behind on creating one as well. I'm also hopefully that with the growing populations of Williston, Dickinson, Mandan, Fargo, and others that competition will keep growing just because of the numbers.

Every other sport in ND has 100+ teams, and hockey has 19...so you're comparing apples and oranges there. ND high school hockey is unique, hence the unique league setup. The only "restructuring" I could ever see working would be if all the JR GOLD teams joined the High School sponsored league and some of the current struggling bottom teams joined them in a lower class. But 75% of the JR GOLD teams would fold before they'd ever get their small high schools to sponsor an expensive team who would end up covering the entire state for travel. If that all somehow panned out, they'd have to get teams to volunteer to join the lower class instead of trying to break it up by enrollment. Teams and schools would fight being put in the lower class. The only teams I think would join would be HB, Bott, and Mayville. Highly unlikely Whap would come back to join knowing they'd have to travel to Watford City, Crosby, Langdon, HB, and Bott instead of their easy current travel schedule.

You're a complete bozo. How has ND development completely dropped off the map during High School? Development comes to a complete crawl? What are you basing this off of? ND produces D1 players every single year and a lot of them have played all the way through their SR seasons. Williston, Minot, DL, Grafton, Bismarck, Fargo Grand Forks...all have produced D1 players just in the last 5 years and it'll only keep increasing. FYI you basing your thoughts off of IOWA hockey (probably not even recent Iowa hockey) makes no sense for this conversation. In MN, a lot of the top talent players on poor teams transfer to private schools or public schools with open enrollment that have better hockey. Because of this transferring, and because of the sheer numbers, MN is able to keep HS hockey competitive at the very top level. Is that really that much better? Edina's star goalie and a few other of their top players didn't even grow up with any of those guys and aren't even Edina natives. Some of them were just brand new there that season.

I hope your comment is 100% about quantity and not quality. MN has more TEAMS than ND has PLAYERS, so of course they're going to produce more solid programs overall. MN has 5.5 MILLION people and ND has 750k so I would sure hope they could come up with more solid programs. MN high school hockey isn't as glamorous as the state tournament makes it seem. There are 10 absolutely horrendous teams for every solid program that we see on TV. Even some of the HUGE twin city schools produce garbage teams that would get taken to the woodshed by GFC and probably even Century and Davies year in and year out. When you're funneling hundreds and hundreds of teams down into two 8 team tournaments, it's deceiving to us here in ND to think that MN quality is much higher than ND...but it's really not true overall. The years that some traditionally good ND teams are down, it just seems to be more glaringly obvious in ND because there aren't dozens of other teams to fill that gap during their down years. Comparatively, if you took every single team from both states, top to bottom and averaged them out, I would take the ND team hands down year after year. Look how well Whap and Mayville did against garbage MN teams, and they didn't even get into the bottom feeder leagues in the SW. Look how bad GFC beats up on teams every year, and look how well Minot, Grafton and DL always do in that Warroad tournament they've attended over the last 5 years. Also, if you compare percentages instead of sheer numbers, ND actually produces just about the exact same % of D1 players that MN does. If the top team in ND out of only 18 teams is legitimately better than ALL of the A teams and comparable to the top 5 AA teams, then I don't think it's fair to bash on the compete level of ND HS hockey like we are. MN no doubt has the numbers, but overall quality is right on par with ND. Unfortunately with the lower numbers, the spread can get pretty large some years, especially the past 2 years with an elite GFC team. GFC has been at an elite level for two years straight, so now all of the sudden everyone is freaking out and wants a change. Did everyone already forget that the west claimed to state titles in a row a few years ago? Minot and BHS won state 2 years in a row in 2014 and 2015. Instead of restructuring the entire ND system trying to mirror a style that MN runs which is made for a MUCH larger pool of teams, I think we will quickly realize it just doesn't work. I honestly think we're wanting to make these changes just because of Grand Forks and because people watch the MNHS tournament on TV. The truth is that we have an outlier situation here in ND because of Grand Forks alone. It is the biggest hockey town in the country year after year and produces high quality players at a higher rate than any other town in the country per-capita, so I think it's unfair that we're acting like the NDHS hockey competition is so poor, because without Grand Forks making everyone else look bad, we would have a much different outlook on the situation.

I bet everyone in Grand Forks is happy to hear you're representing them in this decision.

I said isn’t guaranteed and you say almost guaranteed...so no need to recalculate. Maybe you just need to reread

No, we already know it’s not. They’ll have to sweep Omaha next weekend and go 2-0 on the road during the nchc 1st round against a superior team. Even then I don’t think a spot is guaranteed

Unreal. Lazy and stupid effort by him repeatedly and all he ever gets is praise from Brad.

Get ready for the puck to never leave UND’s end now. Many scoring chances