Cardinal

Totally agree.

This isn't a shot at UND at all, but I think things have worked out pretty well for Skille (as they have for the players you mentioned), since he was a top 10 NHL draft pick and won a national championship.

It's not as if the fans are awarding these honors (All WCHA teams and Rookie of the Year). They are determined by WCHA-member team coaches, players, sports information directors and media. I guess those people don't know what they are talking about though, right?

The NCAA finalists for Kane were BU and Michigan.

It's a bit tough to compare their first three years in coaching considering one was at Alaska-Fairbanks and the other at UND. I never said anything about Wheeler other than that he outscored Irmen has a frosh. Bigger guys tend to take longer to acclimate to the college game, but it's clear this is a big year for him as he'll be asked to score 20 goals. Personally I think he will, but we'll see.

I'm not trying to turn this into a Gopher thread but Wheeler had more points in less games during his freshman year than Irmen did, so keep that in mind. Howe is dealing with medical issues but should be a scorer if they can resolve his issues. How can anyone take Hakstol over Lucia at this point? I know Hakstol hasn't had as many shots as Lucia has, but in (all things considered) a pretty short period of time, Lucia has a pair of NCAA titles, a pair of Broadmoors, and a MacNaughton. I wouldn't let the Holy Cross loss overshadow a pretty good tenure at UM.

Briggs played pretty well in 2005 in the regional (yeah, I know it was at Mariucci), posting a .976 save percentage in the regional and being named MVP of the regional. He played okay against UND at the Final Five, but remember that was his first game back after a long layoff after he broke his thumb. UM was overmatched in the Frozen Four and it showed for about 50 minutes of that game - Briggs wasn't great but certainly wasn't to blame for the loss or anything like that.

Kane is accelerating his studies and should be eligible in December or the second semester (not sure what the details are) but the bottom line is that if he plays college hockey, he'll be playing at some point this year.

Hasn't Hakstol had a lot of success (although no national titles, unlike Lucia) with players Blais recruited?

Sioux fans don't hype up recruits? Must be hitting the sauce early today in Grand Forks... Every team's fan base hypes up recruits/freshmen. That's what summer is for.

There's one reason the WCHA still has a third-place game: $

You have to admit there's a reason that these other leagues got rid of the third place game, no?

Lucia must have talked to a majority of coaches in the CCHA and Hockey East and convinced them to not have a third place game for their post-season tournaments. http://www.collegehockeystats.net/0506/schedules/ccha http://www.collegehockeystats.net/0506/schedules/heastm

They just drafted a Gopher player No. 1 and probably just wanted to say something nice in a press release and/or newspaper article about Johnson to give St. Louis fans something to look forward to.

Per the USHR, Parise is gone and UND has their new goalie. I don't have access for details though.

You would know this based on...?

This is a good time so hopefully enough UND fans sign up.

I'll totally agree that Kessel does try and do too much on his own and would be a lot better if he passed more. That being said, he's not as selfish as some people on here make it sound. Like most arguments on USCHO, SS, GPL, etc., it's somewhere in between.

I picked up the NCAA Baseball game last night and the guy at Gamestop (formerly Funcoland) said it was selling like mad, so that could be a good step in the right direction to show EA Sports that there is a desire for college sports games (other than football and hoops).

The teams don't meet at the REA next season but do play at Mariucci in January (not sure on the exact dates).

Here are the lines for tonight courtesy of hubbabubba on GPL: Minnesota Stoa-Potulny-Irmen Chucko-Guyer-Howe Gordon-Kessel-Wheeler Pohl-Kaufmann-Bostrom Goligoski-Anderson Peltier-Vannelli Sertich-Atherton Briggs North Dakota Spirko-Zajac-Stafford Porter-Toews-Oshie Duncan-Watkins-Kozek Fabian-Foyt-Prpich Jones-Smaby Chorney-Lee Finley-Radke Lamoureux

Some info on Matt Greene a little bit down the page in this article: http://www.hockeysfuture.com/article.php?sid=8211

The key to both games (aside from the usualy suspects of goal-tending and special teams) will be the transition game. UM will be without their best defensemen (insert your own joke here, but Harrington has been pretty good lately) on Friday and transitioning has been an issue this year in a whole. The Sioux have fast forwards and will forecheck very hard and try to cause turnovers. UM also has speed up front and the Sioux's young defense doesn't have a ton of experience on the big ice and while they are as a group better puck-handlers than previous years, it's still a legit area of concern I think.

Minnesota has the top power play in WCHA play. You can rip them for a lot of things (soft defense, goaltending, etc.) but their power play probably isn't one of them.