hockeytherapy13

Looks like I pretty much just plagiarized what you said. Appears we are very much on the same page haha.

That’s fair, that’s my bad. But if you pay attention to the CHN and USCHO guys who have watched the committee for years, you’ll know that the committee will swap within bands to boost attendance. Which is simply crazy.

Agreed on the host site and neutral sites just in general. But the NCAA has swapped within seeded bands for attendance before and will not blink twice before doing it again. Their double standard of keeping ore-determined neutral sites but sacrificing bracket integrity for attendance is a special level of audacity but too many coaches still oppose home sites.

Yes. Our defensive depth has pushed him down. I’m worried he’ll transfer which is too bad because he’s a solid defender.

Regarding Verhoeff. Jax has taken the approach that Sandelin has done very well and that Berry often failed to do with young players. He put KV in big roles all year to let him fail and grow. It’s made him a better player. BUT- he cannot have top-4 minutes in the tourney in a do-or-die scenario, He’s got to be on the 3rd pairing. He’s 17 and just not ready the big-time moments against more mature players. Those little mistakes he makes regularly will end up in our net in a tight game. Throw a thousand tomatoes at me for saying this but I would rather see a boring but steady defenseman like Jubenvil make smart simple plays, a good breakout pass, and let the forwards do their thing.

It was Kotyk that took the cheap shot on Poolman that resulted in him being out that game and the NCAAs. It was a hit from behind that didn’t even get called for a 2. But your point stands that Duluth was definitely taking their cheap shots again before the tourney while they can get away with it.

I like your optimism but to believe this is a 100% guarantee is incorrect. Once they have their 1v16 matchup, The committee treats the seeing in groups. For example: they are willing to swap around 14/15 13/14 because they are all 4 seeds Same goes for 9/10 10/11 11/12 since those are all 3 seeds. They will absolutely swap 1-2 spots for sake of attendance as long as they keep the teams in their banded seeds. They’ve done it before and they’ll do it again to get 1/4 full rinks up to 1/3 full haha

Yeah I see Arnott and Truman being top-6 potential with each of them having more than 10 goals. But Bibby and Bentz won’t be on those lines past the 3rd shift

You’ll have to excuse those of us who remember Shawn Hunwick.

Plantes Shaugabay line will be back together before all the fans are in their seats.

With each passing year it baffles me more and more that they don't do this. I used to be more understanding, but we're getting to the point where it makes such little sense to do these empty neutral sites where the 16th team could end up being in their own backyard.

I wish the committee actually respected bracket integrity but they don't. The double standard of not letting a higher seed host a game combined with moving teams around to help with attendance is insane.

Agree that if the Plante line gets shut down Duluth will struggle, but they actually have 5 different guys that have 10 or more goals (obviously the plante line makes up 3 of the 5) and then Ty Hanson the D has 8 goals and is flirting with almost a point per game. We should still beat them if we are playing our A game but the Dogs aren't as much of a 1-trick pony as they were 2 months ago.

Kotai is remarkably better than Latkoczy. Also Latkoczy has never had much success against us to begin with. But Kotai can and could steal a game from us. We've had games against Denver and ASU at home where we got goalie'd despite being the much better team. It could happen against Auggie for sure. If we have to get sent out east to play HC instead of Augustana or even Mankato I'll take it because those goalies scare me.

I love that we are playing Duluth leading into the tournament. At this point in the season, if you can't shut down a high octane line like the Plante line, then you are going to struggle against the Wolverines or Spartans. Great practice to see where we are at with our Dzone coverage and rush defense against great players. Obviously playing the rush hasn't been spectacular for a few weeks but I think we will shore that up.

In no way can Croal come out of the lineup. He is the best defensive wing we have. The guy is a champ on the PK and keeping us up when games are close. Future "C" right there, maybe even next season

93%

I haven't listened to the pod yet this week but I was doing a peeking at the last 3 weekends of Omaha's box scores. In the last 6 games they are 33% on the power play and 88% on the PK. Obviously their overall numbers are underwhelming but they appear to be a team who has progressed throughout the season. So let's play this series 5x5 please.

Michigan is much better defensively than they have been in years. 2.4 GA/G (same as Western) and we are 2.3 GA/G Seems like Naurato has been actually preaching structure haha

Except for the Saturday game in grand forks when Hasley stole the game.

Give me UNO all day.

That line isn’t exactly going to be riding the pine all night. They’ll get plenty of reps. That line could score goals against almost any team

Great call. 100% agree. Not sure why I forgot about them haha

It was obvious that essentially every UND fan in the building was cheering for Western during the natty champ game last year. So it was pretty funny when Colby Cohen (with his sour grapes) said that UND fans cheering for Western is the same as BC fans cheering for BU. Proof that he has zero clue about how the rivalries in the NCHC work because it’s safe to say that Western is the team we’d pull for over anyone else in the NCHC. Honorable mention to Miami, but I don’t want to see any of the other teams in this conference win anything haha.

I’d much rather play Omaha in the 1st round. Easier opponent and it would be nice to end their season again.