Brim006

I don't know enough about Jax to comment much. But one thing I do know and hope, is that he treats this program like a business rather than a high school team or college teams of years past. Bubs treated it too much like a good ole boys club or Batam B2 team. He allowed his roster to be bogged down with kids that clearly didn't belong on a top tier team such as UND, and often some that didn't belong in D1 hockey all together. He was hanging onto them all 4 years anyways because he was too nice. Casey Johnson, Zach Yon, Dane Montgomery, Bob Anderson....on and on and on. It happens! Players fall off, peak at different times, or just dont transition to the next level for whatever reasons. And recruiting mistakes are surpassable if they are dealt with as fast as possible, rather than just accepted and absorbed. Those depth players make all the difference in this current D1 landscape where nearly everyone can beat anyone on any given night. No more getting by with soft spots that our HC was too nice to deal with. UND needs a HC who's willing to handle those tough decisions and cut the fat when needed. It blew my mind some of them were allowed to stay on the team all 4 years, displacing far more talented players who could have contributed and made a difference in important mid-season games when injury bugs hit and deep rosters make all the difference. Additionally, I know UND has lost some good recruits due to pushing them to wait another year. If you're cutting fat and freeing up those spots, you allow yourself chances to make those small roster improvements and reduce recruit log jams from time to time. Without that you lack depth and don't win those must win games mid-season and late season. HCs should be the commanding officers, making the decisions to produce the best results, not consulting and being buddies with the team about keeping guys around because everyone likes them as a person and are friends. Bubs was likeable and appeared to have a lot of complimentary praise from past players, but he certainly didn't demand the respect or commanding powers to squeeze the most out of his players and teams like Hak and other successful coaches have had. Hearing Jax wants to hire a GM type role, and get more aggressive and up with the times on NIL and other important factors of the reality of college sports today is a great sign of moving things in the right direction. But I'll mostly be interested to see how much he treats this program like a business rather than a friendly group of pals who are okay with prioritizing friendships over performance.

With the instant success of many of these new D1 programs, and the overflowing D1 level talent with not enough teams to support them all, and now even more talent flowing in to displace even more D1 level kids, how many new D1 program could we see pop up over the next 5 years? And honest question, is or should NDSU be considering it? If they were agressive enough and wanted to dominate UND at yet another sport, I’d be willing to bet they could have a consistently stronger hockey program in place within 5 years if they wanted to. The money, the media, the fan support, the airport, and the Scheels rink already in place (until they build their own)…it could easily be done. What better time than now while UND athletics are on their knees in legitimately every single sport, even hockey. I’d unfortunately have to put my money on NDSU over UND for long term success of a hockey program due to being able to win essentially every aspect. Like it or not, crazy talk isn’t so crazy now days since things have changed so fast and I’d be surprised if there isn’t at least a little consideration happening

Serious question. Is it time UND considers the NSIC?

Absent on the recruiting trail? As in, not out there at all for some reason? Or out there but just not grabbing attention of top tier players like UND used to be able to in the past? Blows my mind guys like Schloss and others can say moving on from Berry was a bad move. How can anyone deny the steady decline of the program over the past 8-9 years? As of today is UND even considered a blue chip program anymore? Historically yes, as that will never go away, but as of today I mean. Sadly I'd say no.

Would be nice to get WahpBreck back too actually. That'd be 24 teams, when ND has been as low as 18 teams just 5-10 years ago.

You are correct, and that's the unfortunate reality of the game today.

I'm sorry, I'll admit I just made the assumption that the boys team was the same story as the girls. Which it sounds like it's not! My bad With the girls team, I have seen girls leave for there and asked how that even works. And was told that the girls coaches call around to poach top tier girls to come play for them and they typically offer a MW job that's already lined up to ensure a smooth transition etc. If that is just the girls team doing that, then I spoke out of line. If Warroad boys have been producing such competitive teams year after year with zero imports in that small of a town, that is super impressive.

We can agree to disagree. And I will admit that it's wrong of me to consolidate all cases/scenarios into 1 single opinion on the topic, so I'll do better at that. If someone is moving due to a career move, or other family reasons, that's completely different. Or if the home team and town isn't all warm and fuzzies with lifelong best friends, that's also completely different. I was only referring to the families that move solely for getting their kid onto a better team or league, which is the most common scenario. And unfortunately, more often than not, the kid has no business moving to JRs or moving to a better team since he/she hasn't even mastered their own league let alone team yet. Even then, I would never advocate for bullying them to stay or when they arrive somewhere new. I just think it's a gross culture, and I know it's a parent culture not a kid culture, because it's typically the parent's ego making the decision, not the kid's. In the certain instances where the family moves solely to get onto a better team or better league, we have all seen that the majority of the time it does little to nothing to benefit the kid's experience or development. Forcing them to quit on their lifelong friends to play with a new group sends a bad example on and off the ice character wise IMO. Why not stay, push yourself to be a leader, gut it out and get better, rather than bail and join a gravy train playing 3rd line. Moorhead's Mason Kraft made a point to speak on the importance of this exact topic during his championship speech. If the parents are delusional enough to truly think altering their entire life by moving away while their kid is in his prime high school fun years just to be on a better team of strangers, and that's really going to get them D1 offers they normally wouldn't have gotten, or will be their ticket to the NHL, so be it I guess. I must just be more of a realist I guess, so it all seems so bizarre to me. You couldn't have paid me to leave my friends even when I knew we would be mediocre. I would have looked back at that as a failure and it would have bugged me forever. Now if a kid leaves for a USHL offer, NTDP offer, or obviously has nothing left to gain from high school hockey, then again those are a different story. If I was a recruiter, I'd pick the kid who stuck it out and got better and made his teammates and friends better, over the kid who quit when the going got tough and took the easy route of just joining a better team. The NBA superstar teams and the transfer portal are extremely unpopular, and the same culture ramping up in high school sports is concerning to me. That's why I'm surprised I get so much flack on this board for this opinion. We have seen what all these moves do to high school hockey overall. Some of the smaller towns and smaller teams can't recover from losing 2-3 of their best players. Some of the bigger teams backfill with slight downgrades no problem, which isnt as big of a deal. But overall it has hurt the parity everywhere, but especially in ND. GPR, DL, BOTT, Bismarck etc etc. They have all lost dozens of players to transfers or early departures over the recent years and havent been competitive because of it. Some years they are just 1-2 players short of having 2 solid lines and d pairs to be a competitive program. And then it snowballs.

It's not just the crown jewel of MN, it is the crown jewel of HS state tournaments in the country, and that includes state football in Texas which is insane. That's why the negative comments, jabs and comparisons to the ND hockey state tournament seem silly to me. ND is 1/8th the population for 1, and 2, we're comparing it to the largest and most watched HS tournament in the entire nation.

Neither are they for Warroad but they have MW to lean on to bring in imports. Their girls team alone had what 3-4 ND girls this season? 4-5 last year?

You've never even HEARD of it? Rhame is epic Side note, I think all North Dakotans should travel to every corner of the state at one point in their lives. There is a lot more variety and uniqueness across the state that most don't realize. I'm looking at your Fargoians...the road does in fact continue west past Mapleton

Kind of a chicken before the egg scenario. Do Langdon, WC, NW, and Crosby need to create hockey as high school sports to make the 2 classes a feasible option, or do the 2 classes need to happen first and the teams would switch over then? It seems to make sense, and would definitely grow the sport in the state, but I'm worried doing it with only 20 teams might be a stretch, and also wondering how hard it is for those smaller schools to start hockey as school sports? Or do we just need Minot North and Horace to start 2 classes? And how many teams can ND junior gold lose before the league folds and GF, Minot and Fargo lose overflow teams for hockey kids.

From what I can find, it appears Edina only has about 6 kids playing D1 currently. I thought it would be far more. But I'd imagine there are some other schools that have more, but so far I cannot find any schools that have more than GFC+RR who combine for 12 current. Minot currently has 5, but only 3 of those played at least 1 year at MHS. Still more than I would've guessed.

No one in their right mind would argue against it being an unbelievable tournament or atmosphere. It's the biggest and best tournament in the country by a long shot. I just think it's silly when people float the idea of ditching their communities to move across the river based on the idea of a single tournament. 1- because it's not a given, and most MN high school hockey players will never experience it 2. I dislike the importing and transferring school's culture that we see today.

Hmmm, I’d have to disagree there. “Grand Forks very rarely produces D1 talent like Moorhead”. I think grand forks kids just fly under the radar more for whatever reason. I think you’ll be surprised to hear there are CURRENTLY 12 grand forks kids playing D1…that’s pretty friggin impressive for a town of 60k with 2 smallish schools. I doubt Moorhead has that many? Probably more like 5-7? But I would guess Moorhead likely has more NHL players all time though? Here’s a list off the top of my of recent+current GF kids who have played D1 since 2010. Let me know if I missed any…there are a ton. Grant Johnson, Luke Johnson (NHL), Casey Purpur, Paul Ladue (NHL), Jon Lizotte (NHL), Montgomery (current),Montgomery (current), Kunz (current), Caulfield, Casey Johnson, William Lawson-Body(current), Will Howard(current), Cole Hanson(current), Brandon Holt (current), Kaleb Johnson(current), Mason Salquist (current), Lucas Kanta (current), Tucker Hodgsen(current), Panzer was born in GF but we won't count him (current), Mikey Coleman (next year), Cole Spicer, Johnny Simonson, Alex Simonson, Eric Meland, and many more.

Lolol. Make your kids ditch their friends, move your family to a different town and school, and pay higher taxes all just for the off chance of your kid potentially playing in a better state tournament maybe 1 time out of 3 years at best. Sounds like a great plan.

This seems pretty scorched earth, but I'm all for it. Nothing could get worse at this point. UND athletics as a whole is in complete shambles right now given the history and size of school...and that's not even mentioning the top tier facilities. I've lost interest in all programs as of a few years ago. Big changes would show they're serious about being relevant, and would pull folks like myself back in again. Look at the excitement around football already. Now imagine hockey and basketball if new coaching upgrades came in.

They played in the Warroad tournament instead this year. Last year they beat Gentry Academy, and beat Providence Academy Season before that they beat Holy Family and beat Roseau Season before that they lost to Gentry Academy Season before that they beat Warroad (1A) and lost to Roseau. Do you even follow hockey?

So...you are comparing the 2 grand forks teams beating 8 other teams for the EDC title more often than the 2 grand forks teams would beat all 80 other MN A teams for a state title as a comparison? Lol No, I was stating that the average EDC team is much more competitive than the average MN A across all 80 teams. And it's not close. You then mentioned 7A as a more specific comparison, which I agree is a better comparison since it's about the same number of teams and is fairly level across the board, but the EDC likely wins out most years there too despite 7A debatably being one of the more solid in MN outside of Hermantown and SCC powerhouses skewing those sections. MN A probably has 40-45 teams that are worse than Mayport. In fact, Mayport went 7-6-1 vs MN A this season and 6-4 vs MN A last season. So let's not confuse sheer numbers of teams with overall competitiveness. The EDC is probably pretty comparable to the top 25% MN A in reality. And the top 3 EDC teams are probably pretty comparable to the top 3 MN A teams every year, with MN A top 3 likely winning out most years. The majority of ND vs MN games are EDC vs MN A each season, and the record speaks for itself. 2023-2024 records = ND 26-14-0 2022-2023 records = ND 21-14-0 2021-2022 records = ND 21-13-2 2020-2021 records = ND 12-7-1 We can agree to disagree, but safe to say both GFC and RR would fit in better at AA than A. Because I'd say it's pretty reasonable to state that the top 3 EDC teams would consistently be top 10 MN A every year. I just think a lot of people get a false sense of MN superiority complex after watching their giant state tournament showcasing their best of the best of the 145 teams and with all the excitement and publicity that comes with it, I guess I can see how that can happen. So I can see how for some people it feels like that's how all the MN teams are across the board all year long. It's just emotional thinking. And It's easy to forget about all the other teams that are at home... a lot of which (at least of class A) are realllllly bad hockey teams. Once again, look at the success Wahp has finally found playing in MN A after decades of winless seasons in the EDC.

I'd say this year yes it was. And I'm not talking non-con games and full schedule comparison. I'm talking EDC vs 7A. Most years EGF goes 1-3 or 0-4 versus GFC+RR, and top dog Warroad is usually on par with them. Then the top 2-3 WF/Fargo schools are most often better than the rest of the 7A. Go look at past season scores and tell me I'm wrong. 7AA is a different story, but I'll never understand the 7A superiority complex when the direct scores speak for themselves.

RR has been scheduling a few top end AA MN games every year now and has typically beaten them. Plus the Bantam AA grand forks team has typically steam rolled the MN AA competition for 5+ years now. I think there's no question a combined GF team would easily be top 10 MN AA year after year and likely top 5 most often. I think a lot of years RR and GFC on their own would do really well, but neither would have this season.

agreed but Id say 8 out of 10

Clown comment. Because some kids and family's still have pride and commitment to playing for their hometowns. All this transfering and importing has gotten out of hand. It's gross in college and even worse to see it happening so often even in high school now. Plus the EDC is the same if not better competition than MN A. Most years it's a long shot for them to make it to state over Warroad etc so I'd say this year is def not the norm. Compare direct scores over the last 5 years if you disagree with that. EGF won the Gambucci for the first time in a decade this year.

Certainly lots of variations at play and this "study" was pretty anecdotal, but with that said I'd imagine if you changed it to NHL instead of D1 it would just favor the HS route further. How do you think it would flip? That's essentially saying kids that don't make it D1 are more likely to get to the NHL than kids that play D1....so I'm confused on your thoughts there. Unless you think kids that leave early go major juniors more often or something.

First time EGF has won the Gambucci cup in 9 or maybe 10 years so it's been a rough go for the MN side.