beastandco

Worst case scenario is that UND has three defenseman with world juniors experience on next year’s roster and that’s something few teams have. I would love to add one of the top uncommitted defensemen but as long as the spots are filled with quality recruits, I am content. Either way, there is a ton of talent on this roster.

Reid is committed to Michigan State. Carels would be a great fit for UND. I imagine Bryn will be doing his due diligence on DuPont and Rudolph as well. Just speculating, UND probably would have filled their defensive core already if they knew there wasn’t a good chance that they could land at least one of those guys.

Verhoeff essentially confirms he will be returning next season with his instagram post today.

“Obviously there’s a few decisions to be made this summer and see where I’ll end up for next year so I think I just kind of had to embrace that moment and hope it’s not my last, but I think that there’s a chance it might be. It’s kind of hard to take that all in, but I think I enjoyed it a lot.” Sounds like he’s not returning to Prince George.

UND has had no early signees, has gotten better in the portal, and has a pretty solid recruiting class coming in. Pretty much every team besides Michigan and Duluth has gotten gutted and is scrambling to find their replacements.

Hopefully not. On Carels, Scott Wheeler said on the CHN podcast he thinks he will commit after his CHL season ends. He is the only guy that could potentially sign, imo.

I wouldn’t expect anything on Carels for at least another week. There’s a good chance he takes a visit soon and I wouldn’t expect a decision until then.

Good catch. It must’ve been in the last couple of days. There were a few rumblings on here a few days ago and he did not follow UND hockey at that time.

I would almost add Giorgos Pantelas in that group as well. I haven’t seen a lot of talk about him going to the NCAA. He would be a nice get.

Their two best defenseman, Verhoeff and Emery, are both right handed. Laurila and Mackenzie certainly have top pairing potential, but they haven’t proven it yet. He was more so saying that top 4 LHD is more of a position of need, imo.

He is just saying the right things. He could very well return to PG, but the odds of that happening are slim.

Schloss said on his podcast this morning that UND doesn’t have any silent commitments. I wouldn’t expect any of these names to be committed unless they take a visit after the season. For reference, Ryan Lin committed about 10 days after his season ended. It’s a safe bet that he visited Denver in that time frame before officially committing.

I would argue our “fallbacks” this year would be players like Cooper Williams and Brayden Klimpke, who are returning to Saskatoon next year. Those two, production wise, are in the mix of the players in the next tier. Outside of the big four, there are only a couple of defensemen that are uncommitted with more points than Klimpke. Points obviously aren’t everything either. We will how many spots are still open when the portal closes. There’s not really any names that I would think UND would be after left but players can still enter for the next 9 days. This is a slow burn but we are slowly but surely seeing what Bryn has had cooking for the last year unravel.

https://x.com/schlossmangf/status/2044860870975431090?s=46&t=EmaKipyBO25sUSJd9yeZFQ