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So what happens if Genoway goes early? Is Forbort ready or who would be a possible defensemen to bring in?

With all of our seniors this year I was trying to figure out who is really coming in next year as replacements but I need help. So help me fill in the blanks. I'll give it a shot first: Goalie: Walski leaves and Dell comes Defensemen: Finley leaves MacMillian comes Jones leaves Gleason comes I'm not sure where to put Miller but I'll put him at forward for now: Forwards: Miller leaves Bruneteau comes Kozek leaves Cichy comes Duncan leaves Kristo comes Watkins leaves Knight comes Martens leaves (Here's where I'm stuck for sure: Do I plug in Forney or Rowney or Mattson or ? If no one leaves early we'll have 5 returning defensemen assuming LaPoint recovers , 10 returning forwards and 2 retunring goalies. To keep the same type roster of 15 forwards, 7 defensemen and 3 goalies we would need one goalie, 2 defensemen and 5 forwards. That would leave us next year's team with 3 seniors, 6 juniors, 8 sophomores, and 8 freshmen. A very young team again. So who am I missing?

Did anyone else think the dump in on Rau's wraparound goal was icing? I swear CC was 2 feet behind the red line when they threw it in the zone. The linesman started putting his hand up and stopped. No Sioux was even close to having a chance to get to it. The pucked bounced CC's way all night. After Eidsness's save on McCullough I immediately turned to my daughter and said "Save of the Year". Thank you Parise that it at least gave us a tie.

A friend of mine was a member of The Farce. He has the yellow helmet with the red light on top that got turned on when we scored. He told me that one time a lot of The Farce went to a game in Duluth. They were out bar hopping in the middle of the afternoon on Saturday and when they were walking from one bar to the next outside they noticed a crowd of people in front of the courthouse. They proceeded to chant: "We've got spirit yes we do, we've got spirit how bout you." He said that immediately they were surrounded by a bunch of guys with black suits and were escorted further down the street. Hey how were they to know the guy talking at the Courthouse was Ronald Reagan and the black suits were Secret Service.

There wasn't a lot of love for Forney when he was with the Sioux but I hope you're right and he can produce at UND if he comes back. I always felt he should have gone the USHL route and got healthy before coming the UND but at the time we were short due to guys going pro so they brought him earlier than they should have.

If Trupp and Toews are both still hurt I'm guessing we'll see: First line the same: Duncan, Gregoire, Hextall Second line: Kozek moves up to play with VandeVelde and Frattin Third line the same: Zajac, Watkins, Martens Fourth line: Malone, Lamoureux, Davidson With two forwards hurt and one defenseman out for the season we need this to stop. We don't need no stinkin' injuries!

Frattin (Trupp)

Sitting down for breakfast at the Airport Marriott in Minnesapolis this past Friday 1/30/09, I happened to hear a couple of gentlemen talking hockey mainly about the UND/Denver series and the aftermath. I slowly turned my head and lo and behold who was it but WCHA commissioner Bruce McLeod and head of officials Greg Shepherd. Of course my ears perked up to see what I coulld hear as I kept my back turned and tried not to let on that I was listening. Mr Shepherd says: "You remember when Bob Johnson walked on the ice right? I don't see what the big deal is now. Why are people complaining about what George got. We as a league only make recommendations and it's up to the schools to decide what penalties to give their players and coaches." Mr McLeod mainly agrees with uh huhs and yeses. Then Mr Shepherd says "What do you think people would say if we told them about all of the emails we've been getting to toss North Dakota out of the league?" My mouth sort of dropped at that and I tried to hear more but the server brought us our check then and we had to leave. The impression I had was that Mr. Shepherd was a little peeved about the many complaints that everyone had about the league and how they were handling the Denver/UND series from the week before. The impression I got from Mr McLeod is that he was taking it all in but really was not that upset about what was going on in the media and was ok with how things turned out. And to those fans sending emails to toss North Dakota out of the league: FOR WHAT! Our team wasn't the one that lost it's cool and got many chippy penalties because they were getting beat. Our coach did not go ballistic with choking signs to the refs and then walk out onto the ice and afterwards break NCAA rules by coaching from the press box after an ejection, etc. Denver and it's coach lost their composure and their heads and looked like fools for doing it. Should we ask the WCHA to toss Denver out of the league? Of course not. What foolishness.

Denver drives me crazy. They play what I would call a modified trap. Not as obvious as Tech or Wisconsin but they play it. The main difference is they counterattack very well. With Ruegsegger, Rakhshani, and now Maiani and Colborne that have some top skilled players. They also have a Duncan clone in 5'7" 150 pounds Luke Salazar so our defense needs to play well. With 12 games left they still only play 5 of those 12 on the road. At the end of the regular season they will have played 35 games and only have played 12 games on the road. Due to the unbalanced scheduled they only play North Dakota and Minnesota one series each. Wouldn't it be nice to have that schedule. But this team has allowed the fewest goals in league play so we'll have our work cut out for us. The biggest question though is what will George Gwozdecky wear each night. Maybe Malone? http://www.denverpost.com/ci_8315584?source=bb I just do not like Dasher George.

Yes but the big question is how Archibald could lead the team in scoring when he had 197 penalty minutes and in the box a lot every game.

With the holiday tourneys completed it looks bad for the WCHA come playoff time this year. Teams that have traditionally not even been competitive against the WCHA have either tied or beaten the WCHA teams. So here goes: Northern Michigan sweeping Wisconsin Lake Superior tying Wisconsin Holy Cross tying Denver Yale beating Mankato after Omaha beat Yale 8-3 the previous night Bowling Green tying Mankato Sacred Heart tying Colorado College Clarkson tying Colorado College twice Air Force beating CC North Dakota losing to Michigan State who hadn

Hextall

Gees and he was a unanimous selection too.

Hextall

I forgot about the Harvard series but I'd hope for split there too. So we'd be 11-9 at the break.

I still remember when Adelson broke away from the state Basketball championship game between Minot and Jamestown with about 7 seconds left in 1971 and then when they came back from break Minot had just won on a last second shot. Now that was stupid.

Hey I'm no pessimist but let's be realistic here. Can we possibly get 4 points? Yes. Based upon how we've played so far will we get 4 points? No. I would be ecstatic with a split. So far we can't score on the power play, we are below average on the penalty kill, our defensemen have played soft and have not taken guys out in the crease, our forwards have had a tough time scoring, and our goaltending has been average at best. So what do we need: 1. We need to score some stinking goals. We've been outscored 23-13 in the 6 games we've played. That's about an average of getting beat 4-2 every game. Not good. Heck the only team in the WCHA to score fewer goals than us so far is Michigan Tech. We need to score more. 2. We need our defensemen, including Genoway, to play defense first. Heck we were tied last weekend and three straight times Genoway, Marto, and LaPoint are rushing the net and the next thing you know Wisconsin is coming down with an odd man rush. 3. We need to help out our goaltender. Eidsness seems to already have been chosen as the Number 1 tender but he's young. Clear those guys out in front of the net, play the body, and stop giving the dang puck away. The season has just begun but we need to get back to some basics first and then I think we can turn this ship around. Right now we are 2-4. If I think optimistically we split at CC, we sweep UAA, we split at Duluth, we sweep Cornell and we split with St Cloud. That puts us at 9-7 going into Christmas break when we play in the GLI. I'd be happy with that. What do you think?

Oh that Jim Adelson. He really knew his hockey I remember when he said there was a penalty called for hitting the puck too high in the air and that we would now have a face off at that special face off spot. Still I liked him for basketball.

Hey I was there when you tossed the live chicken on the ice. Then it proceeded to crap everywhere so they had to come out and clean up the chicken crap before the game. Hillarious

I'm tired of us not hitting. Let's play the body like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G-FTg419NM Oh the good old days

Friday night: Kozek If I make It Saturday night: Duncan

Hey all. Now that the roster has been posted I started thinking of line combinations but then I realized I didn't know which new forwards were centers. I know this: Goalies: Walski (Sr) Eidsness (Fr) Harrington (Fr) Defensemen Possible pairings: Finley (Sr)/Genoway (Jr) Jones (Sr)/Marto (So) Lapoint (So)/Blood (Fr) Fienhage (Fr) to fill in Forward possible pairings (with my guesses at centers) VandeVelde (Jr) centering Duncan (Sr) and Kozek (Sr) Toews (Fr) centering Watkins (Sr) and Trupp (So) Gregoire (Fr) centering Frattin (So) and Malone (So) Martens (Sr) centering Hextall (Fr) and Zajac (Jr) Miller, Lamoureux, and Davidson filling in At first glance my concerns are team speed. Defensemen with some speed are Genoway and Marto. Forwards with some speed are Duncan, Frattin, Trupp. I don't know about Toews, Gregoire, Lamoureux, Hextall or even how Kozek and Watkins show for speed. Of course a concern is in goal but who knows maybe one of our freshman goalies will be another Bachman from CC like last year. We're going to need Marto and LaPoint to play like veterans and to get immeditate production from the incoming freshmen forwards. The early schedule looks tough with BU and U Mass then at Mankato, Wisconsin at home then at CC. If our goaltending can stand up I think we're headed for home ice in the WCHA playoffs and another berth in the NCAAs. Then you never know. Thoughts?

I'm just glad they are moving Kyle back to defense. He is a smooth skater and plays with an edge. He'll make the opposing forwards pay to get into the zone. I wish he would have been given more of a role in that sense in college.

I am surprised. At the end of the season I thought Joe played his position but with a lack of enthusiasm. I thought he was planning to be another Brian Lee and "further his development" in the AHL before hitting the NHL. Now that Joe is coming back I'm happy. Still Joe needs to improve his game for college and for the future, the pros. In my opinion Joe needs to do these things: 1. No longer only rely upon his reach but to move his feet to get better position 2. Become more physical. Joe is huge and is going to get called for penalties when smaller players will not. Joe needs to use his size more in the Matt Greene mold. Make that opposing player regret setting up in front of your goalie etc. He needs to make people pay to get into our zone. 3. This past year Joe improved on his break out passes but there were times that he didn't want anything to do with the puck and would leave it to Genoway to bring it out of the zone. To further his career he needs to learn this part of the game better and start moving the puck. He doesn't need to skate it out of the zone but make a decision and pass it to the right player. I'm glad Joe is back as long as he plays with more enthusiasm and uses his assets which are his size. his reach and his experience. Just expand on those attributes and Joe will be in the pros shortly. Heck we may be looking at another Frozen Four now with Joe, Jones, LaPoint, Marto, Genoway, and the newbies on defense. In general all of the defensemen need to get more physical to help our freshman goalie.