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That looks like a Michigan jersey to me.

My wife and I keep saying that what we wear has no bearing on the game. But then why the heck am I wearing the same clothes tonight that I wore last Friday when we beat Wisconsin? Everything has been cleaned of course.

Even though I hate to hear Bison fans say "I told you so" I'm guessing that UND will be Division I in all sports in the next 3-4 years. So we will also be playing the Minnesotas in college football. Do you think UND fpootball will be more popular than UND hockey at that point? I'd have to say an emphatic NO! The reality is that NDSU is a football college and UND is a hockey college. As far as the state of North Dakota is concerned, who knows? I'd have to say that because UND hockey is being broadcast throughout the state now, that the fan base for hockey is much larger than for NDSU football. So sorry Craig but NDSU football will not surpass UND hockey for a fan base in North Dakota in the near future.

I'd rather have the momentum. But I also rather play Holy Cross than Michigan. Minnesota should roll over Holy Cross and the UND/Michigan game will be a battle. With East refs the game may come down to special teams play. But here's saying that with Parise playing well it comes down to goaltending and we pull out the Friday game. Saturday? Who knows? Minnesota has the best power play in the nation. If we can play five on five we win. If we're in the box a lot... All year Minnesota has been winning on offense. Their defensemen pinch more than anyone I've seen and it wins them most games. This past weekend it didn't and with all of the odd man rushes Briggs and Frazee faced no wonder they lost. Let's beat Michigan and then we can worry about the Gophers.

When I was looking at the possible brackets before last weekend's Final Five I predicted we would get either Michigan on Boston College for our first game. I really didn't want to play either of those teams because they have seemed to be our nemesis in the past. Now that we have Michigan all I can say is at least it's not at the Yost! I'm afraid of Michigan but still think we can beat them. Michigan is super young too and the difference for them is their goaltending has been suspect and their young defensemen have been inconsistent. If we play like we have the past few weekends and don't put Michigan on a lot of pwer plays we can win this game. Michigan is 3rd in the ocuntry in team offense averaging 3.65 gpg but they give up over 3 gpg too. I'm not looking forward to a Saturday game. I'm just worried about Michigan.

What a stupid article!

I'm on the other side or the blue line side. So my seats are just on the right edge of the bench as you look at it from behind. . That damn guy who dresses up like a bunny for dance fever is at the bottom of the section to my right but close to the bench too.

Hey Sioux7 do you drive an SUV with a Sioux 7 license plate?

I agree. Just buy your tickets at ticketmaster and take Friday off. You can always find a place to stay.

Hey Tiny, If you're willing to play the ticketmaster fees just go there and buy tickets. I checked it out for the heck of it and you could get tickets in row 2 of section 207 for either semifinal games and the championship game. So get tickets now.

I think I tried this last year but... We're in section 116 row 10. We are on the blue line side of the section though. Three couples wearing UND stuff for the 16th year in a row. Yeah I know we're old. Somtime this weekend stand up an yell at us. I'll look for you too. Go Dogs! Go Sioux!

I always forget about the unbalanced schedule. Here's another one. No team should have the last weekend of the season off like UAA and Mankato did this year. There is too much riding on the playoffs and that extra week's rest could mean the difference in a playoff win or loss. You can't tell me the schedule makers can't figure out a way to have everyone play the last wekend and probably the last two weekends of the regular season. As a fan i want my team playing the last weekend of the regular season since there is usually a lot of excitement.

I have regional tickets and cannot go on Saturday the 25th due to a 90th birthday party in the family. So I read the comments above and called the REA ticket office. Their response was "No we do not take tickets back, we cannot refund the money, and we cannot resell tickets". So if you can't use the tickets you'll need to do like me and look for another UND fan to buy them so you are assured a Gopher fan is not sitting in your seats.

The hockey playoffs as is, are fine. Two out of three in the first round is great. The Final Five is fine too. The top three qualifiers deserve not to play that extra game that the 4th and 5th qaulifiers do. I've had tickets to the WCHA Final Five since it's beginning at the St Paul Civic Center. It is still the best tournament in the country. Four out of five years the Final Five is more exciting than the Frozen Four (I go to t he Frozen Four too) I like the Final Five in the cities even though I no longer live there and feel it would not be the same somewhere else. When it was at the Brad;ey Center it was fun but a lot farther travel for most people and if Wisconsin isn't in the finals not a big crowd. I do wish that Minnesota fans would not continue to tell me how it is not a home ice advantage for the Gophers. Yes it is not their home rink but it is their home crowd. There is just somethign about beating Minnesota at the X though that makes it especially fun to go to the games. Now when it comes to the NCAA Regionals I do want a change. I don't think any regional should be played on Olympic size ice and don't feel that the NCAA should award a regional to a site with Olympic ice. The Frozen Four is played on NHL size ice so let's have the regionals on the same size ice. Besides for those teams like Cornell who seldom play on Olympic ice it is a huge disadvantage especially if they are playing Minnesota, CC, New Hampshire, St Cloud or any team whose home ice is Olympic ice.

I agree. If UND and CC make the Final Five they will have played a much tougher first round opponent and then have to play each other while the other three teams rest. I think either of the teams in the play-in game would be excited to simply win their semifinal game against Minnesota in front of the normal pro-Gopher crowd. I think the team that is at risk is Wisconsin. They were badly outshot again this weekend by St. Cloud and were luckyto get two wins. If they end up playing Denver they could get beat very easily.

So who do you think will take Fabian's place? Foyt, Martens, Miller, Marvin? I'm guessing it will be Foyt since he's had some experience in bigger games.

Wisconsin as a number 1 seed being placed at REA if UND is a Number 4 seed cannot happen. If UND is a Number 4 seed we would get either Miami or BU as the PWR currently stands. you can't play a team from your conference in the first round of the NCAAs if the NCAA can move another team to that region, thus we can't play Wisconsin. Your predictions are actually pretty "predictable". You just pciked all of the top teams to win and the favored team wins every game in your scenario except when CC beats Denver for third and Wisconsin beats Minnestoa. I realize that it is more likely that the favored team wins but it's too boring to pick that. if you went with the odds you'd have all of the home teams wining. Then a veteran CC beating us and Minnesota winning the Final five. It's probably more likely to happen than my scenario but... Right now the teams that are playing the best are Mankato and Minnesota. Denver has defense problems and CC is up and down just like we are. Wisconsin has not played well in 4-6 weeks. So who knows what will happen.

I'm going out on a limb here and making some predictions: March 3rd: Minnesota sweeps Duluth Denver and CC split Wisconsin and St. Cloud split We sweep Tech Final standings Minnesota Denver Wisconsin CC UND St. Cloud Mankato Tech Duluth UAA First round of playoffs Minnesota sweeps UAA Denver sweeps Duluth Wisconsin takes 3 games to beat Tech Mankato upsets CC We sweep St. Cloud Final Five: Play-in game we beat Mankato Friday Afternoon game: Denver beats Wisconsin Evening game: Briggs sucks and we beat Minnesota (oh and Smaby cleanly checks Irmen and he gets hurt again. 3rd place game; Minnesota beats Wisconsin Championship game; Denver beats us (3 games in 3 days takes it's toll) WCHA gets 5 teams in again: Minnesota(1), Wisconsin(1), CC (2), Denver (3), UND (3) We end up a Number 3 seed and play some crappy CCHA team at the REA probably UNO. Unfortuantely Minnesota also is there and gets to mop up on a AHA team. Then we get Minnesota to go to the Frozen Four. That's where I stop. I know I'm looking through green colored glasses but what the heck.

Yep I went through REA. I got mine in the mail today. 3/1/2006

I haven't received my tickets yet.

A real easy one would be to have Bemidji State win the CHA tourney and automatically become a TUC. I sent an email to Jason Moy asking how that would change things as they stoood today and his response was that it jumped UND to 14th in the PWR. I think to really give us a chance we need to win one game in Denver, sweep Tech and then sweep the first round of the playoffs. If we do this I think we'll make the dance even if we lost the playin game at the WCHA final five. The reality though is we haven't beaten very many good teams this year: Minnesota 1-3 Wisconsin 0-2 St Cloud 1-3 CC 1-1 Denver 1-1 Harvard 1-1 (it would have been nice to have the World Junior boys here for this game. It hurts a lot in our PWR) Michigan State 0-1 Miami 1-0 We're supposed to be a better team late in the season after the experience the freshmen have gained so far. Let's see if we really are and beat Denver at least once.

One of my favorites from my college days was: Face Off Face Off Rip His Face Off

What's scary about the rankings is that the Gophers have Johnson, Mueller, amd Oksobo coming in next year assuming none of them goes pro first. Dang!

Usually what happens is the guys coming from the Juniors play pretty well the first weekend back. I'm not sure if they are still on adrenaline or what. But the following weekend they don't play that well. Here's hoping that is not the case because I'd hate to see us lay an egg in Minnesota.

Watching this US Junior team reminded me a lot of the UND hockey team this year. Both teams seem to want to rely on their talent to win and have a tendency to go one-on-one rather than play as a team. Look at Canada; no superstars and they play as a team, play physical, play defense, and take advantage of mistakes. I had two concerns coming into this season for the Sioux: Playing all of those freshmen, and how to mold a bunch of players who are highly rated, drafted, and probably beleive their own hype. So far the Soiux play like the US Junior team with individual play, not physical, then talk about how the teams they play against aren't as talented, and lose to the good teams. Seeing Kessel and Borque in the top scorers in the tourney mainly due to the Norway game reminds me of Stafford's hat trick against Tech. In general I've felt that Stafford has disappeared against Denver, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. I'm using Stafford as an example because I've seen most of these players disappear in the big games. The big question is how can Hakstol make these guys play as a team and play hard?