Stack

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?

Holy Angels won 3-2. Their first line had all 3 goals with Minnesota Gopher bound Barribal getting 2. Still that's not too bad for Moorhead since they lost most of the team from last year.

I will be there with my daughter. Section 21 row 21. Memories to share about the old Williams arena 1. 1979, Final weekend of the WCHA series the Sioux lead the league by 3 points: Gophers win on Friday night so the lead is down to 1 point. Saturday night the game goes back and forth. Sioux are up by one goal and the Gophers pull the goalie. Then freshman Dave Christian picks up a puck and comes in all alone. Instead of driving to the net to make sure of his shot he winds up and blasts a slap shot from the blue line into the net. We partied until dawn. 2. 1980: Sioux Gophers again. Thre are about 10 of us sitting in the reserved section across the ice from the students. My buddy gets hamered before the game and during a stoppage in play with the rink completely quiet he stands up, turns to the crowd, throws his arms in the air and yells "GOPHERS SUCK!" He then sits down as we all cringe. Shortly afterwards he gets up and heads to the men's can. 5-6 Gopher fans peel out of the crowd and follow him to the can. To this day we have no idea how he got out of there alive but he was very quiet the rest of the game. 3. General memories: - I missed half of the goals in that arena because of the sightlines and the cement posts - The first time I walked in I saw that roof over top the one goal where the basketball seats went up from there on the other side and saw all of the black marks from the pucks hitting it and thought what the heck is that? - sitting below the balcony when the students started stomping there feet thinking that baby is coming down on me at any moment. - Not being able to buy any hot concessions there for a year because the building was condemned. They couldn't have anything plugged into the wiring Al I know is like the old Winter Sports Arena at UND, Williams arena had character and made it a lot tougher on the away team than Mariucci. Just some random thoughts. -

Guys that played this weekend Senior: Prpich Junior: Stafford, Parise, Smaby, Porter, Fabian Sophs: Zajac, Spirko, Kaip, Radke, Lamoureux Frosh: Chorney, Finley, Jones, Lee, Oshie, Toews, Kozek, Duncan, Watkins 6 upperclassmen. My evaluation is that Prpich played his game and played well. The 5 juniors did not play very well. Porter and Fabian didn't throw their weight around, Parise was not at his best, Stafford disappeared at times and Smaby did not stand out over the other frosh D. Let's be realistic here. We all knew that with this many freshmen playing we would struggle early and we all hoped we would come together as a team and be very good by the end of the season. These guys did not play as a team this weekend but as individuals and lyou lose when this happens. . We've lost 5 games in a row at home against the upper division of our league. We won five of six on the road against the bottom of the league. This is what I expected but I hoped for more. If we can reel off 6 wins or 5 of 6 against Bemidji, Harvard, and Achorage before going into Minnestoa we'll be fine. We have the lower division teams at home the second half and play Minnesota, CC, and Denver on the road. So 20 games left to go. I'd be very happy of we went 14-6 the second half. Heck that would put us at 24-13-1. That's pretty dang good for a freshmen laden team. So I'm like the rest of you who hated to lose to Minnesota but when I look at the season so far objectively I am pleased.

After playing Denver last weekend I told my daughter that they were our Number 2 rivalry and not Wisconsin any more. But then she reminded me that I am usually very composed at games except when we play Minnesota and Wisconsin. She remembered me yelling Vanek sucks even the year after he went pro. Then out of the blue last year while playing Wisconsin seeing me stand up and yell Wisconsin sucks. Even though I now hate Denver I still can't stand those red bastidges. Just remember: Badgers? Badgers? We don't need no stinking Badgers! My 5'5" friend stood on a bar stool in Milwaukee the last time the WCHA's were there the afternoon before we played Wisconsin and yelled that cheer. The pussies didn't even react. Better dead than red!

Gees I'm just trying to help out a little. I didn't see the old Broadmoor when we were there in 2004 but I thought it was because we didn't know where the hell we were going. Now I know I wasn't smoking something and it really wasn't there. Of course I didn't know about any new hotels since I HAVEN'T BEEN THERE SINCE 2004. I was just recapping our experience. No big deal I just thought I'd respond.

We went to the regional in 2004. Flew into the Denver airport and rented a car. It was a nice drive to Colorado Springs that took about an hour so don't be put off if you want to save some money and fly into Denver. Colorado Springs is a very narrow and long town and the World Arena is on the south end of town about 4-5 miles south of the downtown area. There are only two hotels near the arena but both are easy walking distance to the game. The closest is La Quinta Hotel where we stayed. It's a basic hotel but has no bar or restaurant. The second hotel is the Doubletree where the visting team usually stays. They have a bar and restaurant. There is an Outback across the street from La Quinta and there is an Italian restaurant called Carrabba's Italian Grill. We spent all of our drinking time at Carrabba's. Real small bar but easy to fill up with Sioux fans. Things to do: - Take a drive to the top of Pikes Peak. It is a little scary once you get above the tree line but you need to do it at least once. When you get down stop at The Wines of Colorado which is about 1/2 mile towards town from the Pikes Peak exit. They have a lot of wines and you may need a drink after your scare on Pikes Peak. Plus they have very good food. - Walk or drive through The Garden of the Gods. Very picturesque and interesting place. - Go up to Seven Falls. This is a waterfall that is literally about 10 minutes from the World Arena. Very nice http://www.sevenfalls.com/ - Stop at the Broadmoor hotel and walk aroudn the grounds/golf course and take a peak at the old hockey arena. - Go downtown and drink and eat at one of the Irish pubs. - other things: Cripple creek for gambling, Royal Gorge for the view, Glen Eyrie castle. One last note: When we got to the arena to pick up our will call tickets there was a young guy wearing a Gopher shirt standing in front of us. I think we said something about Gopher fans being so stupid that they didn't know Minnesota wasn't playing in this region. He was actually there to buy circus tickets. What a dumb a??

The reality is with 12-14 freshmen coming in this year I'll be happy if we are able to win home ice advantage for the WCHA playoffs. Minnesota didn't lose much, CC didn't lose much, Denver lost some scoring but are saying this freshmen class is better than last, Wisconsin lost a goalie and that's about it. I'm keeping my expectaitons low for UND this year but hoping our freshman defensemen are able to step in right away like Minnesota's did last year. If they do we have a chance again. If not it could be a rough season. But hey that's college sports.

If you look at the top forwards and defense of each class they compare about the same. Forwards: In 2001 big things were expected out of McMahon, Massen, Bochenski, and Fournier. Of course we saw what Bochenski could do and McMahon ended up a reliable 4 year player. Massen had a decent freshman year, a very good sophomore year and then pretty much disappeared the next two years. Fatty left. In 2005 big things are expected out of Toews, Kozek, Watkins, and Duncan and possibly Oshie. So maybe one more player with high expectations in 2005 but younger players also. We have no idea what these guys will amount to until they are on the ice. Defense: In 2001 big things were expected out of Fuher, Schneider, and Jones. In 2005 big things are expected out of Lee, Jones, and Chorney. Once again younger players with less experience. Big difference here was we had 4 returning defensemen who had played a lot the year before. This year we have one if Greene jumps and Bina can't play. Goal: 2001: Kollar was steady the year before but when he was "the man" he faltered badly. 2005: I don't see this happening with Lamourouex and Parise so this is a big plus. The big question is defense. I think the forwards will work themselves out and will be very competitive if the freshmen can handle the grind of the WCHA. Defensively, the freshmen need to contribute immediately and pretty much be a stud right away like Peltier, Goligowski, and Hagemo did for the Gophs last year. Except I hope our guys aren't hurt as much. I agree with JK that the WCHA in 2005 wil be tougher than in 2001 so this could be a .500 year. Here's hoping that we make the WCHA and the NCAAs. Anything more than that will probably be gravy. Also keep in mind that 2001 team came out of the chute pretty hot and won some games they probably shouldn't have early on. But they also got pasted 7-2 by Minnesota in the first round of the playoffs.