puck swami

Denver's Matt Carle calls Stafford one of the best in the WCHA that he's played against: http://www.cstv.com/chat/030606aaa.html

This battle you are describing is happening in college arenas all over the country, not just UND, and it's about more than just who stands, who curses, who drinks and who complains. What we are seeing here is the by-product of the ever-increasing arms race in college sports, where what was once a simple game in a simple barn played largely for students is now a complicated community event, played in a multi-million dollar sports arena that must be fed by more and more upscale dollars to fill, maintain and make a profit. As such, administrations are under heavy pressure to keep the balance, and increasingly, they are buckling to those who write the bigger checks. In most places, it's the students who will be squeezed, since they don't have the same financial power. Follow the money, folks. Your six first round draft picks are there becuase they play in a $125 million palace, and that palace is funded (post-Ralph) by full-paying customers, not students on a discount. That said, the University also benefits from the home ice advantage, and they should be cultivating an atmosphere that encourages student support, including their right to stand and cheer whenever they want. Anybody who buys a ticket should know that they are coming to a hockey game and not a church service, and that as long as a fan isn't drunk, profane, racist, sexist or otherwise threatening, they should be allowed to behave as they wish. There is a middle gound out there, we just haven't found it yet.

I wouldn't go as far as to say the numbers of fans are equal, for they are not. There will be a sellout crowd of 6,000+ in Magness arena, 5,500 of whom will be Denver fans. However, the 500 Sioux fans usually here in Denver are usually as loud as the 5,500 Denver fans are. It's a credit to your program that your fans are as loud and involved as they are... Denver has perhaps 800 "active/loud" fans, most of whom are students. The other 5,000 Denver fans are more passive older folks and young families with kids who only cheer after goals and are basically silent the rest of the time as they drink their chardonnay and talk on cellphones.

I totally understand. Had Paukovich been a UND player and broken the neck of a Denver player, I'm sure his name would be garbage/hated on a Denver message board, too. The only reason I posted this here is that there seemed to be doubts from a pure hockey standpoint as to why he was selected - that's all. Many of you who know my posts on USCHO know that I am not the kind of poster who trolls or looks to piss off anyone...

I know this may be hard to understand for some UND fans (and rightly so) but there was a reason that Paukovich was named to Team USA. After listening to the USA Hockey WJC conference call, it's pretty clear why Pauvovich was chosen, and it had nothing at all to do with his offensive production (or lack thereof)... In these short tournaments, teams need a mix of guys who can be slotted into defined roles, rather than an all-star team of players with the most stats. Kyle said plans to use Paukovich as a physical presence on the small ice surface in Canada, probably up against large players from the other team, and that "Paukovich's name always comes up when you are talking about the most physical players in college hockey." Kyle was asked directly by one of the reporters about Paukovich/Bina incident and whether that would have a negative effect on the team, and Kyle said that the incident "did not play a role in his selection" ,a nd that Paukovich is a "class guy" that "wants to do what it takes to help us win". If the tourney were in Europe, I doubt he'd have been selected, but it makes perfect sense with the tourney in Canada this year. Paukovich is a guy who can create space for more skilled US players to operate, and his skating has improved this year, as well. He also can play a crease role or a defensive center role a la Joel Otto.

First as a Denver fan, please read the following with as clear and open a mind as you can. What I'm about to write is another viewpoint on what seems to be a fairly one sided view of things in North Dakota. While I totally understand the anger and vitriol that keeps coming from many of you towards Denver, I think some of it is perhaps over the top. Try to seperate your emotions and look at what really happened, and try (hard as it may be) to think about things from both a UND and a DU perspective before you form your final judgements on the Denver program. First of all, the Paukovich hit on Bina was illegal and wrong. We all know that. No one can defend Paukovich for the cheap and illegal hit he delivered. No one. But there is certainly more to the aftermath and more to the venom against Paukovich than meets the eye.... Let's take a hypothtical here and say the roles were reversed. Say Matt Greene had made that same hit on a Denver player (this kind of play does happen in college hockey at least 20 or 30 times a year - the difference was this time, the damage done was severe), what would really have been any different? Chances are, not much. The ref assessed a two minute penalty, and because of the damage done, the league would still suspend Paukovich (or Greene) for the WCHA title game, and Gwoz (or Hakstol) would match the league suspension of Paukovich (or Greene) for the next game. With the stakes involved (millions of dollars, time and effort to get to that point) would Hakstol and UND have given his offending player any more of a suspension than Gwoz (or the league) gave Paukovich? I doubt it. This was a split second, stupid judgement play in the context of game action, not a pre-meditated attack (a la Todd Bertuzzi). The criteria for punishment is not based on the result of the action, but on the action itself. Had Bina been not injured on the hit, Paukovich would have had a penalty and that's it. The only difference on this play was that Bina got hurt, hence the extra games tacked on. Now, some believe that an offending player should suspended for as long as the injured player takes to return, but that eye-for-an-eye logic is not how legal procedures work in this day and age. We don't chop off the hands of thieves anymore, nor do we punish hockey players calibrated to the return of injured players. You might believe that this logic is flawed, but the practice of league suspensions are what they are. After that hit, the Denver coaches called UND's coaches multiple times to check up on Robbie. The DU team sent a card. Paukovich left phone messages and sent e-mails to Bina on multiple occassions to talk about the hit, and presumably to apologize, none of which were returned (that's totally Bina's choice to accept or reject). Then the Pioneers also put Bina's number on their helmets as a gesture of concern. Seems to me that Denver did about as much as they could under the circumstances. What else should they have done? What would UND have done differently if they had the offending player? My guess is that the responses would have been very similar indeed. Perhaps Paukovich would have sounded better if he had apologized directly for the hit in the media- but in this litigious society we live in, I would imagine he (or Gowdecky) probably had little choice about what they could say in public. You simply can't expose yourself to potential legal action, no matter how you'd like to make things right... As for Paukovich's persona, he's certainly no saint. But to paint him as some one-dimensional monster is proabably not a complete picture. He obviously does not yet understand the deep nature of how hated he is in some circles, nor does he lead the world in media savvy. He's 19 years old, and still learning about his actions and the perceptions of those actions. One thing is certain, though, he's not the player he was before the hit. Also who term him as a 'sex offender' probably need to learn more about the case before rushing to judgment. The incident in question took place when he was a 16 year old juvenile as a junior hockey player in a small town in Nebraska, and his record has been officially expunged since then. Additionally, the facts of the case were (and still are) very very suspect and not as cut and dried as the verdict would indicate. These were two 16 year old high school kids fooling around in a parent's basement, and the charges from the girl came well after the alleged incident took place. Normally, these kinds of cases rarely make it to the courts because it's two juveniles in a he-said, she-said environment doesn't usually stand up in court, as it is very hard to determine the extent of what was consensual and what may not have been consensual. The evidence in the case was seen by many to be shaky, and the small town judge made a decison that in many expert's eyes, did not fit the evidence supplied. USA Hockey reviewed the case thoroughly, and determined that Paukovich was more than likely not treated fairly by the judicial system and allowed him to play in the USNDP. Denver also investigated the case thoroughly, with many female administrators looking into the case, to determine if he should be admitted, and they also found that the circumstances were such that Paukovich was probably not treated fairly in the case. In any event, I would encourage all of you to be thoughtful around juvenile cases, as there is a reason we have a have juvenile justice system. I am certainly not suggesting that Paukovich is blameless here, only suggesting that this case is much more complex and nuanced than some the allegations on this board would suggest. As for the "mouthing off" from Denver players, I can assure you that every team does plenty of trash-taking on the ice, even North Dakota, It's part of the game, and the same players that are yapping at each other during games are also the ones meeting up afterwards for beers. I don't think anyone should judge a team's class by the extent of trash talking on the ice, as it is a pretty universal practice. Hockey is an emotional game, and we all say things in the heat of battle that we might not say in polite conversation. My final point here is that thinking people need to evaluate situations based on more than the emotions you might feel. If you clear your head and look at things logically and without predjudice, you will often find that there is more than one side to a story, and that the image you might have of a team or a player may not be as accurate as the reality would suggest. Now of course, you might think that a Denver fan would have a different view by the nature of his allegiance, and you may be correct. We all look at sitations from through the lens of the program we follow. That said, perhaps some of you will view Denver differently as a result of reading this, perhaps not. The choice is yours, but if you are a thinking person, I hope I've made a reasonable case that these situations are rarely as simple as we might like to make them in our minds. North Dakota has a tremendous hockey tradition, as does Denver. Most Denver fans respect North Dakota, and I hope someday that some of you will respect Denver as we respect you. This is a great rivalry because of the history of these two great programs. Purpor and Armstrong, Hextall and Magnuson, Hrkac and Gaume, Parise and Berkhoel. The list goes on and on. Good luck and we'll see you all in February.....

As a Denver fan, I totally understand the "F-U Denver" chant, and while I don't like F-bombs, in this case it was thoroughly warranted. Denver has wreaked a lot of havoc on the Sioux of late, and I'd rather have the crowds venting verbally than using other tactics to express frustration, such as throwing things or other forms of intimidation. I have nothing but respect for UND and its program, and the F-U Denver chanting doesn't change that one bit....

From this Denver fan's perspective, judging from some of the things written here, USCHO, and said in the press, Paukovich probably has every reason to feel he might be "jumped". All kinds of threats on these boards, all kinds of verbal threats at the Frozen Four (I heard several myself). Even Smaby and Prpich's comments in today's Grand Forks paper could be interpreted as quasi-threatening. All that said, I hope nothing happens. This is too good of a hockey series to see it marred by vigilante justice.

Sid is far worse, I totally agree. That man is the very definition of hack....

I have mixed feelings about Virg.... On one hand, putting 35 years of your heart and soul into college hockey coverage is a gift to the game and worthy of praise. He's seen more hockey games than virtually any journalist covering our game, knows the game thoroughly and he's always been a warm and generous person to go with it. He's a reliable game story writer, too... But.... Yet there is also a part of me that thinks Sioux fans deserve more than a 'homer' covering their teams. Virg rarely dipped into controversial stories that affected the program over the years, and he cultivated a reputation with many journalists and fans around the WCHA as being beholden to UND rather than to his readership. Newspapers should have objective reporters, not cheerleaders in print. When I think of Virg, I think of him proudly wearing a Sioux jersey in his book, "Fight on Sioux". Seems to me that's fine if you work for the school, but working professional journalists for newspapers should not be wearing team jerseys of teams they cover in public photos, regardless of what team they cover. I've never seen another newpaper journalist with such a public display of affilation, before or since...If anyone had any doubts about his potential objectivity, they were removed in that photo. Anyway, I wish him well in retirement.

As several UND posters have already opined, I think that DU was just being very excited, and probably would have been banging on the glass no matter where they were on the ice. They had just won their second national title in a row, after all, against a tremendous, emotionally charged league rival in a draining, physical game. I am certain UND or any other team would have done the same thing had the score been different. I don't think Denver was trying to intentionally "rub it in" - they were just a bunch of very excited young hockey players who were probably all having out-of-body experiences at that moment. And even if there was an extra-glass bang or two on Gauthier's part, take it in persepctive. I was at the game, and heard many direct threats among the usual nasty insults from the UND fan section directed at Pioneer players, especially during warm-ups when it was pretty easy to hear such things. Players remember that kind of stuff, too. All in all, both programs have been pretty diginified since the Bina tragedy. Denver went above and beyond by putting Bina's number on its helmets, and UND's coaches and players said all the right things in the papers and played hard, clean hockey. Now that Robbie is skating again, I think we all hope to move on to a better place in the history of this long rivalry...

It's not just Sioux supporters rooting for you, Nick. Us Denver also fans hope for your continued recovery, too. Good luck with the surgery - we'll be thinking of you and your family and wish you nothing but success in your hockey career.

You might find this link interesting..... http://www.augenblick.org/chha/

Seems to me the Sioux will be as good as the freshmen contrbution makes them. If the freshmen step up an play like veterans, the Sioux are as good as any team in the country. But if they play like freshmen, a mid-pack finish is a very reasonable expectation. I see them taking some lumps early and finishing third or fourth in the WCHA, but I expect them to be as dangerous as ever come tourney time...

Denver's recruiting philosophy seems to be similar to the Sioux, with the proviso that the Pioneers tend to get more players that will stick around for a while. There have only been two serious NHL defections in the 12 years for DU - Mark Rycroft and Matt Pettinger both left early, but Gwoz's recruiting classes tend to have more guys who are good college players but not necessarily headline grabbers or NHL bound stars. Gwoz has also had very good luck in terms of getting more guys with Colorado ties - there were 10 on last year's roster, and this emerging boomlet in local talent is mostly the result of the Avalanche moving here in 1996. Additionally, Denver has had success getting lots of role players to step up and develop. Look at last year's senior class -- Luke Fulghum, Jon Foster, Jeff Drummond, Kevin Ulanski, Matt Laatsch, Nick Larson and Jussi Halme. None of them were super highly recruited players (in fact Laatsch, Larson and Unanski were recruited walk-ons), yet all of them were key contributors in providing the kind of depth that Denver needed to reach the top. This year's DU recruiting class was not in anybody's top 5, but most would rank it somewhere in the 5-10 group. Fast, Marcuzzi, Butler and Testuide should all be competent WCHA caliber defensemen as they develop, and Brock Trotter and Patrick Mullen are both smallish forwards to help fill the scoring gap left by the graduating guys. With three all-Americans returning (Gauthier, Skinner and Carle), Paul Stastny's continued development and Peter Mannino returning in goal, hopes around here are optimistic. The two big questions are can these new defensemen step in and replace the three graduating defenders (Laatsch, Larson and Halme), and can the underclassmen produce a similar offensive output to replace what Ulanski, Drummond, Foster and Fulghum took with them after graduation. I think Denver will be in the mix once again for top 4 WCHA finish and an NCAA berth. After that, we'll just have to see...