Irish

In other words - being "one of us" preferred. Same old same old.

Think Charles Bukowski

So in summary - Our program is a underachieving mess and we fire the coach. Then we had a chance to go with a young up and comer to turn this program around but elected to go with a coach who has been with the program for 19 years after supposedly a bunch of players said they would leave if he wasn't hired. We hire him and then almost all of our studs promptly leave. You can't make this up. We have to be the most inbred athletic program in the country.

Not sure what you are saying here - that it's a good move?

In my opinion a failure in his first test of leadership.

Wow - from what I can see Karl has been pretty ineffective - when he was hired I thought wow - here comes a great goalie pipeline - sadly not.

Agree - Part of the problem is how the Ralph manages the game - Stops in action aren't viewed as a time to fire up the crowd - especially after some great or physical play on the ice - it sees it as a time to sell more ads or blare some nonsense music or both. Steamatic races are mildly interesting but have nothing to do with hockey or the play on the ice - They have no idea how to fire up a crowd at a hockey game and from what I can tell don't care very much. Their big idea lately is to invest a lot of money on some system that rotates and flashes lights into the crowd - sometimes into people's eyes. The gigantic scoreboard could certainly be put to better use during breaks. The other problem, of course, has been our style of play lately - especially in the 3rd period. What would be an appropriate cheer when we go into a defensive shell? - "Clutch the stick harder"?

Can you tell us what was the issue?

That would require him to fire most of the people he has worked with - some for a long time. It needs to be done but does he have the stones to do it.

I really hope so - for some it is hard to reconcile Dane's participation in what ever the hell we saw this season with how he would do things as a Head Coach. As a group the forwards were among the worst I have seen in a long time. If he's the coach and they come out playing hard and fast we are back on track. However, if we see the passing, intensity, and game efforts we saw this year we are in big trouble. Sounds like you are confident it will be the former.

But will he clean house on the assistant coaches who were his colleagues for so long? He would need to do it but will he?

Did you watch any games this year? Our play was beyond frustrating - and they were still making the same mistakes at the end of the season that they did when Augustana took it to us.

Don't necessarily disagree - I used "Fighting Sioux Hockey" more as a descriptor of the style that we used to play when we were tough to play against and winning big games - not a reference to the logo (although I despise our current one.

We need to get back to "Fighting Sioux" hockey - not whatever you call the crap we saw this season - continued no look and crappy passes especially in the D zone, the lack of physicality, the patented "third period freeze", and the inability to put together a full 60 minutes of hockey - not to mention crapping the bed against lesser opponents. If Dane is the guy I hope he can do it although it doesn't seem like he had much influence this year. And Berry was shocked and amazed when he let go. It was brutal watching out hockey team this year.

A big part of this is our continual reliance on the portal for our goalie needs. Why can't we recruit a good prospect and develop him over 4 years. Many other programs can. I had high expectations when Karl was hired and in my opinion he has not met them even though TJ played well the last part of the season.