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Correct. Local media in a small market will almost always try to deflect any negativity away from the HC. The Herald is no different. Expect slanted articles where feelings don't get hurt & honesty doesn't get revealed. Which is unfortunate, because a journalist should never be a mere mouthpiece for the program. I pay $9.99/month for Schlossman's reporting on players, recruits, game recaps, etc, not his honesty. Discernment.

Using Boisvert as an example & if he were being lured away with big bucks to another program, I think UND would move heaven & earth to find a donor to outbid anyone else. He's that important to the team. So that if he or any other player of his caliber left UND & it wasn't related to playing time, it would likely be because that player felt he wasn't developing like he thought he should be or the team's potential didn't match his expectations.

Your moderator skills are only surpassed by your sense of humor. If that actually happened, it would rank as one of the greatest coaching feats in college hockey history, considering they currently can't string 2 solid games together to save their lives, let alone 8.

MN of course has many more alumni, but it's the percentage of those alumni who have deep pockets AND are passionate about their Gopher hockey team. And I'd argue that shrewd coaches like Ferschweiler & Carle who can recruit & develop the right players + implement effective systems are more important than simply throwing big money at the latest Canadian hockey phenom. I thought the Englestad family had a contingency in their kitty for something like NIL. Maybe not.

All I'm saying is that NIL for college hockey isn't as daunting & threatening to smaller schools as it's made out to be..plenty of smaller schools are thriving outside of the B10: Maine, DU, QU, W. Mich, Providence, Mankato, BC & more.

Who has an equal or larger hockey fanbase & who has the more passionate fans? MN may have 3x the alumni, but that doesn't mean diddly if the vast majority of them are lukewarm fans or not even interested at all in hockey. The vast majority of boosters/alumni at schools like OSU, PSU, Notre Dame, MI, etc will be opening their checkbooks for their favorite football & basketball players, hockey is a distant third in priorities at those large schools, if that. Mankato, Quinnipiac, Denver & Boston College were also in a national title game during the last 4 years; all with smaller enrollments than UND. It's fallacious to argue that a school needs a large enrollment/alumni base like MN in order to compete in modern college hockey NIL... And Jackson Blake may have been ready & wanting to go pro regardless of what was offered to him by the Collective. It's impossible to say that NIL money, or a lack thereof, was responsible for him leaving without knowing him personally or him stating publicly, which he hasn't.

From what little I've read about NIL for college hockey (there aren't many articles on it), I've learned that this money comes from private individuals & companies, not from the institutions themselves; so it shouldn't matter all that much whether a school has an enrollment of 15k or 45k because it's privately funded. Unless someone here has an article stating otherwise that college hockey NIL comes from the schools themselves

Chess vs checkers

Just guessing here, but a trip to Hugo's to look at some towels for motivation probably isn't going to be of much help for a team that has some deep coaching & player issues. And besides, if a team requires stunts like these to pump themselves up, it proves that they lack self-motivation to succeed.

A successful season for UND would have been playing consistently well from October through April. While other teams who were finding their groove last November, it took this team until February before things started really clicking for them; losing & tying along the way to glorified D3 teams that tanked their PWR. Too little, too late & a regression from last season. And any coach starting Montgomery over Littler is demonstrating loud & clear that he is being negligent in his duties to put the most talented players he has on the ice.

Schlossman replied to my question & verified that Littler was a healthy scratch, which is absurd in a must-win game.

I asked Schlossman in one of his threads why Littler wasn't playing & this was his reply: "He's healthy. Moreso just comes down to them having all their forwards available." I think he means he's a healthy scratch, unless I'm missing something.

A coach's first priority is to put the best product on the ice, regardless of where a player is from, how much he likes his personality, how buddy buddy he is with a player's dad or if he's a senior. Loyalty to the team before any individual players. Simple concept. Have a hard time believing that Montgomery is more qualified to play defense than Komzak. It's these kinds of line-up decisions based on emotions rather than common sense that result in costly losses.

It shows on the official UND roster page that Montgomery is a junior, but you're saying here he's a senior.

DU, because they won the head-to-head.

If one wants to climb the ranks in college hockey & perhaps coach someday at a higher level, UND would be a very sensible segue for someone already coaching at a mid-major. Already mentioned this, but it's akin to, say, an aspiring fb coach at Vanderbilt being offered a hc position at Ohio St or Alabama. Herter also would be a logical choice. He has that magical touch with developing & getting the most out of his d-men at tournament time.

Just realized that Jamernik has been on the team 5 of the 10 years that BB has been a coach. Being he's a pilot, time for him to board a Cessna & fly himself, Kunz, Schmaltz, Wilkie & the entire coaching staff into the sunset. Out with the old, stale & mediocre; in with the young, dedicated & talented.

The reason I included the Cornell, BSU & RMU losses/ties due more to poor play/being unmotivated than injuries is because UND looked really lost in those games; the whole team looked uninspired & I'm not sure Berg would have been a dynamic enough force to swing the team-wide lethargy that we witnessed. But I get your point, it's nice to hash through these issues to gain a better perspective. Offensively-speaking, one sees what happens when you lack scoring depth & 1 of your best scorers is injured. Subtract Berg & UND was relying mostly on an 18 yo Boisvert, Perron & James for the balance of the main scoring. Ideally, UND should have 2 very potent scoring lines as a buffer against any injuries that happen during the season. 2 scoring lines/1 energy line/1 checking line.

One should look at injuries with a nuanced eye. Certainly they were a factor in losses to BU, WMU & DU, but not so much against Cornell, BSU & RMU. In the latter games, the reasons for the Ls & ties were more due to poor, inconsistent play than anything. The win against DU with a very depleted roster proves that the earlier losses to Cornell & BSU (also with depleted rosters) were more due to being unprepared/unmotivated than because of injuries.

Croal missed some games also.

Of those 110 games missed, how many were of those who were actually key players? Subtract Komzak's, Montgomery's, Johnson's, Kunz's missed games from the 110 total & you have a more realistic picture of games missed of players who really mattered.

UND won, as did Providence, Cornell, Bemidji, Mankato & BU..but zero movement in PWR.

There's someone here who has access to BB almost every week. A guy who could ask him if UND is currently gunning hard for some forwards. Put your media access to good use, @Goon, & get an answer from him.

Mostly a 5th wheel. When he's on, he's good (a rarity) .. when he's off, he's invisible. Doesn't strike me as a guy who's passionate about winning.

From what I understand, the 1883 is just a brokerage, not a source of funding. Not much info about NIL on the Internet, but from what I've read NIL money comes from businesses, private sponsors & boosters of which a collective can solicit money from; not the school itself. I would imagine that because UND hockey is so popular in GF & the biggest show in town (borderline cult-like), that there would be some wealthy alumni & local businesses supporting the 1883 for hockey purposes. Just last summer, Dan & Jolene Mikkelson of GF donated $2 million to the hockey program for scholarships. Would be nice if they could use some of that money for NIL purposes, but perhaps the Mikkelsons want it to go solely for scholarships. Then you have the Englestads, Rydell & other very wealthy locals that you would think are gifting NIL money for the hockey program because it's such a staple there. You would probably see more NIL contributions if the IRS classified it as a tax deductible donation, which it currently is not.