tnt

It shows Hakstol became an assistant coach at UND on July 1, 2000. When did Grant accept a scholarship from Minnesota? It would be odd if he didn't accept a scholarship after that, and if he did, when would Hakstol have had a chance to watch him play to evaluate him. This question is directed at you Lomackman.

Don't want to speak to this particular incident, but he is a car salesman, so take that for what it's worth.

He graduated then but played juniors after that. Shows you that he was not that big of a recruit out of high school but bloomed in the USHL.

People are acting like losing Grant Potulny was like a terrible oversight by the Sioux staff like not recruiting a Parise or something of the sort. He was not a big time recruit by any stretch of the imagination. Nobody recruited him out of high school. He turned out to be a very good college player that added a dimension to the gopher team that they were sorely missing. Would he have had the same effect had he been recruited here where the Sioux have/had plenty of character/grinder type players? Maybe, maybe not, but to act like he was a no-brainer recruit is hindsight at its fullest. Some players are late bloomers, and recruiters don't have a crystal ball to determine which ones are diamonds in the rough.

Haven't seen a confirmation from Brad or Heisenberg on Panzarella yet. I assume that even if he is a recruited walk-on that he would be listed with Heisenberg.

They also let them go at the Little Caesar's tournament at the Ralph. I would think the NCAA would butt their noses into that somehow and make it even harder to win recruiting wars with Major Junior.

I totally agree with Hakstol that the rule about scoring with a delayed penalty and still having to serve the penalty is not a good rule change, and one infraction can change a game. It worked against the Sioux last night, and it might have given us a win tonight. This rule needs to be changed. As long as they're changing rules back to the old format, you might as well ditch the hybrid icing call. The officials seem to miss that call more than they would a straight out icing, and it seems to me that you are rewarding unskilled and lazy play. How much extra time did the gophers wind off the clock last Friday by just chipping it out of their own end. You shouldn't be rewarded by keeping the clock going by trying to hold on by icing the puck. I wonder who is on the rules committee who thought these were positive changes for the game.

Need somebody to make sure people don't take liberties with Grimaldi, hopefully for all four years.

I guess hearing that doesn't put my mind at ease as far as the tournament goes. Taking an opponent lightly in that format once is something that needed to be guarded against, but to do it twice, if that was indeed the case, then whose to say that a lot of the players think it can't happen again. Hopefully the upperclassmen can impart this to the others that may not be on their last go-around. I think they all should be well-versed now on the prospect of falling behind early in NCAA games, which has caused their demise in just about every NCAA loss in the last 5 or 6 years.

Exactly, other than the fact that Yale might get a high seed, not playing a high level of competition on a consistent basis should hurt them in the tournament, right? On the other hand, they beat us last year, so what is our excuse. We don't play Bowl games at the end of the year, so I don't know why everybody gets so worked up about polls and rankings. If you listened to a lot of people on this site, you might believe the Sioux haven't played anybody good either, because if Duluth isn't good, then who exactly is.

What was it you were saying about Canadian arrogance? Just saying.

Kind of surprised by this. Who knows what the impetus of this was. As long as the player is working hard at progressing, I don't know if the coaches would pull the plug or not. I think the Luke Beaverson situation was such that he wasn't taking the steps the coaches wanted him to for improvement, but really that is hearsay. Maybe it was just a situation that Mattson took a look at the situation of who is coming in and decided he wouldn't be able to be a go-to guy for the Sioux, or maybe the coaches hinted at that to him. I'm sure with the greater possibility of Kristo coming back than some of us thought might have added to the logjam in his eyes. Who knows, maybe Gregoire will stay for his Senior season. Hope he becomes a gopher-slayer with Bemidji State. It does go to show that it is quite a leap from dominating at the high school level (even in Minnesota), and carrying that over to the USHL and beyond. That said, I think he will be a very valuable player for Bemidji State.

Pretty sure a lot of people are looking at him. I think he was taken in the 8th round of the WHL draft, which is not common for a North Dakota product. I've heard from people that have said that Ryan Potulny and Jake Marto would play Division 1 hockey when they were in 8th and 9th grade that he is another one that has huge potential.

Don't know if this was posted elsewhere, but I just heard this horrible news. Christmas and life itself will never be the same for the Turgeon family. My heart goes out to them. http://www.mndaily.com/blogs/upon-further-review/2010/12/25/former-womens-hockey-recruit-killed-car-crash#

Tickets sold.

Yeah, at some point talking down the other league's competition and schedule becomes pointless when you end up losing to them at the most important time of year.

I guess I don't know many players that are 11 feet tall and weigh 322 pounds, so I don't think he is playing against players nearly twice his size. I know what she is saying, and it may be that they are gearing themselves against specific teams, but his size hasn't deterred him thus far and I don't think it will be an issue going forward at the next level. Who knows, the USA might wish they had him if they get into a long shootout scenario like the one where Toews took Frazee down to Chinatown.

I love that he will think he has something to prove for trying to make the next World Junior roster. I would think at that point it may be a no-brainer.

I have 2 tickets together for each night vs. the gophers in Section 311 in about Row J. Asking $240 for all four, which is face value with ticketmaster charges.

He may have been recruited as a depth player like Davidson, but I'm sure he is thinking if he gets his chance he plans on making something of it. I know that Davidson was compared to Dustin Penner before he came here just as an observation of his size and perceived upside, but there are circumstances where guys do come in and get their chance and never look back. Hopefully he is one of those players, although they are few and far between. The fact that I haven't heard comments from the coaches or players about how this guy is amazing in practice like you heard about guys like Lee Goren or Jason Blake, leads me to believe he will be a depth player, and that is needed on every team as well. Players that accept and fill certain roles are what championship teams are made from.

He doesn't start hating on them until they actually arrive here. Then they become evil, pure evil I tells ya!

They also had the Michigan / Ohio State hockey game on the Big Ten Network that night. What a hockey bonanza.

Agree, most of the time opponents will give up the shot from the point on the powerplay. Who better to take that shot in more open space than Frattin. If he is down low they are more apt to key on his shot, and he isn't quite as good of a stickhandler as Kristo who could then either stickhandle towards the goal, or get it back to the point. If they do choose to key on Frattin at the point, they open up something better down low. Didn't they say all but one of Frattin's goals are from outside the faceoff dots? If that is the case, let him keep ripping them on the powerplay from there.

I guess Hakstol isn't very smart to put him out to kill penalties then if he is that big of a liability.

I wonder if the rivalry can ever be the same way it used to be. I am sure the fanbase will get reaquainted with the rivalry at some point, but if the players don't have as big of a stake in the rivalry, I wonder if that will deter the fans from getting into it as much as they used to. When the players were bitter rivals it kind of carried over to the fans. With fewer North Dakotans on each team, and really not many of those players knowing about or experiencing the bitterness, I wonder how it can ever be the same. The days of both schools being composed of mostly North Dakotans is over. We are just as likely to have surfer dudes from California who are oblivious to the hatred they should be feeling, as we are to have corn-fed farmer's or rancher's kids who would like nothing more than to knock the snot out of the city boys that are on the opposition. I hope I am wrong and that once it is ongoing again that regardless of where the players are from, it can be imparted to them what it means, and they will respond in kind. But somehow I think the Fire and Ice days of Rocky Hager and Roger Thomas are gone forever, and that is kind of sad. To be honest, I'm not sure if a lot of rivalries are like they were before simply because of apathy, both from the athletes and the fans.