tnt

No they didn’t, but they can only do what they can do at this point, and it was far from UND getting embarrassed as you expected.

Wow, we win and negatives are what you focus on. When did you become GF hockey?

Blake does that too.

If it helped with team discipline in the future it wouldn’t be a bad thing, however we are well past the rest of the players taking it seriously this far in, much like when Rhett Gardner was finally benched.

Slim chances, unless Miami can beat Omaha, but it is still possible to finish ahead of Omaha, since we play them. Guessing St. Cloud doesn’t lose out the rest of the way, so either scenario is pretty unlikely, but UND just has to play well and have at least a little mojo going into post season.

Win tomorrow, hope Miami can upset Omaha, then hope either St. Cloud or Omaha sweeps each other next week. Of course, UND has to keep winning.

No five minute majors tomorrow, and why not just stay out of the box period.

That was interference, but St. Cloud shouldn’t have had a power play when they scored their 2nd goal because that was classic interference that led to a chance in front, and then they called the subsequent cross check on UND. Consistency please.

If I was Peart, I wouldn’t be sacrificing a chance at a pro career by opening yourself up to a check from behind into the boards. Based on the college rule, the refs made the right call, but it was obvious what happened, and they could have given St.Cloud a penalty for cross checking Gaber after to offset the lack of self care by Peart.

https://www.ncaa.com/championships/icehockey-men/d1/future-info Looks like we don't host an NCAA regional next year, so we will probably get in the tournament. I assume that is a typo for the 2025 regional host in Fargo.

Are you thinking Frisch, or are you being facetious?

Really could use a dependable all around guy like Connor Ford this year, but since his numbers weren’t huge last year, people think he wasn’t a big loss. That is why going solely on offensive stats is a big mistake. Heart and soul guys that do things right and make the smart play 90% of the time are indispensable.

Don’t forget about Mac Swanson, who said the coaching staff was the reason he chose UND. We do need to get back to being a hard forechecking team that can still take care of their own end. To be frank, teams like Western always seem to be hard on the forecheck and buzzing in the offensive zone. Maybe the best defense for us is to be constantly buzzing in the offensive zone, without that extra turnover at the blue line that is killing us with odd man rushes going the other way.

I really don’t think we have to reinvent the wheel. I think the team overachieved last year with all of the new guys, and I think they thought everything would be handed to them. We all expressed concern that we don’t pull a St. Cloud with everyone coming back, so that is the coaches job to instill that in his players. If they get back to needing to prove something and do the off-season work to make that happen, there can be a quick turnaround. This is not something that should be happening frequently. I recall they had a nice system in place under Hakstol where they would always have options of people to bring in, depending on development and experience, but that seems to be a bit broken with Covid and the portal. They need to get back to that system and figure out a good mix, especially at goaltending. Let’s get this fixed.

I would argue that the reason we aren't successful is because we seem to be a little softer than we used to be. When we keep talking "no swagger" on the years we are down, there is a problem in the guys we are recruiting. We would always have some skill guys and a complement of players that just had an edge and would go through a brick wall for the team. Everyone would always say that we would be the hardest working team and were just plain hard to play against. When I look at our roster, there aren't that many players I look at and think their distinguishing characteristic is being tough to play against. Some of the defensive lapses are due to being mentally lazy, and some from being physically lazy, and those aren't thing usually associated with UND hockey. Need to find a way to right the ship and truly be a team of "culture"!

One has to wonder why you are here then. Complain about it, but stay. We do live in a free country, do we not?

Who is it this year, Isaac Howard? I’ll take the non Blue Chip Jackson Blake.

https://www.collegehockeynews.com/stats/team/Minnesota-Duluth/36/overall,20172018 Duluth won a National Championship with 5 freshmen defensemen, why not us? Of course, guys like Mikey Anderson and Scott Perunovich help, but hopefully we get a few that can step up right away. After this year, maybe we need a few guys that haven't been a part of the bad habits that somehow transpired this year.

I agree, introspection is needed. You need only look at Omaha who everyone thought would be a cellar dweller with all the guys they lost, and not having the same recruiting edge, and the fact that they most likely will finish ahead of us requires a deep look in the mirror. Our prime time games where the rest of the country is watching have not been great lately, and down the road if potential recruits aren't seeing North Dakota in the NCAA playoffs, that is going to hurt recruiting even more.

Not sure what you’re getting at. Are you saying we are exhausted from the grind? If anyone should be tired from the grind, it should be Denver who shared the Penrose and has had longer seasons than us, with longer post seasons. If anything, I think this team had Fat Cat syndrome at the beginning of the year, thinking that post season and home ice would be a given. They had St. Cloud as a lesson from last year, and they still didn’t come back with a passion, and it looks to me with the regression of many, especially on the back end, that they didn’t put in the extra work over the summer to bring their game to the next level. Watching the pregame video they created for this year, showing the disappointment from the season ending loss to Notre Dame, sure didn’t seem to manifest itself how they came into this season. I assume they still have season ending talks about expectations coming into the year for each individual, so not sure why so much regression.

This is definitely not the year to be questioning our pp.

So is Isaac Howard regressing under Sandelin? He was a first round draft pick, and Blake, a fourth rounder has outperformed him by a bit. Howard may end up better, because everyone transitions at a different rate, even some so called Blue Chippers.

When we do, people complain about them -- Hain, Caulfield!

For real, they would bring in two portal goalies? How does Duluth get Gajan, and we are sitting here possibly needing to be bringing in two portals? Doing that would be admitting total whiff on recruiting. Would think Karl would be having a lot of input on goaltending recruiting and developing them, so how did we get to this place?

A lot of those guys will be gone next year, so Slipec will get an opportunity to prove himself.