tnt

Yeah, I can’t cheer for St. Cloud. Remember their fans and administration when they thought they wouldn’t be in the NCHC? Nevermind their constant railing on our nickname in the past.

Could be he is waiting for their season to end, but who knows, Gilling didn’t wait. It would be great to have Cruikshank. Hopefully a destination game like Nashville and hopefully playing in front of a full house again at home helps tip the scales in our favor.

I know he played some, but that's why I said "a lot".

He sure didn't play a lot of center for us.

Still would like another forward. If not, Cruikshank, maybe Matt Brown.

No way it is just Feeney and Johnson as the goalies. I don't look at Moore as a huge liability. He had quite a few positive moments and had problems here and there defensively, but then again so did Bast.

Would think that Morrow will be coming on defense with how highly ranked he is for the draft. Would think that if he doesn't come in this year, he probably doesn't come. Some have talked about some concerns about him, so who knows.

I wonder if he committed to us, or if UND is trying to get him to change his mind.

Not quite to that level, but Chris Wilkie didn’t have a much better second year, and wasn’t as responsible defensively and had opportunity with the top guns. Not saying that Blaisdell will lead the country in goals, but taking that next step isn’t out of the realm of possibility.

Unless they fear losing some of these guys, I am always in favor of the extra year of juniors like Adams had. To have that many guys go through a learning curve at the same time seems like a big gap to fill especially when you will be fighting against some teams that are experienced to begin with that are supplementing with more experience. We will see if that is the direction they choose to go, but missing the NCAA again when fans would be allowed would be disappointing, not that either way guarantees anything.

If we build the roster, he will stay. Wishful thinking, but we need a few more positives going forward.

Yeah, his assists aren’t just from touching the puck at some point, in many cases they make the play. Knowing exactly when to pass it seems like an innate skill with him.

Doesn’t have quite the motor his dad had, especially back checking. Only a Junior, so time to work on the defensive side.

Wait and see how they produce in Juniors.

Then why is Minnesota still pulling in most of the big names?

Looking at our recruiting pipeline, other than the family ties, I don’t see any Minnesota recruits. Are we just not getting kids we are recruiting, or have we focused more elsewhere? You would think Karl Goehring would be able to pluck a few from the Cities. We used to get a few big guns here and there. We need to challenge Minnesota and UMD for the top talent in the state, because Motzko can’t appeal to everyone. Need to pull more guys like Hain and Frisch, but also pull top talent from the Twin Cities metro.

Duluth has done what they needed to do to win, which is all they can do, but making the tournament by some miniscule decimal point the first year, having to play Air Force rather than St. Cloud, and then having that same St. Cloud team blow a tire against AIC, not to mention getting a bye then playing a 5 overtime game against a team that played the late game the night before sure helped in those runs. We have seen teams that repeat in the past go on long droughts because it is hard to do, but then you will just move on to the next team that is doing well, and ask why can't UND be more like them. Our titles will come, but I sure don't mind winning league championships in the meantime.

We already do it a lot, but next year they really will need to activate their defense to generate more offense. Sanderson, Moore, Kleven, Frisch, are great pieces to start with, then add Morrow and Luke Bast to that and who knows who else. Our defense should remain a huge strength.

Agree, but it is also nice to not rush guys to college that could use another year in the USHL. Adams struggled his first two years in college, if we wouldn’t have kept him another year in the USHL, would we only have gotten one great year out of him. You look at teams like Mankato and St. Cloud and you see what those extra years of experience bring. In the past we had an edge on the aforementioned teams because high end talent might have edged out experience. Someone always surprises, but I don’t look and see major impact coming in that outweighs extra experience. Is Kunz, Bowen, or Constantini ready? If not, bring in someone that has college experience after you do your due diligence on their character.

The worst part is that because of Covid we couldn’t fully enjoy how good they were the past two years. Missed watching the game in Nashville with this group.

Have seen so many big misses by recruiting really young goaltenders. I think you can wait on most goalies and see how they perform in the USHL. We’ll see if Hedquist can figure it out at that level in the coming year or so.

You don’t last as a coach by holding grudges. Do we know why Motzko doesn’t like him? Maybe his work ethic sucks, or maybe something worse.

So you want us to go after a guy that isn’t good enough to start for Minnesota?

I still think you have to look for a goalie that can be a go to guy. Not that Thome can’t, but we saw what happened when Scheel lost confidence a year ago.

That’s a pretty general statement. Westin Michaud worked out pretty well. Without any help from the portal I think UND is fighting to stay in the upper half of the league. Will probably be in that predicament regardless, but they need a scorer to put alongside Gaber.