nodakvindy

OK, from the left field department, how about the Abracadabra Line, because they are like magicians with the puck. The Steve Miller band song is a pretty obvious theme and you could have a fan group dress like magicians, complete with top hats, ready to be thrown on the ice when one of them gets a hat trick.

I think chanting "2 and 6" might be a nice way to send the Gophers back to Minneapolis.

Coach Blais says they will score 100 goals, so maybe the Century line. Or along the lines of 7-11 and a little nod to our generous benefactor, the Vegas line.

If you read this and the other articles on the series, there were a few blasts at North Dakota. The story on Saturday's games took a thinly veiled shot at the academic integrity of UND. Hopefully this stuff doesn't continue, I don't want to be known around the country as the Florida State of hockey.

I think part of the problem is a lot of these policies border on the old saying of "Penny Wise and Pound Foolish". If you want to bleed every last cent out of your fan base you can make that choice, but what happens during an off season or two or when the newness of the Alerus and Ralph wear off. You can only rely on the good will of the fans so long and to continually burn bridges is a bad idea. Since the opening of the new area we have seen ticket price increases of more than 200%. And while the new arena brought a much greater variety of concession options, there was a considerable price increase from when dining services controlled concessions. How much longer can that continue? I think there is validity to the concerns of pricing out you constituency. I say this despite being a season ticket holder myself who still finds my tickets a good value. However, I am concerned over the ever-increasing role of REA in the UND athletic department. It seems everything has been ceded to them, and I'm not sure that is such a great idea. I dread the thought of an O'Keefe halftime show at football games or something similar.

Didn't mean to come off as snarky in my last post, and for what it's worth, even removing UND's hockey points, it would still have almost certainly finished higher than SDSU each year. The only year it was close, 2001-02, the hockey gave UND a goose egg for Director's Cup points. Another thing is that the Director's Cup is OK as a reference between teams in the same conference or generally geographic region, but due to the number of sports it heavily favors Sun Belt and West Coast teams. There are a high number of warm weather sports (like water polo), or outdoor sports where a longer season is beneficial to southern teams (like baseball). Conversely skiing and hockey are the only sports where Northern climates are at any real advantage. For this reason, high finishes by schools from the Big Ten and Big East (other than Miami) in the overall standings are all the more impressive. So UND has shown in recent years that it could certainly be competitive, and the only real barrier to being DI is historic and geographic.

Thanks to Jim for posting the Sears Director Cup standings of recent years, but in the interest of full disclosure, UND's results do indeed include hockey. The D2 Sears Cup scoring system includes a "wild card" due to the generally smaller number of sports offered at D2 schools. UND has received points in this category, and other schools receive points for things like water polo, men's volleyball and skiiing - sports not widely sponsored by D2 schools. This year's DI men's volleyball champ was a D2 school. There are also several D2 schools who are DI in wrestling, and I believe their DI results are counted.

Nice selective use of stats there CRH. UND had been near the top of the Sears Cup standings the last several years. This year was a slightly down year overall for athletics so the finish was lower than recent years. As for the NCC all-sport standings, it's a little misleading since not all schools contest all sports. It's no coincidence that the top three finishers are the only three schools that sponsor all ten sports. Also I note you left out the NCC women's standings where UND finished second and SDSU was near the bottom. This where nearly all schools sponsor all sports. SDSU finished below even NDSU which doesn't have swimming or tennis, and at 8 sports hasn't the fewest in the NCC. Finally, the only crowd of 8000 I could find last year was for the game against South Dakota, a school you consistently denigrate. The listed crowd for the USD-SDSU game in Brookings wa 8481, while in Vermillion it was 8482. Wouldn't be surprised if both schools were padding the totals in a little gamesmanship. So I'll take UND's consistent crowds of 10,000+ for hockey versus your one game a year against a rival you are leaving behind and trying to burn as many bridges as possible in doing so.

Greg Lotysz's story is on Outside the Lines right now. You see the old NFL guys who are beaten and broken, but it's even sadder to see in a guy in his 20s who has to live with those injuries for the rest of his life. Hopefully, the legal system can provide a remedy for Greg and his family.

This should be a nice move. Murphy has a good chance of playing with Nashville, joining former Sioux star Greg Johnson. The Preds are a fun team and its a good place to see a game. Their crowd is reminiscent of a college crowd, with Cell Block 303 being great. Best of luck to Curtis. He was one of my favorite Sioux.

He already may be traded, going to the Chicago.

Those are some eye-popping numbers for Radke, and I like that we are moving back into Western Canada. Hopefully he can follow in the footsteps of guys like Travis Roche and Curtis Murphy.

One other school may have a shot this year. Boston College - Pat Eaves and Troy Bell (Bell is probably a long shot, though)

Irmen to the Wild at 78 and Potulny to the Flyers at 87. Pretty impressive for the former 'Riders.

I saw ESPN comparing Patrick to Cy Young. But like baseball it's the No. 2 man on the wins list who is the best. Terry Sawchuk won an incredible number of games in a season almost 20% shorter than today, most in the days before the mask. And his 103 shutouts will be tough to beat. Here is a nice little piece of Sawchuk and the misfortunes that befell him. http://www.lcshockey.com/archive/greats/sawchuk.asp Also, in comparing Roy and Brodeur, while the Devils play a defensive style that means that Brodeur has to win games for them. Roy's teams, especially in Colorado have been obscenely talented and had the offensive firepower to win games and yet as great as they are, they have only picked up two Cups.

Nope, I think it is the right move. This is a national tournament. You shouldn't play conference teams until there is no one else left to play. You don't see Duke and Maryland or Oklahoma and Kansas playing in the Sweet 16. Having conference opponents play in the first round should be saved for Division II. There the cost savings can possibly be rationalized. They should have also split up all four Hockey East schools, but that didn't happen. Hopefully for next season, they will change the RPI back to the split is had last season and also make teams a TUC based on record rather than RPI. That second change was a huge benefit to Hockey East, a large part of why all their teams are highly seeded.

I must agree, this is a bad idea. A 4000 seat arena kills any DI growth potential. Also, having basketball games at the Ralph would only make the ice conditions worse, and that certainly isn't needed. What happened to refurbishing the old Ralph? That would make a lot more sense.

Being a very recent transplant to D.C. I was wondering if there are many Sioux fans in the area. Would like to find a place to watch the Wisconsin games this weekend and the Final Five is Fox North is carrying it.

Great line in the pre-game show. Tim Hennessey comments on how Denver did a nice job controlling the Bochenski-Parise line, however they did it. Gwozdecky response, "Yeah, holding our breath worked real well." He was one of my favorites while I was covering the Sioux, and he is a damn good coach. Him and Serty would be great at a roast.

I like this decision. Hopefully he can play well, and Siembida had a good week of practice at home, continuing to work with Craig Parry. If Siembida can fight his urge to flop like a halibut, he can be very solid. I like a Ranfranz/Siembida combo.

OT. Let's get it done!

Spie gets in done in the clutch! Let's go Sioux!

24,9,8

I think it's important to remember that the Canad Inn will be a LUXURY hotel, so while it is adding rooms to the Grand Forks lodging landscape, they are a different type of lodging and people that would stay there aren't going to consider East Grand Inns, Ramada Select Inns and the like. This is another area where Grand Forks was/is behind both Bismarck and Fargo. Fargo has the Radisson downtown and the Ramada Suites out by West Acres. Bismarck has the Radisson/Kirkwood/whatever it is called now plus the downtown Holiday Inn. Grand Forks has no hotel near its convention center, and the nicest place in town is probably the Hilton Garden Inn, still not really in the luxury class. It's sort of like Burger King competing against Sanders or Lolas, sure they both serve food, but they aren't competing for the same clientele. In much the same way the Alerus hotel is bringing in new market share that is really untapped in Grand Forks. And there must be some hotel shortage in Grand Forks, or Holiday Inn wouldn't have built the new HI Express out on 32nd Ave. They clearly some potential and hope snare some Alerus traffic.

OK, I'll play. I think there is a 33% chance that NDSU will drop wrestling in the next five years. With the additional 27 scholarships going to football, there will also need to be 27 new scholarships for women. This likely means two new women's sports, which will likely be money losers for NDSU. They may get by adding a single sport and adding additional scholarships in other sports. I am not sure if that would be feasible. I would guess that NDSU offers the max in scholarships in all sports they currently field. Some sports may have a higher number of allowed scholarships at Division I, but this difference is almost certainly not enough to absorb all 27 scholarships and therefore an additional women's sport must be added. It also appears that in order to join the Big Sky Conference, NDSU would have to add men's and women's tennis. Failure to add men's tennis was part of what made Cal-State Northridge leave the Big Sky. Of course, the other option in reaching equality is dropping men's sports. Looking at the Big Sky Conference sponsorships, baseball and wrestling are the main options. I know that NDSU was a partner in the building of Newman Outdoor Field, a fine facility. I think it would be difficult to drop baseball, although in a northern climate, DI NDSU baseball has virtually no chance of success. The College World Series is almost an entirely southern event. So I would say it is almost assured that NDSU will drop a men's sport, I think it is about a 2/3 chance it will be baseball, and a 1/3 chance it will be wrestling.