farce poobah

Oh, and if anyone actually does this, I'll contribute to reimbursing them for any legal fees incurred.

Getting it on the ice is easy. The hard part is getting it onto an airplane. Maybe put it in a kennel and dress it up like a kitty.

Somewhere, the rest of the NCAA is saying "dang it, why did we put Minnesota and North Dakota in different regions?"

Well, we certainly got outplayed tonight. Only a week after some of the worst puck luck ever (vs Miami), we catch a break. Which brings me to my point: I cannot remember ever winning an NCAA tournament game in which we were decidedly outplayed yet won. We've certainly outplayed other teams and lost (most notable recent game Michigan 2011) a lot of times. Can anyone else think of an occurrence?

Ferris is really really hard to play against. They make their opponents look slow and mess up passing lanes. Really well coached. We need short shifts and use our speed advantage.

Good. Now ferris has to come out of their shell.

Gary Thorne is excellent.

I love Buccigross. Hope he calls more games: "Another MOSH PIT in front of the goaltender..."

:) Iron is the goaltender's only friend.

With the win tonight, we also move up in the Pairwise.

With the win tonight, Hakstol improves to 13 wins and just 4 losses in NCAA Regional play. That's .765 ... which deserves a WOW.

Hakstol: A real determined effort. We got good minutes from Stecher and Thompson, and helped us turn around the game. St Clair's line gave us a big handful of big energy shifts, some vs WI top line. Our team thrives on everybody contributing and everybody getting minutes. Berry one step ahead of predicting who's coming on from the other bench. We were back on our heels early in the second, but Rocco's goal got us back on our front foot. We were too slow on our first powerplays. But we were better later ... and built some momentum. Zengerle is very hard to contain. Creates time and space, and thought McMillan did a good job against him. Wisconsin is a really good hockey team. But I did feel like we would play well. We came in loose and focused, and we will play another good hockey game tomorrow.

Weak weak weak Gothberg has to step up

We look fabulous in center ice counterattack mode

Nice prediction

Darn right Rumple looks like teh suk tonight ... Everything on net boys

The Zengerle lime is the real deal. But stop them. .... And we win.

In the NCAA's, the lineup needs as much speed as possible. Interference might actually get called by non-NCHC refs, at least historically. Not to mention hooking and slashing, which are rarely penalties out west.

UND has never lost to the Badgers in the NCAA tournament. The streak will not end this weekend. To the Badgers, I say "you shall not pass." The first meeting in 1982 - for a trophy - was glorious ... Phil Sykes was Mr Clutch yet again. The second meeting in 2008 was almost as good. Made more surprising at the time because the first 100 minutes of that weekend (vs Princeton and then Wisconsin) we looked listless. But an epic comeback and the OT made that another unforgettable matchup. Whatever happens, I predict this one will be epic.

Agree, that holds true. For those coming from out of town, I feel like there should be some kind of caution. If you're going to walk the streets after 7pm, stay in a pack (or go skyway). Less of a problem when its 15 degrees outside than in say July, though.

I was having a ton of flashbacks to the 1980s ... Not just the arena itself ... but its electronics (agreeing with siouxkid above) ... the music playlist which didn't play any music newer than 1996 or so. But for me the biggest flashback was going back to the first WCHA tournament in 1988, at the old St Paul Civic Center. That building was about half full, even for the Gopher - Badger game. The ice sucked, with players at extreme risk of injury. The boards sucked, with weird bounces all over. But somehow, that event grew into the heated-rivalry loud-and-louder WCHA Final Five that we grew to know and love. Here's hoping that this event grows to become the same. Certainly we'll need UMD and St Cloud to be frequent visitors. Certainly, there's a LOT of appeal for fans that is better / more convenient than downtown St Paul. More nightlife, more hotels, skyways to access a LOT (or get close) of the places to visit. And light rail 1 block away. I think this is going to work. But it will take a while ... maybe a decade ... and we're going to need some REAL rivalries to bring fans in.

Absolutely. Plus we have a terrific all-time post-season winning percentage in games played before crowds of 3000 or less.

Well actually, the main campus is on the east side of the river. But in the land of 10,000 excuses, I can see Gopher fans trying that one.

There were a lot of things outside our control tonight: * The ice, which was worse than an outdoor game. * The pucks, which seemed to be heated rather than frozen. * The refereeing, which I won't expand on since others here have. * The bounces, and Miami got some. And we had the worst puck luck I've seen in 40 years of watching UND hockey. BUT ... what I am most disappointed at, is that we didn't seem to adapt to the conditions. This game needed to be played like an outdoor game. "Everything on net, everything on net" both Crosby and Toews said to their benches 2 minutes into the outdoor game at Soldier Field this month. We never made that adjustment. The only adaptation I could see was that we were extra cautious getting the puck back to the points, but beyond that, no readily-apparent strategies that you expect in a game with bad ice, bad boards, and bad pucks. All of which were the same for both teams. In my opinion, this was a failure of leadership up and down the bench. ===================================================== Setting aside my rant for the moment, we still should have won the game, except for the worst puck luck I've seen in 40 years. * Multiple posts and crossbars. Some on wide open nets. * Multiple pucks fired behind the goalie and across the goal mouth. * Rebounds where the bounce went 6 inches away from where a goal would have been scored. All of which made this a painful, PAINFUL game to be a fan. I can only imagine how hard it was to be in the UND locker room tonight. Gretzky said "hockey is a funny game". It sure was tonight.

I know it would stick an autobid in front of UND's tournament hopes, but I'm really hoping for a Penn State vs Ohio State final tomorrow night.