farce poobah

Right now, he's playing like Perry Berezan. Nobody can knock him off the puck.

That's a nice fish.

Vancouver is also en fuego, but in a different kind of way. A melting down kind of way. Last night getting blown up 9-1 by Anaheim. That included picking 2 fights with 7 minutes left and giving Anaheim 7 minutes of 5x3. (Yeah, I'm smiling inside. It couldn't be happening to a more worthy team.)

That's just BSU trying to keep all the UND fans in Grand Forks.

TPT MN - channel 202 via Comcast in the Twin Cities

I'll drink to that.

According to Hammer, the goalposts are also named Thorimbert. And St Clair changed his name to St Cloud.

I would like to see us use the occasional one-timer. Not all the time, but really .... more often than rarely.

I agree we look very sluggish. That said, CC needs to stop shooting themselves in the foot.

Brandon Bochenski is 4th in the KHL in scoring. http://en.khl.ru/stat/players/244/skaters/

Yes, you can drive it. Bloody brilliant. Go Canada. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3i_bsfwPE1s

Duncan Keith has to be a lock. Michigan State. Patrick Sharp has a shot. Vermont. Chris Kunitz is a longer-shot, but he played at Ferris State.

Glad to have T! J! Ooooshie named. I suspect the big ice was a factor in his selection. And I have to say Parise4Captain.

I get chills just thinking about that game ... On the other side of that coin - "the most improbable game lost" - just 8 years earlier at the DECC, UND had a 4-zip lead with under 10 minutes left, only to see Duluth tie it in the final seconds. 35 years later, I can still see the puck rolling up the arm and over the shoulder of UND goaltender Bill Stankoven, and drop just beyond the goal line with less than 10 seconds left. Of course, after all that, UMD won it in OT. And perhaps the most "improbable game won" also happened at the DECC. It was 1999. UND trailed 3-2 in the final minute, then scored to tie it and send it into overtime. BUT WAIT! UND scored again (Adam Calder from Jason Blake) at 19:58 to win 4-3. I don't ever being quite so stunned as that night. Link to boxscore: http://www.uscho.com...nnesota-duluth/

I was one of those that thought we would be able to make some hay over this 12 game stretch. We are on track so far, with the promise of getting guys healthy over the next 26 days going into the CC series at the Ralph. Its good to see the boys beat teams that we should beat. And I'm still optimistic that by the time February rolls around, we'll have improved enough to win a few against the top of the NCHC (St Cloud, Miami). One of the optimistic signs of the last 3 weekends is that our young defensemen are picking their spots well to jump into the attack. Ausmus' goal last night - he read the situation and reacted quickly. Given that we don't have a gaggle of top-flight snipers (yes, I miss Frattin and Kristo) we will need to create offense from the D-men. Keep playing this way, and we could get to see the legendary Circle of Sticks again.

Well, for 40 minutes, the test pattern that kept interrupting my webcast was more interesting.

A little bit of progress today, in that Phaneuf got 2 game suspension for boarding Kevan Miller. That would never have been a suspension in the past. http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=695249&navid=nhl:topheads

In a related story, Gene Taylor said "Chyzyk has suffered enough, so he should get to play".

Interjecting here, and noting that iluvdebbies, and the game referees, got the penalty time served correct, according to the current rule book. http://www.rowaniceh..._Ice_Hockey.pdf Rule 4 Penalties , Section 2 "minor penalties", paragraphs e and f: e. When penalties are not in effect and not visible on the clock and one minor penalty is assessed to one player of each team at the same stoppage of play, these penalties shall be served without substitution. f. When penalties are not in effect and not visible on the clock and one minor penalty is assessed to one player of each team, with an additional penalty or penalties (minor or major) assessed at the same stoppage of R-42 Rule 4 / penalTies play, immediate substitutions on ice shall be made for an equal number of coincidental minor penalties (penalties assessed during the same stoppage of play) to each team so penalized. The penalized players substituted for shall take their places on the penalty bench and shall not leave the penalty bench until the first stoppage of play after the expiration of their respective penalties. Penalties of the players for whom substitutions have been made shall not be taken in into account for the purpose of the delayed penalty rule (see 4-8-a). Note they define "coincidental" as occurring at the same stoppage of play (and not whether the same infraction is called).

LOL. And 427 pages on "Former Players".

Tonight's Boston v Pittsburgh game can only be described as vicious. So much intent to injure. Both sides. Starting with the biggest goon on the ice, Chara, less than a miniute in, and continuing. Shawn Thornton should be getting about 10 games for pounding Orpik's head into the ice. And James Neal should get about 4 for kneeing with intent to injure. There may be more, but wow. Just wow. The fireworks on this board the next few days should be interesting.

Even in the Land of 10,000 Excuses.

Very encouraging effort and quality of play tonight. For fair stretches of the game, we saw bona fide Fighting Sioux hockey.

I too know very little about hockey, and only scored one game winning goal in intramural hockey in the way back, with a real wooden Christian Brothers $5 stick. But you won't see that stop me from offering my $.02 either. An assessment through November... STRENGTHS 1. Character. As always at UND (going back to the Gasparini days!), we have guys who will bleed for the team, who play injured, who will barf between shifts and then go back out and give 100%. I do not see any evidence of loafing or guys who don't care. 2. Conditioning. If memory serves, this group of players graded very highly on the dryland testing coming into camp this fall. (Best in ten years is a quote I recall.) In games, there's no pattern of late-period issues or 3rd-period issues that would suggest conditioning is it. 3. Fundamental skills and talent. These guys can skate. There's decent hands guys. And obviously with 15 draft picks, lack of skills can't be an excuse. It should be an area of strength. 4. Freshman class. In a season where we lost a lot of scoring and three experienced blueliners (counting Gleason for this purpose), this team had to put rookies into key roles. Calling out for special mention here: Luke Johnson, Paul Ladue, Troy Stecher. Although I have to say that Gage Ausmus reminds me of James Patrick; superb lateral movement and an explosive first step to create space. Just about every PK unit this weekend seemed to have 2 rookies. (Can't get back St Clair and McMillans soon enough.) WEAKNESSES 1. Poor decisioning with the puck. Lots of little mistakes that turn into the team getting bottled up. Just from this weekend's games, I recall half-dozen times when someone behind the net threw the puck up the wall too hard for the UND forward to get there. We also fail to clear the zone far more than I've seen in the last 10 years; a half-dozen of those plays as well just from this weekend. POISE with the puck is needed. Much of the time, we're moving the puck before forced. Hanging onto it a half-second longer and making a fundamentally solid pass would go a long way to getting out of our own zone consistently well. 2. Inadequate play without the puck. While #1 above is about the guy with the puck, this comment is about the guys without the puck. Often times, they are not finding the space and not becoming a target to receive the puck. The best teams at this have guys moving full speed to get open. Many times it looks like we are going half-speed, without conviction, and as a result, we're too easy to cover and its too easy for the opposing team to break up the play. 3. Goaltending is not consistently sharp. Its not clear to me whether this is a mental issue, a physical / fundamental issue, or just plain bad luck. But we have not gotten the consistently-sharp "B+" or even "A-" goaltending that this team will need. OBSERVATIONS: 1. The schedule has not been our friend so far. (Per SS.com, our SOS is #3 as rated by KRACH.) We've played the top of the NCHC (Miami and St Cloud), we've played some tough nonconference games. Now the schedule is about to become our friend. These next six series (WMU, Northern Michigan, CC, Bemidji St, Omaha in GF, Denver) represent a golden opportunity to get on a winning streak. If we're going to compete for an NCAA berth, I think we'll need around 10 wins in those 12 games. 2. February will tell the tale - back to back to back vs Miami, St Cloud and UMD ... present the last good opportunity to cement a solid enough record to get into the NCAA's. Based on NCHC's "mediocre" out of conference results, it may take 20 wins for UND to make the Dance. So winning 3-4 of these is a must. 3. I think the building blocks are here. A regular season title may not be in the cards, but a NCHC-tourney is a definite possibility. But there's no longer room for games that we aren't 100% ready to play, as happened Friday night.

Brad Malone with his first point of the season tonight. Nice to see him getting some ice time in the Show.