farce poobah

USA hockey could do a lot worse than sending the U-18 team to the Olympics . These guys are very respectable. Plus they are unbeaten in the Big Ten 3-0 so far.

For the first time in a while, I may actually check on the polls when they come out on Monday… interesting take on sentiment in the college hockey world.

Kudos to Brad Schlossman, who's used his Twitter platform to skewer, flame and troll Michigan these last couple days. And Kudos to Michigan Tech for getting a result tonight. Well done boys.

This afternoon's "results": Penn State vs Maine, scheduled for the weekend, is cancelled and won't be rescheduled. (Positive results in the Maine camp.) Quinnipiac vs Princeton, postponed, likely to be rescheduled.

The Michigan: "A really cool lacrosse-style goal." "Chickening out of a game because you are scared to lose."

Oh, and we can also say goodbye to the Great Lakes Invitational, one of the best holiday traditions in the sport. (not to mention who in their right mind would schedule a nonconference game with Michigan in the future. Here’s hoping Mel chicken Pearson experiences a broad backlash.)

Time for NCAA RulesCommittee to define what’s allowable. Michigan vs Weatern should go onto the books as a forfeit, and be part of the Pairwise. English football has a standard of “13 players and one of them a goaltender” ; if you have that many you play or forfeit. We need a bright line objective standard like that in NCAA play too.

Good thing Fenton will be in charge soon.

How to kill off your basketball fans ... chapter 79: schedule the in state rivalry games so they overlap and fans have to choose watching one or the other. That fails marketing 101. (There's a good case study there for an enterprising student...)

If any of UND's current (or former) players get the opportunity to play for their country in the Olympic Games, I hope they jump on it. Those opportunities come rarely if ever, and who knows if you ever get the chance again. From the POV of a UND hockey fan: The halls of the Ralph are filled with former players getting Gold Medals, hoisting Stanley Cups, and every recruit who comes in will get to see a few more. Whatever we may lose in the short term, we more than gain in the long term.

Has it really been 20 years? wowser. Some parts of that game feel like it was just yesterday: a couple Beasley slams that brought down the house, and yeah Boschee's reception.

I'm happy to see the NCHC website has been updated / corrected. https://www.nchchockey.com/stats/division_instance/435714?order_by=hkspts&order_dir=DESC&stat_tab=ice_hockey_skater&subseason=771120

I wonder how many of those penalties and minutes were offsetting. I doubt the box scores exist anymore, so actual numbers couldn't be re-created. My recollection is a lot of fighting majors where he drew an opponent into the box with him. (5+10 or 2+2+10) If he was going to give the opponent a power play, he was getting his money's worth in dealing out pain. But yeah, I'll concede that Kleven deals out pain. Its just that the game has changed so much. In the 1980's with the average score of say 6-5, giving away one powerplay or two wasn't such as big deal compared to the 2020's where the scoring averages are half of that. P.S. Archibald's PIM at UND are much less than when he played Juniors at Moose Jaw in the SJHL.

With apologies, I'm going to retract this one. I was browsing NCHC's statistics pages, sorted by Goals Scored, and up came (still comes) three players tied with 6 goals each (in conference games only): Ethen Frank of WMU, Louis Jamernik, and Denver's Carter Mazur. But, upon further searching, I see that the NCHC site hasn't yet posted the box score for Western's Friday win over Omaha 4-2, and CHN shows Frank as scoring two goals that night. So, to the best of my knowledge, Ethen Frank leads the NCHC with 8 goals scored. My enthusiasm for Louis Jamernik's play is unquenched, and the observation he's getting better each game and getting some stability and chemistry with line mates, still makes me think the end of season could find him on top of the Goals Scored chart. Again, my apologies for the error.

Okay, who had put a bet on Louis Jamernik leading the NCHC in goals at New Years? And … I wouldn’t bet against him finishing the season there.

Next man up.

I’ve been taking a shot evury rum he say we r the 7ht ranked teem. Nice bzz. L8er dudes.

2-1 2 minutes left

With the new arena , they hired attendance counters from the Big Ten.

I didn’t like that last penalty on CCs Millar, but it makes up for 3-4 uncalled interference penalties…

Tough call against CC there at 14:44. I wouldn’t be happy if jersey colors reversed…

Vernon trips Ford …. Then Hain shoots it in. If that’s not a goal I don’t know what is.

Jammer! Vernon probably wants that one back…

Also a bad time to go down 0-1. penalty kill got drawn way out of shape there. Argh.

Dang, bad time and place for a penalty.