dagies

My friends and I had a little hex we'd put on goalies. It worked a few times but we must have overused it as the hockey gods have been ignoring it. Basically you remind the goalie that he has a shutout going, may never give up another goal, reminds you of the great wall of china, will probably sign a pro contract immediately after the game, blah blah blah. It resulted in a few timely goals but has been pretty anemic when called upon as of late.

Forgive me if you are already aware of this but I think a large % of the team is selected specifically by the pro scouts, the rest by merit of play. The again, this could be another one of those times I'm way off base.

Not sure this warrants its own thread, and the original thread is closed to traffic, so will post this here. It's close enough to being on-topic. I think we remember back to October when Coach Lucy said this after the McMahon/Vannelli set-to: In today's Star Trib, Lucy had this to say about Vannelli: Now, tell me again what Lucy was complaining about? Link to the article Lucia on Vannelli

Amen.

If he can temper some of that, and use it at the right times, and be the guy who crashes the net and causes havoc out front. Sounds good to me.

Love that story.

That's because of our cupcake early season schedule.

Wow, he's got a lot of PIM's for half-way through the season. We can use guys that can score goals. He's got a very favorable goal scoring percentage, scoring on about 17-18% of his shots. That's pretty good. I wonder how many he'd score if he was on the ice? In checking the USHL stats archives, only very very quickly, it appears more penalty minutes are being handed out this season. That might account for some of this. Is the USHL also cracking down on obstruction like the NCAA's? He's reminiscent of Mike Prpich who had outrageous PIM's in the BCHL. He's been successful in the WCHA, for the most part, but sometimes he'll take one at a bad time. I guess you have to look at the whole package. Prp has been a valuable addition, I believe. Hopefully Boll will know when he can and can't take a penalty. Love to have guys who play with an edge, however.

I second that!

You know, this was REALLY, REALLY funny....until I read it a second time.

That would be Daglies.

PCM, those stats are very enlightening. We sometimes crumb on the class of 2001 as having not lived up to expectations, but that class did produce Bo, as well as 3 defensemen who are significant contributors to a defense that is responsible for absolutely gaudy GA averages over the last 2 years. It's true some other offensive players didn't work out as expected, but there are/were some awfully good players in that class. As for as Matt Jones, Andy Schneider, and Nick Fuher are concerned, you can't expect much more from them.

WPoS, I don't know what you expect. Your fans revel in what Ballard did to Lundblom (sic Woog). We take a bit of enjoyment from from watching Ballard get figuratively pantsed.

Well, I know I was being sarcastic, I wasn't sure about you.

Sweet table. What a great surface for ping pong.

Nice review. Glad you all had a good time! Count yourselves amoung the fortunate to have discovered the Red Pepper. And don't forget you can order your grinders on-line.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned that much is that the Sioux did all of this Saturday without possibly their best offensive weapon, Brady Murray.

The strong effort at CC has me feeling optimistic. Granted, who knows right now if it will happen, but if we can shake the scoring slump we could conceivably win out down the stretch. I don't expect that to happen, even if we start scoring, but I agree with brianvf that we could show very well down the stretch. We played pretty well against WI on the road but got no points. We played CC well on the road with nothing to show for it. We've got Denver and Wisconsin in our building, so that helps. The opportunity to finish strong is available. We have to take it.

The only thing I can say is 1. I have no direct knowledge from a player and 2. I have heard enough from credible sources to believe that a kid (especially one who is struggling either athletically or personally) can be negatively impacted by what they read, including from a message board like this.

Question about scoring goals: Can a team get too focused on putting the puck on net and not focused enough about where the puck is going? Sioux teams historically have outshot opponents but what I'm wondering about is whether players lose the edge to try and make each shot count. For example, from what I read about games this weekend it appears we had a player with a breakaway who put the biscuit in the goalies bread basket, not the net. Last week I saw Fleming for the gophers with a bit of space and he aimed his shot in the upper corner stick side and guess what, it went in. I realize sometimes you miss the net on a deal like that but I wonder if we're too focused on just getting the puck at the net. Maybe that's accounts for the puck not getting by the goaltender. The shooter's job must be to not only get off a shot, but try and direct that puck where it has a chance to be successful. Maybe that already happens. I'm just grasping at straws. There has to be a reason why we can put a lot of shots on goalies consistently without scoring the requisite number of goals.

Thank you Goon, I see you are repeating EXACTLY what I said.

No, I'm not kidding. I'm talking about kids who often aren't old enough to buy a beer. I don't deny that later in life they may be subject to even greater scrutiny depending on their public profile, but they'll also be older, wiser, and more mature. Right now you have young kids. Yes, I do believe some of them read what's posted on these boards. And yes, I do believe that a trend of negativity can have an affect on a young player. It's obvious some of you have a difference of opinion on this topic. It isn't one that either side will prove they are right, so I won't get into arguing it in greater detail. This is my opinion, and one that I feel pretty accurate on.

I think they're more aware of what people write than you give them credit for. And as young kids, I think it affects them more than you think.

Bummer. Sioux fought hard, didn't get it done.