dagies

I saw an event tonite. I'm not even going to try and analyze the play. This game was exciting from a fan's perspective. More twists and turns and suspence than a good mystery novel, cold dead chances that were and weren't converted on, heavy hitting, some scrums, outstanding individual efforts. I'm spent, and I'm not even that disappointed. This game could have gone either way. We made a couple more mistakes the ended up costing us than the gophers otherwise I thought we played them fairly even, though the game had ups and downs at times for both teams. This kind of game is why I'm a college hockey fan. What a great time. I love my Sioux.

Kind of got our own routine going. Was there though.

Big game tomorrow night. I thought MN looked way too good that last couple of periods. Dogs made a dumb mistake in their own end and give up a goal at the end of the 1st period and it was really all down hill from there. MN was really clicking. They moved the puck with authority, and skated hard and fast. They won most of the races to the puck. Duluth didn't seem confident the last couple of periods and MN looked completely confident. Men against boys. I think the Sioux have a better chance to withstand that because we are bigger and more physical than Duluth. Hopefully we can use that to disrupt the MN passing attack because if we don't....Jakey bar the door. Briggs does a solid job but can be beaten. We've got to take a page from Duluth's book early on and crash the net and fire hard slappers that can bounce out to an open man. Briggs gave those up fairly regularly. Maybe we can capitalize. Hit 'em hard, men.

Yep, gloves are off.

That happened right in front of 3 of us and we didn't see what Prpich did to him. Wish I could see a replay because to us it didn't look like anything. I'm guessing it was something though... We were really impressed that during the scrum after Parise ran into King that Bina came all the way down the ice and took on one of the largest AA players in the melee and was basically working him pretty even. Then he doesn't even get a penalty. GO BINA! Nothing much that I could add that hasn't been said by others here. Good game, need a better one tomorrow.

I tend to think it is one of 2 things 1. Everyone's jealous (or they just don't like Blais). 2. It's not "custom" that everybody calls you when you win. Not expected. It's like everybody comes to your first wedding but no one bothers to come to your 5th. I tend to think it's #2.

We may be a moving target at the 2pm game depending on which end we're shooting at......

Geez, guys. We're starting to sound like junior high girls. "She likes me better than you!" Who cares.

Was there too. I thought King played a solid game but to me it didn't see like he was stellar. One thing, we didn't think CC had a lot of great chances, or put the puck in tough places for him to make saves. I could be way off but other than having a lot of shots on him I don't know that he stood on his head. On the other hand, maybe he's just doing all the right things and is a step ahead of the puck right now. CC seemed to get a lot of shots, but AA scored mostly on great scoring chances, odd-man rushes, etc where they goalie was pretty much left out there. Didn't seem to me that CC connected too much on those types of opportunities or they may have scored more. AA didn't play well offensively. They seemed to have great difficulty getting into transition. They have almost a non-existent forecheck. They played hard defensively but often were getting beaten to the puck in the defensive zone. I feel if the Sioux don't take them for granted, they will win comfortably. But if the Sioux think it will be enough to come out and play hard, it could be a game. They need to play very hard, with great confidence that they are going to take it to AA. They need to use their speed to open up scoring opportunities that will hang King out to dry, where the rebound is available to be pounded home. And we MUST play solid defense, and not give up the odd man rush the other way. AA seems to have little ability to create offense but tonite it seemed like they scored on almost all their good opportunities. Limit the mistakes leading to odd-man rushes, and they almost can't score. Now to Fournier. Occasionally I have read a box score and seen that he's been involved in the scoring. Must have been a different player than I saw tonite. Fournier did little defensively, showed no speed unless he was on the PP or 4X4 in open ice, did not seem to hustle back to help out other than occasionally. When CC was in on the forecheck it seemed Chris hung out by the blueline. At first I was critical of his defensive effort but then I thought maybe he's out there to keep a CC defenseman back outside the blueline and uninvolved in the play. So I don't want to be too critical there. It seemed to me that he had one very nifty centering pass (behind his back) from behind the net but other than that he looked extremely ordinary out on the ice, even on the PP. Where the US junior player of the year is I don't know, but from what I saw in this one game, we don't miss him. Hope I didn't just jinx us tomorrow... The player I'd like to see on the Sioux is Dallas Steward. That little bug is fun to watch, and plays with skill, and plays physical.

I didn't see that. That's great!

Yeah, here's Frankie Rickard walking off the board leftrightleftrightleftrightleft..right..left..right...left...right...left...righ t.....left......right.....left..right..left........right.............left....... .....right..SIT DOWN!

Usually that's my response but this time I just felt feisty.

One would think he could do better than you....

1 - UND 2 - MN 3 - UMD 4 - CC 5 - AA Though I'm pulling for UMD over MN on Friday. Frank Ricard, I'm sitting in 104 Row 11 and you can KISS MY ASS you biatch.

Good one Pat. I was going to do the same thing last night but just didn't feel creative and gave up.

I never would have said anything if I'd have known where it would lead.

Great article, Pat. Nice praise from Blais for both Jake and Jordan. Good luck this weekend, guys!

I received my little email from the Ralph with upcoming events and this was in that email:

Despite his handle, don't lump WPoS in with the Basil's of gopherland....

Tanya Harding is a Gopher fan.

Back in school during the '80's when we would beat the gophers I would always make sure to run out and buy a copy of the Trib the next morning to read Gilbert whine about anything he could.

This must have been the year of the snowstorm on Thurs. I still drove over for the play in game. I think WI was playing? Anyway, there's no way there were 10,000 people there that night.

No, UM didn't prove much when it beat SCSU but they did beat them handily. I know it doesn't prove much but when the Sioux handled Mankato after hitting the skids against WI I felt a LOT more confident about our team. Sometimes it's not who you beat, it's how you beat them. We'll see who the best teams are this weekend but I think MN has put their late season skid behind them.

I'm selling my tickets. Looks like no one can match up with the Gophers when it's playoff time.