Chris

UND has enough of a reputation there that I think most every kid playing at Shattuck at least considers the possibility of playing at UND.

All the cool kids are into Tom Wolfe these days.

Hughes plays at Shattuck, so he's at least somewhat interested in North Dakota, but UND hasn't talked with him yet. It's very wide open in terms of which school he'll choose, but I get the feeling that it won't be North Dakota, unless circumstances change.

How often do players hit 40 points on a sub-.500 team? It's not that they were bad offensively, they were just bad in general. You're basically talking about four seasons between now and when they had Heatley that nobody reached 40 points. One was Sauer's last season when they were awful, one was Eaves first season, when they were awful, one was Eaves second season, when Rene Bourque came close to 40 points, and then last season, when they need a late season to just sneak over .500.

Pavelski scored more points in the WCHA as a sophomore than anybody on UND's team. I guess Stafford, Zajac, and Oshie weren't even ok.

Why? Even if Oshie goes out and violates his probation, it's not like he'll miss any hockey games.

There was a mix-up in communication on my part. He wasn't offered a spot on the team yet, but regardless of what happens, he'll be back at Edina.

I'm almost positive that he's grown since last year. He looked a little taller and skinnier than he did last summer. I'd guess he's about 5'11" 170 now.

Matt Frattin of Fort Saskatchewan was reportedly at North Dakota this weekend.

There's no rule about other schools talking to a player after he is verbally committed. Since it's an unofficial thing that doesn't exist in the eyes of the NCAA, there's nothing to stop teams from doing it. A lot of teams stop recruiting kids once they've verbally committed because it's kind of a Gentleman's Rule to stay away from kids that have already made a choice, and it's a pretty poor use of resources since a kid isn't likely to change his mind. Some of that is starting to change a bit in college hockey because kids are committing so early. Smaller schools are more willing to take a chance on a kid early, which means some of the bigger name schools either have to also gamble on offering scholarships to kids earlier than they would like, or they have to recruit kids that have already made verbal commitments.

His dad played football for Minnesota, so I'd assume that would be his top choice.

I'm fairly confident that Bishop finished his classes. Since he wants to come back to college hockey, it was pretty important that he did. If hockey programs end up falling too low, they will get punished. Baseball seemed to be the sport that was the hardest hit last year.

Little Caesar's Midget Major team isn't that great. The big Detroit-area AAA programs(Honeybaked, to a lesser extent Caesar's, and to a much lesser extent Belle Tire) are all freaking amazing at the Midget Minor level and then all their best players leave for the NTDP, or major juniors, or the USHL and they're left with pretty average midget major teams. If anybody gets a chance to go and watch the LA Jr. Kings, I'd recommend it. They've got forward Troy Power and defenseman Max Nicastro who I think are two of the better prospects for their age group, as well as a couple other kids with a good shot at playing college hockey.

Yeah, I knew who it was. Hey, if you can convince her to sit out the year, maybe you guys could recruit her to play goal for you.

On behalf of the rest of the WCHA, I'd like to respectfully point out that he has worse stats than a girl.

I know that's what Woog said, but that is 100% wrong. Everybody knows when you make that sav you're supposed to keep your stick behind your glove in case, for whatever reason, you misplay the puck and don't stop it with your glove. The stick is there as a second line of defense. Tormey didn't have time to bring his stick in front of his glove after he covered it. That's the type of thing from Woog that really bugs me. He's a great guy, but sometimes extremely poor as an announcer.

That's just a bit south of reality. Wisconsin and Minnesota both definitely talked to him, but they talk to dozens and dozens of kids. Neither team ever ended up offering him a scholarship. I also got the feeling that Michigan's offer was solely for '08-09, whereas UND said he at least had the chance to come in next year if he plays great. I still think we won't start in college until the '08 season though.

He didn't have a great tryout camp with Omaha, and they went with Scott Gudmanson who committed to Wisconsin, and Jordan Tibbett, who is a young goalie that is going to be around next year. I wouldn't mind see him play another year of juniors next year though, since he'll be behind two pretty good goalies at MSU.

http://westerncollegehockey.blogspot.com/2...rth-dakota.html

Nope, but I'm also not usually the first person to hear about this stuff in most cases. I just try to be second or third to hear about it. I'm asking around, but the odds of me a)getting a response and b)getting a response I can use before it gets announced, aren't all that great. I did hear from someone in BC that Riley Nash will probably go out to Cornell to play with his brother, but I'm not enitrely sure how reliable that is, or if that situation has changed recently. In any case, I don't think UND would be the favorite for him, but you never know.

Bruneteau is an early '89, so he's eligible for the draft. It could just be an oversight on their part. Denver's Brock Trotter didnt' make the preliminary list either and I thought he should have, and a few years ago, the CSB forgot to include Brent Seabrook in their preliminary rankings in 2003, and he ended up going 14th overall.

Kord Miller is technically from Wisconsin, but he's playing for Detroit Honeybaked this year and his dad used to coach at Michigan, so his connection to Wisconsin is slim at best. Morbeck is a good goalie for his age, but that's too young to start projecting goalies. Plus, he had a pretty good team playing in front of him at Selects. It's probably not a huge coincidence that the next best goalie statistically was the other goalie from his team.

http://westerncollegehockey.blogspot.com/2...hy-shocker.html Mike Cichy of the NTDP team. This is a huge surprise for most people in the hockey world.

Trust me, you didn't want Walski playing this weekend. He's a walk-on practice goalie for a reason. Grieco was ok last weekend. He gave up a soft goal in each game, but overall was decent. Most of the goals were powerplay goals or bad turnovers by the defense that led to breakaways. He made some fairly big saves, including a couple highlight reel saves. Things definitely could have been much worse for the Sioux considering the circumstances.

There won't be thousands of tickets available for these games. Last weekend they drew just over 4000 people, and the capacity is 4800. This weekend might draw a few more just because the Sioux always seem to draw big crowds in Mankato. My guess is that some tickets will still be available at the door, but I'd get there as early as possible.