jimdahl

1999 was Maine, BC, UNH, and Mich State in Anaheim. One of my personal favorite road trips ever (though everyone else seems to rip on the Anaheim finals, I thought they were awesome). Vermont made the tournament (not to be confused with the Frozen Four if Wiseguy ever reads any other threads) in 1996 and 1997. In '96 they won their first round game, then played a multi-OT game against bye-rested CC, who went on to win. I think in '97 they were one and out.

It's funny how critical you are for someone who is wrong. It's the NCAA hockey tournament. The Frozen Four is the final round with four participants (what did YOU think four meant?) Just like the NCAA basketball tournament is NOT the Final Four, the round coming up with only 4 participants is (ask IUPUI if they made the Final Four, they'll answer no). I did reply, twice. Why don't you address the substance of either of my replies? I listed all the ways I could honestly think of that you could say UMD was better than UND this season and vice versa. Looks like the Sioux dominated. I then pointed out how you admitted your motivation was jealousy of how everyone thinks the Sioux are a great program and I reiterated that we think they are a great program because of their storied history, their recent successes, and even that they did better than UMD this year.

The way I interpreted the meaning of this thread (cause it's what I was thinking myself) had nothing to do with the "regular" Gopher posters who come by to talk Sioux hockey (and sometimes a little smack). We kind of even like some of you. Rather, in the last day or two it does seem we've been inundated with newbie fans of other schools (look for the single digit numbers by their names) who want to talk about their school instead of UND in the UND hockey forum.

From his own admission, yet another of the random visitors trying to talk about things other than Sioux hockey is here because of his jealousy of the attention the Sioux get. Perhaps people think the Sioux are some great college hockey team because they are? I won't bore you with the history becuase I'm sure you know it. Not to just dwell on the past, I already tried to use facts from this season to compare the Sioux to UMD. Sure, it wasn't the best year in recent memory for UND (2 championships and 4 MacNaughton Cups in the previous 6 seasons), but the Sioux are still currently a better team than UMD.

Sigh. This is a pretty active thread in the UND hockey forum talking about an article in an NDSU newspaper about UND hockey. Activity in this thread has nothing to do with any of us caring about NDSU or any other D-IAA or mid-major sports. In fact, the whole point of the thread is some NDSU fans' obsession with UND's hockey program.

Coming to a hockey forum to make a post that says nothing other than you don't care about hockey is a ridiculous waste of the time of everyone here. Talk hockey or leave this forum.

Alright, this thread is worthless. Let's stay on the topic and take the personal bickering to email or USCHO. UMD won the head to head this year UND won better record, better conference finish, better PWR, better RPI, better Bradley-Terry, higher finish in the polls, and made the NCAA tournament. Demonstrating absurdity by example: UNC beat Duke in the ACC tournament. I wonder how many UNC fans are taunting their Duke friends right now claiming they're the better team? H2H is really only meaningful as a tiebreaker for teams with identical records, and UND/UMD were definitely not tied in outcome this year.

I think the biggest difference is that Miller was from Michigan St and LeNeveu is from Cornell. Hobey voting comes down to national fame because to win you need to get out-of-region votes. I think Miller was much more famous as "the league's best player" in the East in 2001 than LeNeveu is in the West this year. This year I think Sejna reverberates more out East than LeNeveu does out West. Therefore, my prediction is Sejna (though it's POSSIBLE that Kunitz and Sejna could split that vote, leaving LeNeveu with the award). As long as Kunitz doesn't win...

I think the Gophers are likely to be the favorite to win the league next year; but Denver was the favorite to win the league this year. Since you asked for our honest opinions of who's going to be better than Minnesota next year, I think UND stands a great chance of beating UMN in the regular season. As skateshattrick opined, so do Duluth and Mankato. I wouldn't even be surprised by CC or SCSU. Any conference outcome for the Gophers between 1-4 seems equally likely to me. To keep this on topic, I'd put UND in the same range, though maybe expanded to 1-5.

This is great evidence towards the hypothesis that I've put out in the D-IAA fourm: a lot of Bison fans jealously watch UND hockey results each year hoping UND fails, lest the Sioux receive yet again the national recognition in athletics that NDSU athletics has never received.

You can see this discussion took place a couple months ago in the thread below. Not much has changed since then, so I doubt there's a lot new to say.

I think Vanek's a little different in that he's more ready to play in the NHL. Vanek has some size and is pretty accustomed to using it -- I honestly think he has a little less to get out of the college game. It's always tough to convince yourself to spend one more year in college (for ANY reason) when you're already able to go get the big fat paychecks. Zach's definitely a familiar story to UND fans, smaller guys who evolve into great college players, but lack the size of NHL stars. Zach looked completely unaccustomed to being grabbed and held, as if this season were the first time in his life; however, he was great for a freshman and we wouldn't have even noticed if he hadn't been so talented as to generate so much hype as an entering freshman. If Zach takes some extra time in college to put on some pounds of muscle and learn to use it, he could dramatically improve his stature as an NHL candidate. As is, he'd probably still be an early pick, but would most likely spend a lot of time in the farm system.

Here's the release from the MTU site:

Nice overall anlaysis of some of the big question marks, ScottM. Comments on a couple points: I have never understood the appeal of trying to emphasize local players. I don't care where any of my favorite pro players went to college, I don't care where my favorite college football team's players went to high school, etc... I think it would be a big mistake to let the "pride on ice" mentality seep in and trick us into favoring a local player over the best available talent. I don't see us doing that much, though, so am not too worried. No kidding. Was there a loss this spring after which coaches didn't complain about bad bounces, fans didn't point out bad calls, message boards didn't fill with talk of hitting pipes and shot counts, etc...? The arguments that the Sioux outplayed their opponents but got unlucky start to look pretty silly when you lose 10 of 17 games.

You gotta be careful there. As far as I can tell, this little war seems to be between a total of about 5 Sioux fans and the gopher fans who feel the need to come here to taunt. Glance down the list of top 25 posters and you won't find many names that have had a thing to say in this conflict (I believe this is my first comment, for example). The battle of short tempers and personal attacks (on both sides) is dominating the conversation on this board because, frankly, there isn't a lot of UND hockey to talk about right now. Getting in a pissing match with some gopher fans over who has the most storied program is of no interest to most of us, despite that recent success has emboldened a few of those fans with ridiculous hubris (what goes around comes around). It would probably be a mistake to let the half a dozen people you're fighting with change your impression of the average temperament of the hundreds of other Sioux fans here, as you've suggested it would.

Well, who do you WANT to win could be a different topic from the other poll, "who WILL win". I personally want to see UNH get a win (gasp), but expect it to be the winner of Michigan/Minnesota defeating Cornell in the final game.

It's also worth noting that the only game on which Bradley-Terry adjusted for home ice disagreed with PWR was the Michigan-Maine game. The home ice adjustment gave the edge to Michigan. If CC goes on to beat Michigan, Bradley-Terry adjusted for home ice will have correctly predicted every regional game.

An observation as Cornell finished off BC: All 3 advancing teams so far are #1 seeds All of those games involved #1 vs #2 The only "upset" so far out of 11 games (with only one game remaining) is Michigan beating Maine (#2 over #3) at Ann Arbor. Pretty surprisingly predictable tournament. I guess this means CC wins today, beats Minnesota and then loses to Cornell?

So I wonder when the real judges put in their votes for Hobey? If it's after the regionals, it's hard to believe that Kunitz stands much of a chance after the world saw what a cheap goon he was against BOTH teams Ferris played*. We've all heard the rumors all year, but it was pretty stunning to actually see it live and in color. If I were a judge it would sure influence me. If a lot of people don't vote until after the regionals, I wonder how important a good game tomorrow is for Sejna's chances? *--Disclaimer: it would be a big mistake to read my complaining about Kunitz being a hack as having anything to do with outcome of either game in which he played this weekend.

Thanks to John Whelan, here are the Bradley-Terry adjusted for home ice predicted odds for each team to advance from the regionals (win 2 games): and the sports book odds:

Thanks to John Whelan, here are the Bradley-Terry adjusted for home ice predicted odds for each team to advance from the regionals (win 2 games): and the sports book odds:

Thanks to John Whelan, here are the Bradley-Terry adjusted for home ice predicted odds for each team to advance from the regionals (win 2 games): and the sport book odds:

Thanks to John Whelan, here are the Bradley-Terry adjusted for home ice predicted odds for each team to advance from the regionals (win 2 games): and the sports book odds:

Alright, let's keep this at the top for a day. Watch the weather and plan accordingly, you don't want to be trying to hurry through bad weather to make a game. Sounds like it could get pretty bad, according to the STrib.

I assumed by webcast they mean video. The bandwidth to serve a decent video signal would be a lot more expensive, which would also explain the desire to charge a fee (though it looks like there would also be a hefty profit built in).