jimdahl

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).

Because of a change in the way I've decided to handle timezones on the board, I reset everyone's timezone to the board default (CST). If you prefer to see post times in your local time, simply go into "My Controls", select "Board Settings" and choose your local time zone from the list.

So funny because it's so true, from ESPN.com:

It's funny how we form these mental images of the people behind the monikers. I guess it shouldn't be surprising that we're invariably wrong. I was at the Badger Showdown a few years ago and met someone in the audience who insisted I wasn't Jim Dahl because he's some "bigger old guy". I suggested he might be thinking of Virg Foss, but he was pretty sure there must be some other Jim Dahl associated with UND hockey who's a bigger older guy. You hit the nail on the head that my impression of POI was largely formed by the tailgating groups and hockey games. Of course, for every person we think of as being in the "core" group of sites like these, there are 10 others with wildly varying demographics.

It's a little ironic, because you were the one POI regular who I thought was older than student age. I was actually wondering how well the game would come together, given my perceived age gap between the web site audiences. I've always thought of POI as kind of a social club of U of M students who were interested in hockey and for whom their website was sort of an online clubhouse. SiouxSports, on the other hand, has always been intended as an information source for alums and distant fans, and draws a small percentage of its audience from Grand Forks (read: older). I guess the message board is changing that demographic a bit, so I was glad to see we had a competitive team lurking among us

Alright, I've figured out who forecheck is, and of course I recognize Notermann (j/k POIers). From PCM's link above:

Yeah, here's the latest word (effective 8/04) from the division membership chapter of the D-I manual. As far as I know, D-IAA has no similar requirement (yet). There are current rules about minimum athletics budgets (so low as to have no teeth) and attendance (not strictly enforced yet). Just using scholarship limits is an interesting idea of how to measure who's really committed at the D-IAA level. I keep focusing on minimum attendance rules only because the NCAA has given strong indications that they're going to clamp down them for D-IA. D-IAA is really tricky because a basketball-oriented school that deserves to be D-I might not meet a D-IAA football requirement, but has nowhere else to go. In effect, any D-IAA restrictions are also restrictions for D-I membership (unless the school wants to drop football entirely). That's why I keep speculating that limits for D-IAA are not imminent.

This is a problem Tony, you come to a UND message board and assume everything we type is about NDSU. We were talking generally about problems with teams jumping divisions and likely changes in NCAA legislation that could affect that. It's relevant to this thread about changes in D2 and its relevant to this forum about moving to D-IAA. I know absolutely nothing about Idaho, so I'm quite certain Idaho has nothing to do with my interest in the problem and possible changes in the NCAA division structure. You've stated here many times that you love antagonizing UND fans so I think you're looking for the same ill will from us towards NDSU and its fans. Our posts don't actually all have hidden anti-NDSU agendas. You thinking they do could be leading you to reflexively naysay everything Sica or I write, though we're actually both on record as saying we support a move to D-IAA! This thread has almost nothing to do with NDSU, so I can see how it would be confusing to someone looking for an anti-NDSU agenda. My argument is that there's a problem of teams climbing divisions at every level of the NCAA and that the top teams at each level are going to try to solve the problem. Forcing teams down based on attendance is my prediction of a likely solution to the problem at the D-IA level. Bison_Kent and Bisonguy seem to be able to discuss the issue with us (even through disagreements) and we all understand what each other is talking about. BTW-- no clever response to Star2City's post? That one was actually about NDSU.