forecheck

I love this one! But you would need the person sitting behind the penalty box.

Student tickets did not sell out last year for the Gophers series, but more than likely because it was a holiday weekend. I was able to get leftover student tickets for a friend of the family and his kids.

We have a large dry erase board at our house, but do you really think REA officials would trust a student with a blank slate? Highly doubtful. Good thought though.

REA needs to do some research and find out how Maine produces their webcast. Dagwoods played the webcast on their big screens last night and it looked pretty good.

I just called Dagwoods, and the guy who answered said that they will be playing both Friday and Saturday night's games. FYI, Monday-Friday there is a free nacho cart from 4-7. I'll be there, mug in hand.

I'm a student, and therefore go to all the games for free as it is. I figured I may as well give someone else a chance to see the game for free since I have no use for the tickets.

I filled up with gas at Valley Dairy today and received 2 free tickets to the football game this weekend. I took them thinking my mom might come up for a game, but it was too short of notice. The seats are Section 208, Row K, Seats 12 & 13. If anyone is interested, email me at nimiller8@hotmail.com.

I think it sounds fun. As long as all the ligaments that I tore in my knee at Springfest last May don't get reinjured.

Have you even been to any games? There are tons of regular season ticket holders who don't show up for a majority of the games either. So why allow non-students to buy season tickets and only show up for the MN & Wisconsin series but not allow students the same option? I myself plan on going to every game, as usual, and to tell me that I can't buy season tickets because I might not show up to every game is absurd.

I would definitely go in on that if he would be willing to meet in the evenings. I'm unavailable from 8-5 Monday-Friday.

Today I went to pick up my general admission ticket for the game this Saturday when the woman helping me asked if I had season tickets. I said no, but asked if they had decided to sell season tickets for the upper bowl. She said no, so I asked what the reasoning was behind it. REA employee: "There isn't a need." Me: "Yes there is. I plan on going to every home game and it's cheaper for me to buy season tickets. Plus, since I'm doing a fieldwork from 8-5 everyday this semester, I wouldn't have to leave work every week that there is a home game to pick up my tickets." REA employee: "If students have to buy single game tickets there is a better chance that they will show up to the games, where if we sell season tickets there is a good chance that there will be a lot of empty seats." Interesting. So in other words, they don't want to risk there being empty seats in the upper bowl student section because those tickets that weren't used could have been sold to the general public for 4x the value. Of course, how silly of me. Why take into consideration how the STUDENTS want STUDENT tickets sold to them when there is more money to be made by selling those tickets to people who aren't students! Forget the stupid lottery that happened. I'm over it. I want to know how the hell it is ok to deny students the option of season tickets for the upper bowl based on the reason that "students might not show up for every game." Seems like if that is the philosophy, then no one in the arena should get season tickets!

It's been located in the Slap Shot's pizza restaurant since I've been at UND.

Oh brother. Jordan himself said that he hoped people pre-camped on Thursday night because he wanted to embrace the atmosphere and "comraderie" that was present last year when the students camped out. And I agreed with him. No one was breaking the rules to camp out. I know Jordan pushed for general admission seats this year for the lower bowl but was shot down. He brought up renewing season tickets from last year, and people didn't like that idea either. No one is blaming him directly for what happened, but the situation still sucks.

Beware, this is going to get long. The Sicatoka, first to answer your questions. Yes the lottery was just for the 540 seats in the lower bowl. Students that didn't get season tickets can get GA tickets for the upper bowl at I believe $6 per game (which I would need to purchase every Monday on a week that there is a series), vs. the $2.36 per ticket that I paid last year for season tickets. Almost 3x as much. We are not guaranteed seats since those tickets are first come first serve, which is always a problem for the Gophers series. As far as there being fair weather fans in the lower bowl, we won't find out for sure until the hockey season starts, but I would bet my financial aid that at least half of the lower bowl student section will be empty by the time the puck drops at 7:05. I agree with what others have said. People who are die hard fans find a way to get in line for tickets and are the ones who should get first priorty. I myself asked for Friday off of my first week at an internship to stand in line for tickets. There should definitely have been a weighted lottery today, with juniors and up getting priority. Here is my point of view of how this process went, and it's all I'm going to say about it. I am a 5th year senior who went out of my way to make sure I would be present to wait in line for tickets. I have been to every home game in time for warmups in the past 4 years I have been a student, several away games each year, and 3 out of the last 4 Frozen Fours. Last year my group was waiting in line Thursday night to make sure we got our tickets. Obviously going to the hockey games is important to me. Last week there was a Q & A with the student body president for anyone who had questions about the ticket distribution process. I attended with probably about 10-15 other people to make sure I knew exactly how this was going to work. Supposedly those present got "inside" information as to how the process was going to work, and it sure as s&!t did not involve a lottery. There were supposed to be 2 check in points halfway between the end of REA property and the front doors where students would need to get their cards stamped before lining up. That way if people ran to the doors, they would not be the first people in line, the person who got their card stamped first would. This was their idea of making it safe and avoiding mass chaos. It doesn't take a genius to realize that this idea was just as stupid as having 1000+ students make a made dash to the doors. How were we going to know when it was exactly 8:00 you ask? The president said they were planning on having FLARE GUNS or something else visible, kind of like shooting a gun at the start of a race. I got in line last night after the bars closed and accepted the fact that I was farther back in line. It's orderly, no one is drinking. Yet at about 2:30 am, members of student government come out and start handing out tickets for a lottery, claiming that they were concerned for the students' safety with the prospect of having 1000+ students rush the doors. First of all, this was an absolutely stupid idea in the first place, which is partly why I went to that Q & A last week. It was a dangerous plan to begin with, thinking that that many students could line up in an orderly fashion at 8am without causing a riot. So why did it suddenly dawn on them just how bad it would be at 2:30 in the morning?? They were absolutely naive if they thought people weren't going to line up Thursday night, especially since the student government president himself was calling people Thursday to tell them where their best chances of lining up were. And before people try to call me out on spreading rumors, yes I know this for a fact. Second of all, and this is my biggest complaint about this process, I don't think it was right that they changed the process at 2:30 in the morning on the night before the event was supposed to happen. I went to certain lengths to make sure I knew what was going on, and in the end I got screwed. I don't have season tickets this year, and I am pissed.

Rumors - where they sell towers of beer.

Alas, the fry costume will be retired.

Exactly what I was thinking. It's not like Blais was going to be here forever....the man is mortal. He may have left a bit sooner than people thought/hoped, but the speculation of Blais going pro has been circulating for quite a few years now, so it wasn't a total surprise. UND fans are sad to see him go, but I don't understand how a coach going to a pro team warrants flaming. What I am excited to see now is whether Karl Goerhing will be given a chance or not with the Bluejackets now that Blais is on board.

Keep an eye out for when tickets go on sale to the general public shortly before the hockey season starts. Log onto Ticketmaster and have your profile already filled out with your address and credit card number to speed up the process. They'll start selling the tickets at a designated time (it was 10am last season), and will sell out within 5-10 minutes. You need to be ready as soon as they go on sale. It helps to have a fast internet connection with the large amount of traffic happening at that time. The crappy part is that there is a limit as to how many tickets you can buy at one time, and last year I wasn't able to find out what that number was. So if you insert that you want to buy X amount of tickets and it is over the amount, you have to start over, which wastes valuable time. That happened to me. There is also the blood-sucking $8 charge per ticket that Ticketmaster added on once you secured your tickets. Beautiful. Hopefully some of you can get a hold of tickets to this series. I rather enjoyed watching Gopher fans leave the building last year after the Sioux swept.

Actually I saw Kirk at Coyote Ugly now that I think about it. I think he may have been leaving, and I had only been there like 5 minutes. Believe me, if you had stayed you would have seen me. I saw Kirk at the airport coming into Boston too.

You want it short and sweet huh? Typical male. How's this for you? Friday I went to the INCH party at Our House East. Two words: open bar. Met and took pictures with Jeff Sauer, Scott Sandelin, Brown University assistant coach Danny Brooks (whose wife has the same first and middle name as me), and Bill Watson (Hobey winner for Duluth). I wanted to pretend like I knew people. Saturday we topped off the last 1-2 hours before bar closing at Coyote Ugly. If you've seen the movie, you know what kind of debauchery went on there. BTW Sicatoka, I always wear a white long sleeved shirt under my jersey. He didn't want a shirt with pit stains. Get your mind out of the gutter.

As I'm sitting here trying to recover in time for the festivities tonight, I thought I would share one of my experiences in Boston. Thursday we kicked off the party at a place called Sully's at 10am. Needless to say, I had a few drinks by the time the afternoon rolled around. So we're at the Penalty Box between games when a guy comes up to me and tells me he loves my jersey, and asks if I want to trade with him. He was wearing a New Hampshire jacket and a New Hampshire hockey polo and said he would give me the 2 for my jersey. I didn't think he was serious, but with some encouragement from my friends and the help of an ever increasing blood alcohol level, we took off our shirts and swapped. Then one of the Boston College fans we were partying with, the one who had been telling me for the past hour about how he loved my jersey and thought the Sioux had the best looking jersey in college hockey (some of you might know darin from USCHO), flips out and says he would have traded with me if he had known I would give him my jersey. I just laughed and said he should have told me that earlier because I would rather have a Boston College jersey. He bugged me to get my jersey back so I could trade with him, but the other guy didn't want to give it up. He said he watched the Sioux win in Providence in 2000 and just loved our team. So I told the BC fan that I'll buy another jersey and we'll trade in Columbus next year. I'm just thinking, man if I had known that people would want a worn out jersey with a rip on the sleeve from a plexiglass injury so badly, I would have brought a few extras along and made some money! Apparently these people don't know you can buy jerseys online? So later on I started chatting with a couple of New Hampshire fans in the bar, and they were telling me that I made a good trade. Apparently you have to donate big bucks to the school to get the jacket that I had on. Some ESPN guys stopped a couple of us when we got off the T train that morning too and asked if we would walk by the camera so they could get a shot of fans in their jerseys. Someone let me know if I was on tv! Anyway, I thought it made a good story. I was a New Hampshire fan the rest of the night. Anyone else have any good stories?

I don't think anyone is blaming JPar for the loss. You can't win games if you don't score goals.

This is where I'm at right now. Looking back, the Sioux did not have their most stellar games in the past couple weeks.....Final Five, Holy Cross, and now Denver. Good teams find a way to win, but the Sioux didn't look nearly as dynamic as they have all season. It just burns me to think that a team that consistently underachieves during the regular season lately (Gophers) seem to turn it up a few notches in time for the playoffs while the Sioux, who have played phenomenal at times this year and have been consistent all season, just plain old ran out of gas. It seems wrong. But kudos to the Gophers, they seem to have perfected the formula to win it all. And for those people who are annoyed by bertibm, don't be surprised. About 2.5 seconds after the game, the epitomy of Gopher arrogance was calling my cell phone to pour salt on the wounds. Damn my fieldwork site for cancelling on me....I have to drive to Minneapolis for a week tomorrow.

Gotta stick with Sandy. Go Duluth!

My roommate and I laughed when we heard Bochenko. I wasn't sure if the announcers were trying to give Bochenski his own little pet name or if they honestly just mispronounced it.