Big A HG

I don't know that anyone is asking for Motzko. It's just that Minnesota stock is on the rise and North Dakota stock is on the decline. UND has been one step forward and two steps back under Berry. Every single year on Motzko Minnesota has gotten stronger and stronger...no steps back so far. We are the University of North Dakota and we are playing a road series in freakin' Omaha for the conference tourney. How in any way, shape, or form does Omaha have a better team than UND? Imagine if the SEC had a conference football tourney and Alabama had to go on the road against Vanderbilt after having basically no post season success for seven years. Think they'd be ready to fire Saban? LSU only waited two years to fire Ed Orgeron after he won a title due to poor performance. It's been seven years since our championship and little in the pipeline to create a team anywhere near that level.

We have become the very thing we sought to destroy.

I hear a lot about good Berry is because he wins regular season championships. Don Lucia won six straight regular season conference championships from 2012 through 2017. He finished the following 2018 season fifth in the conference and Minnesota fires him. Bob Motzko gets brought in, cleans house, goes through a rebuild, and though they haven't done much more than Don Lucia did yet, the program has gotten better every season and is on an upward trajectory having won their second straight conference title and coming off a Frozen Four appearance last year. You could see the program wasn't growing anymore with Lucia. It was very stagnant and competition around them was clearly getting stronger. They were able to win games in the regular season, but when tourney time came, no one considered them a threat...and they lived up to it. See any resemblance? Is our head coaching standard at UND "be like Don Lucia", or should we ask for more?

Forbort wasn't a stud, but he was still a solid piece. First round NHL talent is going to hit more than miss, which is the whole point of this debate. Bring in better players and you have a higher chance of success.

It obviously has potential, but will Berry actually use it to his advantage? Or, is he working on trademarking the new NorKota jerseys to replace the NoDak ones swept under the rug?

Culture over talent....and whoever thinks he's a nice guy.

Literally smack dab in the middle of Oshie/Toews and Schmaltz/Boeser was Nelson/Forbort with rosters fleshed out by other highly touted picks and undervalued talents impressively recruited, such as Frattin, Kristo, Knight, Malone, Rowney and many others. They may not have been Oshie/Toews good, but were still very talented and were keenly scouted. We had a minor, allowable dip for a couple of seasons (but still made the tourney and looked competitive) before going on another run of Frozen Fours. Now more than ever do you need high end skill to consistently score. You can't throw a decent top line and three other lines of meat grinders out there anymore and compete as effectively. The officiating doesn't allow it and the skill gap has increased.

If he hasn't figured it out by now, he's never going to. He's had his own recruits for years now. Notice how many blue chip recruits choose not to play here now? Notice how you don't even hear about is in the running for many of them either? A few here and there, but not like it was not that long ago. Either Berry isn't recruiting as many or they don't want to play for him...both reasons are a problem. A college coach's number one priority is recruiting....or at least it should be. Your Alabamas, Georgias, Ohio States, Dukes, North Carolinas, etc of the world all focus their energy on recruiting. Coaching is important, but you need talented players to win. North Dakota hockey has an emberrysment of riches...where are the players? Look at Lincoln Riley and USC football. USC lost the ability to recruit the amount of high end talent it needed to compete nationally, so they did something about it and hired Lincoln Riley. It changed the culture and program immediately for the better and they turned a 3-7 season into an 11-3 season in Lincoln's first year.

Playing a brand of hockey that doesn't lend itself to improving your draft stock among mediocre players and a mediocre head coach. Remember, we want culture kids only here now.

I'll say it.... Berry should be released.

Hopefully it was senior night for Berry.

To get the thread back on track...ah-ahem... BOO BERRY!

Found Brad Berry's burner account.

I'm so happy Berry recruits culture guys. Who needs blue chippers when you can watch this?

That's because most are also Viking fans.

This will probably break the game wide-open by saying this, but.....both teams are so bad neither can score.

He's actually been very consistent in post-season play since the title. 0 wins, 0 wins, 0 wins, 0 wins, 1 win, 0 wins, 0 wins ....consistent at his teams doing virtually nothing in the post-season with the exception of the NHL team he inherited for the 2015-16 season.

What's there to learn from this season that he shouldn't have already learned from the other missed NCAA tourney seasons? People aren't throwing Berry under the bus for having his first bad season. He's had multiple bad seasons already and now we're throwing another one onto the pile. He won a national championship 7 years ago. Assuming we don't win the NCHC tournament, he'll have a 50% NCAA tourney participation rate with only one NCAA win against lowly AIC since then. He should have been learning way before now, instead it's just more of the same. That 2019-20 team was a good team, but wasn't a surefire Frozen Four team and Berry's probably lucky the team didn't get a chance to get bounced early again. None of these performance conversations are even factoring in the shady dealings with the Nodak trademark which got quickly swept under the rug.

Glisten here ya little sh**s...

It looks like a dig, and maybe to some extent it is when I'm trying to dissect the accomplishments of our head coach, but the guy literally drips with sweat. Legitimate question, if you're meeting Brad Berry for the first time as a recruit, what's your impression going to be? We're not exactly raking in blue chippers these days. Our facilities, history, alumni, fanbase, and pedigree all stack up. Grand Forks isn't the most geographically pleasant place to be, but if all other benefits outweigh that, kids will still come, as many have in the past. Why are they not coming now?

I thought I'd keep it simple and easy to understand. Does "heavily-perspired Brad Berry" work better for you?