brianvf

A different portal guy? Or bring in one of our current recruits? Maybe get the UND President to allow Miller a 2nd chance? Or just not a fan of Farmer?

It was assumed right at the beginning of the offseason (by almost every one on here, Schloss, etc) that Berry was going to go to the portal to replace the Sanderson lineup spot since none of our dman recruits were quite ready to move up to NCAA hockey. Most of us were hoping that he would have snagged someone that had more than one year of eligibility remaining since we assume greater D losses next year, but if Farmer improves this squad (even for just one season), then I'm onboard. Were you hoping that they would have gone a different direction?

Respectfully disagree with this. First, Sanderson left for the NHL, so every returning dman moved up one spot essentially since he was the best dman in the NCAA. And I'm guessing that Farmer will earn his position in the lineup, just like all the others.

Nah, my point still stands. If anything, gfhockey could hang out there instead then. Starting a GoFundMe to bring back tPB!

Man, what happened to the UMD fan website? The Penalty Box or whatever it was called. Seems odd those fans just migrated over to SS.com or GPL instead of keeping their own forum going.

Sounds cool, man! As I said, it'll be easy to revisit this at the end of this season and see how they compared, with both being freshmen in the NCHC.

Nicely done.

I assumed it had more to do with what James was doing. When James scoring took off, he bumped ahead of Spicer and the coaches made the decision to bring in the more “ready” player. But I agree, it’ll be interesting to look back on this in a couple seasons to see if UND made the right call.

I'm not trying to downplay it. I'd for sure rather Spicer, especially being a skilled hometown kid, end up at UND. But that's not what ended up happening. And of course Sandelin had no issue bringing in Spicer...UMD lost 13 players from their team this year. And they only had 11 freshmen and transfers lined up to replace them. So they needed Spicer and, if anything, still need at least one more player for this fall.

I'd be more if we'd lost Strinden or James because we brought in Spicer instead.

If Berry's plan is to go all-in for next year, then I agree with him on keeping Senden/Hain. Spicer has the potential to be a very good college player, but it might take him a year or two before he is a consistent producer. Before his injury, Hain was our leading goal-scorer...if he is fully rehabbed and starts off next season in the same way as last, he could have a great year. Spicer was the least prepared for college among our five forward recruits that could come in (supposedly)...we'll see next season if Berry made the correct call or not.

We'll certainly see enough of him...he'll get his chances against UND and will certainly be playing his hardest in those games.

Exactly. Good chance that all four incoming UND forward recruits outscore Spicer next season at UMD.

Right?

Chyzyk and Smaby will guide him our way, hopefully.

Maybe they already did, and the answer was more & better weights.

The USA U18 team lost in the championship game today, 6-4, to Sweden...despite outshooting Sweden 51-15. That USA team was loaded. But they couldn't overcome Sweden scoring on almost half their shots.

Looks like he's headed to Vermont.

I wonder if they lose any other recruits or players if Pearson gets the boot. They've already lost a ton this off-season, but they probably have the best incoming class in the country at this point.

I heard that as well. DU picked up a couple quality portal forwards in Dornbach from Harvard and Broz from UMN. Broz is raw but has talent, he could be a great jr/sr player for DU. Those two won't replace Brink and Savoie, but will help fill in some forward gaps. Still no word on Stapley and Guttman (that I've seen) on if they'll move on or use their COVID year to go back for a 5th season. If those two return, DU will definitely be good once again.

He's talking about Berry's son (on the U16 team), not the forward that just committed.

Those numbers are pretty darn impressive when you consider the team that was playing in front of him.

If it’s true that Cruz is decommitting as well, that means they’ve lost two players to portal, one signing a pro contract, and one lost recruit all in two days.

They also did tweets for Bast and Hellsten recently now as well.

Especially unexpected blue chips. It's one thing for Sanderson or Pinto to leave, as they had already proven that they were ready for the next level. It's like when Jost left UND after his freshman year, I suppose. But Jost had a better frosh year than the Gopher pair combined. Most UMN fans would have had Lucius and Broz penciled into their 1st/2nd lines for next season...so I would definitely say it is a loss for them. They return most of their d-corps, so they'll for sure be solid. But they'll be relying on Knies and hoping that their freshman forwards all get acclimated right away to the NCAA game for offense.