MafiaMan

Put your money where your mouth is, Siouxmama. I smell free Final Five tickets for me.

Let Vanek walk to Edmonton and sign Briere. Aaahhh...hindsight is always 20/20, isn't it?

Yea, I remember the waitress...ok, I'll put a post up. Dart boards? I'm in...I hear NorthDakotaHockey has been practicing.

Hoggsbreath is a daytime bar/restaurant so anyone younger than 21 can be in the place until 9:00 pm. Was everyone OK with the Hogger last year or not-so-much?

Really? I was actually thinking about putting up a post and seeing if people were interested. I'd be game.

Cmon, if the WCHA was that concerned about revenue, they would move those CC/DU championship games to Saturday afternoon and those meaningless 3rd place games at 7:00 pm prime-time!

I knew it was a lot so I thought I would research it: 1999 2 games to 1 over Mankato (loss was Friday night) 2000 2 games to 1 over Denver (loss was Saturday night) 2001 2 games to 1 over UMD (loss was Friday night) 2003 2 games to 1 over Denver (loss was Friday night) 2006 2 games to 1 over Mankato (loss was Friday night) This is the 9th time in the past 10 years the Sioux have hosted a first-round series. In 5 of the previous 8 times, they needed 3 games to advance to the Final Five. Something tells me Dave Hakstol will mention those numbers to the team before they take the ice on Friday night.

You'll still get the die-hard hockey fans (Gopher fans included) there but the casual bandwagon fan with tickets from Imation won't be going. Let's just say that the top seeds all advance: Mankato vs St Cloud play-in game Friday semi-final #1: UND vs DU Friday semi-final #2: CC vs Mankato/St Cloud winner I doubt that a CC/DU or CC/UND title game tilt could top the 16,507 who watched CC/DU play back in 2005. That tournament at least had UND and Minnesota playing the 3rd place game, which obviously was a draw for Gopher fans. Of course, this is all attendance speculation. My guess is that there will be an upset or two that will change everything...

Now I had to go look it up... 1998 WCHA Final Five title game...UND was up 2-1 after 1 period and 3-1 with about 14:00 left in the 2nd when the wheels fell off. It was 3-3 going into the 3rd and Denver won 4-3. attendance? 8,445. Yikes.

I do know what you mean about Gopher fans though. I won't lose any sleep if they lose at Mankato this weekend and are eliminated from the tournament.

I was there too and agree totally. The place was a morgue. If memory serves me right, UND was up like 4-1 or 4-2 late in the third and Denver went nuts and scored 3-4 goals and won the game. Then I got punched in the gut a week later when I flew to Ann Arbor to watch the game with Michigan at Yost.

I've never had a problem with UMD Bulldog fans.

It "should be" the afternoon game, but by agreement of the conference schools, it would be moved to the Friday night game. Barring several upsets, count on the Sioux playing on Friday afternoon.

No, not at all. I was just saying it didn't affect attendance as much as it would have if the Final Five that year had been in St Paul. 1999's tournament was held at Target Center and it was North Dakota vs Denver. I believe attendance for that game was around 10 or 11 thousand.

Better question is how many times has UND had to play 3 games in the first round the past 5 years?

I was almost hoping SC would win Saturday night so that they could send the Gophers packing. No more "Gopher rejects" chants by Minny fans...would be nice to hear some "season's over" chants from someone knocking out Goldy.

Nothing is locked in until the first round of the playoffs this coming weekend. You're going to mention the possibility of CC getting upset by the #10 seed yet the Sioux advancing over Michigan Tech is 'in the bag.'? If Minnesota finnagles their way in and either avoids the Thursday play-in game or wins it, they will be playing at 7:05 pm Friday night.

I do miss those days.

This didn't really affect attendance since the Final Five that year was held in Milwaukee.

I believe I had the years mixed up... the 1997-1998 WCHA Final Five was held at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee. The 1998-1999 Western Regional was held at the Dane Co. Coliseum in Madison. West Regional, March 27-28 Dane County Coliseum; Madison, Wisconsin All times are Central. March 27, 1 p.m.: No. 3 seed Colorado College (28-11-1) vs. No. 6 seed St. Lawrence (23-12-3). March 27, 4:30 p.m.: No. 4 seed Boston College (25-11-4) vs. No. 5 seed Northern Michigan (22-14-5). March 28, 2 p.m.: Winner of Colorado College/St. Lawrence vs. No. 2 seed Michigan State (28-5-7). March 28, 5:30 p.m.: Winner of Boston College/Northern Michigan vs. No. 1 seed North Dakota (32-5-2).

Explain Class B basketball in ND being much better attended than Class A then.

I haven't had much luck either but I believe the rules are different for boys and girls hockey. BSM won the A title a while back and is now playing in the AA bracket. The main idea with the two-tier system was to give more teams the opportunity to play in the state tournament, particularly the small schools. Instead, you've seen teams sandbag and stay in the A level when you could really make the argument that they should be playing AA. Like I mentioned with the girls, the biggest manipulation I have seen was SSP winning AA and then announcing a switch back to A for the following season (which they promptly won).

I've always told people...if they reunited the 1980 Soviet Olympic team and had them play an exhibition game against Minnesota at Mariucci, I'd be sitting in the stands proudly wearing my red CCCP jersey screaming "Let's Go Commies!".

Three fun facts: The Sioux are 0-0-1 since Brett Favre retired.

Just win, baby!