ksixpack

I was using sarcasm...I agree with you 100%

The REA did not throw any money in and would never do so.

OK your right...we got screwed again...we are the victim again...our AD and entire UND staff is incompetent again. (sarcasm)

Let's look at this from Nicholls perspective if they would have had to come to UND to play us... They were ranked higher than us, they went on the road and beat a good team and rival to win their conference, they had a better record than us, they put in a competitive bid to ours, and they would have to go back to North Dakota and play again the following week if they beat us. Put yourself in their shoes if we were hosting them. Make sense a bit now? Can you still defend us hosting?

The fact that the winner of our game plays the #1 seed NDSU identifies either us or Nicholls as the #24 seed. They were ranked ahead of us and won their conference; therefore we are the #24 seed and last one in.

If that is true, 90K was a pretty good bid by them and close to how much we could muster. 8000 at what I would guess would be an average of $20 a ticket is $160K in revenue ...you cant give it away as you have expenses to host as well

Look, UND is last team in; Nicholls won their conference; UND does not draw substantially better then most teams. If UND got the bid I would guess attendance would be about 8000 at the Alerus on a Thanksgiving weekend. How much can you bid with attendance of 8000? As the lower seed in the tournament you would have to outbid the other team by a lot to host. If Nicholls was in the ballpark they would host as the higher seed. The biding process is part of the hosting process but not the entire part of the process. We should be happy we are in.

I think we need to calm down with the bid aspect of who hosts. The bid is part of the process and not the entire end all of who hosts. We obviously got in as the last seed; it would be a stretch that we host as the last seed in the tournament.

I was at the game yesterday...their attendance couldn't be WAY worse. Here is the stadium they play at...

Spot on. Coaches love shut down defensive tight checking games with very few mistakes. Fans not so much and often confuse these type of games as poor play when in actuality it is good defensive play without mistakes.

Look, they held a desperate St Cloud team to 10 shots and one fluke goal. You can not argue that our D men did not do their job defensively and put us in good position to win that game. That wasn’t Huntsville last night; it was a team that was 1 year removed from being the #1 seed in the tourney... still a lot of pride in that locker room from the guys that were around from last year. They will make some noise by the end of the year. It wasn’t a pretty game last night but that’s the type of game it was and defensively we obviously did well.

Sure offense from the D is huge but not at the expense of giving up odd man rushes and not clearing guys in the front of the net. In a 1-1 type of tight checking game like last night was I would take my chances defensively with the guys we had out there. We limited them to 10 shots and basically no odd man rushes and rebound chances. You will win a lot of games when you just have to get to 2 to win and you won’t lose many holding the opponent to 1.

I respectfully disagree. We had our top 6 defensive DMen on the ice and it showed; only giving up 10 shots. They call the position defense for a reason and it’s overlooked way too much.

I’m not into moral victories, it’s a losers mentality. You either win or you lose. Period. Doubt we get in at 7-4...our schedule wasn’t that tough in the end. You cannot put stock in where the teams were ranked when we played them; it’s how they finished as a whole and many of these once ranked teams were not very good as their record now indicates. As I see it, at the end of the year we will most likely have one win against a top 25 team and no wins against top 10 teams. We have no conferences pushing for us to get in. As a matter of fact, we have conferences pushing against us, to allow their teams in ahead of us. A few years back we were 7-4 and in a conference and we did not get in. History is a wonderful teacher. I hate it but this is reality.

Have 3 left for Friday in 116 on the glass just to right of St Cloud bench and 2 in the bar for both nights

5 Tickets for West Regional....3 on the glass and 2 in the bar. text 701-739-5623 for more info.

If GF's finest from last 4 years and next couple years played as one team and nobody left to play elsewhere and that team was allowed to play MN AA; they would win it at least once...no doubt.

Hmmm...I don't see too many kids leaving Bantam AA in MN for high school. I could only probably name 3 this year and it was to high school programs that needed them...the blue bloods of MN AA like Edina and Eden Prairie rarely if ever bring up a 9th grader with Bantam eligibility. For example, Mittlestadt, Holt, and Bachelder played with Eden Prairie bantam last year as 9th graders and all three were top players on EP high school team this year and certainly would have helped them last year. Same goes for Nick Williams at Edina last year as he played bantam AA as a commit to Gophers. On the other hand, Cole Spicer had a year left to play with Aviators but chose to play at Central...plug him into this years Aviator team and how do you think that would have went?

That may work too without going to two tiers. All teams play an independent schedule without the lopsided games built in to a league schedule and have the freedom to schedule against like teams in MN and ND. Seed for regional games to get to state like they do for sections in MN. Take the league structure completely out of it. Makes sense to me.

It would be interesting if Sacred Heart in EGF would ever explore putting together a AA high school hockey team in MN. I don’t think that would ever be an ambition for them but would be interesting if it was.

No...top kids (16-17) make AA, next 32 split equally in 2 A teams and rest split into B1 and B teams. School district has nothing to do with it...I am not sure it does in any N.D. town. Couldn’t if you wanted to in GF...90% of the hockey playing kids in GF are in RR district. Boundary’s are screwed up in GF but that is a whole other topic. Takes $ to play hockey and the RR district is where most of the upper middle class lives. 50/50 split in this Aviator team is just the way it worked out...contrary to popular belief, the school these kids will go to/are going to (most are 9th graders in high school already) was determined many years ago by their parents and not after the season in a smoke filled room.

For those of you against the two tier system, think about this. Look at the teams the Aviators play. They are the best of the best in MN AA and Manitoba. Look at the list of teams suggested for tier 2; a lot of those towns play youth hockey at the B1 level tops. You would never schedule the Aviators to play a B1 team, yet when these players get to high school they will. Why?

Teams for the most part have been balanced. When RR won it Central only had 3 losses and the 2 to RR were slim and RR was a senior dominated team. Centrals title the following year they were a senior dominated team as well. This year it appeared Central was a super team and it was not balanced in GF but plug in these 4 kids that left RR for greener pastures...Kunz, Dane Montgomery, Zaradka, and Helgeson and I believe it woukd have appeared to be a lot more balanced....that was potentially 100 more goals for RR’s team this year. This year’s Aviator team is split about 50/50 between Central and RR. This super team talk and kids joining each other at one school or another is a bunch of bull.

GF Aviators have been a top 3 MNAA Bantam team the last 3 years; no MN AA program can make that claim. The Aviators have played 18 home games the past two years vs MN AA programs and their record in those 18 games is 17-1. Those 17 wins have come against Edina-3 (6-5, 6-3, 4-0), Roseau-3 (3-2, 3-2, 5-3), Rosemount-3 (6-0, 6-4, 1-0), Moorhead-2 (5-2, 10-1), Lakeville North-2 (4-1, 7-2), Prior Lake (4-2), Minnetonka (6-4), Duluth East (6-3), Grand Rapids (8-4; lone loss to GR 4-8) Thise teams listed are the blue bloods of MN AA hockey. To answer your question, yes GF would and does compete extremely well at MN Bantam AA and could win a title if allowed to compete...no reason to think they wouldn’t at high school as well...it would be the same kids competing against each other.

Those games are on Saturday