rochsioux

That should be it. The NCAA allows a total of 34 games unless there are exemptions. Next year we go to Alaska so that will allow us to play 36 games. I don't believe any of the other games are exempt. With 28 conference games that allows us to play 8 non-conference next year.

The Sioux are 2-4 in the last six played at AA (split in 2004-5, split in 2005-6, got swept in 2006-7). The good thing is those games were played during the "pre-surge" part of the seasons but anything less than a full 60 min each night and they will be in trouble. AA, Tech, and Wisconsin play a style that seems to give the Sioux problems. There is too much on the line for any excuses after the game(s). We are the better team, we need to play like it and come away with two wins. Anything less will probably drop us below 14 in the pairwise. There is a resonable chance there will be a least one or two "upset" conference playoff winners that will get in that are not in the top 14 pairwise, therefore we really need to be at #12 or better. Had we not come back to win the Sat. Mankato game we would be at #17, that's how much each game matters right now.

To add a little more info, the last two years under Blais our record was: 2002-3 25-13-5 (started out 18-1-1) 2003-4 30-8-3 (started out 18-2-2) So the prior two years to Hakstol we got off to blazing starts but either faltered down the stretch or got upset in the NCAA regional. Under Hakstol: 2004-5 25-15-5 prior to 02/26/2005 16-13-3, after 9-2-2 2005-6 29-16-1 prior to 01/14/2006 14-10-1, after 15-6-0 2006-7 24-14-5 prior to 12/29/2006 7-10-1, after 17-4-4 2007-8 28-11-4 prior to 01/05/2008 9-8-1, after 19-3-3 2008-9 18-11-3 prior to 01/02/2009 9-10-1, after 9-1-2 So these last 3 seasons we have been around .500 near year-end (23-28-3), then rip it up the rest of the season (45-8-9). The first two seasons we didn't start out quite as bad, but it also took longer to put together a good streak, especially the 2004-5 season. The reason we may think of all 5 seasons as the same pattern has to due with season ending surge regardless of when it really started, although these last 3 seasons have been very similar.

We currently sit #12 in the pairwise. To show how crucial the non-conference games are, our pairwise would be significantly better if we could have won the UMass and/or Mich. State games. Win over UMass only, pairwise would be #8. Win over MSU only, pairwise would be #7. Win both, pairwise we would be #5. With the switch of just two games we would be discussing the chances of a #1 seed instead of fighting to get off the bubble.

That's correct: 2003-2004: BC at REA for 2 2004-2005: UND at BC & NE 2005-2006: NE at REA for 2 2007-2008: UND at BC & NE

The NCAA only allows 34 games. Games played in Alaska are exempt so when UND travels to Alaska they get to play 36 games. Additionally, the Icebreaker tourny is also exempt. Since UND played in it this year they can schedule 38 games. Under your scenario with 30 conference games, teams will only be able to schedule 4 nonconference games in the years they don't go to Alaska. Highly doubt this would fly. Not only would teams have fewer non-conference games, but a 30 game schedule would likely mean an unbalanced number of home vs away games. It would also effectively mean fewer home games some years and the teams with large buildings (UND, MN, Wisc) would not want to go along with this. Some teams (MN) rarely play road games out of conference, now you would be asking them to play two more conference road games every other year, thereby reducing the number of home games. Not going to happen, IMO. If the WCHA does expand, and I expect they will, I don't expect there to be more conference games. If anything I could envision fewer games. With a 12 team league and 28 conference games, that means you play 8 teams twice and 3 teams four times. Sixteen conference games against 8 teams and twelve games against 3 teams. Extremely unbalanced, not even sure what it would mean to win the league anymore. The CCHA has this today and it is a joke. A few years ago Notre Dame won the CCHA. Two of three teams they played four times were the two teams at the bottom of the league. I think the conferences are making a big mistake in expanding to include the CHA. Reducing the number of conferences is not the way to expand college hockey. It almost makes it inevitable that a group of schools will break off from these conferences in the future to form a new conference that is more advantageous to them (Big 10 conf anyone ?). I think the big mistakes were made in the past when the WCHA allowed itself to go from 8 to 10 teams. Eight is a perfect number for a balanced schedule.

I think we need to cut Gwoz some slack here. It is clearly obvious when you watch the video that he was choking on something as he placed his hands around his throat twice (I believe in frames 223-225 you can clearly see Hextall's stick contacting Gwoz's throat causing his head to snap back and to the left ). The lack of oxygen to his brain from this made him unable to find his way to the dressing room and hence he crossed the ice looking for some help. If he can't even find the dressing room without assistance how can we expect him to remember the NCAA rules ? This is NOT George's fault, it has to be the fault of UND !

UND's fault, huh? OK. Let's look at a few items: What would most people say heated up this rivalry in recent years ? IMO, it was the hit by Paukovitch on Bina in the WCHA tourny back in 2005. A blatant, flagrant cheap shot. When Gwoz recruited Paukovitch there was no possible way he could have known the type of character he had...nothing in his background that would raise any red flags, right ? While Robbie Bina had to spend over a year out of hockey, Gwoz's response was to suspend him for one game. Sounds like a fair punishment Two years ago in Denver, Prpich "nuts" Paukovitch during a faceoff, Gwoz goes crazy, jumps on the dasher and gets kicked out of the game. Should Prpich have done that ? No, but it is hard for me to feel sorry for Paukovitch, what goes around...bit of a payback. Gwoz still needs to control his own actions. Last year at the Ralph. Fight breaks out at the end of the period. Why ? Major cause was Denvers constant "dumping" of the bench onto the ice at the end of every period in direct violation of the NCAA rules. A few UND players heading toward their own bench passed thru this "dump" and guess what happens. Bumping and pushing escalates while Denver has a 20-5 man advantage. Radke hears the roar and comes back out to help his teammates. Who's at fault here ? I would blame this on Gwoz for allowing his team to dump on the ice after the period and on the officials for allowing it. Notice this past w/e at the end of every period at least one official would race toward the Denver bench to keep them from doing this. My take is that it is not the officials job to prevent a team from committing a penalty. They should have stayed away, then called a minor penalty on Denver if they came off the bench onto the ice...that would quickly fix the problem. This year in Fridays game, Denver got away with a lot of "stick work" throughout the game. In the third period Testwuide blatently spears Vandevelde along the boards then gives him two hard cross-checks. Scrum breaks out. Looks like UND started another fight . Denver's team is getting spanked on the ice and can't handle it so they resort to cheap stuff. Again, who's fault is that...Gwoz, maybe ? His captain is the one doing a large part of the cheap shots. Lead by example. Saturday night, Gwoz thinks Vandevelde should have been called for a penalty so he goes nuts again. If all coaches went nuts on a missed call or whenever they think the officials have a bad night then games would run 5 hours long. It appears to me that Gwoz can't control himself or his team. The DU admin response is "this was wrong, coach realizes this". Dang that is a harsh response. Not a peep from Gwoz himself. I doubt he is sorry for his actions. The Denver backers of Saint George are delusional if they think it is UND's fault. Mike Chambers might want to look at things objectively (nah, that would ruin a good story) instead of kissing up to Gwoz.

If that is true it is very sad that he would hold a grudge for 25+ years. The coaches, administrators, etc have all changed since he went to UND. I would hope he would allow his son to pick whatever school he felt was the best fit for him. After all, we are talking about what is best for his son's future not trying to "get back" at UND. If his son decided that MN was the best fit then good for him. If he was leaning to UND and his dad got involved only because of his problems 25 years ago then that is a shame for the kid.

Trupp played a game in juniors with a ruptured appendix. Tough kid. http://www.undsportszone.com/articles/?id=72612

If you really believe that there is a greater chance of the games being canceled than a Sioux sweep then no one should ever take anything you say seriously. Records in the past 10 games: Rodents: 5-3-2 Sioux: 7-3 While I don't believe the Sioux are playing very well right now, a 7-3 record is not bad (all three losses were by 2-1 scores). The big disappointment for Sioux fans is that it looked like the team was starting to turn the corner then they slid off the road in the GLI tourney, failing to even put forth an effort against Michigan State. I don't think effort will be any concern for this serious. If the Sioux can't put forth 120 min (or more) of solid effort this weekend then there is no hope for this season. I would rate the games pretty much a tossup, so I give each team a 25% chance of a sweep. A sweep for either team could very likely be a springboard to a top 2 finish in the league.

If Peyton Manning was the quarterback there would still be problems, just not as many. I doubt you would have stuff happen like the Giants game, but the Detroit and possibly the Philly games would still be a problem for Childress. It's not just Childress and TJack, there seem to be a lot of coaches and QBs that have no idea how to manage a clock properly. San Diego did a poor job of managing the last two min of regulation against Indy.

The biggest problem I have with Childress is his complete inability to handle clock management in the last two minutes of each half. This is not a one time occurance. Too many NFL games are decided in the last few minutes so it is critical that the coach and players manage this properly. With the specializaton in the NFL I am surprised a team doesn't have a coach whose only job is clock management. There are at least three examples in the past month of his inability to grasp this concept. Yesterday against the Eagles in the first half. Approx 1:10 left and first down at his own 13. Elects to run on first down which is OK, gains nothing and lets the clock run. Again, this is OK just run out the clock, the Eagles only have one time out left so you can run it out if you wish. Then for some reason he tries a pass on second down ! Even if complete it is unlikely to gain much, if anything. Instead it is incomplete, clock stops. Third down is a run, Philly calls timeout and forces a punt from deep in your own end (of course the Vikings do a great job of covering punts). Now Philly has a chance to get a FG before half when they should never have been given this chance. Against the Giants, don't even need to comment, anyone who saw the last minute of the game understands how badly that was botched. Against Detroit, the Vikings are leading 17-16 with 26 seconds left and facing 4th down from the Detroit 33. Elects to try a 50 yard FG. Detroit has no timeouts. A FG attempt here makes no sense. The only chance Detroit has is if the FG is missed (or blocked), then they get the ball at the 40 and will have 20-22 seconds left. If the Vikings punt it into the endzone Detroit will get the ball at the 20 with around 20 seconds left and no timeouts. The chance of winning the game are better by punting then trying the FG.

Just want to extend my best wishes for a speedy recovery for Don Lucia. Health and family are the much more important than hockey or a hated rival. Hopefully this is nothing serious and he will be back coaching very soon.

Hard to score without getting shots on goal. They had 39 in the first two periods and also missed the net and had shots blocked. If you didn't know the final score but only knew that und was up 4-3 after two and had 39 shots on goal but would only have 40 for the game, how confident would you be that they won the game, especially given that bsu had 15 shots and 3 goals in the first two periods and would get 10 shots in the third ?

When the shots by period are 20-19-1 (according to the box: http://www.uscho.com/box/?date=20090102&am...su&gender=m) then the 3rd period should be a major concern. With a one goal lead entering the third you need to keep putting pressure on...they were very fortunate thast BSU didn't tie it up at the end. Wonder what the posts on the board would look like then ? If the third period play was by design then they need to reconsider their plan.

Not a good 3rd period. A good team should put them away and not leave it up to a post to save the win. I don't understnad why they backed off on the forechecking pressure, BSU looks to be a horrible team breaking out from their end. That said, these games with BSU are probably meaningless. The most realistic chance to make the NCAA's is to win the WCHA tourny. To do that they almost have to finish top 3 which is possible.

Pathetic effort...too often in games like this, a game we should win, we play with no emotion, fall behind and then continuing playing as if we should have no problem coming back, then with a few min left someone must point to the scoreboard and realize we are behind. They work hard for a few min, score a goal, pull the goalie, game over, another loss. This is a terrible Michigan State team. To lose one of the few remaining non-conference games left this season to them is extremely disheartening. At this point in the season we needed to win this game and we come up with this kind of effort. They just made their path to the NCAA tourny much harder.

I see Notre Dame is ranked #1. Here is their record so far: Teams with winning record: Denver (13-5-1) 0-1 Miami (12-3-3) 0-2 Boston C (9-5-2) 1-0 Ferris State (9-8-3) 2-0 Teams with losing record: Sacred Heart (4-9-2) 2-0 N.Mich (3-10-3) 2-0 Providence (3-12-1) 1-0 LSSU (4-8-6) 1-0-1 Bowling Green (5-10-3) 4-0 West Mich (2-10-4) 1-0-1 The teams with a winning record have a combined record of 43-21-9. Notre Dame went 3-3 against them. The teams with a losing record have a combined record of 21-59-19. They went 11-0-2 in those games. The strength of schedule looks extremely weak. I will give them credit for winning games against poor teams but right now I find them a very suspect #1 team.

If someone made that statement then they can't do simple math...unless a family = 60-70 people.

The score was 1-0 Harvard. Ocurred during the 2005-2006 season during the xmas break. I believe we were missing Oshie, Toews, Chorney, and Lee to the WJC.

If I buy your premise that this is a rebuilding year (which I am not ready to do so), it would make no sense to split goalie duties between Eidsness and Walski. The whole point of a rebuilding year is to improve for the next season. Playing Walski does not do that. I would rather give playing time to Harrington if I was going to play two goalies in a rebuilding year. Eidsness is the starter and should play most of the games this season. Not only does he give us the best chance of winning but he gains valuable experience for future seasons.

Not sure but I believe Eades coaches the defense.

I don't see the glaring weakness at goaltending right now. Is Eidsness as good as JPL was last year ? Of course not, but that doesn't equate to being weak in goal. Let's look at the last 6 games (AA, UMD, Cornell). Eidsness started all games except for the first Duluth game where he came in to replace Walski approx halfway into the game. In these games Eidsness faced 145 shots and allowed 11 goals for a save % of .924. His GAA was around 2.00. Given the level of competition and the fact that four of the six games were at home, IMO a good team would have gone 5-1 or 4-1-1 in these games, instead we went 2-3-1. Had we scored 3 or more goals in the games we would not have lost even once. The problem right now is not goaltending, it is a lack of offense. When you see how much we struggle on the PP it is no wonder we are having trouble scoring. In those six games we scored 16 goals which is an average of 2.67 goals/game. If you exclude the one game we scored 7 goal, we only averaged 1.80 goals/game in the other five. The lack of offense is the reason we are struggling to win right now.

Kozek has had very little PP time, mostly when the top 2 PP lines have been out too many times or when his line is out to end the last 20 secs or so. You may have a point on the puck handling skills but as bad as our PP has looked this season I think I would look at putting him on the PP unit. After all, he tied for the team lead in goals scored last season. It's not as if we are having great success on the PP with the players we are using. Saturday night we had Toews on the 2nd unit which to me is a slap in the face to Kozek. Toews didn't even dress on Friday night, he hasn't scored a goal yet but he is on the PP while a guy who has proven that he can score goals sits on the bench. If I recall correctly, scoring goals is an important part of winning hockey games.