NorthDakotaHockey

Smart move. Latest Bracketology has the Sioux there, and that is looking like the solid logical play for them right now, and likely through selection Sunday, barring who knows what might happen. Regardless, travel safely, enjoy the hockey, and enjoy the Sam Adams.

Really funny. I did not get it at first, then I went back to scroll through the thread.

Damned straight there Shawn-O. Unless the Goofs ride a wave to the auto-bid, the Sioux will be at the X come hell or high water. Apologies to the guy who doesn't like sandbagging or high water references on the board this time of year. What really bites is that the CHA could get two teams in the NCAAs if BSU falters in the tournament. If Robert Morris beats BSU in the tourney, that should be all she wrote for the Beavers.

Time to fire up the bus. Who's ready? Detroit is but 680 miles from the Twin Cities, and not much farther for those in the Great State. Sure, the venue will suck, but there are seats to be had and to be filled with Sioux fans. What better karma might there be than a team loaded with talent, on a mission in March, playing for themselves and for their injured captain, in a relatively even year all across the college hockey landscape, ten years after the last title, and perhaps, but only perhaps, in the last year of the Fighting Sioux name and logo, returning to Detroit to claim another Crown? We've got four in the lower level from the lottery, and just picked up two sweet ice side tickets off of USCHO from a knowledgeable and friendly BC fan who cannot go this year. Time to give the trusty old Ford Exploder the once over for yet another Fighting Sioux road trip. 160K miles on the jalopy since 2003, mostly to Sioux hockey games. The Exploder returns to Detroit, to the great Ford Motor Company, and to Ford Field, full of earnest and friendly die-hard Sioux fans. All roads are pointing to Detroit. Make your plans now if you can. Championship No. 8 is here in about 37 days. It is preordained. Be there, if your circumstances so allow. Get your tickets now. There are good ones, to the extent that there are good ones in Ford Field, to be had.

I'd much rather play the Gophers and send them off to the fields to plant the corns. CC just played us two tight. CC will have the better shot at making the NCAA's with a first round play off win. The playoff atmosphere in The Ralph if we play the Gophers would be top shelf. It's always sweet to end the Gophers' season so why not again this year? Chances are, even if we lose the first round, heaven forbid, our recent play likely has us a berth locked up for the NCAA's. Here's the deal on the first round. Tickets go on sale soon. Solid Sioux fans need to be them up fast before the Minnesota fans catch wind, if that is the way that the winds blow, that their boys will be at The Ralph. They'll buy 'em up in droves if given the chance. Really no need for that. Folks, if you ain't got 'em, get your playoff tickets as soon as they go on sale. Monday or Tuesday I think.

Shaping up to be another great Friday night in the WCHA. I'm off to maybe the only thing that comes close. A meat raffle at a small town hole-in-wall. In Goofyville no less. 4-2. Sioux. Benny gets the empty netter.

Thanks for the preview Dave. It's game night!! While others are obviously free to continue discussing the Knight matter, it is and always has been a non-issue to me because it did not happen. The league office must feel the same way as no discipline for the solid, but fair, hit has been handed down. Same with Sandelin. No gripes out of him as best I can tell. This will be a great series. One thing, and my memory is bad. I do not recall CC being a West finalist last year. Wasn't that game between the Dogz and the RedHawks in The John? I thought that CC missed the tourney altogether. I could, of course, well be wrong. See you around the arenas. Go Sioux.

The Duluth Hit Horse is dead. It's game night in the WCHA. This series is going to have a playoff atmosphere. The Tigers will be playing like caged Tigers. Their recent history of fading at the end of the season and missing the NCAA's will be haunting them. Once again, they are on the bubble. A review of their record shows that, but for the bad games last weekend against a solid Gopher team playing with their own backs to the wall, the Tigers have been pretty solid all year long, and they have played to top WCHA teams very tightly. Their roster, as always, has some familiar names and nemesises. They will be playing on their familiar big ice sheet, in their barn, in the mile high air, and with their backs to the wall. The Sioux will need every bit of their conditioning, and all of their four lines, to hold up in the thin air through six periods. No stupid penalties. Finish hits hard and clean. Run the forecheck with frenzy. Score first. Score often. Score as many, or more goals, as the Tigers. Get out of there with two, or three points. The team that comes out on the short end of this series is gonna have a tough row to hoe from here on in if they find themselves on the road in the first round.

Great news Stewie. Thanks a million. I just might make the drive north to catch these games in this fine establishment. See you around the Ex at the Final Five and the West, where the Sioux will be playing on back-to-back weekends soon.

Friday - Toews Saturday - Blood

Oh, I am pretty sure that I know how recruiting works in college football there Bucky. I know it when I see it, and I ain't seen any of it around Minnesota for years. Brewster is all show and no go. Maybe once Brewster is shown the door, the quality recruits will come calling. Until then, the U football program will remain firmly mired in the morass of continued mediocrity. At best. The sooner that the Brewski Nation realizes that hiring Brewster was a complete mistake, the better off it will be. This said, Gopher football really ain't my problem or my concern. It has been on the hind titty of the college football world for coming up on fifty years. Count 'em. Fifty years. Fishing's good today boys.

I know a guy who knows a guy who listens to a Sunday sports talk radio show that features a guy who writes a column in a Twin Cities rag that claims to have all of the inside scoop on Gopher athletics because the guy who writes the column hangs out at a restaurant that claims to feature some famous butter knife steak where the Gophers' athletic director, Joel Maturi, is often found fattening himself up during the midday hours. So, the guy on the radio claims that Maturi told him, over a silver butter knife, that Lucia is the head hockey coach at Minnesota as long as Maturi is the athletic director there. My questions are these? Where is Maturi going come June? And, is he leaving voluntarily, or is he being shown the door for having signed Bubba "Snake Oil" Brewster to a long-term extension for no good reason?

Winning on the road in the WCHA is always a challenge. Double that challenge here what with home ice near on the line, skating the big sheet, and moving to the rarified air of the Colorado foothills. However, the boys are brimming with confidence, the coaches seem to be on the reigns (not sure, but don't think that there were any stupid penalties in the third period on Saturday), and The World will have more than a fair share of solid Sioux fans in the seats. There are twelve, maybe fourteen (third game first round, Final Five play-in), games left in the season. The old one shift, one hit, one save, and one goal at a time mentality is firmly in place. Many of us said it from the start. Detroilet, here we come. Sioux are National Champs in another forty-seven or forty-eight days. While this may be preordained, it will, of course, only come true if the boys continue to skate hard, hit hard, and play hard. Here is saying that they will. Ford Field will suck far less as a so-called hockey venue once the boys are skating the trophy on April 10.

If anyone has a single available for a song for tonight's game, please call me on my cell of 612.201.3239. I will be flying up I-94 and I-29 this afternoon. Thanks.

Don't forget the best and most exciting sport in town, the Minnesota Roller Derby Girlz.

I'd love for the Sioux to play the Bison now, especially seeing how the Bison are on the big hind titty in the football world. Sadly, it will have to wait for awhile. There are few things sweeter in life than the sound of 15,000 Bison sphincters slamming shut at the same time when the Sioux are again handing them their heads on the gridiron. Glad to see that you have at least some degree of focus on the things in life that really matter there MPLSBISON. This has got to be a tough time for you. No football. No hockey team. Your basketballers stink. The buildings are falling down. And your former President and his old lady are crooked. No wonder you spend all your time wishing and wanting to be a Sioux fan.

These tickets are sold. Thanks.

GPL. Gopherpucklive.com Gopher fan site. PB. The Penalty Box. Bulldog fan site. Not sure if it is a website. I assume so.

We have two tickets in Section 103, Row 1, on the glass, for Saturday's game. Seats look across to benches and, as I recall, are about at the face off circle. Paid the TicketBastard $81 for the pair. Will sell both for $75. Can meet at the arena either Friday or Saturday before the game. Please be sure to look at, and strongly consider buying, WillytheKid's tickets first as he is singing a story much sadder than mine. I buy tickets thinking I have friends when I have none. He can't go because his dog is on the ropes.

Been a tough season?!? Heck, the season only starts this weekend, MafiaMan. Same with those youngsters of yours. That 8-2, or 8-4, drubbing ain't nothing but in the rear view mirror. The winning starts now, and doesn't end until next fall, after we have Crown Eight in tow.

I echo the Big AG sentiment. I know a guy who knows a guy who knew a guy who bought one of these. He ordered one size, and was sent something about four sizes to small. All of the sudden, the seller went stone cold silent. No refund. No relief. Now, some little kid is wearing it rather than the big guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who knows me.

I used to be convinced that Blais was going to the Gophers and was agonizing over finding myself actually wanting to see The Don win a couple of big games to take the heat off of him and his program. However, I am no longer convinced that The Don is gone, either "voluntarily" or by firing squad. In fact, a contract extension is nearly done and will be announced soon, ala Brewster Nation. Why? First, the Gopher athletic program does not have any extra cash to throw around to "buy out" a coach who has been as successful as has been The Don. Second, The Don is only in his early fifties. There has been no hint of lingering health problems, and it is unlikely that he has any desire or intention to retire at such a young age. He would not go easily and, as noted, the Gophers simply cannot afford to buy him out and bring in a guy wanting top dollar on top of Don's top dollar. Third, the guy does have two NCs in a relatively short stretch of time. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, The Don still has a youngster in tow who is coming up through the ranks, who is twice the player of his brother, and who is handpicked and earmarked to become the program's savior in a couple of years. Mario will make the team, Mario will get to bring a couple of his friends, Mario will get to be captain, and Mario will fill the seats. Only then, roughly six years from now, and still stuck on five titles, will The Don either get canned or go quietly into the retirement years. By then, of course, The Dean will have won a title or two at UND (yes, UND, not UNO, as The Hak will have left for the pros), The Dean will be ready to retire himself and will have no interest in the Gopher job, and Enrico will become their new coach if he does not first replace Gwozdicky at DU. I have this all from a little birdie and, as we all should well know by now, little birdies tell no stories.

No bad feelings about this weekend are allowed. The Sioux are going to kick some serious Clown hind end in pay back for any number of things that have been bothering them, and to tee up a solid February run that will go through the Ford Field finale. Coming off a bye week, Hak and staff will have these boys focused, furious, and frenzied. All of this adds up to a solid Sioux-weep.

Damned straight DamStrait. MplsBison is just ripe with the envy because his school did not have the foresight and the wisdom to establish a hockey program back in the day. As such, he is left with the ignominy of being little more than a troll under the bridge. Sniveling over everything and always without reason or cause.

I said it early and I will say it again. This team is loaded with both heart and talent. As someone noted elsewhere, the week off comes at just the right time. Hextall will get healthy. Genoway will return. Eidsness will start seeing the puck. The Sioux will stretch drive to home ice, a solid showing in the Final Five, and a #3 or #4 seed in the West. There, we will extract revenge by beating #1 seed Denver, and we will go to Detroit's Ford Field. There, the boys will skate to the National Championship. This is a year where the title is anyone's to grab. Who better equipped, better coached, and better supported by its fan base than the Fighting Sioux? National Champs in the last year of our existence as the Fighting Sioux. It all lines up. Be there, or be square.