SJHovey

MN is a very slight favorite Friday on FanDuel. Moneyline Minnesota. -120 North Dakota. -110

All speculation, of course, but I have to disagree. Berry always had the problem that some people looked at the 2016 title and saw Hak's team. But by 2020, it was Berry's guys. That coupled with the fact that we would have been the first program to catch Michigan at 9 titles, I think that leash would have been quite a bit longer.

I expect MN to be pretty desperate this weekend. The last thing they want to do is leave GF sitting at 1-4-1 on the season, with four games played at home. It will take a monster effort by UND to come away with a sweep, but we can hope.

I was looking at Dave Berger's article, and all of the links in it, earlier today. One that I watched was the November 2019 Thanksgiving beat down of MN. As I was watching it I was thinking, "my goodness this team was stacked. How did we not win it all that year?" I was just about to do some digging into what happened that post-season, when suddenly I was like, "oh, yeah...."

Dad got his hot dog and soda. I know they were consumed. No idea how many cards were.

Since we've gotten off track with the discussion of cashless transactions, I'll pile on. When we were in Nashville for the PSU game, my dad left his credit card stuck in the machine at one of Bridgestone vendor booths. He didn't realize it until we were at a bar later that night. We walked back over to Bridgestone and were able to find a gate where security would let us in and sent us to a lost and found room. We told them what had happened, and they guy walked into a back room and came back with a large box that had, at a minimum, 300 debit and credit cards in it. He said, "these are from tonight, let's have a look." We found it in there.

Pretty "meh" in my opinion, just looking at them in the Siouxshop email.

PSU is the pretty heavy favorite on the Draft Kings site (+400) with BU at +800, followed by MSU and Michigan at +900. Fan Duel doesn't have their odds posted yet, that I've seen. I actually thought the article was pretty fair and well written. The eyes of college hockey are going to be on PSU, and honestly, they've shown nothing in their past that suggests they will thrive with that kind of scrutiny. Teams that come to town with that target on their back almost always face the best by their opponent. It'll be interesting to see. They sort of snuck up on people last year. That won't happen this year.

One? C'mon, where is the greed? Two guys. Two spots. You have to admit there is a certain symmetry there.

I think what we're seeing a bit of is a "wait and see" response by many of the CHLers. They want to see how things work out for kids like Reschny, etc... I don't think we can underestimate the pressure that is being put on these Canadian kids to stay home and play major junior hockey. Plus, the known is always more comfortable than the unknown. I know the message that is being pushed up north is "don't make this mistake. Don't jump at the early money (NIL) which is only going to cost you a lot more money because of your slowed development. Playing massive numbers of games in major juniors is the tried and true method of landing in the NHL." That will no doubt gain some traction with some kids, especially before we have a chance to see how things work out. And I think North Dakota is going to play a big role in this during the coming year. Verhoef is coming in, anticipated to be maybe the second or third overall pick next year. If we bring him along slowly, as I expect we will, and if he maybe spends a big chunk of the year playing bottom pair or middle pair minutes (with this group, something that is entirely plausible), will his draft stock slip? If he drops down to the 5-10 range in the draft, how many people up north are going to point to him and say, "see, if he had stayed in major juniors, he'd have been the second overall pick." It'll be interesting. I suspect that Bryn and the group are out prowling around looking for perhaps a couple of older kids to round out the roster this year.

Listened to The Athletic podcast. They were shaking their heads on him picking PSU. No history of developing NHL talent. Traditionally soft schedule. Not the same talent level as other locations. They chalked it up to two things: NIL and the chance to be the entire focus of the program.

How does that pitch go, exactly? "I've coached college hockey for 25 years (13 winning seasons, baby!!). I'm a whole 6 games over .500. I have one regular season title to my credit, but two conference tournament titles. I've actually coached a team in the Frozen Four, but sadly, never in a national championship game. Hop on the train." Jeebus, the guy was 44-109-7 as a college hockey player. 12 seasons at Penn St. and his team has finished the regular season in the top half of the conference exactly twice. Once was the 2019-20 covid regular season title, and the other was a third place finish out of six teams in 2015-16. If I'm recruiting against PSU, I'm throwing those numbers out there and asking recruits, "how much money do they have to pay you to get used to losing?" Or, maybe, "Come to Penn St. You can be fourth player from our University to ever play in the NHL!!"

Someone posted this link over on USCHO, regarding a list of major junior kids going the NCAA route. If someone has already linked to it over here, I apologize. https://www.sportsnet.ca/juniors/article/chl-to-ncaa-tracker-ohl-whl-qmjhl-players-going-to-u-s-college-ranks/

He didn’t attend Cornell. He was a broadcaster for their hockey games for a time. I think his degree is in radio broadcasting from Ithaca College, a private school located in the same city as Cornell.

He did. I think it was even on Wodon's show on CHN. Wodon just had no answers. After the interview, and after he had some time to think about it before he finished up the podcast, Wodon came up with some half-hearted arguments, but even then you could tell he knew he'd been pounded.