SJHovey

In my opinion DU's tough pod has to come with a huge asterisk, though. First, the schedule for them was brutal. Their first game was against a very good UMD team, who already had a game under their belt. Every team struggled a little, naturally, in their first game, but DU had to do it against a team that had already played. Game 2 was against the #1 team in the country, at that point, and they lost in OT. Game 3 was against a good SCSU team playing with four days rest, while DU had a really tough game the day before against UND. Those first three games were brutal, from a scheduling standpoint. Then they lose their best offensive player to the World Juniors. DU will be a lot better in the second half. I wouldn't have wished their pod schedule on anyone.

There is no pairwise. You can only do the pairwise when you have interconference games.

But Wodon's site also has some flaws. PwPt%, was the Pairwise percentage that was going to be applied to overtime games, for Pairwise comparisons, before all this pandemic nonsense not occurred. But Wodon is still hung up on it, and thinks that the PwPt% is what should be important for tournament selection time. But take a look at it. CHN has Bowling Green with a PwPt% of .857, for example, which includes two regulation wins over a DIII school.

I think I agree with almost all of this. That was just a good college hockey game between two good teams last night. I thought we started slow, but by the second period we had taken over the game. Sometimes the bounces don't go your way, but I think Duluth is as good a team as we are likely to see this year (outside of maybe a BC team that looks really good) and Duluth certainly isn't a better team than we are. I think it'll help once it goes back to a more normal schedule and the coaching staff is able to have more practices again to tighten up some of the mistakes. There has been nothing about this team that has disappointed me yet.

I'm ok with Perunovich winning. He was a terrific player, although if I were picking a team I'd pick his teammate Samberg over him. Guch had a great year, but it wasn't a dazzling statistical year to set him apart from the other players. He was simply clutch. But as for UND snubs in the Hobey voting, he'd still fall behind Greg Johnson, Jeff Panzer and Matt Frattin in my book.

For goaltenders and forwards drafted in the top ten: Goalies: One year -- Rick DiPietro (1), Three years -- Al Montoya (6) Forwards: One year -- Phil Kessel (5), Kyle Turris (3), Jack Eichel (2), Clayton Keller (7), Tyson Jost (10), Casey Mittelstadt (8), Brady Tkachuk (4), Alex Turcotte (5), Trevor Zegras (9) One and a half years -- Kyle Okposo (7) Two years -- Dany Heatley (2), Thomas Vanek (5), Jack Skille (7), Jonathan Toews (3), James van Riemsdyk (2), Colin Wilson (7) Three years -- Blake Wheeler (5) Four years -- Eric Nystrom (10)

For top 10 defensemen in the last 20 years, it is sort of a mixed bag (draft position in parenthesis): One year - Noah Hanifan (5), Jacob Trouba (9), Erik Johnson (1), Ryan Suter (7) Two years - Quinn Hughes (7), Cale Makar (4), Zach Werenski (8), Brian Lee (9), Jack Johnson (3), Mike Komisarek (7) Three years -- Four years -- Ryan Whitney (5) It's possible I missed a player or two, but I think it's hard to predict whether you'll get one or two years. You almost certainly won't get three out of a top 10 pick. One thing that might be working in our favor is there is some thought that this year's draft might be "down" a bit in terms of talent. The other thing, it's kind of crazy that Michigan has had five of the eleven players listed.

Time to call it a season and award the championship according to the PairWise.

I have to believe that if you are a Warroad high school hockey player, TJ Oshie and Brock Nelson are a couple of players whose names you are familiar with, so I assume that helps as well.

I was bored last night so I was just messing around with CHN's pairwise tool that lets you modify game outcomes. If Canisius had swept us again this year, we'd still be #3 in the pairwise. Of course, none of us would still be around to see it.

The only time I worry about what a UMD fan is saying is when they are reading my order back to me at McDonald's.

St. Cloud swept Duluth in St. Cloud a couple of weeks ago. Tough at home.

I don’t think they swap 1/16 out west with host school there, but maybe.

I was looking at Jim Dahl's site. The St. Cloud situation is pretty crazy. They are at #27 in the PWR right now, and are a below .500 team fighting just to get home ice in the playoffs. If they finish the regular season 6-0, they could be as high as #6 in the PWR when the regular season ends. 21 spots in six games is crazy, especially this late in the year. Games against UND, Denver and UMD will do that, though, I guess.

I personally don't think it will be that many. Atlantic Hockey, obviously. The ECAC and WCHA are the most vulnerable because they only have two at large qualifiers right now, which means that if any other team wins the tournament, that's another spot. Right now the B1G really only has PSU and Ohio St. as qualifiers with Minnesota on the bubble, but I think that if Minnesota, Michigan or maybe even Michigan St played their way into a conference title, they'd also probably be in the top 15. Same for WMU in the NCHC.

Actually the games tonight are very interesting for the teams in the 15-18 spots of the Pairwise. Just playing around with the calculator at CHN shows these results: CC and Mich St win 15 MN 16 WMU 17 Mass-Lowell CC and Michigan win 15 WMU 16 Mass-Lowell 17 MN AF and Mich St win 15 Mass-Lowell 16 MN 17 Quinnipiac 18 WMU AF and Michigan win 15 Mass-Lowell 16 MN 17 WMU 18 Quinnipiac

I agree 100% about Jake. He has improved so much. He clearly understands the game and is pretty good about making a comment about what a team is doing or needs to do that makes complete sense.

What really strikes me from that table is how locked in the current #1 seeds are. Even if BC won 8 or more of its final 11, they still would need a lot of things to fall right to sneak into one of the top 4 positions. Everyone else who has a chance at a #1 seed outside the top 4 need to basically run the table and hope everything else goes perfectly for them.

I think she writes about women's college hockey on USCHO and perhaps at other sites. I haven't seen a lot of what she has written, but I think she's a pretty vocal advocate for women's hockey. That's great, more power to her. For women's hockey to survive it will need a lot of vocal advocates for it. But I have no time for the vilification of UND for choosing to drop its program, especially as they are spending money that supports, in some small way, women's hockey in general by paying to advertise during a women's college hockey game.

I think it’s funny that college hockey tweeters Chris Dilks, Nicole Haase, and Nate Wells got their panties in a bunch over the temerity of UND to purchase advertising during the tv broadcast of a women’s college hockey game during hockey day Minnesota. I guess it’s good to see the women’s college game healthy enough to be picky about who pays for advertising during their games.

Our two first rounders in 2016 were a freshman and a sophomore.

Two of them were first rounders, hardly the first time we've seen that with this program. All the rest were fourth rounders or later, or even undrafted. A lot of things have to come together just right to win a title.

I'm not so certain this entirely true. I heard him reference something about UND traveling and all living in the Twin Cities area, but the way I heard it he was more trying to throw a dig at us because they understand we have fans who get upset when people say the reason we have great attendance in the Twin Cities and Denver is due to all of our alumni in the area. Motzko and others acknowledge that UND fans are going to show up and that they travel well.

It's gotta be a bit of a vacation destination. Seattle is borderline for me. Tampa during the winter would be fine. But there needs to be an attraction other than just the game or you probably wouldn't draw more than 7-8000 tops. I think going back to Vegas would be fine, against say a Michigan. Another option would be New Orleans. The Smoothie King arena was designed as a multi-purpose arena and supposedly seats nearly 17,000 for hockey. Their ECHL team bailed from the arena due to a dispute with the Pelicans over reconfiguring the arena between basketball and hockey, but on a one time basis I'm sure it could be done. Maybe a Mardi Gras destination game?

Down to fewer than 400 tickets still available on Ticketmaster.