SJHovey

22 wins and we’re in, 21 and I’ll take my chances. That’s always been the number for teams from the top conferences. 6-2 over the regular season, win the first round, and we’re at 21.

The only thing I would say about the program that I would like the staff to look at is this. Since the early 1980's until Eades left a few years ago, we always had a Minnesota high school hockey connection on the coaching staff. Blais, Eades, Frank Serratore, Jim Scanlan, Sandelin, Osiecki. We always had someone who was from Minnesota or who played high school hockey in Minnesota or coached high school hockey in Minnesota or something. Recruiting is very relationship driven and I've always thought that a lot of Dean Blais' success was due to the relationships he had with other Minnesota high school coaches, either through his days at the U or through his high school coaching days. Eades and Sandelin also had a lot of that. I don't think we have the connections with the state hockey programs the way we used to, and that perhaps makes recruiting in the state more difficult. It's harder to find those hidden diamonds without some inside information.

I've often thought that what this Board really needs is a thread addressing that precisely. A prediction thread where posters can come in, before a player starts his college career, and declare, "this guy is going to be a great college hockey player." Not just limited to our team, but all around college hockey. What you'd see is this. You'd see some hits, because yeah you can pretty much figure out that a player like Hughes (if he makes it to college) is going to be great. You're going to see some misses. And you're going to realize that many guys who are great college players were never even mentioned in our thread.

We certainly have a much nicer facility than Duluth, and we have a much deeper tradition. But everyone I ever talked to who went to school at UMD loved the school. Duluth is a fun town. It also has the advantage of location in terms of recruiting. The Duluth high schools and surrounding areas have turned out a lot of good recruits. Yeah, I agree we have an advantage, but I'm not certain it's as large or distinct as we might like to think.

We have advantages over many schools in terms of recruiting, but most of those schools we're really not competing with on a recruit by recruit basis. But if you list the top 15 college hockey programs out there, do we really have that much of an advantage? We have facilities and tradition and a quality staff (although on this board we seem to spend a lot of time trying to dispel that advantage). But there are a lot of schools located in geographically more pleasing areas, in larger metropolitan areas, in locations with more media exposure, with quality coaching and training staffs, etc...

I get why people here are frustrated. It's always more fun to win championships than to be a middle of the pack team. But there are a few here who think that identifying and landing great college hockey players, then turning them into a championship team is easy, or something that if the coaches just knew what they were doing or at least tried, they would accomplish. It is not that easy. Your question goes to one of the three great myths that I see offered way too frequently on this board. MYTH #1 - The System People complain that the coaching staff's "system" is stifling all of these great scorers coming out of juniors and turning them into grinders. It's the same "system" and core group of coaches and coaching philosophy that's been around UND since at least 2004-05. It's the identical system and group of coaches who were in place in 2015-16. Folks, I don't think it's the system, whatever that is. MYTH #2 - Failure to Develop College hockey fans of some of the major programs like to brag about how their program "develops" NHL players. That is largely a myth. Parise, Boeser, Toews, Oshie, Stecher, et al, were going to be great college hockey players wherever they played, and were going to play in the NHL. What the college programs can do is round out their games. They can teach better decision making. They can teach players to be more responsible in all zones of the ice. But if you think any staff can take a player out of juniors and "develop" him into a 25 goal scorer in college is just wishful thinking. To me, the question is do the players who enter as freshmen play the game better when they leave as seniors, juniors or whenever? That doesn't mean do they score more goals in a season. I think our coaching staffs over the years have done a good job of this. MYTH #3 - Failure to Recruit This touches upon your question. Where are the great 18 year olds who come in and dominate the college game, and why isn't our staff landing all of them? It is extraordinarily difficult to look at a player, especially when you project out 2, 3 or 4 years, and determine whether their great talent at the current level will translate over to the next level. In fact, if you believe you possess that ability, then you are wasting your time and semi-trailers full of cash posting here. You need to contact an NHL front office. Just think about some things we've seen with our own program. Brock Boeser and Chris Wilkie both came to our program the same year, out of the same junior league. They were coached by the same coaches, using the same "system." They had tied for the goal scoring title in the USHL the year before. So, why is one of them a budding star in the NHL and the other playing in what seems like his 14th college season? Think back to 2010-11. Who here would have predicted that Carter Rowney, having been declared a flop after just 4 goals in his first two seasons here, would likely have a better NHL career than Matt Frattin? College hockey is a different game, even more than it was 15 years ago, and light years from the way it was 30 years ago. The days of a Michigan, North Dakota, BC, Minnesota, Wisconsin or other schools loading up on all the talent is long since gone, and even if they happen to have a spectacular year recruiting (seemingly), it doesn't necessarily translate into team success (see BU).

Haha. This is why old people should not post on their cellphones. Damn tough to see.

Man, I’m not a huge fan of poor mouthing recruits who won’t be here for a year. For what it’s worth, Chris Dilks tweeted that Ness has been really good in the USHL this year. Chris, who is no friend of ours, seems to have a decent eye for hockey talent.

17-15-4 over last 10 seasons, including this one. Two years we just played two games.

In the pre-NCHC days I was with you. I don't think I ever cheered for a WCHA team, although I preferred UMD to beat Michigan in 2011 only because I didn't want Michigan to get further ahead of us. However, the NCHC programs took a fair amount of heat and ridicule for forming the so-called "super conference" once the B1G broke up college hockey as we knew it. With the great success of the NCHC in getting teams into the tournament, and then success within the tournament, I kind of feel like it rubs the noses of the detractors in it a little bit, which I don't mind one bit.

If we don’t win it, I’d like to see an NCHC team win it, just because it riles fans in other conferences. It goes without saying that DU and UMD are at the bottom of my list of NCHC teams I’d cheer for though.

Well, I posted I thought we could get a win and a chance to win the other game. I don’t think my hunch was too bad.

I don't know. A guy has to draw a line somewhere.

Ok, I did it but it went in sideways. Haha. Anyway I hung a baseball cap in the upper left corner of the banner for a size perspective.

They are similar to the current banners in that they are rectangular, hanging the long way. I’d estimate 6 feet high by 4 feet wide. I’m a technology idiot. If someone can explain (in very simple terms) how I can post a photo that I’ll take with my phone, I’ll do it.

I know exactly what happened to them. It was following the 1996-97 championship season, which was also the spring of the great flood in Grand Forks. As I recall, the Sioux boosters lost a bunch of their stuff in the flood. The University also needed to order a new banner for the most recent championship. The five banners ('59, '63, '80, '82 and '87) that had been hanging in the arena were donated to the booster club for them to auction off and raise money. The 1980 banner was purchased by the owner of Tim Shea's nursery in Grand Forks, and I believe it used to hang in their facility, although I haven't been in there for years. The 1963 and 1987 banners were purchased by an alumni who used to be a state district court judge in Minnesota. He is a good friend of my father's. My brother has the 1959 banner, and if you were at the CC game when the '59 team was honored, you may have seen the banner. My brother couldn't be at the game, but he had a friend bring it, and a number of people took their pictures with it. The 1982 banner hangs in my office.

SCSU hasn't exactly dominated teams in the opposing team's rink. They're 1-1-2 at UMD and Miami, where UND went 2-2. They won four games at CC and Alaska, but three of them were one goal games excluding eng's. They blew out BC and lost to Northeastern. Yeah, they could come in and do to us what WMU did, but I could very easily see us play them the way we played DU, with a win and a chance to take the second game.

If this team has done anything though it has been to play to its competition. Thus, I expect at least one if not two close games in each of the four series coming up, and there is certainly no reason why they can't steal a game in each instance.

I understand. I was just being a smartazz because those teams I listed were truly awful and we'd probably have needed about a 32 team field minimum for them to get in. I still don't think this year's team faces an insurmountable hurdle. 22 wins by the time the Frozen Faceoff is over and this team will be in, unless there are just crazy upsets in the other playoffs resulting in a lot of autobids going to teams outside the pairwise top 16. 22 teams in a league like the NCHC will pretty much always lock you in. We have 12 now. We might even get in with 21. I still think this team needs to go 7-5 the rest of the regular season, win the first round of the playoffs and win one of two games in St. Paul. That's not impossible, or even that unrealistic for this team.

How many teams would the tournament need before our '91-'92, '92-'93 and '93-'94 teams would have made it, teams that finished 7th, 8th and 8th respectively in the old WCHA?

Maybe someone has done this, or maybe it's pretty much impossible to do, but man it would be great if there were a site or someplace where fans could go to see examples of each version of authentic jersey that North Dakota has worn over the years, by year.

That might be slightly overstating it. I plugged in your results into the CHN customization feature for the Pairwise. Because you didn't state which 6 we would win against UMD, SCSU, WMU and DU, I just went with sweeps at home and splits on the road. With the results as you suggested, we'd be sitting at the #3 overall seed heading into the playoffs. It's actually a kind of fun tool to play around with, in your spare time. Of course it assumes certain results elsewhere. I believe it bases those results on KRACH ratings. While they can be wrong, keep in mind they can be wrong in both directions (that is, to UND's benefit or detriment). If you play around with the customization feature, what you'll see is that in the absence of some absurd outcomes elsewhere in college hockey, what UND really needs is to sweep two remaining series and split the rest. If it does that it's most likely spot in the pairwise will be around #10 heading into the playoffs. Only one sweep and the rest of the series split will put us on the bubble, at around #15.

Home ice for the first round. Get to St. Paul. Win two against two teams without a ton to play for. It’s a formula that has been followed before and is certainly achievable.

Excellent. Good to know. Thanks.