SJHovey

A couple of other options to keep in mind for rooms If you have a group, consider a VRBO. A lot of people own condos in various locations on the strip, and use them as vacation spots, renting them out during the rest of the year. We stayed at what was the Westgate time share resort just behind Planet Hollywood a few years ago and got a great deal. Those suites were spectacular, too. Second, we once used priceline and got rooms for $50/night at Planet Hollywood. With two people per room you couldn't beat the price.

I have a lot of suggestions. A group of buddies and I have been going there about twice a year for a number of years, and we've stayed in a wide variety of the hotels. It really depends upon what you are looking for and what you want to spend. The Orleans is off the strip, and you really can't walk between the Strip and that resort without a lot of hassle, and some danger. But the Orleans itself is fine if you just want to show up, gamble a little, go to the game, then leave town without having to see the Strip, rent a car, or pay $20 every time you want to taxi or uber somewhere. Most resorts are going to have a "resort fee" of about $30/night for the room, so keep that in mind as you check out websites for prices and deals. We've use Delta Vacations, Orbitz and Cheapo Vegas in the past. You just have to shop around. I've found that the best deals, at least coming out of Minneapolis, is for a Thursday to Tuesday trip, primarily because the flights are so much cheaper. Rooms in Vegas for any night other than Friday or Saturday can be pretty cheap, even at the best resorts. Keep in mind that it'll be a football weekend, so the resorts fill up with Californians coming over to bet college and NFL games. Vegas sportsbooks on a Saturday and Sunday in the fall are crazy fun, if you're into football and sports betting. But be prepared to hit the sports book pretty early Sunday morning to get a seat (games start at 10 a.m. Vegas time). I would divide the strip resorts into three categories, A to C, with A being the nicest resorts/rooms (but also the highest prices): Class A: Aria, Cosmopolitan, Caesars, Wynn, Encore, Mirage, Venetian, Palazzo, MGM, The Cromwell, Bellagio and Mandalay Bay Class B: Paris, Treasure Island, Luxor, The Linq (Ralph's old place, refurbished), New York New York, Monte Carlo (about to be rebranded as "Park"), Planet Hollywood Class C: Flamingo, Ballys, Tropicana, Circus Circus, Excalibur, Hooters, Harrahs, Westgate Las Vegas, the Stratosphere, Best Western Casino Royale Within Class C, there is a big variety. Hooters is horrible. Excalibur is pretty rundown and gritty. Same with the Strat and Casino Royale. They've done refurbishing at the Trop and at Westgate Las Vegas. Harrahs is pretty gritty. The Flamingo and Ballys are fine. Avoid Circus Circus. The Linq promenade is a relatively new entertainment district right between the Linq resort and the Flamingo. On the east end of the promenade is the big ferris wheel (The High Roller), and there is a shuttle to and from the Orleans that picks up at the ferris wheel. That is also the heart of the strip, so I've always thought the Linq, Flamingo, The Cromwell, Caesars and Bellagio area of the strip is the best place to stay. Walking district to everywhere on the strip. If I had one tip for travelers out there this October it is to watch for deals at what is now called the Monte Carlo, but what is being completely renovated and rebranded as Park MGM. The room rates were always pretty reasonable at the Monte Carlo, and it's a pretty good location. Quite frequently when they do a complete refurbishing out there you see a "lag" in the room prices until it starts building demand. People associate the property with the old resort so there isn't big demand until people see how nice the rooms are. That's what happened with the Linq after they refurbished it. Right now that is one thing I'm keeping an eye on. Good luck!

There may be some of that, but I'm not sure how much. Personally I don't think a ton of tickets are going to go on the market, except at unreasonable prices we currently see. As I told a friend, if someone wants to pay $2000 to see this game, I'll sell them my tickets, and I'm going to be in Las Vegas anyway. I've told my buddies that I don't expect to be able to get them tickets. I personally think the most likely scenario for stumbling into tickets is in a situation where someone planned to go, but life intervened in the 20 months between the tickets going on sale and the game. You'll probably learn about them in a place like this message board, or through friends.

Nobody is buying tickets at that price. It's just some North Dakota fans who were able to get in on the presale and think they can rip someone off. I'm actually going to be in Las Vegas with a group of my friends that weekend, so I've been monitoring the ticket availability pretty closely for about a year. I have two tickets from the pre-sale, but if I can pick up more I'm certainly going to do it. The first tickets that came on the market are those seven tickets in Section 105. They were originally listed for a little over $600/seat. They've been listed for months. When the Herald story came out they were still listed for about that same price, but now they raised them to $748. Nobody is going to pay $600 to see this game. The people who have them listed are kidding themselves. My guess is someone might pay $2-250, but that will be about it. I do think it'll be interesting to see what happens with the listing prices. My personal hunch is they will remain high, then the tickets will come off the list because the sellers don't get the king's ransom they seek so they go ahead and plan their personal trip. There is a cut off by which people will have to book their flight and rooms to avoid getting gouged. There won't be a lot of walk up demand for these tickets. If you committed to making the trip, you'll go. If you don't have tickets, you probably won't make the trip unless you have a reason to be there otherwise.

What was the story behind his original commitment to ASU, then backing out and picking UND? Just a matter of a small kid overlooked by most schools so he committed early to ASU? Did he re-open his status before choosing UND, or did we just poach him?

I see where the son of former UND forward Brent Bobyck recently committed to Mankato. At least I think he's the son of Brent. Always enjoyed watching Brent play.

They have a right to rip on UND. That doesn't mean the decision by UND was wrong, but if there is anyone who has a right to be angry, frustrated and disappointed with the actions of UND regarding the women's hockey program, it's the Lammy twins. Let's just ignore the rest of the family's connections and contributions to UND hockey. The Lammy twins gave up an opportunity to be stars on championship teams for nothing more than an opportunity to join a horrid program, in their hometown, and try to breathe some life into it. I'd say they were successful. Some have suggested failure because of the lack of national championships, but all things being equal they certainly put the women's hockey team on the map. I don't necessarily disagree with UND's decision. Something had to be done, and this probably made as much sense fiscally as any others. But the way the school handled it was sub-optimal, to put it mildly. Frankly, it probably bothers me more the lack of outrage over the cutting of the other programs (didn't they care?) or the lack of outrage that our school can't get it's fiscal house in order and seemed to be caught by surprise by all of this.

The Lamoureux family's contributions to North Dakota hockey certainly exceed, by miles, the contributions of anyone on this board. I think its time to stop ripping them. Just my two cents.

Not all lawsuits are generated with the idea that the plaintiff expects to go to trial and be awarded a certain amount of money. Sometimes they are started to make a point. Sometimes they are started to try to force the defendant to compromise, or even just force a party to the bargaining table.

This is just my personal opinion, and I recognize many people here, at UND, or around the country in general may disagree with this opinion, but I think it is a mistake to judge the merits of the women's hockey program, or any other college athletic program, by the number of fans it draws to its games. I don't think that can or should be a consideration. The way I look at it, a University's athletic offerings should be as broad as it's educational offerings. Just because very few people may study English Lit for a major, that doesn't mean the University should drop it. We want a broad base of educational opportunities to attract a broad base of students. The same with our sports teams. During the seven years I was at UND I attended many men's hockey games, quite a few football and basketball games, and about three baseball games. That's it. No swimming meets. No track meets. No soccer or field hockey or volleyball or anything else. But that doesn't mean the programs should be dropped. By offering all these programs, we attract a class of students with a broader array of sports interests. We offer scholarships to people who are good at swimming, but not so good at basketball. These are loss leader programs. We lose money on them, but you need to have them. You need them to be a University. It's a matter of figuring out how to fund them. To me, the failure of the University is in its relationship with the legislature and governor, and the University's failure to address, in advance, money problems which were clearly heading its way.

Oh, I agree with you. I definitely think they're going to go after someone.

Personally, I think all this speculation is for nought. Let's think about some things. B1G hockey has to be feeling a lot better about itself than it was even a couple of months ago when this rumor broke. They got three teams in the tournament. Notre Dame, who also made the field and is joining them next year, made the Frozen Four. Michigan and Michigan St., two of their bread and butter programs just cut their dead weight coaching staffs. Are they suddenly going to ask North Dakota to join them? A school with, shall we say "well publicized", financial problems in its athletic department? And what about our Admin? Are they going to suddenly "find" the money to pay the NCHC exit fee after unceremoniously showing the women's program the exit? Good luck selling the P.R. dog.

Yep, and if you go back and watch all of UND's games, you'd see something similar happen 10-15 times a game between the two teams. Sometimes it causes a player to lose his balance, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the player who loses his balance gets injured. Sometimes he doesn't. The workings of chance don't make it dirty.

I didn't scream about the Poolman hit, although I do think that hit was worse. What I though was different about the Poolman hit was that basically he was grabbed from behind and driven shoulder first into the boards. Because he was being held as he was driven into the boards, he had no chance to protect himself. The Denver play was a little different. I think the Denver play was more akin to a player going in and getting tripped, then sliding awkwardly into the boards and injuring himself. It may be a penalty, but I don't think it's malicious or dirty.

But that happens all the time. Second period of a game in November, you might even draw a penalty call out of it. But I wouldn't characterize it as dirty or cheap.

You guys realize I listed 12 non-con games, right?

I don't know that the NCHC schedule has been completed yet. I think I've seen these for non-con games: Anchorage tournament (2 games), host Minnesota (2), at Wisconsin (2), host Union (2), home and home with BSU, host St. Larry's (2). Pretty good schedule. Seven at home, five on the road. Get the bonus games because of going to Alaska. Minnesota and Wisconsin should be decent, St. Larry's is usually in the mix in the ECAC. Union seems to generally have their program on the right track.

If you're talking about the broken leg, I didn't think that was a particularly terrible hit. Duluth plays up to a line, and over. But we sometimes play that way as well. We dodged some bullets last year with a couple of the hits, the Olson one in particular.

Yeah, I had a chance to see Jost play in person against the Wild last Sunday, and again on tv last night. There is nothing that I've seen that causes me to think he made a bad decision to leave, as much as I'd have liked to see him stay.

Who said anything about folding up their program? Like I said, they are basically the St. Cloud of Hockey East. But that doesn't change my initial opinion, to which you started your responses, that Notre Dame, as a "4 band seed" had it about as easy as they could have hoped for. They played the worst #1 seed in Minnesota. Then they played a UMass-Lowell team that had some success in Hockey East, but in a year in which BC was decimated by early departures and BU was playing a bunch of 18 year olds. That was my original point, to which you took offense.

If they needed bounces to go their way to score even one goal, we handled them.

UMass-Lowell is the greatest program to accomplish exactly zero. I'm tired of hearing about how great UMass-Lowell is. You might as well talk about the dynasty that is St. Cloud.

I watched the game that was actually played. Shut down a team with a top 10 offense and top 10 power play. I'd have to go back and look, but I recall reading that we held them to the lowest number of shots going back a year or more. This is a team that hadn't lost since the Obama administration, and is crushing teams. I didn't say we dominated them, but we were the better team that night.

Maybe, but I certainly wouldn't bet on it. I think it's going to be a war, and a close game. Notre Dame was not a good hockey team last night. In fact, they really weren't that good this year. They had a relatively easy route to the Frozen Four. Three weeks ago we handled Denver. It was a close game, but we were the better team, and Duluth plays a lot like the way we do. I've picked Denver to beat Duluth but I expect a one goal game, two goal game at worst.

If it's like it was before, you'll lose the players for the full season. When I was at UND in the early 1980's, it wasn't unusual at all for WCHA teams to lose a star player for the entire season. Broten played for Minnesota one year, took the next year off to play on the 1980 Olympic team, then came back to Minnesota the following year. That happened to a few others that I recall. Unfortunately, most just moved on to the NHL. NHL players can just take off a week before the Olympics and arguably be ready to play effectively in the tournament. No way USA hockey does that if they have to use college kids.