SJHovey

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.

I like the balance next year's team might have, too. I'm also excited by the way our freshmen defensemen played by the end of the season. C. Poolman didn't look like a freshman at all, and I really liked how Casey Johnson, and even Peski, showed a willingness to jump up into the play once they got a little confidence. If I have one concern about next year, it's this. High end talent really makes a difference on the power play. That's where exceptional playmaking talent and puck possession talent and a sniper's touch really show themselves, and we're not going to have a lot of that unless one of the incoming freshmen have it, or someone like Yon or Bowen take a big step forward. The power play is going to just be a lot of big bodies in front of the net, hoping that a shot of the point deflects off them or hoping to screen the goalie on shots from the point. A team's special teams play is pretty important, and is probably responsible in large part for our loss to BU this year. That's my only concern.

This, I believe, is part of the problem. I'm not sure we're ever going to see enough cameras, with a high enough quality, at all college rinks. I think the NHL system is also aided by "Toronto" in that they have people watching the games with the ability to quickly look at a potential offsides, even before the play is stopped. That speeds up the review.

The Parallax video that was linked here is certainly very interesting, and goes to show the importance of having cameras right on the line, either on the side or above. However, when I was watching that video one thing that did occur to me is that wouldn't the Parallax effect apply to both Hoff's skate and the puck on Olson's stick? In other words, if the actual location of Hoff's skate relative to the blue line was distorted due to the Parallax effect, wouldn't the actual location of the puck be similarly distorted?

There was a similarly interesting situation in the Wild game last night, if any of you happened to catch it (including Oshie's game winner in OT). The Wild were down one in the last minute and had pulled the goalie. They entered the zone on a cross ice pass to Spurgeon, who then dumped the puck. After some skirmishes along the end wall, a Washington player got possession and shot the puck up the center of the ice, about 7 feet off the ice surface. Koivu reached up, while on the blue line, grabbed the puck and dropped it down onsides. A few seconds later the Wild scored. Toronto wanted to review for offsides. At first there was a question of whether they were reviewing Koivu's catch, which was pretty close, but seemed like it should be onsides. Then it became clear they were looking at the initial entry. In a scenario like that one it's really hard to see how the initial offsides (it wasn't, by the way) could have played any role in the play and further supports PCM's logic. I would have liked to have heard some discussion from the announcers or others about the change of possession and whether that should have nullified any advantage gained had Spurgeon been offsides.

You are right that the First Amendment doesn't apply here.

With respect to your question, again, for the third time, I think the offsides review process is an excellent point of discussion on this board or anywhere else. Friday's play is another matter. What else is there to discuss about Friday's play, other than to complain about it. The play is over. It was called. The game went on. I suppose that we can talk about the fact that the UND players box and coaches were right on that blueline and that it's interesting none of them have suggested it was a bad call. What exactly do you want to discuss about the play, not the offsides review process in general, other than complain about the call?

Her post, which didn't directly quote anyone else's post, followed krusty's post (which quoted your initial post) and included krusty's references to the officials.

That's not what I said at all. In fact, it's the opposite of what I said. Talk about rule changes all you like. Nodakgirl responded to a poster who was complaining about the "bozos" and "clowns" who called UND offsides on the play, and she told the poster to give it a rest. I feel the same way about those particular types of posts. Biatching at the officials, or calling them names, accomplishes nothing and sounds like whining to outsiders, and to me, and we're better than that.

I'm going to agree, somewhat, with Nodakgirl here. The original post of Sic's is a good topic for discussion. Should college hockey look at changing the way we go back and check for offsides, and more particularly, whether a zone entry with no score on the initial rush should then essentially be "good" if after 30-60 seconds of cycling the puck a team scores. However, in your initial post you changed the topic, slightly, by commenting on the our particular offsides, the poor camera angle for the replay, etc... To me, this gets into more of the "sour grapes" territory that I prefer we avoid as a fanbase. Berry took the correct approach with respect to our particular offsides. He said it was "probably right" and deferred to the officials. Enough said on that particular play as far as I'm concerned.