SJHovey

I would guess, without knowing what is in the contract, there is very little chance the game could be moved to T-Mobile. First, the two arenas are owned by entirely different gaming companies. The Orleans is owned by Boyd Gaming, T-Mobile is connected to the MGM company, iirc. If they were the same company, you'd have a shot. Second, it's one thing for there to be demand as voiced on a message board or two, and another to sell an additional 10,000 tickets. The champions club was the low hanging fruit. These are the hardcore fans, the ones who put up the extra money to join the club and buy season tickets. There may be champion club members who might buy a few more tickets, but do we sell 10,000 more? Third, the demand for tickets, from the champions club, was probably increased at least in some small way by the anticipated ticket shortage. If people knew there were going to be 17,000 seats available, people would have waited to make sure their travel plans could be made, especially at $100/ticket. But the promoters can't take that chance. They want the tickets sold now. Think of the regional in Fargo. Let's say UND makes the tournament, and MN is placed there. Sure it would be great if the arena was twice the size. But if you're putting on the event, you want to sell the 5000 tickets now, while there is still some uncertainty about whether UND will be there, but a shortage of tickets. Bird in the hand. Finally, it's not in UND's best interest to move it. Think about what happens the next time a destination game is scheduled. Everyone here will remember the shortage of tickets in Vegas. Artificial demand has now been created.

I've attended every conference tournament since the WCHA started holding them in 1988, and this year will be no different. I understand not going if it's family or resources, etc... But to not go because of Target Center is just creating an excuse to bail, imho.

The Minnesota release on the game said they will receive a "limited number of tickets." http://www.gophersports.com/sports/m-hockey/spec-rel/072716aaa.html

According to Wiki, the Orleans Arena holds 7773 for ice hockey.

It truly is the nightmare scenario for the NCAA selection committee. They need UND to either miss the tournament or, more ideally, make it up to a #2 or #3 seed. That way they can park Duluth close to home in Fargo, match up UND with someone like Minnesota in the #2-#3 matchup, and let Duluth play an autobid like Bemidji.

Let's say that UMD, DU and Western Michigan all end up as #1 seeds, and we end up a #4. Let's also assume BU is the other #1 seed, and that there are only four NCHC teams in the tournament. There is no doubt in my mind that BU would be coming to Fargo, UNLESS one fact existed. If BU were the overall #1 see there is a chance they would go ahead and match up NCHC teams in Fargo, but even in that scenario I still think it would be about 55/45 BU would be here. There are two holies of holies for the NCAA. The host team plays at home and no first round matchups between conference members unless it completely destroys bracket integrity.

It would not shock me at all if by the time the B1G playoffs roll around that Minnesota and Wisconsin are the only two B1G teams in contention for an at-large bid.

I think for once we're going to have to defer to DaveK on this one. If there is anyone who should be an expert on underachieving, it's a Minnesota fan. Any other college hockey program with the built in advantages Minnesota has had (major university and money that goes with it, only major university in a hockey mad state, B1G tv money, etc...) would have managed 12-15 national championships easy by now.

Three or four years ago I looked at the tournament fields and concluded that if you are a program from a major conference (i.e., not Atlantic hockey or the current version of the WCHA) you need 21-22 wins by selection Sunday to make it into the 16 team field. There are the occasional outliers, and a poor season by the rest of your conference (see: B1G 2015, 2016) can hurt you, but generally speaking, 21-22 wins puts you in solid shape. With the strength of the NCHC this year, unless strange things happen with the autobids, I think we're a lock with 22 wins and probably pretty good with 21. We have 13 right now. I think we need a minimum of 8, or maybe 9, including the NCHC playoffs, to put ourselves inside the bubble. If we get Jim's 6 wins during the regular season, losses in the first round or at Target Center may knock us out. My hope is the team finds a way to win at least 7 of the last 10 regular season games, then see where that takes us.

With respect to Penn St., their season gives me a sense of deja vu. Their season, and all the discussion fans and writers are having about it, remind me so much of the 2010-11 Yale season. Up to that time the ECAC had been pretty terrible. Yale did have a couple of appearances in the tournament including some upsets that we remember, but generally speaking they received no respect in the hockey world, nor did the ECAC. At about this point in that season, Yale was something like 17-1 or 18-2. They were elevated to #1 in the polls, much to the outrage of everyone who pointed out they literally had beaten no one of any consequence to that point. Generally, people who claimed to be "in the know" just said "wait and see what happens." Yale did start to lose a few games, but because of their hot start maintained a pretty high ranking going into the tournament. In the NCAA's, they escaped a scrappy Air Force team before getting rolled by eventual champion Duluth. But I remember coming away from the tournament thinking, "Ok, they were a little better than I thought." I didn't think they were the best team in the country, nor did I even think they were a top 4 or 5 team after watching the two NCAA appearances, but I concluded they were certainly a top 10 team. That's kind of what I think I'll see with Penn St. as the year progresses.

So, basically, three out of four NCHC series every single week?

USCHO has them 1-6, 8 and 12 as of this morning. That's pretty cool, I think. It also means that there probably won't be a major pwr hit with the occasional loss or tie, which is nice.

I think Jayson made an error. Too many of us have looked at the schedules and come up with a different number.

I think it's his 52nd, assuming no exhibition games counted. The last one he didn't start was Saturday vs. St. Cloud last year.

Yeah, Red Berenson is pretty much the only person associated with Michigan who is old enough to remember them.

I suppose we're all different, but two that I'll always feel that got away were 1982-83 and 1998-99. In 1982-83 we had a good core of the previous year's championship team coming back, plus we had the Frozen Four at the old Ralph. We were basically a triple overtime goal against Wisconsin away from playing 4 NCAA tournament games at home for the championship. That 1998-99 team was one of the most dominant I've seen. 29-3-2 in the regular season. 11-1-2 on the road in the WCHA that year. Just a crazy good team that come the playoffs started to doubt itself. It started when Mankato took us to three games in the first round, followed up by a loss to Denver in our favorite place to play, Target Center, and then a lethargic performance against BC. Just a huge, slow letdown for me that year.

You'd think with all the non-com games the B1G has had to fill that they would be interested. It might just be that we haven't discussed it with them lately. It's really too bad, considering they are certainly two of the most storied programs in NCAA hockey history. A little bit of trivia. The last time Michigan played against UND in Grand Forks? February 23, 1980, the day after the "Miracle on Ice" game. Yeah, I should edit my post. The last time we played Michigan in the regular season was in 1980. As some others pointed out, we did play them here in the NCAA's in the "Holy Cross" regional.

I thought I remembered reading somewhere that we've tried but Michigan has been unwilling to do home and homes. This was back in their old CCHA days when they only had about 6 non-con games available each year. They were playing Wisconsin and Minnesota is some b.s. series each November, and then they had the GLI. Claimed they couldn't give up the money by playing any other away games.

At least in the short term Miami will be better off in terms of prepping itself for an NCAA tournament bid by playing more Hockey East teams, or higher level ECAC teams. I understand Michigan's position. It's just Michigan being Michigan, and even with their crappy team this year people will line up to play them. Only programs like DU or North Dakota are in a position to basically turn down a "play at Michigan or play nowhere" demand from Michigan. But OSU? Jeez, I'd think that anyone who is willing to play in their empty barn in exchange for a home game of their own would be a welcome sight in Columbus. Apparently the lack of oxygen in the Pairwise top 16 is starting to get to them.

If we get in we know where we play.

You only get trolled if people care about what you are doing. No one cares about DU, the Avs, hockey in Denver in general or Mike Chambers, for that matter. That's why I love it that Lambert and Meloni go out of their way to insult the UND hockey program and us, the UND fans, every single week in their podcast. The day they stop trolling us is the day we'll know we've become irrelevant in the college hockey world.

And, it worked.

I think there are two reasons why this team does not have a better record at this point in the season, even though they've played a pretty decent strength of schedule and aren't in terrible shape. The first reason is the primary cause, in my opinion. It is poor special teams play. The second reason is that while Cam Johnson has played decent, and at times has made spectacular saves when hung out to dry by a young defense, we realistically need him to be slightly better. I'm not a huge "fancy stats" guy, but I think they are useful for determining where some strengths or weaknesses lie. The most common, of course, is the Corsi %. By all accounts we are an elite team (usually defined as 55%+) under this metric. We are near the top in total, even strength and when games are "close". But on the power play our Corsi sucks. Good teams are running at about 92% on the power play, we're around 87%, way down in the lower half of all the teams in the country. Similarly, our penalty kill sucks. Right now I think we sit at about 47th. The only teams whose penalty killing is worse than ours are, Bentley, Dartmouth, Colorado College, Bowling Green, Northern Michigan, AIC, Holy Cross, Niagara, ASU, OSU, Brown, Mercyhurst and Michigan State. These are not college hockey programs that we want to keep company with. With respect to Cam, last year he was around .935, which is spectacular. I'm not sure he even has to be that good again, or that we can expect him to be that good again. But he's at .910 right now, and we need him to be better. The better teams are getting closer to .920, which is where I think the good teams need to be, at least. It doesn't sound like much, but those small percentage points make a big difference. For Cam, if he were .920 instead of .910, that's four goals already this season. That means the difference in the Friday Minnesota game, the Denver games, the MSU games, etc... Cam played better in the latter part of the first half, and we need that trend to continue. If we can get Cam to play at .920 or better in the second half, and if we can fix the putrid special teams play, this has the potential to be a very good team.

I wouldn't be surprised if 3 or 4 of them are basically unpaid grad assistant type "coaches", unpaid former players who need to get a start somewhere into what they hope will be a coaching position.

Yeah, you put your finger on the primary problem with their podcast. At their best the feel unscripted, two friends who just really love college hockey, sitting around and talking about the current status of the game and the teams that play. But at their worst, they (and by "they" I mean usually Lambert) get sidetracked talking for four minutes about their high school soccer days or something.