SJHovey

Chuck Schwartz at the No Alibis blog rings in with his picks. Again, thanks for posting them Chuck. I don't necessarily agree with all of them, but he has some interesting picks, including Gwoz over Blais for coach of the year and Schultz over Gardiner for defensive player of the year. The Schultz pick is especially interesting given that Chuck saw both play all year long. http://noalibisnoregrets.blogspot.com/

I was thinking the other day how it's funny. You ever go out in the winter to an old township hall or other building that's been shuttered up for the winter? You go inside, it's cold, there are flies and bugs laying all over. You fire up the furnace to get some heat going. Suddenly you've got about a thousand flies that you thought were dead, but were just dormant, buzzing around and annoying the crap out of you. Ever since the MN hockey team came to life about 4 weeks ago all the college hockey message boards, including this one, have become the same way.

I agree 100% with Brad. I respect the fact Bruce put it out there. Also, by and large I don't think his ballot is completely out of line. It's not how I would have listed them, and not how I think it will end up, but there are only a couple of instances where I think most people would agree he went a bit off track (I listed them in my previous post.) By the way, I would kill to have his list come out as the final awards. Leave Blood, Gregoire and Dell off the lists completely. Throw Fratts down on the second team. Mail us the Broadmoor. Somebody would pay.

I happened to be in Duluth this weekend and caught part of the UMD-UNO radio broadcast, including an interview Ciskie did with Jess Myers, I believe. Unlike some Sioux fans, I actually like Myers. They were talking about player of the year voting and the like, and both said they were voting for M. Connolly for POY. Ciskie's reasoning should be obvious, but Myers said that he voted for M.C. over Frattin for a bit of a strange reason. If I understood him correctly, he said that if you look at UND, and how they have done with "two of the best players at their positions" out of the line-up for a big part of the second half, it just shows how incredibly deep and talented the UND team is, and therefor M.C. is more responsible for his team's success than Frattin. Seems to me you could also argue the opposite, that Frattin has basically carried this team since Chay and Danny went out with injuries. In any event, each are entitled to their opinions, and their votes, and Mike C. could certainly win POY. But Ciskie is crazy (which he is) if he thinks Frattin doesn't make 1st team all conf and Dell doesn't make 1st, 2nd or 3rd team. Also, I wouldn't be surprised to see Ben Blood make at least 3rd team defense.

I think Merrimack is pretty good. All of their losses have been really tight games, with the exception of the two recent blowouts in Maine (we know how that feels). Also, they haven't seemed to have lost any clunkers, to lousy teams. IIRC Merrimack was without DaCosta when they came here last year. He was supposed to be their big stud recruit, and has turned out to be the real deal.

Call me cynical but I don't think we'll know until after the first round playoffs. If MN makes it, I suspect it will go as follows: 1. MN is 6 seed (or even 3 seed with first round upsets), the 3/6 game is Thursday night, and Friday night the winner of that game plays the #2 seed. 2. Mn is 4/5 seed, the 4/5 game is Thursday night, with winner playing #1 seed Friday night.

I think another thing that might work in Minnesota's, Wisconsin's, or even CC's favor, is that we might see less likelihood of a non-pwr qualifying team winning an upset automatic qualifier bid. We don't have the CHA anymore, with BSU making it on numbers but a team like UAH winning the tournament. Only the auto qualifier in the AHA will make it. Plus, with the better showing by ECAC teams in the regular season this year, it's more likely the winner of their tournament would already be in anyways. The best chances for an upset win appear to be from BU, Western Michigan, Dartmouth, and maybe Maine. But I don't really see that happening. Pretty good chance, imho, there will be 15 pwr spots available.

Some nice comments from Chris Dilks at WCH blog regarding some Sioux recruits. http://www.westerncollegehockeyblog.com/

Maybe more than we know. http://www.mavpuck.com/mpboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=7816

Would your headline be any more peculiar than this? http://www.mavpuck.com/mpboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=7816

While I was listening to the radio broadcast of UND's game Friday, I had the chance to watch, simultaneously, the SCSU-Miami, UNO-MN and later BC-DU games. These comments. First, SCSU is not ready for prime time. They will likely get a lot better, but they looked terrible, and slow, on Friday. They're going to miss Raboin. Watching UNO in that first period Friday I could not help but think back to about 1996-97 when Dean Blais took a bunch of small, speedy forwards and big defensemen, along with a goaltender no one ever heard of, and turned them into a magical team. If you ignored the color of the jerseys, you'd have sworn that you were watching a late '90's version of the Sioux. The same skating, relentless forecheck, one forward after another heading to the net. MN has a lot of problems, but UNO was a very fun team to watch this weekend and could turn into a formidible team. Then there is BC. The team I saw on Friday is the best college team I've seen since the '97 Michigan team. Let's hope it turns out the same way. On USCHO I slightly mocked a comment by Northeastern's coach that BC could win 40 games, when they're only likely to play 43. The weird thing is, they could win 40 games.

The departure of Birkholz has to be a disappointment because that's just bad decisionmaking on the part of the athlete. But that can happen anywhere, as we've seen here. I really don't understand all the anger over Leddy's departure, especially directed at Lucia. I've never understood the argument that it reflects badly on a coach or program when a kid departs early for professional hockey, even if it's not the NHL. Most of these kids would kill to earn a paycheck playing hockey. I know we hated to lose Toews, Oshie, Chorney, etc..., early, but I don't think anyone ever suggested it was a black mark against the coaches or program. Even a kid like Brian Lee, someone the fans felt had disappointed, didn't cause the type of angst we're reading about with Leddy. I would guess it's just the cumulative effect of all the rest of the items that have occurred that may be causing their fans to respond this way, and upon some later reflection they'll see it's actually a postitive for the program to help a kid achieve his dream of reaching the NHL.

True. But as Baggot reported, Schmaltz apparently wants to stay in the WCHA. As reported in Mikejm's link, Schmaltz' family holds season tickets in Wisconsin, and I think North Dakota was the only other WCHA school he visited. Let's hope for the best.

Don't know if this has been posted, but Andy Baggot out of Wisconsin is reporting it's "expected" Wisconsin decommit Jordan Schmaltz will wind up playing for North Dakota. Also, a poster at USCHO reported that Baggot indicated during a radio show that Schmaltz' family had stated North Dakota was the "best fit" for him. http://host.madison.com/sports/college/hoc...1cc4c002e0.html