SJHovey

It's sort of funny. In all of the discussions ahead of the NCAA opening up the path for major junior players, you almost never heard anyone talking about how many college players might choose to leave college and go to a junior team, knowing they could possibly return.

You're not going to see it on the scale that you do with say football. Kids aren't going to be getting millions of dollars. But I think we're kidding ourselves if we think it won't have any impact. If a kid is choosing between say us and Minnesota, and if they offer the kid even $25,000 and we offer nothing, I don't like our chances. A school could make a difference with even a fund of say a half million dollars, which is peanuts to the big schools.

It's got to be an interesting problem for someone like Carle to consider. First, with respect to the pay, it's not an automatic that someone like Carle would conclude he has to make the jump. NHL coaches are obviously paid more, but in some cases it's not that much more. He'd probably get offered something like $1.5-2 million/year. It's not like he'd get ten times the salary he is making at the college level. There has to be a desire to know whether you can occupy and perform one of the top 30 hockey coaching jobs in the world. Carle certainly has job security at DU, but even that can change. Everyone thought Lucia could remain the MN coach for life after he came in as a hot coach out of CC and won two championships for the gophers. 10 years later they couldn't wait to be rid of him. To me, the biggest concern for a college coach has to be NIL, and what is going to happen in that regard. If both college and the NHL are going to be about who pays players what to come and play for them, why not take the NHL job?

Fun fact. There isn't a single current college hockey player who was alive when Michigan last won a national championship.

I think the point of my post was missed. I opined that Blais’ most successful four year stretch was significantly better than Hak’s best four year stretch, and Blais did it with zero first round picks vs. Hak’s half dozen.

He wasn’t on any of Hak’s FF teams or the four Blais teams I referenced.

If you just want to look back to the beginning of the Blais tenure (for old timers like me, North Dakota will never have the dominance it had under Gino), I would argue that our most dominant four year stretch was from '96-97 to '99-00, not the four years under Hakstol when we went to the Frozen Four each year ('04-05 through '07-08). And I don't even think it's close. During the first four stretch, we saw all four seasons with at least 30 wins, only one season with double digit losses (10), three regular season titles, two league tourney titles, and two national championships. Meanwhile, under Hakstol's four year stretch, yes we saw four straight Frozen Fours, but none of those teams won 30 games, they had losses of 11, 14, 15 and 16, they had zero regular season titles and one lone tourney title. Furthermore, in the national tournament, the Blais teams were all essentially #1 seeds (one of the four top seeds in the entire tournament). At that time there were 12 teams, and UND was either a #1 or #2 region seed each season. Hakstol's four teams were seeded #8, #7, #9 and #3 overall, respectively. You want to know the other big difference. Not a "chippah" to be seen on the Blais teams. Zero first round draft picks. Hakstol had at least 6 by my count.

Last night I watched the hour long special on this year's Canadian World Juniors team put out by TSN. Near the end they played "this year's video," some song sung by a young lady I've never heard of, sung to a montage of pictures of the Canadian players. At first I was thinking it was odd they had "a video" for each tournament, but then I realized they probably just need a bookend to the gangbang rape video that usually comes out about three months after the tournament.

Yeah, I like the team to do well, but I'll admit that the prospect of a couple of bad losses in round robin play, followed by maybe a 6-3 exit in the quarterfinals has the potential to give me the warm fuzzies. We'd be done with Carle and Larson on the world stage, at that point.

Berenson and York retired. Monty took a job in the NHL. Pearson was canned for off ice shenanigans. Let's not pretend all of these schools are firing their head coach for missing the tournament. You want to know the other thing that all of the teams on your list and mine have in common? Other than DU and UND, not a single one of them has won a title since Brad Berry took over. Their seasons all ended just like ours, by missing the tournament or with an NCAA tournament loss.

I understand what you are saying, but even if we now decide that NCAA tournament is the bar that has to be met, I still don't think it's been that bad. Yes, under Brad, we've missed the tournament 3 times. But consider this. During that same time frame (2015-16 to now), these "bluebloods" of college hockey, that everyone fears we have fallen so far behind, missed the tournament the following number of seasons: Michigan - 2 Minnesota - 3 Michigan State - 7 Wisconsin - 6 Denver - 1 BU - 2 BC - 5 Further consider that we were #1 in the pairwise in 2020, and of the above teams, only DU and BC were likely to make it that year. MN was at 17, and Michigan was hanging on at 14, but everyone else was basically dead. Plus, the three misses in the 16 team era was probably not a standard that can be sustained. None of the above teams have come close to that. I have a theory. I always think the panic around here starts to build when the team struggles, but it goes over the top when one of our chief rivals (MN and DU) are having success at the same time. That's what we are seeing now.

Story and single picture. https://www2.kusports.com/news/2001/dec/23/boschee_hailed_as/

Should be fun. Wish I could go. I remember back in December, 2001, when Roy Williams brought his #2 (I think) ranked Kansas Jayhawks to the new Ralph for a game against UND. It was the same sort of deal as this Alabama game. Williams had promised the Boschee kid out of Valley City that if he committed to Kansas, Roy would try to schedule a game in North Dakota. During the player introductions, as I recall, on the new overhead video board in the Ralph, they ran a video montage that consisted of a few different UND basketball highlights (probably mostly three point buckets) interspersed with very short clips from The Wizard of Oz. The montage ended, of course, with the clip of Dorothy saying, "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." Pretty decent level trolling, I thought, for a new arena crew. Even Williams seemed to get a chuckle out of it. Then, shortly before the first 4 minute timeout, UND made a bucket to go up by one. During the timeout, the crowd was pretty fired up. The student section started chanting, "We want Duke," who was #1 at the time. In retrospect it was good the trolling was gotten out of the way early, since I seem to recall it was a 30+ point blow out loss, but good times.

I'm going to disagree with the idea that his teams always play bad in the NCAAs, except for year one. In 2017 we absolutely dominated a BU team that was supposed to be unbeatable because of all of the #1 picks on the team. I think we outshot them something like 60-30, and lost only because we got jobbed on a horrible offsides call. In 2021, I thought the team played very well against UMD, given the fact that UND had to play the first round game and UMD got to rest because Michigan did what Michigan hockey does best, quit. Last year's Michigan team was a very good team, and I did not think we were outplayed in that game. Yeah, it sucks to lose it in the third, but the team came ready to play.

If you're going to bring in a D, bring in someone from the Canadian Major Junior leagues. The ban on major junior players is/was discriminatory. The fact that the NCAA has said they will agree to stop discriminating August 1 of next year doesn't change the discriminatory nature of the policy. You don't get to just say, "Ok, yeah we have been discriminating, and we'll agree to stop August 1 of next year." Let the NCAA try to stop us, walk in and get the injunction when they do, problem solved (and flood gates opened?) Honestly, I'm surprised no one has tried this thus far. Wouldn't it be fun to win a dispute with the NCAA, for once?

They are good. I’ve always enjoyed them. The call that lead to our second ppg was a little soft, and there was a pretty clear hook or hold at center ice late in the game that we got away with.

Every UND hockey team I've ever seen play always has to learn how it must play to win a game. The "how" is different for every team. Some teams, with more established lineups, figure it out sooner rather than later. Others, especially teams with a lot of young players or injuries or the like, it takes longer. Jeebus, I remember the 2006-07 team stumbled into Christmas something like 7-10-1 and in fact were 1-7 in their last eight before heading out for the holidays. But there were still some young kids on that team, and it took awhile for them to figure it out. I'm not saying this team will figure it out, or do so in time. Massive lineup disruptions caused by people into and out of the lineup affect that learning curve. But there is still time. You can play around with CHN's pairwise customizer. Basically, you can fill in the outcomes for future UND games, and their customizer figures out your most likely pairwise position. I believe what they do is predict the outcomes of all other college games using KRACH. If UND sweeps Miami, sweeps Duluth at home, and sweeps Omaha at home, but splits with everyone else, the customizer says we'd be about 16 in the pairwise. If we follow the old mantra of "sweep at home, split on the road," the customizer predicts we'd be about #9. That includes a split this weekend. #9 in the pairwise is basically a lock for the tournament, even before conference tournaments begin. Defending home ice and gaining a split on the road is not an impossible task for any hockey team.

Another interesting thing to track would be kids bailing on the BCHL or USHL and heading to the CHL.

It wasn't the regular season. UND split with Wisconsin, in Madison, in January of that season, losing the Saturday night game (the infamous "water bottle" game). Two weeks later UND swept the Badgers at home in a couple of really tight games. That series pretty much secured the regular season championship for UND, which was important because all rounds of the playoffs were played at the home of the higher seed, including any NCAA playoffs before the Frozen Four. UND and Wisconsin met up at the old Ralph for the WCHA championship playoff series in March. This was a two games, total goals series, and UND lost the first game in the bloodbath that you referenced, 9-0. Sort of made the second game a bit of a challenge to work up any enthusiasm for, but Wisconsin won that game as well, 3-1. The only significance of that game was bringing the season series to 3-3, with the 7th and final game in the national championship game. Also has a special place in my heart, because as I've posted on here before, I own the original NCAA championship banner for that season that hung in the old Ralph until the flood of '97.

None of us here know how the season will turn out. That's sort of the fun of watching sports. Some of my observations: I tend to agree with those who argue that a team like this year's team, with a lot of young talent, will likely see more improvement over the course of a year than say a team like last year's, with a bunch of older guys and older transfers. That, I think, is good come tournament time since you always want a team that feels like it is playing its best hockey of the year, and playing with confidence, once the post-season comes around. The team doesn't really have any "bad" losses yet. The teams we've lost to are all pretty much 16 or higher in the PWR. It's easy to be critical of the coaching staff, but this would be a very different team with Blake playing his junior year. Good programs always lose players early, but you don't often count on fourth round picks playing two years and bailing. I'm not saying that Blake made a bad decision, because obviously he didn't, but that can't have been expected, and you can't just add in a young recruit or transfer guy and get the same production. Once Blake was gone, we knew that we were going to have to replace some scoring. But the loss of Berg for a big chunk of the year hasn't helped. There is talent on this team, and I think we are going to see a different team come February than we see now, unless we continue to get obliterated by injuries. You can already see guys like Emery gaining confidence and stepping up into plays. I personally think it's early to just abandon all hope.

Maybe the article will point out that had they lost to RMU in OT, or had it ended in a tie that Friday night in November, the team would have missed the field, but Perron’s goal changed that, and enabled the team to go on a Providence like run to title #9?

Could probably hire Jay Pandolfo. He seems to bring in a lot of blue chippers. I see they got swept this weekend so I assume he’ll be looking.

We got shut out in the 2011 FF semi’s, too, but I wouldn’t say it was because we played bad. It happens, even to the best of teams. I was at both games and I thought from a control of the game standpoint, we played better Saturday. I give Mankato credit. They are an old, experienced team (avg age 23), and they played very sound defensively, and when we broke them down, they got a big save. They’re still figuring some things out, but it was game 3. I didn’t leave the arena concerned for the team or season. My two cents.

You can’t get to a “Fire Hak VIII” thread if you don’t start early.

I think it's going to be interesting to see what will happen when (assuming) college hockey is opened up to kids from the major junior ranks. I listened to Mike McMahon's podcast interview of Shane Malloy of Fractal Hockey the other day. Fractal Hockey does analytics on the CHL kids. Like others, Malloy predicts that the NCAA will become the top of the pyramid for hockey development in Canada and the US. You'll have high schools and leagues like the NAHL at the bottom, then the USHL and CHL leagues, with college hockey being the finishing league prior to the NHL. Malloy predicts that the talent level in college hockey is going to jump dramatically, with many/most of the top end kids playing in the CHL to likely make at least an appearance in college hockey. The CHL teams are 100% in favor of it. Malloy says that their scholarship programs are a significant cost to the teams, and it's something they are going to do away with as soon as those kids can go to US colleges. Another interesting point he raised is that from a broadcasting/streaming standpoint, we should see significant upgrades. He predicts huge demands out of Canada for college hockey broadcasts/streams. An interesting listen, and I still wonder to what extent that is influencing recruiting right now in the US.