SJHovey

It's probably a good thing the Board doesn't pin "Fire ______" threads.

I'm going to admit that this weekend is sort of going to be a mixture of sadness and relief for me. In the fall of 1987, a buddy that I had attended UND with was talking to me and we agreed that we should try to get tickets to the new "WCHA Final Four" that would be played the next spring in St. Paul. We started out with three tickets, since my dad wanted to join us. Within a couple of years we added a fourth seat for his brother. I think it's interesting if you look back at the conference tournament, since it started that season. You can almost divide it into three equal parts, each of which is dramatically different than the others. The first dozen years were sort of a conference tournament trying to find its footing. Those years in the St. Paul Civic Center were basically Minnesota home games, with a few of us from other schools sprinkled in. Wisconsin probably did the best job of bringing fans, and they usually brought their band, but it was a Minnesota crowd. But that fact really made the games fun, since the Civic Center was basically a house of horrors for MN, so we got to spend the tournament cheering goals by any team but MN, and laughing at their misfortune. But it certainly wasn't a party. St. Paul, in those years, was basically Gaza. They would kick you out between the afternoon and night games, and there was no place to go. The few years in Milwaukee were even worse, since the crowds were so much worse. But as the first dozen years ended, and the tournament moved over to Target Center while the X was being built, you could sort of see some growth. Other teams were having success at both the conference and national level, and it was showing in the tournament crowds. The middle years, at the X and before the WCHA broke up, were obviously the golden years, and nothing more needs be said. It was a perfect storm. You had a new arena, in a city that had made an effort to have food, drink and hotel establishments within walking distance of it. You had a period of dominance by the conference that was something to behold. Five straight national champions. Multiple programs with Frozen Four appearances. Great players. The last dozen years have been a disappointment. I will forever be grateful to the NCHC for at least giving it a shot, and a fair shot at that. I think the conference tournament, in one location, is clearly the best idea. Unfortunately, the last dozen years or so have basically felt like attending a high school reunion where some past their prime guys just want to talk about the glory days. But I think what I'll miss most of all is the annual get together with my friend from UND. 38 years is long time. During that stretch we each missed one or two tournaments for various family commitments, but it's been a good run. I'm glad that we at least get to watch UND one final time at the event.

Or, win the Frozen Faceoff, steal an at large bid from someone with our automatic qualifier status, and the team that is eliminated from this year’s tournament is Michigan. Revenge! 😆

We can sit here and biatch all we want about this team, its coaches and its players, but they are playing their best hockey of the season now, when you want them to be. If Boisvert comes back, he’s a Hobey finalist, and Dylan James has become one of my favorite UND players of all time. A motor that doesn’t stop.

Starting to wonder if this isn't the case. I see the Sioux Shop is doing a buy one, get one free deal on jerseys.

If you’re going to hire someone in their mid-50’s, why not hire Hakstol?

I think only one freshman in the country (Eiserman) has scored more goals than Boisvert.

The problem with the pwr right now is we’re on the wrong side of a pretty big gap in rpi. The gap from 11-15 is just .0037. The gap from 15 to UND at 18 is .0219. Big weekend for us coming up.

Even more improbable is they win out and win Penrose. Still possible. 😀

I’ll just say it looked a lot like harassment.

Why are ND fans harassing Emery in the penalty box?

Oh, no doubt. But at this point they need pretty much every break they can get.

Seems like we should be big WMU fans this weekend. I think if they get at least 4 points at ASU, they secure the Penrose. Maybe we catch them with a hangover next weekend.

The other problem is the NCHC isn’t that great this year, too.

As I recall, Hak had been a head coach in the USHL for about four years before coming over to UND. After just a single season at UND, he was named "Associate Head Coach" which I interpret as sort of being second in command. At that point I think Berry had only been at UND for maybe a year or so, and had no head coaching or professional coaching experience, so Hak seems like the natural selection for Blais to name as Associate Head Coach. Blais obviously left under good circumstances, and wasn't fired, so I'm sure any support he gave for Hak being named his successor would be given some weight. Then, after Blais left, and Berry spent a few years as an assistant, he went on to be an assistant at the professional level, before returning. Once he returned, he spent another year as an assistant, and was then named "Associate Head Coach." Thus, when Hak left, again under good terms, I assume his selection of Berry as Associate Head Coach, and any positive comments he made about Berry, carried some weight.

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.