SJHovey

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.

Jeebus, are you sitting in a psychiatrist's lobby right now, staring at the wall art?

Some additional perspective on the idea that since the '16 championship, we are descending into an average program. Blue blood (and a couple of additional NCHC teams) winning percentage from the 2016-17 season through this past season. And keep in mind, that the NCHC has won 5 of the 7 national championships since the '16 championship, so we're playing in a pretty good conference. Denver - .700 Minnesota - .628 UND - .624 BU - .615 BC - .604 SCSU - .601 UMD - .595 Mich - .584 Wisconsin - .483

I was reading Brad's article about the Central Scouting rankings, and the potential for a few of UND's future recruits to be drafted this year. Has anyone studied the issue to figure out whether college programs are being hurt in those situations? It's sort of like the Blake situation. He was drafted, then played a year of juniors, which meant that after his junior year of college he could become a free agent. That sucked, because normally you only expect first rounders, or maybe second rounders to bail after two years. But I'm sure Carolina made the push because they didn't want to give Blake leverage. Seems like the coaches might want to think about bringing these guys in the fall after they are drafted to maybe insure ourselves of at least three seasons.

Wasn’t Broz a transfer from Minnesota?

I think Carle is a good coach. But what I’m reading here is virtually identical to what I read here about 5-6 years ago about Sandelin, who apparently became stupid and bad again.

Minnesota, Michigan, Michigan State, Wisconsin, BC, BU. Every blue blood except Denver. Teams with an embarrassment of talent, riches and advantages. And all with a longer period of natty futility than UND, an apparent washed up has been. Shut them down. They should be ashamed of themselves.

Starman is doing radio on XM channel 84, College Sports

It’s hard to call a good game when you are fellating one team.

My fear is that if DU and Michigan win today, Bucci, Cohen and the ESPN crew will just pack up and go home. We’ll be watching the championship game on closed caption tv.

Maybe he’s a cat person.

If he goes, he goes, and I'll wish him well. I never fault any of these kids for making decisions about what they think will be best for them.

Certainly paid off ten years ago in Madison when Mike Eaves was fired, and twelve years ago in East Lansing when Rick Comley was forced out by a disgruntled fan base.