SJHovey

I don't necessarily fault the LD. QU's right defenseman got the puck following the faceoff win, and drifted right to the boards under pressure from MN's left wing. The QU right wing, by design of the play, went to the right boards, drawing a pinch up by MN's LD. But that was the play for the MN LD. He's there to pinch off a pass up the boards to the QU right wing. The problem for MN was Nelson, in the center position. Not only did he lose the draw, but he then lost his man the (QU center) who proceeded up the left wing and was there for the two on one pass. If Nelson had stuck with him after losing the draw, there is no open player for QU to pass it to on the two on one.

That was a fun game to watch when you don’t have a real rooting interest.

I'm going to disagree with this, at least with respect to St. Cloud. Motzko got St. Cloud into the tournament, but their tournament fortunes under him were getting worse. He took them to the semis, then to the quarters a couple of times. But the last couple of years they had some bad first round defeats. Larson has done a good job of maintaining or even building the program, including a trip to the championship game a couple of years ago.

One thing I'm taking away from this final is this. There isn't a lot that separates the top 25-30 college hockey teams in any given year. QU and MN were clearly the two best teams during the tournament. They were the top two seeds, and they played like it. North Dakota played those two teams on back to back weekends last October. Three of the four games went to overtime. In every single game North Dakota lead. In fact, you can argue that we probably should have won three of those four games. Yet we weren't really that close to either qualifying for the tournament or this championship game. It doesn't take much to change your fortunes in this sport.

He says, as he then ....... cherry picks numbers. I just pointed out what the two different players did during their first two seasons at school. Since one of the kids decided to stay only two seasons, I'm not sure how more complete my numbers could have been. But speaking of cherry picking, yeah, Hain had a high of 11 points through four years, the latter two of which he spent substantial time off the ice due to injuries. When the kid finally stayed healthy, he had a nice final year with us. Hain wasn't seeing a bunch of time on the power play. He was killing penalties and playing a checking role. I'd take his season over MC's in a heartbeat.

MC played 60 games his first two years. JC played 55. Their scoring was 10-14-24 and 8-15-23, respectively. JC could have whined about playing time or entered the portal, or whatever. But he paid his dues, got more playing time and special teams time. That's what you do. Unless you come in and put up Blake numbers, you pay your dues.

MC played every single weekend of the year, except the Minnesota series, until the final weekend against UNO. Yeah, he sat the back half of some series, but he was in the lineup for pretty much all of the year until the last weekend and the playoffs. It wasn't like he was producing and they were still sitting him.

Constantini got his chance to play. He basically played about the same number of games that Collin Adams and Cole Smith, and guys like that, played during their first two seasons. If he thinks his chances are better elsewhere, I wish him the best.

I'm not in the meetings, so I don't know. It seems like an odd move, if they did, so therefore I'll assume they didn't until I hear otherwise from either the players or the coaches.

Yeah, the situation with the D for this coming year sucks, but I'm not ready to throw the coaching staff under the bus for it yet. Bast and Johnson leaving puzzles me. If you are a junior and you are looking around and there are only three of you with any returning experience, and the other two really don't have a ton more than you, especially on the special teams units, and you are at a premier program, this is as good an opportunity as you will ever have presented to you in your college career. If you can't make this go, then you better be working on that degree. And with that, you enter the portal?

I thought there was another D-man in that same class, but his name escapes me. Big, tall, rangy kid.

Yeah, I guess my preferences would go as follows: QU Category 5 hurricane BU Global pandemic “Planet killer” meteor … … … … (still thinking)

It's about 1600 miles each way. Four guys, one car. Each guy drives four shifts of 100 miles each. 130 to 160 gallons of gas. Maybe costs each guy $150 bucks tops, round trip. You're there in 24 hours. I've done it. Don't complain to me about flight costs.

I looked on the AXS ticket site this morning. There were 2023 tickets available through T-Mobile for seats that hadn't yet been sold, and another 1104 tickets already sold but available for resale through the site. That would be about 17% of the capacity of the arena, for hockey. Maybe 500 of those 3000+ tickets are in the lower bowl.

Spicer will be fine. He was legitimately probably a year a way from when he should have started his college career, but he's going to get a lot of time with Duluth, and they've got a good coaching staff. As for the past weekend, I personally thought UND deserved the win Friday, and MN Saturday, but so be it. I was really pleased with the way the guys played on Friday, especially after last weekend, and given the competition. Minnesota is going to be a good team this year, everyone knows that. They will be especially good at home, on the huge ice sheet. If you're playing on Olympic sized ice and you have talented defensemen who can move the puck, it's literally impossible to put sustained pressure on them. There is simply too much ice. But I thought the guys played very solid positional hockey all night Friday. Other than Jandric losing Knies on the OT goal, I couldn't find anything to criticize. I thought the shot disparity was overblown a bit, especially on Friday. A lot of long shots, with wide open lanes for DeRidder to stop. I thought Minnesota played better Saturday, but they also showed their immaturity, and UND took advantage of that. I really liked Jandric's game Saturday, and I like the look of our power play with Blake on the wing opposite Gaber. Teams were catching onto the Gaber shot last year, but this will make it a lot harder for them to cheat that way. Can't wait to get to Vegas Wednesday.

Yep

It's certainly possible, but no particular game comes to mind. Just skimming the CHN site, it looks like we've had 12 games during that 4+ year span in question where we've scored 3 or more goals and lost or tied. I don't see any where we had a 3-0 lead, but it's possible.

One of the stats guys from BU over at USCHO posted in the Wisconsin thread that since the 2018-19 season, there have been 1050 games where a team has a 3-0 lead. The team with the lead is 1001-31-18. I don't think that cheered up the Wisconsin fans.

I've played the Old Course at St Andrews, and I agree with this. I love that they go back there every 6-7 years, and I do not believe the course is obsolete. They just had ideal scoring conditions this week. I was a low, single digit handicap when I played the course. Having learned how to play golf on various dog tracks around the state of North Dakota, I was very familiar with rock hard fairways, some long prairie grass in the roughs, and some crazy bounces on uneven ground. Because of the circumstances surrounding how I came to play the course, my tee time was at 6:10 a.m., and there wasn't a breath of wind. I cruised through the first 10 holes two over par and was thoroughly enjoying myself, not really realizing that the wind was slowly building. By the time I got out to the end of the course, the wind was whipping pretty good and those inward holes were a bear. Tee shots, chips, putts, everything was affected by that wind. I got a lucky par on 17, and a par on 18 to finish at 83, but there were a lot of double bogeys in between. With no wind, and with the rough thinned by a lack of rain, the course was defenseless this week.

They are also small guys, too, iirc.

Goals against Alaska and LSSU. Assists against Providence, Mich. St. and Notre Dame. Shut out against NMU, MTU, Cornell, Mercyhurst, BU, Merrimack, UND, Minnesota, and Michigan.

Seems to me that people should be happy we are in this situation, rather than angry. Isn't it a good thing that we have two older, experienced captains coming back to try to win a title, have a bunch of talented recruits coming in, and thus aren't in a position where we are forced to bring in a kid early, out of juniors, and possibly before they are ready (like perhaps last off-season?)

College hockey listed Jack Hughes of Northeastern as the youngest player in college hockey this past season, 18 yrs, 5 months at the start of the season, two months older than Spicer would be at the beginning of this next season. Hughes scored seven goals in a pretty poor HE this year, and is expected to possibly be a late first round pick. Ranked #7 among North American skaters. Spicer is ranked 122. I don't think Brad and the coaches made a mistake. Maybe the kid goes somewhere, gets top six minutes and has a good college career. Good on him if he does. Always like to see local kids succeed. But the odds don't favor it.

Luke was tied for fourth in goal scoring on an ok 2015-16 team that year.

Caulfield scored the same number of goals, and just one fewer assist in his junior season as did Luke Johnson in his third and final season. And Johnson played more games.