SJHovey

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.

So, to summarize. Kid turns out to be Sidney Crosby, we lose. Kid turns out to be Bing Crosby, we win.

I was curious so I went back and looked at the history of the NCAA Ice Hockey Tournament. March 17, 1951. That was the day that Michigan won title #2. Since March 17, 1951, Michigan has been the NCAA ice hockey program that has held the title of "most championships won," until April 9, 2022. Crazy. More than 71 years. Nearly 26,000 days. Truman was president.

If you select 20 years as the random timeframe to fit your silly narrative, as opposed to going back say a random 25 years to include ‘97, in which case your narrative turns to crap.

Sounds like the exodus from Michigan is starting

I don't think he's publicly disclosed anything, or if he has even been diagnosed with anything, but he clearly isn't well.

I'm really, really glad I was wrong about this. Now, let's see if I can do it again. I guarantee DU wins Saturday night.

There are more choices, too. I don't mean more schools, necessarily. I mean there are more places you can go and still have a shot to play for a title. Unless Denver wins this year, there will have been nine different winners of the national championship in the last ten tournaments played. Furthermore, if we see a title game between Michigan and Mankato, in addition to having nine different champions in ten years, there would have been seven completely different programs that finished runner-up. 16 different programs playing in the title game in ten years. That's pretty remarkable.

While there is a certain amount of glee in seeing our in-conference rivals go through the same misery we went through last off-season, I personally think all of this is a bad development for the NCHC, and for North Dakota as a hockey program. This league needs to maintain as much talent as possible for as long as possible. I think anyone with a lick of sense has known for the last 8-10 years that it is inevitable that the B1G takes over college hockey. There is simply too much money, tv access and name brand recognition for it to not happen. The NCHC has done a heck of a job holding that off for now nearly a decade. But it won't be forever, and I fear that 10 years from now we will look back and talk about how this is about the point in time when the takeover was complete. B1G schools have dominated the recruiting battles for those "blue chippahs" everyone around here loves so dearly. To counter that, we're going to need a league of talented upperclassmen. A boatload of early departures for the AHL, or entries into the transfer portal, won't help that.

If you go to the leaderboard and click on the person's screen name, you see their selections.

Looks like the best I can do this year is a tie for first. That said, I'm still going to cheer for Mankato.

Man, almost fell out of my chair this morning when I saw Schloss pick a DU-UND final.