Godsmack

Yah, and I want to be clear, they are not a bad team but if you look back at the past couple of seasons, their weak non-conference schedule has sometimes come back to haunt them. Bad losses at home against teams like Niagra probably helped dig them into a hole. I can think of some bad losses for UND that may have cost them a tournament spot as well.

Schlossman, Eli and Jason have a great discussion on today’s podcast about the weekend at Denver… https://www.grandforksherald.com/podcasts/und-hockey-podcast

Omaha seems to load up the front end of their schedule with a ton of home games against a bunch of cupcakes and then fall back to reality once league play begins. Go look back at their past handful of seasons, particularly under Gabenet and you’ll see what I mean.

My mistake everybody. I accidentally posted my comments about the CC team here on this DU game thread by mistake. I’ll remove it and post it on the CC thread.

Some thoughts about what I’ve seen of the Tigers this season. 1. Their goal scoring woes they had last season have come back the past handful of games. In their last 4 games, they’ve gone 0-3-1 and have potted only 3 goals. CC was scoring goals at a very high rate their first half dozen or so games of the season but you have to also consider their opponents at the beginning. Their first five games they went 5-0 against: Union, Long Island, Air Force (1). Facing better competition since then, they’ve gone 2-6-1 (Augustana (1), DU, Miami, Western Michigan, and ASU). They’ve only scored 17 goals in their last 9 games. 2. The good news about their offense is they are getting the majority of their scoring production from their freshmen (aka, “first years” as they’re referred to at CC) and sophomores. The bad news is, they’re not getting much production from their upperclassmen. Tigers freshmen have scored 30 of the team’s 43 goals and 68 of the team’s 110 points. Freshmen have scored 14 of the team’s last 17 goals. The freshman class has been touted as one of the best incoming classes in the league, something I don’t think we could say about the Tigers in over a decade so the future looks promising. Losing big, strong and skilled forward Hunter McKown early to the pros definitely hurt. He accounted for something in the range of 20% of CC’s scoring last year and was among the nation’s leaders in power play goals. Look for forwards Noah Laba and Gleb Veremyev to try to pick up the slack in scoring. Big, strong physical forwards who can score and also have some “snarl” to their game as Dave Starman likes say. 3. Contrary to typical CC teams, this year’s squad has been taking a lot of penalties. And with a 41st in the nation penalty kill (79%) that could continue to plague the team. 4. CC’s power play is clicking at a dismal 9% (61st in the country) this year. There’s hope-it looked much better this last weekend against ASU, generating grade A chance after chance against ASU’s TJ Semptenphelter. I guess that “hot goalie” thing has rubbed off of UND and onto the Tigers. And don’t quote me on this but if I recall, CC radio guy Ken Landau said in Saturday’s post game that CC hasn’t scored a power play goal in like, their last 28 opportunities or something ridiculous like that. Whatever the number, it’s been a while. They badly need a slump buster but doubtful it’ll come at the expense of UND and its highly rated penalty kill. 5. Kaidan Mbereko. .909 SV% and 2.61 GAA. While his numbers won’t pop out at you as earth shattering, I have seen him play enough times to say he could be considered an elite goaltender if he had better talent playing in front of him. If not for Mbereko, the team would have likely won fewer games the last two seasons. They say good goaltending masks a lot of other deficiencies and I think that holds true for CC. 6. Kris Mayotte. All in all, I think CC made the right choice in hiring a younger coach but one with deep ties to college hockey. Kris Mayotte is bright, intelligent and I think has a good hockey IQ. He was a four year starting goalie at Union before stints coaching at Providence (was on the staff for their 2015 national title) as well as Michigan prior to coming to CC. I think Schlossman was right when he said CC is probably a season or two away from being a league contender. They supposedly have another really good recruiting class coming in next season, it’s just that Mayotte needs to continue cycling through the upperclassmen that were brought in under the Haviland regime. 7. Final thing I’ll say, as bad as CC’s been over the past decade, their games against UND as of late have been rather tight, entertaining, low scoring affairs. Last year, CC took UND to overtime in both games at Robson. Admittedly, this year’s UND team is significantly more talented than last year’s so who knows what’ll happen between the teams here this weekend.

Yah, I didn’t ever get the sense there was much animosity between CC and UND, players and fans alike.

Sorry-after our OT loss Saturday, I was taking a self-imposed break from the message board. I was salty and ticked off Saturday as UND lost in OT while also I got to watch CC outshoot and out play ASU but still manage to find another creative way to lose. Let me gather some thoughts and observations about CC and I will report back here shortly.

Unfortunately, no. However, we do plan on getting up to GF sometimes in the second half of the season for a home series. My wife’s been to a CC/UND series at the Ralph (during the dreadful Mike Haviland era) and let’s just say she didn’t have a very good time. UND curb stomped the Kittens but every UND fan around us felt sorry for her as she sat there watching with her Tiger ears and jersey on. She was very impressed with how nice and gracious UND fans were.

Does UND salvage a point for league standing purposes by losing in the 3x3 OT?

Is the game being televised again up there on Midco?

In some respects he reminds me of Joey Abate from UNO…always up to no good and seems to be at the center of so many scrums.

One thing I know all of us UND fans can agree on, this rivalry with DU is simply electric. I’ve attended many road games across the country and none are more electric than when UND travels to Magness Arena. While there appears to be a lot of mutual “hate” between the fans and players, I honestly think there’s a ton of mutual respect and having both teams in the NCHC simply makes it such a great, competitive conference. This series was the talk of the entire college hockey nation, not just the talk of the league.

I didn’t like that cele either, in front of the BU bench. Blake tossed his twig in celebration after scoring the OT winner at CC last year as well which was ill-advised from what I’ve heard (the upperclassmen chewed him out in the locker room for that little stunt).

I always worry about the officiating at Magness on Saturday night, especially following a Friday night loss for the Pios. Over the years it has on occasion felt like some home cookin.’

Caponi is the player UND has to be aware of out there in terms of dirty hits and such. Can’t stand that guy.

You are correct. I had a Birds Eye view unfortunately. Lose the draw and then scramble and get out of position and then boom, goal.

I can’t say if DU has done it in all of their games so far but they certainly did it against CC because I witnessed it. It pissed me off. Bad enough they’ve had their way against us for over a decade, don’t need to be a holes about it on top of that.

It so is. I hope UND doesn’t make it a standard practice to do that but I was glad to see our boys respond in kind last night. Just a very petty immature thing to do-trying to embarrass your opponent like that.

I’ve noticed a thing DU does where after they score, they skate by the opposing bench with their sticks raised high in the air. They did this all weekend long when they curb stomped CC and I noticed it again last night. I don’t recall seeing any other team doing that, or am I missing something? I didn’t notice UND do it until after their comeback started. Perhaps turnabout is fair play? Wonder if that ticked the UND bench off a little bit when DU was doing that hence Blake and Berg and I think maybe Jamernik doing it during their third period rally. Edit: I recall seeing CC’s Noah Laba do it when he scored a pretty breakaway goal for the Tigers in the Saturday game at home in response to DU doing it as well.

I just walked in the door. Went for a celebratory beer at the Crimson and Gold after that amazing comeback. My voice is totally shot, I’m emotionally exhausted, and I feel fantastic! Wow, what a game.

Spanky’s, Crimson & Gold, The Pioneer are typically hoping bar restaurants nearby that lots of UND fans will congregate at.

I still remember one of those majors called on Cole Smith. His back was turned to the dumb*ss DU player who skated into him with his head down.

I believe UND still heads out one day earlier than normal to give the players more time to acclimate to the elevation. Anyone know if they’re still doing this?

I once lived in Denver for several years. Trust me, there’s plenty of material one could use to make fun of Denver fans…

Good luck. DU jacked up the prices to levels I’ve never seen before. I believe I got the last set of tickets that we’re going for $51 a piece. The rest were selling face value at over $90 a piece. What sucks is, in order to get the cheaper tickets, I’ll have to sit right above the DU student section. Simple economics of supply and demand, I get it but man, $91 a ticket plus fees?! For two games of two seats each game, it’s more than what I paid for my CC season tickets!