KSSioux

I want to start out by saying that I really do not care a great deal about the Hobey, because the voters have been too regional about their viewpoints and not followed the standards for the award which are a combination of character and hockey IN THAT SEASON. I have been to all but one frozen four in the last 32 years and enjoy all of the conversations that I have had with folks over the years regarding games and Hobey candidates. There are many players that are deserving of the Hobey that have not won. Since it is a seasonal achievement of hockey/character, I do believe it should no doubt go to Kawaguchi. I do not think it will, as voters will likely look at career and not season and the character part is very overshadowed. Also, please do not kid yourself, the team the player plays for also has an effect on voters. MN-Duluth has won 5 Hobeys, but I do not think many voters know that. The Hobey also does not translate to success in the NHL. Here are the five players from Duluth that have won the Hobey, and the number of NHL games that they played: Tom Kurvers - 659 Bill Watson - 115 Chris Marinucci - 13 Junior Lessard - 27 Jack Connolly - 0 , for a total of 814 games for all of the MN-Duluth Hobey winners. I was in Boston for Zach's Hobey hat trick season, and his loss to Junior Lessard was one of the biggest injustices that I have seen. It was great talking to Zach and I wished him success as he went forward to his professional career. My personal opinion is that it was a senior vs. sophomore issue, and Zach did not have to be "the man" every night but was a consistent performer. By the way, Zach has played in 1015 NHL games (200 more than the 5 MN-Duluth Hobey winners) and has scored far more goals/points than the five of these candidates together. From a character standpoint he has always represented the university and team very well. You can see by the number of times he has worn a "C" or "A" for his teams, he is well respected. I am not saying this because I am a homer with green glasses. If Ehn would have won the Hobey instead of Duncan, I would have been very happy for him. He was a great guy on his team, member of a service academy, and an awesome player that year. I do wish Jordan luck as we watch the Hobey presentation and I hope to be pleasantly surprised.

For those who thought the NCAA would "fight back" against the states, they just folded. No matter what the NCAA tries to say, it is pay to play. Kids will get agents to get paid for signing autographs and their imagery while attending college. I assume the NCAA will try to set up some guidelines on this, but good luck with that. Colleges will now likely hire folks to help the athletes navigate this course of action. You can find this on your preferred news channel, but here is the official info from the NCAA via this link: http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-center/news/board-governors-starts-process-enhance-name-image-and-likeness-opportunities The NCAA has now gone down a very bad path in my opinion. Very bad precedent, but the NCAA will likely look to make dollars from this.

Michaud

I loved what one of the Russians were quoted about Comtois (before the tourney), comparing him to a soccer player rather than a hockey player. He is too good of a talent to do what he is doing, and even the Canadian announcers were a little tongue tied on a couple of his antics. I think you will see a different Comtois in the quarters, and it will be interesting to see how focused they are. If the US gets both Hughes brothers going, and stop the D Hughes from trying to do too much, it will be a great Canada- US game for the gold.

Thanks for your comments on the bidding owl auction. I was lucky enough to win the first Morelli that was put up for auction a while back, and will definitely say the quality was exceptional. Not sure if this is the second or third of the extras that they have offered for auction, but the winner will be satisfied. Watching the game Saturday, I agree the sweaters did not look as high of quality, but still obviously awesome sweaters. You will notice that the Saturday sweaters did not have the "Sammy Sioux" logo. There were also some other differences that you will see comparing the bidding owl Morelli with the ones Saturday.

After over 50+ pages of "discussion" on this issue, I wanted to find out how UND compares with other universities regarding the sports revenues. Do other schools actually make money on the sports they provide? I was tired of seeing the trashing of donors, other people wanting to tell them how the money is spent, and the biggest joke that the university would be a better steward of that money. What I found out was not surprising. There are very few of the universities in the NCAA system that are making money off of sports, which looks like around 20 schools out of the more than 1000 colleges and universities that are part of the NCAA. Here is a link to the Politifact article to back that up: http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2014/dec/22/jim-moran/moran-says-only-20-colleges-make-profit-sports/ The NCAA pulls in right at $1Billion dollars in revenue and a great deal of that revenue goes to P5 schools. They do not allocate funding evenly across the board to all schools. A better picture of the issues with college athletics is in the following Washington Post article which also verifies that very few schools "profit" from athletics. They spend more money on athletics than they take in from athletics. These large schools can pull in $125 - 200 million dollars in sports revenue, but spend it as fast as they make it. That also did not surprise me, as I do not think UND would be any different. http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/sports/wp/2015/11/23/running-up-the-bills/?utm_term=.7800ce2592cc You can look further and find out that a large portion of money comes from sales of merchandise. That obviously varies from school to school. If you have a program like hockey at UND that drives a big part of merchandise sales. Ticket sales are not the prominent driver of revenue for any school. We should be glad to have donors that fund athletics, as that is not the purpose for colleges and universities, but are a benefit to those universities and help to drive the attendance and passion for the school. There may be some issues with the contract, and contracts can be negotiated, but the university needs to understand the value of donors. Other sports do benefit from the status of hockey at UND by merchandise sales along with keeping donors excited. A large donor should have more say in how their money is spent. The Engelstad's have given money beyond athletics to UND, and that should be appreciated. I know any donations that I make now to the university are going to be very specific, as they have in recent years.

This shutout must have gotten him a contract with the Flyers. He is the backup for one of the Flyers split squad games against the Islanders. Very surprised to see this.

Check the game Lyon is starting in goal for Philly. Check the team stats and Matej is listed as the backup. Click his name and his picture will pop up. It is definitely him in the picture.

I assumed he is signed by Philly since they drafted him. Then I do not believe he could play in another pro league while under their contract. Could be wrong on that.

You cannot. He is definitely the backup in one of Phily's games tonight (playing split squads against the Islanders). There are only a few international spots available in major junior, so he will have to go to the ECHL or AHL, if he does not get one of those exemptions. Pretty young kid to do that. Very surprised.

Did I miss Tomek signing a pro contract? He is the backup for Phily tonight playing against the Islanders. I am really surprised at this being how young he is. Thought he would go to the USHL this year and another school would pick him up for next year.

Here it is, and the tweet came from UND Football as a gamer.

It is the old font and has nothing to do with "stretching". It is not the font associated with "North Dakota" in the "Fighting Hawks" rollout. Not even close. It is an old North Dakota font.

I just saw the football game jersey on twitter. With all the outrage regarding the hockey usage of the logo, why does the football team use a different font for "North Dakota", than what was built around the Fighting Hawks branding? I would think those on here would be "outraged" at the noncompliance.

The truly honest answer to the original question is that in the Brien logo era, the football team had a 1" logo on the collar of the jersey (bottom of the neckline) and NEVER had that logo at midfield. It is true that the basketball team had the logo on the side of their shorts a few years, but also NEVER had that logo at center court. It will also be true that the hockey sweaters this year will have the Hawk logo on their shoulders, and will likely be similar size to the logo that was on the side of the basketball shorts, So being honest, the hockey team this year will have a larger Hawk logo than the football team ever wore during the Brien logo era. I will also guess that on the ice (maybe not this year, but quickly) you will see the Hawk logo appear in the same area, and near the same size, as was at the Scheel arena regional ice this March. You can decide for yourself the real "outrage" of some people.

Tucker Poolman

Janatuinen

You can tell by the responses on here that the NCHC.TV is extremely variable. This year is much worse than last year. Some times it works great and other times it does not. When it first started there was not Apple product streaming, so I ran through Internet Explorer on a very fast WiFi system and it was choppy. They said to use Google Chrome, so I did and it was not much better. Definitely not HD, but I really had very few streaming issues of it syncing. When they started streaming through Apple products, I bought an Apple TV (third generation, which I still use) and streamed on our TV with that and both an IPad II and now a newer Air2. That worked very well last year. This year with the same system (faster internet WiFi than years past), I had numerous errors getting it to stream to the Apple TV. I can stream many other live programs/shows on our Apple TV without problems and they do so flawlessly. I cannot replicate the error that the NCHC.TV streaming shows. I still get the error initially, but after several attempts it works. The NCHC.TV is just not consistent and is in fact getting far worse this year. I am assuming the issue with my Apple TV has something to do with the 4th generation Apple TV setup that you can get the NCHC.TV App loaded into without having to stream it from your Apple device. That is the only thing that I can come up with, since I had no issues last year.

After the finally have "some" of the bugs worked out with the Airplay, the feed got very choppy in the third period. Using same system as last year, I had few issues. This is a Neulion issue with the feed. I understand some of the audio issues come from Midco, but the streaming is on them. Not many folks hardware their internet, nor should it be expected. I have extremely fast internet feeds, and have no issues with other live feeds. Extremely disappointing, and Neulion is not good at fixing things.

We just went from the "BOY" line, to the "SOS" line. Lots of changes.

Tucker, Boeser

I agree they have had serious issues across the board since the start of the season. This is the first weekend that I have been able to stream the game on Apple TV (3rd generation), from my IPad Air2. It was not without some error messages and difficulties, but at least I got it to work this weekend. I had sent in numerous complaints regarding the issue, and it still is not perfect, but it did work. I had used the same system all of last year and did not have any problems. They first blamed my system, but NCHC.TV is the only streaming that I have had issues with on my Apple TV. Fox Sports Go and the Wisconsin-BC game streamed perfectly. CNN, Blaze TV, ESPN and others stream perfectly. Neulion is definitely a weak link and something needs to be done very quickly to improve customer support and overall capabilities. They no longer do the NHL, so something is up. The only thing that I would say is, Please-Please-Please, continue to send them complaints and copy the NCHC folks as well. That has helped my situation.

Jost

The NCHC better review Neulion as their choice to stream these games. What a joke it is tonight. Freezing up every few minutes.

I want to ask folks about using an Apple product to go through Apple TV on your television. Last year I had no problems using an IPad2, or an IPad Air2 to stream the games through my Apple TV to my television. This year I get an error message on my Apple TV as I try to stream it on my television. I have yet to watch a game through Apple TV this year at all. I can stream every other site that I have CNN, Blaze, ESPN, etc. through my IPad to the Apple TV without a problem. Only NCHC.TV has this issue that I can tell. I actually pulled up my older IPad and got the same error message. I have contacted NCHC.TV and they say they had a problem last week, but it was fixed. Just checking.