Johnny Five

Minot over Legacy 4-3, scored with about 30 seconds left. Mandan over Dickinson in OT 4-3. 2 tight games out west. Only girls game Thursday: L-B grinds out a 4-0 win over Dickinson. -------- This weekend: Friday: Hazen at Bottineau Friday: CHS at Jamestown Saturday: Jamestown at Minot Saturday: Grafton at Bottineau Saturday: BHS at Willison Girls: Friday: Jamestown at Minot Friday: DL at WIlliston Friday: CHS at WFU Friday Davies at GF Friday: Mandan at North Saturday: Jamestown at Willison Saturday: L-B at WFU Saturday: DL at Dicky Saturday: CHS at North

Best in the state in my opinion followed by Dickinson's goalie. For whatever reason Grand Forks kicks out brick walls for goaltenders in girls hockey.

Tuesday the 17th: WF over Davies 5-3 (no live score on website so no clue how many Mattern put up) Mayport over WAHP 4-3 GFC over South 10-2 Crookston over Grafton 5-2 Legacy over BHS 11-1 Minot over DL 9-2 (live stats show Forsberg didn't play in this one) CHS over Mandan 6-3 (special teams fest. 5 PPG and 1 shorty out of the 9 ginos) North over Sheyenne 7-4 GIRLS Davies over Devils Lake 6-1 WFU over Jamestown 4-2 (WFU keeps grinding out dubs in the early half of the season) GF over North 1-0 in a shootout (Bensley with a 36 save shootout win over the 3 time defending champs IMO she's the best in the state).

8 boys games tonight. Most interesting matchups to me will be Mandan/CHS and WF/Davies. 3 girls games tonight. Jamestown and WFU should be a good battle. Will see if GF tendy can keep them in the game with North.

SDSU and MSU for the win.

SDSU MSU final. Vigen brings home the title.

He's not good.

Didn't even consider driving from Bismarck to Fargo for that one.

That was a packed house. I hadn't seen Eagles since the remodel. Looked like a great environment.

Central and Red River. GFC up 2-0 1st period.

Population doesn't mean much to me. Girls hockey is as niche as it gets. I love it, but it's the honest truth. Like I mentioned above, all communities need to do a better job of recruiting girls to the sport. In order to determine the viability of 3 programs in Fargo, would have to look at the youth club 15u down to 10u, check addresses and and determine which pipeline/school hockey girls are filtered into. In a 3 year snapshot (think soph-senior, but have to look back to basically 12u levels), if there aren't 18 girls it's going to be tough to pull off. Some of those girls will quit. Some of those girls will move to other schools. Some of those girls will leave the state. Looks easy on the surface. There was A LOT of discussion in Bismarck on when, how and which schools to co-op.

I do not believe there's enough girls playing hockey in Fargo to support 3 teams. I only see 1 15U team listed. They do have 3 at the 12U level however. Talk could also be about WF having 2 teams. Numbers have to be similar to Bismarck in the youth levels - edit: actually WF only shows one small 15ua team and 2 12u. I think all of the bigger communities could do a better job of recruiting girls youth hockey players too be honest. It's going OK in Bismarck. Much better now with that 3rd sheet of ice (which was one of my personal issues) at VFW. Gotta look past the winning part of HS sports and focus on participation - which, when it comes to hockey and girls, a large % are just doing it for social/fun purposes. Numbers look huge on L/B (28 skaters 3 goalies), however at least 5 of them have played hockey less than 3 years. 2 issues I've seen personally in Bismarck: 1. It has had an affect on the youth club. Girls are jumping up when they're not ready. Personal family decision...yes. But FR who aren't ready coming up for social reasons, barely touch the ice and don't develop properly like FR boys in bantams. 2. More girls have actually quit the last 2 years with 2 teams than ever had with one team. I believe CHS had 3 just this season. That rarely happened with the Blizzard. All that said. Growth is good. The sport in ND is as talented and deep as it has ever been. I don't believe girls need to leave the state to reach their dreams if that's what they want, and I believe colleges are missing out by not scouting talented, hard working kids in ND.

Even getting to run time has been rare the last 3 years. The parity in the state has kept that extremely rare.

Jamestown over Davies 3-2 Dickinson over CHS 4-2 L/B over Mandan 3-1 Minot over Williston 3-0. And....North over Devils Lake 18-0. SOG 73-5.

The go hard. They'll pick up more wins.