Johnny Five

"Schmaltz has a 93.6 save percentage and a 0.75 goals-against average, while Bensley has a 92.5 save percentage and a 1.69 goals-against average." Crazy numbers, especially since they've played North twice. Young team, imagine how good they'd be with the girls who left town the last few years. The story brings up a great point though. First game of the year against Fargo North. 3x defending champion, and a GF team full of youngsters. It's ridiculous the state of north dakota doesn't add more games to the boys and girls, but the girls particularly get hosed. Each team only gets one non counter. So you get a bunch of rookies trying to figure out HS hockey, and one mistake on a shift could cost a game and 3 points in the standings. In addition, girls don't get WDA or EDC....3, 4 non counters would do wonders for girls as far as game experience and also playing time for those girls who are lower on the depth chart. Add some games!

In the west it's Minot and then the race to clinch state but not the 4 seed. Perhaps it's the same in the East. ---------- @SiouxperDave I was at the Mandan CHS girls game. Mandan looked like state champ caliber. Halfway through the 2nd and the entire 3rd CHS looked like state champ caliber. Avery Matt scored 2 goals on back to back shifts that not many in ND will score to get them back in in. Mandan is one of just a few teams who have 3 good lines. Only thing they are missing is an Avery Matt...Brynn Hanson...Kenleigh Fischer. I've posted before but I thought the state would drop off after the top 5 teams. I was wrong. DL is struggling this year but after that literally anyone can beat anyone. The teams that don't have the top end talent have some of the best goalies. Depth may come into play the second half of the season, there's not many teams that will consistently roll 3 lines. In fact, I've been shocked how many rely on 2. There's a lot of hockey to be played of course, it looks like it's going to come down to the final weekend of the season to decide the top 8.

Mandan over North in girls hockey 5-3 this weekend. North loses x 2 in same week. They will also be missing Fischer for a stretch in the second half for a few games due to USA Hockey obligations. The battle for top 8 state seedings is going to be tight the second half of the season.

Yeah I'm not a fan. Miller and then Culhane were extremely good. This guys is awful.

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.

Tuesday Girls: Jamestown at Davies Devils Lake at North Century at Dickinson Legacy/Bismarck at Mandan Minot at Williston 4/5 of those should be tight.

Kupfer

After 2 weeks it looks like North is the clear cut favorite for Girls hockey. It's gonna take a "best" effort and some luck to beat them. After that, it is quite literally going to be a dogfight to get into the state tournament.

Yeah he's constantly on the move.

Yeah the UC Davis coach went on a mini rant about attendance yesterday too.

It's definitely not the draw it once was.