Johnny Five

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.

Didn't have DL beating WF 5-2 on the Bingo Card for the night. Looks like Mattern was kept off the score sheet which helps. Busy weekend again coming up. 8 girls games and 7 boys.

I wonder when the last time someone ran the table in the WDA if ever. I understand Mandan had the flu bug ravage their team, but Minot was also out 2 really good players due to injury as well. It's going to take a fluke for anyone in the WDA to beat Minot. The wildest stat is I don't think they've won the WDA tournament since like 2008 (can't recall year but it's been a LONG time).

I think all 3 Jamestown goals were breakaways as a result of breakdowns/turnovers and they took advantage of it. Girls side: L/B: 1-0 over Minot Mandan: 4-0 over Williston GF: 5-0 over DL Davies: 3-0 over WF CHS: 6-4 over Jamestown

That's going to be an interesting game to follow as is North and Red River. Curious how those turn out after North and WF trips west last weekend. Also curious to see what kind of run Mandan can give Minot out west. 9 games on the boys side on Tuesday, busy night. 5 games on the girls side that night as well.

Couple more good games out west today. Legacy over WF 4-3 in OT. Mattern is definitely explosive. North over Mandan 3-2. Went to both games, both were basically even on game play. Mandan showed they outshot North by a bit but I felt North had a slight edge in possession.

2 entertaining games at the VFW in Bismarck last night. WF over Century 7-5, North over Legacy 3-2. Fun night at the rink, people got their money's worth. There was a nice old school scrum at the end of the North/Legacy with 11 seconds left game too. Veteran move by the officials...took one guy from each side and called it a day.

On the girls side I think my "on paper" thoughts were off. I thought there would be more separation this year than there has been the past few seasons. And then they drop the puck and play some games...I think it's going to be another meatgrinder all the way to the final game again, and that makes for a really fun season.

Thies is a brick sh*thouse to bring down. Super impressive.

Seedings were done to a tee between the 3 teams. Head to head gets tossed out, the D2s were the obvious deciding factor. Like it or not we all knew that going into the season. That being said, I think SDSU will come out of that side of the bracket.

Games of interest coming up this weekend, before the chaos starts... Girls Friday: CHS at EGF - non con, Mandan at L/B, North at GF Knights. Saturday: L/B at EFG - non con Boys South travels to Mandan Friday and BHS on Saturday.