as15

Read this article, Colten St. Clair has the attitude and drive that I want every current and future Sioux player to have, honestly how many players in his situation would stick it out this year, its not like this kid has no future in hockey, if he would have had a solid year this season he very well could be have been a late round draft pick as an overager. He will be a great 4 year player for us.

Has anyone else noticed how good Knight is at looking off defenders and firing no-look passes and shots, if you re-watch his goal from Saturday he looks to pass to Nelson and fires a no-look shot at the net, the goalie didn't even react because he thought he was going to pass. Also his assist on Nelson's goal in Madison, watch the replay on "Through These Doors" he looks to the point and fires a 20 ft. no looker to Nelson for a tap in.

Looks like Chay is starting to heat up, 4 points in his last 2 games and is now Houston's leading scoring defenseman.

"Obviously, it's a must win game"-Danny Kristo, I hope the rest of the team has the same mentality as him tonight.

I second that, except that guy with the cowbell was making enough noise for 300 people.

I agree that they had an amazing powerplay, the puck movement between Connolly, Connolly, Fontaine, and Faulk was a thing of beauty, but our depth, defensive corp, and goaltending absolutely blew theirs out of the water last year. Faulk is the only defenseman on their team that would have played on ours, Gleason probably would have been their #2 or #3 d-man last year (I am not including Dylan Olsen). Their first line was extremely good, but I really don't think that their 2nd line was even close to as good the Sioux's last year. By the end of the year the Nelson-Kristo line could have held its own with a lot of teams first lines as well.

Beat you to it.

Grimaldi in the lineup. Can't wait, hopefully he is fully healthy.

Grimaldi is playing on the 4th line tonight with Senkbeil and Gleason. I really hope he is at 100% and putting him on the 4th line is just to ease him into real competition. If he is indeed 100% healthy, I doubt he makes it a full game playing on that line, I would expect him to be on the powerplay as well.

I think Hakstol stated earlier that it was "unforeseen issue" that came up, that it was a huge surprise. It is really too bad that this happened and I wonder if there is a way to determine eligibility of a player prior to coming to school. St. Clair did not attend school last year so if he would have known their would be an issue with the Clearinghouse, he could have taken the time to get it taken care of last year.

By the way, I didn't mean your comment was total bull, just the St. Clair ineligibility situation.

That is total bull. At least in college, if a college is accredited when a degree is earned there it doesn't all of a sudden become nullified if the college becomes un-accredited, I don't understand how this works. I am an engineer and I have a co-worker that attended a school that no longer has an accredited engineering program. Every 4 years ABET, which is the accrediting agency for engineering schools, goes to each school that applys and determines if it should be accredited or not. During this persons senior year, ABET came to his school and said the school wasn't meeting its standards so it would no longer be accredited. Everyone person that was enrolled in that degree program at the time would still earn an ABET accredited degree, but future incoming freshman could not. I don't understand how they can just say its not good enough when at the time it was.

One thing I have noticed from this team that is quite different than last year is the ability to get the puck out of their own zone cleanly. Last year we had defenseman that could move the puck well but also skate it out if needed (Genoway, Marto), this year we don't really have that as much. Another thing, UND likes to swing its center down low to carry the puck out with speed. Last year we had Malone, Knight, and Nelson to do this, this year we have Knight, Rowney, and Lamoureux. That is a huge difference in terms of skill, skating ability, and speed. I think this is something that is being overlooked. If the center attacks with speed it is extremely hard for the other team to stop them before they bring it out to the red line, I think that instead of having the the center, exclusively, swing down low we should allow the wingers to do it, guys with speed and skill on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th lines instead of the centers. Guys like MacMillan, Parks, and Grimaldi when healthy. I think doing this would help for cleaner breakouts.

I just got done writing a letter to the NCAA about this, a kid gets screwed over for going above and beyond the minimum requirements in terms of schooling, while a good portion of NCAA football and basketball players probably don't deserve to be in college at all. Really unfortunate, I really would like to know what specifically the issue was with St. Clair, I heard he is a very good student, it has to be extremely frustrating for him.

I just hate how helpless the NCAA is against situations like these. Not only can the NCAA be used as leverage to get the player on the team he wants, but he also has the opportunity to get paid. Windsor can publish articles like these whenever they want and UND can not do anything about it, Hakstol can not even mention anything about the player until he has signed with the team, and Schmaltz has not signed yet. It is just a helpless situation and I see no way of it getting resolved.

Frattin blows by a defenseman and get his first career point on an assist on David Steckel's goal, shows great strength and speed on the rush.

Frattin misses semi-breakaway, he can't buy a goal right now.

Frattin just laid out Meszaros.

How good is Nick Schmaltz supposed to be? It is hard to get a read on him just looking at stats because he is not playing in a Junior league and he is still too young for the NTDP. Is a legitimate high end prospect? Like first or second round NHL draft material, or a later round, 4 year college guy?

I didn't get to see the game on Friday but too many goals were scored on the rush tonight. The defenseman did their job but the forwards were either not coming back hard enough or they weren't picking up the open guys which led to open shots in the slot. The d-men would poke check the puck away from the first forward but the trailers would be uncovered because the back checking forwards were nowhere to be found. We need Dell or Eidsness to start stealing some games for us otherwise we could dig ourselves into a pretty deep hole.

Yep I got that as well, hopefully not foreshadowing.

I like your rankings, but I can see the Sioux finished anywhere from 3 to 6. By the end of the year I strongly believe they will be a Top 5-8 team in the country, but the early struggles might really hurt them in terms of WCHA seeding.

Frattin playing very well so far against the Bruins, a lot of nifty backhand passes, his linemates need to start burying the puck. He was set up for a one-timer in the lost but missed the net high and wide, he doesn't do that very often. He slammed his stick on the ice after the miss, hopefully he doesn't get too frustrated.

After all that went on with JT Miller this summer, until Matteau is in a Sioux uniform I will be a pessimist and assume we will not get him.

Thanks for the info, hopefully he is able to play soon.