GFG

Kerr got injured Feb 10, so he ended up missing 14 games. He was also one of their best defensive d-men and was on the PP. If you look at points per game he was quite a bit higher than Myllari and Autio. He only ended up 2 points behind them in 13/14 less games played.

Yeah, #4 was Myllari, a freshman who was put in the lineup due to Kevin Kerr being injured

Kevin Kerr

If Minnesota was weak than what was UND considering they couldn't beat them? Losing both Novak and Lindgren to injury was a lot for MN, especially Lindgren because they didn't have a lot of depth on D. The team was very inconsistent this year (saw it again in the game vs Notre Dame) and most Gophers fans knew they weren't major title contenders because of that inconsistency. The B1G was not a bad conference, though. I think most college hockey fans throughout the country would agree that UMD and Denver were the top 2 teams in the country the majority of the year, but outside of those 2 the rest of the NCHC was basically on par with the rest of the conferences.

Is he one of the bottom guys? IIRC penn state lost their top Dman for the year a few weeks ago

I know, but why come back as an assistant if head coach is what you truly want? Especially if you have head coaching offers. Unless he just doesn't want to be a head coach, which I'm sure is possible. I could see Grant getting the job as well. There's been talk that the only reason he doesn't have a head coaching job right now is due to his lack of head coaching experience. If Lucia thinks he can do it and puts in a word to the AD I could see that happening.

I can't recall where I heard it, but I'm pretty sure somebody said that Lucia is planning on handing the head coaching job to him in the near future. I can't remember where it was...I think it was somebody on KFAN a few weeks ago. Obviously no way to know if that's true or not, but I wouldn't doubt it one bit. I just don't see why Guentzel would have stayed at Minnesota otherwise.

They've had some bad stretches, but they were awful all around tonight. Super slow, never first to loose pucks, couldn't hold possession of the puck. It looked like most of them were playing with terrible hangovers

That was ugly. Probably the worst game I've seen Minnesota play all year. They deserved to lose for sure. Hopefully they realize they're not locked into the NCAA's yet..

Came here to say that haha. A lot of people think vaccines for virus' are basically 100% effective, which isn't true. The flu vaccine is even worse. Pretty sure it's below 50% effective because the vaccination is only for the known/common strains and there are constantly new strains of the flu virus

Just curious, would you bet on Denver to beat Ohio State at home? Because you would be 0-1 on that this year. If OSU can beat Denver on the road I would bet that Minnesota can beat both Denver and Duluth. Would they be underdogs? Absolutely they would be, but I think it's unlikely that they'd get crushed. The B1G is the 2nd best conference in college hockey this season with only 6 teams, so no, it isn't that bad.

As a Minnesota fan this comment is almost exactly how I've felt more often than not the last 8 or so years.

Nebraska is not going DI in hockey without a donor. It's as simple as that. They're trying to get their football team back up to where they think it should be and it's likely going to get even more difficult with the schools in their division making big hires and putting more money into the sport. For the time being any money they have is going to be heading towards football. As for the B1G sponsoring women's hockey...I don't think anything has been said anywhere. It seems like more of a "I think this will happen" statement than it does a fact. On a side note, I didn't recall ever seeing anywhere how much money the B1G hockey schools get from BTN. While looking to see if the Googles could find anything about B1G women's hockey I saw another Nebraska article with a tweet from Let's Play Hockey in 2013: I didn't realize they were receiving that much money. If that's what UND could get out of it then I think it turns into a no brainer.

Agreed. It may not please all UND hockey fans, but being associated with the B1G conference + Notre Dame could and probably would be huge for the university. It gets the university noticed around the entire B1G footprint playing those teams, being talked about on BTN shows, having their highlights on BTN and being seen in the B1G hockey standings anywhere they are shown.

I shall deliver the message Edit: Nevermind. He probably was right earlier but the results of tonights games probably changed it

Just for fun a guy on GPL tinkered with it as well and found that if Minnesota didn't completely collapse against SCSU just one night and had beaten Northeastern they'd be #1 overall right now. I've said it for years and I'll continue to say it, but I'm personally not a huge fan of the pairwise. It's not terrible by any means, I'm just not a huge fan. I like that non-conference games have importance, but in my personal opinion they're weighted to heavily in the pairwise when compared to the amount of non-conference games actually played. Especially in today's age of college hockey where there's so much parity. I don't know how I'd fix it or what would be a better solution, but some discussion about it might be fun. It would be interesting to hear Jim Dahl's thoughts on it as well. Edit: On a side note, due to the parity in college hockey, I've been thinking the last few years that it would be fun to expand the tournament to 20 teams. I know it's a lot of teams, but there aren't many sports out there with parity like college hockey. Especially in a one and done tournament.

That's how it is for a lot of bubble teams. IIRC Minnesota only needed one more win the last couple of times they missed the tournament to push them comfortably in. Non-conference losses are bad...non-conference losses to bad teams are horrible.

I'm still not high on this team. I'm glad they're finally winning games but Schierhorn's jekyll and hyde performances aren't good enough to get it done in the NCAA tournament. He gives up a lot of soft goals.

B1G is #2 this year in OOC records. If you move UND to the B1G this year the B1G has a better OOC record than the NCHC. B1G w/ UND: 52-31-13 (.609) NCHC w/o UND: 32-19-12 (.603) So no, the B1G is not that much weaker than the NCHC right now and it appears as though the teams are improving, UND is the difference. If it was that weak then maybe UND would've actually gotten a win in their 4 games against B1G teams this year. (sorry, just making a point)

They still said no. A few guys on GPL have lived down there and said there's no way it would ever happen. Like you said, though, financing. Not a chance in hell Iowa takes millions of dollars that could potentially be spent on football or basketball and starts up men's and women's hockey programs. Once again, a donor is needed.

The extra money comes from having more live sporting events televised on BTN/FOX networks. You can charge more for advertisements with live sports than non-live shows on the network. This would likely lead to some UND home games not on BTN to being on FSN/FSN+ (UND could produce it all in house and take in extra money that would normally go to a place like Midco). And a game with UND you might be able to charge more for advertisements if you prove they have higher viewership numbers than others. I'm pretty sure it's not a coincidence that Minnesota is on BTN so much more than the other B1G schools. More viewers and a large metro area to draw that core audience from. I guarantee UND brings more viewers to the table than anyone in the conference but Minnesota. On top of that UND will also bring them good numbers from the Twin Cities metro, which is probably their major market for college hockey. Obviously I can't say all of this would be 100% true, but it seems to make sense. Just fun to speculate.

I don't either, but if it comes down to UND saying no I guess UMD wouldn't be the worst option.

Omaha hockey would be no threat to Nebraska athletics. Nebraska isn't adding hockey. In the end, I don't see why they wouldn't allow those schools in. It's pretty easy for them to claim that those 2 schools are part of the school system of current B1G universities.

Those tickets are sold. Pretty much all tickets have been the last few years. People have tickets and don't show up for whatever reason. It's stupid because prices stay high since the tickets are "sold". That's why Minnesota started selling $10 standing room tickets the week of the games towards the end of last season. So people that wanted to go could buy them and use the seats

It was. And it was definitely the best atmosphere of the year. Surprisingly I think PSU was #2. UND is a big draw in the college hockey world. The hockey schools know that and want them in.