GFG

Serious question. What the hell happened to Grimaldi? I honestly thought he would greatly benefit moving up to play with teammates of a higher skill level. Seems like he's at the point now where he won't really see the NHL unless injuries force him to be called up.

They still wouldn't be big ratings by BTN standards at all, but they'd be an improvement for hockey ratings on BTN. Other than games involving Minnesota, hockey ratings have been BAD on BTN. Rick Pizzo said on Twitter the other day that they're extremely bad and that even volleyball absolutely crushes all hockey ratings on BTN. The B1G thought they could just make people across their footprint watch by branding it under their name without realizing how much of a niche sport college hockey actually is. You can't just hope to make people watch like they're currently doing. They have to provide compelling matchups that draw in people that are already college hockey fans. Adding in a school like UND will draw in UND's fanbase, including the ones all over the country since so many of them could get BTN on DirecTV and stuff, along with other college hockey fans who tune in to watch teams like UND and Minnesota play. For the most part nobody cares about watching OSU, MSU, Michigan or god forbid Wisconsin and their boring style. Most of those schools have never really had their own fans watch on TV before, so why would others want to watch? A school like UND will give them higher hockey ratings for sure. They also need to change their philosophy and start televising non-conference games when their schools play against the likes of BC, BU, etc. Once they learn that they need to try and draw in actual college hockey fans and not just try to force B1G fans to watch they'll see major improvements in viewership, IMO. 8 of the 14 B1G teams have never had hockey on their campuses so why would those people care at all about watching? Heck, a lot of OSU students, fans, alumni etc. apparently say they've never even known they had a hockey team. The UND-MSU game wasn't televised because BTN doesn't televise non-conference games. They only broadcast conference games because the non-conference games are going on during football season.

You and I both. Seeing as it appears to be mostly season tickets that just aren't being used for Minnesota the university needs to figure something out. I'm sure parking keeps some of them away for a lot of games. It's an absolute disaster parking around there and they don't have shuttle services from restaurants and bars like schools in smaller cities do. I know that's not the biggest problem, but it certainly could be a contributing factor.

Touche, not sure why I didn't think of that since I know the rule. Probably because that punch should be considered fighting and only got the guy a game

Almost all of Minnesota's fans would rather have the old WCHA back, but we can't. It's kind of fun playing the B1G schools on the ice, but it's not as fun for fans because we never see their fans and can't develop hatred for one another. I would actually love the B1G conference right now + UND. It would give both fan bases that hatred between each other that we all long for , as well as playing "big name" schools. Living in Grand Forks my whole life, it's been extremely noticeable the last couple of years that even UND's crazy fan base has suffered from the rivalry being gone and both schools have to make sure it's an every year thing that they play. I don't mean it as a dig when I say UND's fan base has suffered, so please don't take it like that. Clearly everyone still loves UND hockey here, but when the rivalry was around this town revolved around it. You couldn't be anywhere at any time and not have it brought up. The passion just isn't quite the same right now. The rivalry just gave both fan bases such a charge that carried throughout the entire season that I don't think there would be anything for a VERY long time that could ever come close to replacing it for either side. People can say "Denver, UMD and SCSU" replaced Minnesota and what not, but it's not true and everyone knows. Same with Minnesota, there's nothing that the majority of fans can say replaced their hatred for UND as a rival. Some people have always hated Wisconsin just as much, if not more than UND because of the B1G rivalry, but UND is easily the overall biggest rival for Minnesota in hockey and it's not close. I actually really enjoy playing Michigan and hate them, but they'll never reach the rivalry level of UND. My only idea? When Minnesota hires a new AD get as many people as possible, MN and UND fans, to send emails to the AD explaining why the series should be played every year. Let whomever they hire hear from a couple thousand people that this rivalry is something they want. Not guaranteed to work, but it certainly can't hurt.

They've had Mariucci beat almost every weekend for 2 years but nobody makes a big deal out of it because it's Duluth and not the Gophers. There's almost no possible way Amsoil's actual attendance has been at more than 50% capacity for any series but UND and Minnesota the last 2 years. Maybe a couple other series have, but it's been rare to see it more than about 50%.

What was last years excuse for Duluth's empty arena? Or the excuse for every series this year? Including the games before anyone knew they would underachieve. Even Minnesota and North Dakota series there had plenty of open seats. And if Duluth is excused for pitiful attendance because they're not as good as they thought they would be 20 games into the season why doesn't Minnesota get that exemption for extreme underachieving last season and struggling with 10 freshman this season? I'm just curious to see your thoughts on it.

I completely agree. He unloaded a punch on a player that was defenseless because he was subdued by the official. One game for that is ridiculous. Doesn't that set the precedent that full on fighting would be a one game suspension if it's your first suspension?

Haha I was going to say no offense to the rest of you with that comment but didn't. I just wanted to make him rethink his statement a little

They're pretty lenient on first time offenders. I'm not sure a 1st time offender has ever gotten more than one game in the B1G.

They haven't gotten this years yet, it'll be at the end of the year. But attendance looks very similar so far.

Yep, not a single school announces actual attendance anymore. UND included. Duluth's actual attendance for whatever reason is just awful. It baffles me because they've been decent up until this year and have a new arena. Attendance was sparse for them last year, but it's gotten really bad this year.

I didn't recall correctly on the actual attendance. Averaging 7600 in actual attendance, yet sold on average over 9700 tickets per game (97%). It's just people (season ticket holders) not showing up. So they should contact those people to figure out why they aren't coming. It's probably 2100 UND alumni holding season tickets to go to next years game... http://www.gopherpucklive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=12553

I'll see if I can find it...one of GPL's writers asked the U for actual attendance numbers and tickets sold for every game after last season and they gave it to him.

You're right. He's probably like 0.6 seconds away from being fired.

Minnesota is still averaging around 8500 butts in seat, IIRC. 1500 no-shows is extremely noticeable in a 10,000 seat arena that's one giant bowl. They had a game last year that reached as low as 7200. They're selling 97% of their tickets, though. So it's not like they're having trouble selling tickets. I would rather them find a way to sell tickets to people that want to be there...they could probably start by lowering the ****ing single game tickets from $75 to like $45. You know, what college hockey prices should be.

Minnesota was mathematically locked in without the autobid last year. The way other conference tournaments played out they were in before the B1G Championship Game began. If Michigan won that game the B1G would've had 2 teams in. Similar situation 2 years ago: Minnesota and Wisconsin were locked into the NCAA tournament and if Ohio State would've beaten Wisconsin in OT there would've been 3 B1G teams in the tournament and UND would've been sitting at home.

If they get ASU they want to try and get UCONN. They haven't had any talks at all with UCONN about it yet, so the heavy interest is only internally at the B1G. If they can't get UCONN to join for whatever reason I wouldn't be surprised to see them reach out to UND. They said if ASU joins the B1G will, with 100% certainty, get their 8th team from an existing program. If UCONN for some reason says no I'd have to imagine UND would be highly considered for next in line because there's no other big name FBS schools to try and poach

Butts in seat I'll bet my life savings that Minnesota would still be 2nd in attendance in the NCHC this year. UMD is more empty than Mariucci every week with a smaller arena (even the UND series had tons of open seats), CC and Denver only have a couple hundred fans each. Omaha has the novelty of a brand new arena, but it'll die down. St Cloud is rarely over half full, with UND and Minnesota games being the only exceptions. And a lot of those fans arent cheering for St Cloud. I can't speak for Western Michigan and Miami because I haven't seen much games out there. Regarding Wisconsin ...can you blame them? Their team is beyond bad and have an extremely boring style of play. Why WOULD anyone want to go to games? Outside of Minnesota games the old Ralph was pretty damn empty when UND was struggling too. You can't group UND in the group spending much less money than B1G teams because und spends just as much, and actually probably more, than they do on hockey. It's the other NCHC schools that are nowhere near UND's or the B1G teams budgets.

Correct. I personally don't fully understand the reasoning behind it, but that's who they're interested in trying to get if ASU chooses the B1G

All of those fans would have the ability to see more games overall, though. Any game that's not televised on BTN can be televised by anyone else. Whether that be FSN, Midco, ASN or a local channel. UND wouldn't be as held up in their TV deal like the one they have with Midco. Every B1G game is also, at minimum, on BTN2Go to my knowledge. Which is free as long as you have BTN in your cable subscription. The only ones that aren't on BTN2Go are the ESPNews televised games, which are on the Watch ESPN app for free. Also very rare that UND would have to worry about games on weird days. Most of those odd day games are B1G schools scheduling around football/basketball games, which would be UND away games. Minnesota hasn't really been affected by that much at all, other than when they had friday-sunday series if they had a home football game saturday. UND makes their home schedule and if they want to play on Friday-Saturday they can choose that. The only difference you would likely see is a game occasionally starting at 8pm instead of 7:37 due TV. Edit: And you can't say it wouldn't be cool to invade places like Columbus and Ann Arbor with UND hockey fans.

Just saw the hit from a Penn State player on Saturday that resulted in a one game suspension. Not sure what he was thinking other than causing carnage..

They didn't get the Baltimore market with Johns Hopkins. That's why they added Maryland. Full members make it so the entire state has to carry BTN. They added Johns Hopkins for the research dollars and to have a high profile lacrosse team in their conference since they needed to add a team. North Dakota wouldn't get the B1G any research money, but they would certainly be a high profile team to add into their hockey conference.

1. I agree, and I would be surprised if they didn't reach out to UND. 2. That's part of the reason Minnesota was the only school that voted no for the B1G hockey conference. They knew they were the only school that would take a hit from it. They didn't lose money, technically. Their expenses increased (somehow doubled to like $4million) but their revenue has been about the same. Math doesn't add up for the extra flights and stuff costing that much money, so take those numbers with a grain of salt. Big athletic departments always move money around in their books for whatever reasons, usually title IX. It's rarely reported correctly. The U of M is #13 in revenue in all of college athletics, yet they say they break perfectly even all the time. I can tell you right now that's not accurate.

Surprisingly I think they would look at UND before Denver. These are business people, and you know as well as I do that UND's fan base and support bring far more to the table for the B1G than Denver. UND hockey viewership numbers would bring their hockey ratings WAAYYYY up, which = more advertising dollars for BTN. They won't add Denver because adding them as an affiliate school doesn't actually get them the Denver market.