Mariucci

BIG has 23 National Titles while the NCHC has 17 despite the BIG having 2 less teams.

In 20 years you can tell the grand kids you were at the NCHC conference tournament and they'll reply, "what's the NCHC???"

College hockey has always been changing. When I first started watching college hockey in the '80's the WCHA was an 8 team league. It went to 10, then 12, and even lost a member(NMU) during that time as well. Only 7 of the 12 teams were there originally. Heck the Gophers have Big Ten Champion banners hanging in Mariucci from the '60's or '70's. College hockey's landscape has always evolved, this is nothing new. I would think long time fans of an elite program would have more perspective than this. And BTW Siouxperfan7, hockey is BY FAR the third most popular sport on our campus and it's not close.

Thank you captain obvious. It's been a bad year no argument here.

Only short sighted people would judge the success of a conference based upon the first 2 years of the conference tournament. It's not a tradition to anyone yet, it's new. But in the league's first year it produced 2 of the 4 #1 seeds which was a pretty good start.

Sadly this will be true.

Just got home and turned on the game. Obviously the crowd or lack there of is embarrassing. But don't Michigan and Michigan State typically draw good crowds for the GLI every year? Not sure why this would be so different. Maybe because its still just so new to people but still. Pathetic.

Those numbers are not butts in the seats. No chance. I just think its silly to try to come to any conclusion about how the expansion of college hockey the last two years will go. You guys keep ripping on the BIG even though just last season it was better than the NCHC. This season is the absolute worst the BIG Hockey will ever be. It's an outlier. You don't think there will be a year where Minnesota, Mich, UW, and Michigan State all make the NCAA's? Let's give this experiment some time and look back ten years from now. At that time I'm quite certain we'll all be happy with where college hockey is in relation to the conferences. And if you guys don't think that the BIG brand helps college hockey in numerous ways then I don't know what to tell you.

A WCHA Final Five Thursday afternoon game would be empty at the X as well.

The Gophers still play all their rivals every year with the exception of UND.

Considering neither had any choice in the matter whatsoever I'm thinking they don't feel that way.

It's amazing how much trouble people outside of ND have in differentiating between the 2 schools. It seems something like this happens every year.

Zane's numbers this year are nearly identical to what Wilcox put up last year and he was a Hobey Finalist. Zane this year = 27-7-3 1.97 GAA and a .932 SV%. Wilcox last year = 26-6-6 1.97 GAA and a .932 SV%. It's spooky how close the numbers are. Last year I had no doubt that Wilcox was worthy of being a finalist so I have no problem with Zane getting the same recognition. He deserves it this year.

Sorry but you're just wrong. Lucia did hate the rule and I know this for an absolute fact.

Good point.

Sorry I didn't mean to get the thread off track.

You think it's that easy? Lucia had zero say. Every institutions AD got to vote and every one of them including UND voted for the rule.

The rule was strictly for TV. If Gopher fans knew in advance they their team played at 2 they would buy tickets just the same and attendance would not be effected. At all.

The home crowd was an advantage sure. I can't argue that. But automatically playing the night Semi-final every year wasn't any advantage.

Umm ok? Not sure where you're going with this. The Minnesota rule was for tv ratings. And playing Saturday afternoon after losing the night semi-final was a disadvantage. What part do you disagree with? I know opposing fans hated the Minnesota rule but nobody hated it more than Lucia and the reason was because sometimes it would put the Gophers at a disadvantage. it was NEVER an advantage in any way. Whether the Gophers were playing Saturday night or Saturday afternoon they were playing a team that had more rest plain and simple. And my initial argument still stands that this was the main reason the Gophers sucked in 3rd place games.

The 2009 game against UMD was the Thursday night play-in game if IIRC.

I knew we had sucked in these tourney's lately but this stat surprised me as well. And the past 3 years we've been the #1 seed as well. For once it would be nice to go into the NCAA's on a good note.

Who cares if a local high school has the same nickname? No one outside of the area would ever know that. I certainly didn't.

I got that beat. The Gophers haven't even won a conference tournament game since 2008.

You may have me on that one.