jk

Along the same lines, every season since Blais righted the ship has been interesting and competitive. They've all had their ups and downs, and most ended up shy of Nirvana, but they have been endlessly entertaining. Just look to Wisconsin's sad journey and BC's fall from grace, not to mention the prolonged suffering of Maine and UNH, to see what could be. We have been so spoiled, for what has basically been the bulk of my adult life.

WMU has some very clever offensive players. You can see them slide into open space to receive passes, and the guys with the puck know to anticipate that. It's pretty impressive. Just as impressive then was the consistent play by UND's forwards to take that space away. Time after time a seemingly dangerous play or rush was defused by a backcheck. I can only conclude the guys are well coached and coachable.

How about a guy like Caulfield? You could see the tools before, but he's grown into this monster, dangerous on so many shifts. That pass last night was a thing of beauty. I have a feeling two years from now we'll see that Kunz is on the same trajectory. He's getting close, and he is a load.

Boy I bet Omaha wishes it could go back a few weeks and not get swept by Miami. Flip those two losses and Omaha is PWR 14 instead of 21.

Even with their problems this calendar year, I wouldn't be surprised to see SC or UMD win a few tourney games to get to the Frozen Four. SC can be explosive, and we should have all learned by now to not count out UMD.

Most of the TC kids listed MN would not gave cared about. They would never have looked at Gaarder, to their detriment. Or Senden, whom they could dearly use.

I seriously doubt UND has been after anyone CC and UNO have landed, and getting beaten by SC and UMD for recruits is also probably rare. Not that the latter two have not done fantastic jobs lately overall, but they are very good at finding late bloomers. In Sandy's case, he has also benefited from the local assembly line. The kind of TC kids UND wants are the type MN wants as well, which makes it tough. They snagged Boeser during the height of Lucia's drag on the program, but it's been very rare over the decades for UND to get a top TC kid.

I thought it had moved to a broader, when did we ever beat them?, discussion, based on a string of misses. Cooley is a great win, but the others were TC kids.

One chicken. Two chickens.

If Kleven doesn't count because he grew up a Sioux fan, why do we gnash our teeth over TC kids who grew up with the m tattooed on their chests?

Academics are not a plus compared to some of the competition . It's also like Siberia for a chunk of the season. I don't know Cooley's story, but we should never ever be surprised when a metro kid picks MN.

I'm not happy with this one either, but they seem to be doing ok in general. I mean, they finished #1 in the PWR the last two years, and they're hanging in there this year after graduating over half the team. You can't do that without good recruiting and coaching.

I still like next year's group quite a bit, and the pipeline in general, but Motzko has definitely had the upper hand the last year or so. Chesley, Moore and Cooley. That hurts.

farce, that's great. I wonder if getting into an Ivy via transfer is even harder than as a freshman. Also wonder if the academic culture shock would be pretty intense. But, as to the Ivy degree, there could be players who initially went another way under delusions of greater hockey ability who now realize their ticket might be better punched outside the hockey world. They should line up to get in. Thinking closer to home, it seems doubtful UND would pursue any portal forwards. Maybe a goalie, and maybe someone on D if anyone beyond Sanderson leaves.

I think CC got worn down by winter by the end of the weekend, like Napoleon and Hitler in Russia. You can think you're ready for it, but until you've live it, you're not.

UND has clinched a top 5 league finish, as Omaha can no longer catch them. Some points next week (2+) would clinch home ice. Edit: I'm wrong on next week. It depends on UMD's result tonight, but it will take at least 3 points next week.

Has Bast passed Ferner on the depth chart?

Say what you want about the quality of the big 10 (I don't have much to say given UND is 1-2 against them), but MI and MN have been real impressive during the Olympics.

I've hardly seen DU play since they left GF with a 4-4 record. But 17-1-1 since then speaks for itself. Of course it doesn't guarantee a thing for the postseason.

Well, Sanderson's injury will obviously be a huge issue for this team. Hopefully he can be 100% when it matters.

It's a close call. If SC goes back to abusing the bottom of the league, they get 12 points there the rest of the way, putting them at 34 plus whatever they can get of the 9 points they'll share with UMD. So they could still be a threat if UND struggles. I see UND needing 5 more points to clinch fourth. Every point UMD and SC drop to anyone else along the way shrinks that number. The bigger concern is the PWR. Since the losing streak, UND is 3-0-2 (basically, as the 55/45 is just about a tie), and has stayed stuck at 12. Beyond frustrating.

Denver may just be on another planet this year. But to your point about UND, they are not impressive or explosive. They need to make the right play all game long and hope to get more bounces than the other guys. Two point shots, a basic hockey play that works only very occasionally, making it into the UND net last night is an example of how tenuous it is when the breaks go the other way. If you said UND had to play a shutdown game to win, fine. But if you said they had to do it without 19, 27 and 10, well, good luck. That said, three points Saturday night is just crucial, however they can scrape them up.

It feels like five of the eight conference spots are just about set. 1. Denver 2. WMU 6. Omaha 7. CC 8. Miami That leaves UND, UMD and SC fighting for 3,4,5. Somehow UND needs to fight through the injuries and get to 3. The 4/5 death match in the first round could be loser-season-over. If the shutdown guys are out for long, two wins this weekend seems difficult, and any wins at Duluth seem unlikely. Then you'd have to hope reinforcements arrive from IR and China and they can win some games in the last two weeks. Then the PWR has to be good enough to make it at large, because beating WMU and DU back to back in St Paul seems unlikely.

I haven't felt like Driscoll was giving up much in the way of real soft goals. But he was just giving up too many, even on pretty high quality chances, and that's how you get to 0.890, or whatever the number is.

If Mel was going to lie to get that game against UMD played last spring, I wish he would have done a better job of it. Maybe then UMD wouldn't have started the game the next night fresh as a patch of daisies.