UND-RedSox fan

What a prick. Gaarder comes back just to steal Ausmus' goal.

We looked like we were on the powerplay during the penalty kill. Just pure domination in the first. This is the Luke we've been waiting for all year. Hasn't shot one straight into the skates yet.

My oh my, Stecher so far on this power play has been great

4-0 LJ with 2nd goal

CC is terrible. We are amazing!

I think the freshman line of Gersich, Gardner, and Boeser is more than capable of putting up some goals this weekend. Big thing that worries me about that line is in the faceoff circle. I feel like Gardner has struggled taking faceoffs. Blue line is stacked like always. Poolman and Stecher will be very important for scoring this weekend as well.

Yeah, I didn't really mean miss the tournament level of hurting. I was thinking more it would be really bad in that it would be difficult to finish ahead of SCSU and UNO with a loss or God forbid two losses to CC. We tend to struggle out east and right now we are in a position for possibly playing in St. Paul. It would probably send us to the 5-8 range with one loss. Besides CC, there is no other team that would be too bad to split with. WMU is the lowest besides CC and they are at 27 or something like that.

I'm scared about this weekend. The only game Caggiula has missed this year was the Friday Wisconsin game and that game was not pretty. The only games missed by Schmaltz was Huntsville series and that Friday night game wasn't very pretty either. CC has been playing well and probably is better than Wisconsin (maybe equal with Wisconsin) or Huntsville. This is a huge series as far positioning for Penrose and postseason play. CC is really the only team remaining on our schedule that could hurt our standing in the Pairwise badly.

Quick look again; there are another 17 out of conference games for NCHC teams that 3 goals or fewer. Most of them were 3-0 or 2-0. There were three 1-1 ties and three 1-0 games. No 0-0 ties. UND has had a 1-1 tie and a 1-0 out of conference game. So there has been a total of 30 3-goal or fewer games this year for the 8 teams in the conference. Nine of those were 1-1 or 1-0 with no 0-0 games. There were a couple 2-1, but more than half were 2-0 or 3-0 games.

Agreed and we would need to go 8-4 to get there and that is very doable. If we get 54 that means St. Cloud would need to go 7-2-1 and win the 3 on 3 overtime. The only other team that could reach that level is Denver and that only happens if they win out. That won't happen. Us and St. Cloud are sitting very pretty in conference standings at this point.

Honestly, you sound very condescending in this post. Knowing the history of the NFL isn't remotely important to me. I couldn't care less that Arizona used to be in St. Louis. It's a fun fact that I didn't know, big deal. Not knowing the history of the NFL impacts my life in no way whatsoever. If you didn't know the Red Sox were the Americans prior to adopting their current nickname, I wouldn't talk down to you like a jackass. Congratulations on your ability to state you know sports history.

It is already very unlikely that neither UND or SCSU win the conference regular season. Three games doesn't seem like much to make up on an opponent with 12 games remaining but something like that is actually quite rare in any sport. It is even more rare when there are two teams that far ahead of the next team. For Denver to win the conference they would likely have to sweep us and Duluth. They would also need to avoid being swept by Omaha. Denver winning out would get them to 56 points. If they only lose two, maybe 3, of their remaining games they will have a shot. Any more and it becomes a stretch. Duluth is 11 points behind us with two more games played. They also have us, SCSU, and Denver remaining on their schedule. They're going to need to play amazing down the stretch just to have a shot at winning the conference. Duluth winning out would put them at 49 points. Last year we had 50 when we won the conference and St. Cloud had 48 two years ago. Omaha is 14 back of us. They close out the regular season with home series against SCSU, then a home series against us, and finally a series at Denver. That is a pretty daunting 3 week stretch. Winning out would get Omaha to 52 points. They'd have a shot with only 1 loss down the stretch and a long shot with 2 losses. Three losses and they are done. Western Michigan would need to win out to get to 50 points and have a chance at winning the conference. Miami and CC are already eliminated. Even if those two won out, they wouldn't match the point total of either of previous two year's regular season champs. St. Cloud also has the most favorable schedule to close out the regular season. They don't play UND or Denver again and have Duluth at home. Most difficult series remaining for them will be at Omaha. They won't, but they have a decent shot at winning all of their remaining conference games. We have two series with WMU and one series with CC left. We also have series against UNO, Duluth, and Denver. Its going to be a dogfight between us and St. Cloud to win the Penrose.

Schlossman tweeted that Michigan has given up something like 5 goals in a game 3 or 4 times this season and won every single one.

I have much more knowledge of baseball history. If it happened before 1998 or so and it isn't about Jerry Rice or Barry Sanders, I would be a blank. I'm pretty sure you just made up those two names.

Makes sense. They moved before I was alive so they've always been the Cardinals for me. I didn't even know they used to be in St. Louis.

Looks like there is a pretty confident New England fan out there.

I think its 16 or something like that. It will take Star Wars another 10 years to get that many episodes

Preferably before March.

What's wrong with Arizona? A lot of people hate the Pats and Broncos and Carolina has Norman so no thanks for me. I've never really heard of someone hating Arizona before though.

Who would have thought 3 weeks ago that we would get to see another Manning vs Brady? I hope Manning shreds the Pats defense but Brady shreds the Broncos worse. It would be nice to see Peyton go out with a good performance, but not good enough to beat my favorite team.

Another 4 points for Kyle Connor. USA didn't need him at World Juniors...

He already has Hopefully we get to enjoy him as long as we got to enjoy Stecher or Caggiula.

Guentzel and Ortega did sort of beat us on their own. Can you think of one decent scoring opportunity they had that wasn't directly set up by those two or shot by them? And Guentzel and Ortega are dang good players. Teams have won in the NCAA tournament with one good line and little else. Contain that line and Omaha is a less than mediocre team. Based on our games against Duluth, I would think their fans would like their chances against us. There is a reason they were the preseason pick to win the conference. St. Cloud probably likes their chances against us as well. Denver probably wouldn't because we thoroughly outplayed them in December. I would think that all three of those teams would like their chances against Omaha based on how they played against Omaha. And out of Omaha, SCSU, UMD, and Denver; Omaha is the one I would feel most confident against. I'm guessing Omaha fans would feel good about playing any of the others as well. I'm also not certain Omaha makes the tournament. I wouldn't be surprised if they went 4-8 or worse in their remaining games before tournament time. They have to play two teams that have already swept them (WMU and Denver) and two teams that I think are significantly better than them (UND and SCSU). They struggled with Miami when they played them earlier in the year and CC has been playing better recently (5-5 in last 10). Omaha does have a pretty bad history of crapping the bed as well. They most likely will make the NCAA's and the last few years have shown us anyone can win it (Yale and Providence). Omaha could as well since they have Ortega and Guentzel. Those two alone make them a good team. I just wasn't impressed at all by anyone else on their team.

In my original post on Friday I excluded Huntsville and later admitted that I completely forgot about Michigan State when Burd pointed that out to me. Omaha is better than both of those teams but that is a low hurdle to jump. What I really meant was that I think SCSU, UMD, DU, and Miami are all better than Omaha. Miami is admittedly a stretch but not that big of one in my opinion. I don't think the other three are. I strongly think that Omaha will be playing on the road in the first round of the NCHC playoffs and that they are more likely to finish 7th than 4th. I wouldn't be surprised if they finished lower in the NCHC than they do in the Pairwise. I don't know how good WMU is. I didn't think Miami looked too bad when we played them. Duluth and SCSU looked like the best teams we'll play this year before the NCAA tournament. Also I'm not saying Omaha is terrible. They have two of the best players in the conference. I'm guessing their goalie is a stud but I don't know because he was hurt this weekend. Overall they didn't impress me. Maybe they had an off weekend. They probably did considering how they looked.

In my opinion Randolph is a guy that just benefits from getting to play with two of the best players in the conference. Parizek and Snuggerud were solid offensive zone players but were also pylons. How many times this weekend did Luke Johnson just skate right by them? Luke is probably the slowest skater we have and he beat the Omaha defense with speed multiple times. Sanderson was walking their defensemen. It almost looked boring for Stecher, Caggiula, Boeser, and Schmaltz with how easily they could walk around the defensemen. In the past years I thought Brady and Cooper were their best defensemen. Brady looked like he barely knew how to skate this weekend. Cooper was either in the penalty box or else he was getting away with holding and hooking all weekend. I honestly didn't notice Vessel or Ollafson a single time on the ice. I would take a line of Sanderson, St. Clair, and Wilkie over Omaha's 2nd line (chose them because they were guys that sat out this weekend). The only Omaha defenseman I would even consider over any of our top 7 is Parizek. If it wasn't Ortega and Guentzel out there, I wasn't worried. Look at St. Cloud's top end talent and depth and tell me they aren't better than Omaha. Do the same with Denver and Duluth. I just don't see it. When we played St. Cloud and Duluth there were moments in the games where they were definitely outplaying us. They would carry the play of the game. That didn't happen once this weekend in my opinion. Either we made lazy turnovers or we stopped playing at the end of a period. Maybe Omaha is better than what they showed this weekend. Maybe Weninger is a stud and we didn't see him this weekend. Just looking at shot totals in Omaha's games, it looks like he carried them on his back in a lot of their wins. I would think they are better than what they showed this weekend considering they are 5th in the Pairwise. However, we absolutely should have swept the Omaha team I saw this weekend. I couldn't say the same thing when I watched us play Duluth or St. Cloud. We played our best games of the year against Denver. We played poorly this Friday and easily could have won. We played well but not great on Saturday and easily won. Ask bale31 or another Mankato fan what they thought of Omaha. Ask Biddco or another Duluth fan what they though of them. I'm sure both fan bases would say they think they are better than Omaha and have no idea how they didn't sweep them, let alone get swept. Again I will admit that I'm not the smartest when it comes to hockey. Probably not even in the 50th percentile. Still the Omaha team I watched this weekend did not impress me at all. Ortega did and that's about it.