UND-RedSox fan

Matches Oshie in goals as a freshman. Is that good?

Alabama-Huntsville is the first team in the NCAA to be officially eliminated. They can't make the WCHA playoffs. If Alaska-Fairbanks doesn't sweep this weekend, they will also be eliminated.

The ECAC is a much better conference than it used to be. Probably the 3rd best after the NCHC and Hockey, but the gap between them isn't very big. You have to be pretty good to make it through a full regular season with only two losses. Also consider they went 2-0 against Yale and Harvard and swept St. Cloud. As Goon said, they probably should be a little worried about all of the overtime games because at some point it will bite them in the rear. Doesn't mean they are not a great team this year.

He's the guy in the suit. I hope that helps

And in the Eastern time zone.

At no point was I worried we would lose a game last weekend. I am the captain of the Omaha is terrible train.

I guess they did tie Denver as well. Two good results is probably better than a lot of the teams in that area can say even if those were the only two non-negatives on the season.

They are in Atlantic Hockey. Atlantic Hockey currently has the 60, 58, 54, 51, 48, 45, 40, 34, 30, and 28th ranked team in Pairwise and that is better than the conference usually is. Any loss in conference is going to hurt them and they have 6.

It's weird this year. There's a small chance that three teams from the Big 10 could make the tournament even though they have been awful this year. The only teams that weren't terrible out of conference were Michigan and Penn State. And the only reason Penn State wasn't awful is because they are pretty much an honorary Atlantic Hockey member. Wisconsin, Michigan State, and Ohio State have been terrible period. Yet the lowest Pairwise spot in the Big 10 is Michigan State at 44. I have no idea how Wisconsin is at 40 considering they only have 6 wins; 2 over #59 Arizona State, 2 over #55 Alaska, us, and 1 win over #44 Michigan State. Is the win over us the difference between 40th and 55th for them?

This right here. What is the breakdown between schools in Bismarck and the girls participating? Is it different every year? Would one season result in Bismarck High having their own team while Century, Legacy, and St. Mary coop and then the next season Century has their own team and the other 3 coop? Is the participation pretty steady between which schools are providing the players and two teams can be set up based on that? Or do you suggest having all the girls drafted onto two separate teams and the makeup of those teams change every year? Then some girls may never get to play with their classmates. They may have the pure numbers for two teams but it isn't that simple IMO. If they aren't able to make the teams based on the schools then how can you guarantee they won't just stack one team every year anyways and the other team is more or less the JV team?

Beulah was never in AAA football. Beulah has won one football state championship at the AA level. We made the championship game one or two other times. My senior year in 2009 was the first time we beat Trinity since the early 90's. There are no poor AA schools because of Beulah remaining at the level they have been at since the current class system was set up. Of the 16 AA teams, 11 have higher enrollments and 2 more (Trinity and Shanley) are in Class A towns and I have no idea who Central Dakota is. So they may be bigger for all I know. The only public school Beulah is bigger than is Lisbon. Beulah has 30 more students than 9-man Thompson. I'm not saying Beulah should move down but to act like us being in AA is crazy means you don't know what you are talking about. At Beulah's peak high school enrollment we averaged a little over 100 students per class. So 400 students in high school. Definitely a Class A school. When I was a senior my class had about 80 students. The class ahead of us was around 60 and the class behind around 50. The high school enrollment is around 200 at this time. Bismarck has twice as many students in a class as we have in our entire high school. The next smallest school in Class A has 120 more students than we do. Beulah is to Bismarck High is like Scranton compared to Beulah. But I don't think there is any school around the size of Scranton that does not co-op. If you bumped Beulah up then people would bitch and moan about Hazen and their 20 fewer high school students or Killdeer and their 15 fewer. No one complains about Kindred or Stanley and their 300 students. Peopled complained about us going back to class B when I was in high school until they realized we sucked at everything. The only remote success we had was in sports where we co-oped with Hazen. We took 2nd in state wrestling once and had 5 or 6 straight years of going to state hockey. Our basketball team might have taken 8th at state once. There will always be the school that people complain about being too big for B.

Hazen-Beulah's best Class A success in any sport was in hockey in the early 2000's. I know people loved that we were competing to win WDA and were plenty happy making it to state and getting to play at the Ralph. I'm sure none of those guys are embarrassed that they were competing with Minot, Williston, and the Bismarck schools for a small period of time. Should every other town in the state be embarrassed that Bismarck High wins every wrestling state tournament and the rare time they don't, Century wins it? Should Grand Forks kids be embarrassed that they don't compete in any sport besides hockey?

Far better is hyperbole on my side, and I have a bad habit of slipping into hyperbole, but if someone gave me the option of playing Omaha or Duluth, I would take Omaha in a second and not think twice. There was a reason Duluth was the favorite in the NCHC coming into the season. Even after 5 months of them being disappointing, I'm scared of them realizing the potential they have. They were close to taking both games in Grand Forks while missing one of their best players in Farley. I think we know what the best version of Omaha is and that is Guentzel and Ortega going crazy. Beyond those two, that team is not very worrisome to me. If Omaha was missing Guentzel or Ortega they would only be able to score against a Big10 defense.

I like Luke and there are moments where he is the best player on the ice but there are also moments where he is the worst player on the ice. His bipolar play can be very frustrating but I think the good Luke outweighs the bad Luke. If we are going to win it all this year, we are going to need a lot of the good Luke as he is the best non-CBS forward IMO.

The sweep of Denver prior to Christmas break was pretty dang impressive. If we play like we did against Denver that weekend then we are better than any other team in the country.

Duluth is a far better team than Omaha despite those two teams' records IMO. The top four teams in our conference talent wise are probably UND, SCSU, DU, and UMD and any of those teams could win the national championship as long as they are in the tournament (cough cough Duluth). Personally I think Duluth would easily be in first in the Big10 if they were in that conference.

The NCHC as a whole played so well outside of the conference this year resulting in losing conference games not affecting teams too much. Add in the fact that Omaha went 10-0 with a nice sweep of Mankato and we have a team set up nice to make the postseason despite struggling in the conference. We don't need to look much further than SCSU last year. Finished 1 game over .500 but still made the tournament thanks in large part to playing in a stacked conference and doing decent outside the conference. Or we could look at this season and see an under .500 Duluth team in position to get an at-large bid. Omaha's worst losses are getting swept by WMU and dropping one to CC. Look at the teams around them in the Pairwise and you will see similar losses. Lowell at 12 was swept by Connecticut, split with New Hampshire, and has ties with Merrimack and Brown. #14 Penn State went 2-2 against Ohio State and has ties with #47 Anchorage and #58 Niagara. Duluth is under .500 and one spot behind Omaha. The Gophers are the worst team in Minnesota and are two spots behind Omaha. As far as RPI goes, Omaha is as close to #25 RPI as they are to Notre Dame and BU tied at 9. So, with a very rudimentary look, UNO is as likely to drop out of the top 25 as they are to get into the top 10. The fact that losses in the NCHC hurt a lot less than losses within the Big 10 or WCHA or even some teams in Hockey East and the ECAC is what is helping UNO stay where they are. But they are in position to drop hard.

I already hate them. They feel like Gophers South to me. A lot of bitching and moaning to the refs followed by diving. They are a super talented team that plays fast fun hockey and then act like a bunch of babies ruining the entire fun of playing against them. If things start going bad then there is always some slashing after the whistle followed by running to the bench.

Every way I ran it on College Hockey News modifier for Pairwise resulted in us behind St. Cloud unless Quinnipiac tied or lost. I didn't think a UND win and St. Cloud loss alone would be enough for us to move ahead of them in RPI. Obviously I messed something up. From what I was seeing on their website, it would take a three-way tie and UND winning the tie-breakers for UND to finish ahead of St. Cloud. I'm no expert on Pairwise. I was describing results I found playing around on CHN. I more than likely missed situations where UND finished ahead of St. Cloud alone and was too busy trying to find ways where UND finished first. The situation I was describing would have ended with UND winning the 3-way tie breaker for first. Again, I didn't think UND would pass SCSU in RPI with us winning and them losing. QU losing or tying would have allowed us to pass them in RPI and even if SCSU won tonight, it wouldn't have mattered because we would have won the three way tie breaker for first. I missed the simplest way for us to pass SCSU and went looking for another way to pass them. However, passing QU in RPI makes it very difficult for St. Cloud to finish ahead of us because there is no way SCSU will ever win the comparison against QU and us being ahead of QU in RPI guarantees us a way to finish ahead of SCSU using tie breakers.

The only players that scared me when they came to Grand Forks were Taco and Pretzel. The rest of them looked like they belonged with Lake Superior.

Quinnipiac results have an effect on SCSU and their RPI. We can finish ahead of St Cloud and QU if all three teams are tied in the comparisons. If QU doesn't remain ahead of SCSU in RPI then it is more difficult to pass SCSU. I know Pairwise is fluid. I find it fun to look at.

St. Cloud loses tonight, Quinnipiac ties or loses, and we win. If that happens we are in 1st. Difficult to get ahead of SCSU without QU stumbling

Omaha continues their meltdown. My bold prediction now is they don't win another game this year

It was probably 10 for me as well. I was thinking 1 hour between weigh-ins and starting wrestling but it was probably 2 hours. I just know we had weigh-ins at 8 each day. I graduated from high school in 2009 so it wasn't that long ago. I was in the finals my junior and senior years though so I didn't have to wrestle in the morning rounds either. State wrestling was always awesome. I started going in the 4th grade with my dad but haven't been able to go the last 3 years. Definitely miss it. I have a soft spot for those #1 seeds that lose as seniors. That is the way my career ended so I empathize with them.

Did you see he was actually a finalist for the Richter?! Granted 26 goalies are finalists but he has been awful. Somehow 3 goalies from the Big 10 made it despite the fact that they are the worst defensive college hockey conference in 15 years.