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2023 NCAA Regionals


Kevin G

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2 minutes ago, farce poobah said:

Yeah.

Eastern hockey was hurt by total shutdown of seasons in 2020-2021, and they are still recovering.

NCHC?  Well after winning 5 of the last 6, we're due for an off year.   (Now watch St Cloud pull the unexpected.)  Duluth was certainly down, and our out of conference record wasn't as good as we've been accustomed to (so it was more than just UND and Duluth in an off year).

I'm optimistic about the NCHC future, especially with CC getting stronger and Omaha improving too.

Hopefully I’m wrong, but with the injuries scsu has I would be shocked if they kept it within 2-3. Gophs are going to be way too much.

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3 minutes ago, brianvf said:

I can't believe that they still had their 1st PP unit out there with a 7, then 8, then 9 goal lead.  :D  

My guess is, that was retribution for the butt end infraction. I hope Michigan used up their goal quota for the weekend. 

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37 minutes ago, NoiseInsideMyHead said:

Reason(s) to believe that this is not the new normal?  That the Big Ten won't go on an NCHC-like run well into the future?

This locomotive has been easy to see coming for 3 years and now we seem surprised it ran us over . I don’t think we care enough to use the resources of the biggest and most rabid fan base in the country so welcome to wine and cheese hockey

 

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1 hour ago, farce poobah said:

Yeah.

Eastern hockey was hurt by total shutdown of seasons in 2020-2021, and they are still recovering.

NCHC?  Well after winning 5 of the last 6, we're due for an off year.   (Now watch St Cloud pull the unexpected.)  Duluth was certainly down, and our out of conference record wasn't as good as we've been accustomed to (so it was more than just UND and Duluth in an off year).

I'm optimistic about the NCHC future, especially with CC getting stronger and Omaha improving too.

Not too sure about Omaha and CC.  Their improvement may be more a function of the regression of UND and Duluth.  Not what we’ve come to expect from the league.  A minor blip or a major long term reordering of the conference’s? The next few years will be interesting. 

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Hard to believe that the Pairwise was accurate this year. I get it that Colgate and Canisius won their tournaments, so they made it, but they are the anomaly and weren't expected to put up a fight. So those blowouts are not surprising. But to have Harvard at 7 in the pairwise and Michigan Tech at 10 makes them seem like good teams. They didn't show up. Even those teams that made it like Merrimack (14) and Western Michigan (12) got beaten by 4-5 goals. Gees the only teams that lost that looked like they belonged in the tourney were Denver (expected to be decent) and Minnesota State (their game seemed closer than the 4-0 loss).

The Big 10 can crow all they want but to me it looks like a lot of fairly poor teams made the NCAA tournament and they showed how bad they really are once they got there.

(How the heck does Harvard have 15 NHL draft picks and not even put up a fight once they get to the NCAA Tourney. Pathetic)

Worst first round of NCAA Tournament games I've ever seen. UGH!

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11 hours ago, Kevin G said:

PairWise would have Harvard as a slight favorite (PWR 7 vs PWR 9), while KRACH has OSU as a slight favorite (9 vs 11).

Possibly the most evenly matched regional semifinal game this year.

 

6 hours ago, St Patrick said:

Probably true.

There HAS to be a solid upset in the first round of the tournament.  Colgate, you will beat Michigan tonight (and then get pounded by Penn St.)!

uufda

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https://www.collegehockeynews.com/news/2023/03/24_The-Big-Tens-Big-Day.php

Quote

The Big Ten has spoken.
In the form of 27 goals on one day, it has spoken.
And it has finally become the conference it was intended to be. And what others feared it would be.

The question is whether this is just the beginning of a trend, or part of a cycle. After all, just two years ago, Big Ten teams were run out of the NCAA Tournament, after a run-and-gun insular regular season during the COVID year.

Quote

Of course, not everyone was pleased about it. In his post-game press conference, Michigan Tech coach Joe Shawhan, whose team just lost to Penn State, 8-0, and were never in it, lamented the direction college hockey is going. Many will say it sounded like sour grapes — maybe it was — but you'll have to listen and decide for yourself.

The questions he's asking will be debated for years, so it's worth hearing regardless. Is this a permanent change? Is the Big Ten destined to run roughshod over college hockey for as long as the NCAA continues to exist? Or is the Big Ten simply finally having one up year? Is the NCAA, and thus college hockey, changing beyond recognition before our eyes?

"There's a side of this that you're starting to see — I probably shouldn't even get into this — you're starting to see the emergence of the (transfer) portal and the NIL and the Alston money (Name, Image and Likeness rights) and all those things," Shawhan said. "The Big Ten is flexing a little muscle right now, and how to do you compete with players who are getting paid. And things like that. And they're jumping ship, jumping ship, jumping ship. You're putting your team together, and people can put their team together out of the portal now.

"And I'm not complaining about it. I just think college hockey's such a beautiful sport, and the parity, the opportunity for schools like St. Cloud, Michigan Tech, Mankato, Duluth — all Division II schools that have one a lot of national championships — you look at their roster and you say, 'Well, I could use that guy, I could use that guy.' You see it everywhere. To take the parity out of it, all of a sudden you get the SEC and the Big Ten in football, that's all you get, and lose everybody else.

 

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7 hours ago, brianvf said:

I can't believe that they still had their 1st PP unit out there with a 7, then 8, then 9 goal lead.  :D  

Why not.

I'm realizing that we are running with the mindset of the "Lennon-Schweigert-Berry" school of thought: Get a two score lead and "manage" it to a victory. 

That mindset died the last 36 hours ... or you'll be killed by it.

9, 8, 8, then 11. 

Berry's normal is get up two, manage it to victory. The new normal is get up two and play to be up five. 

How many times this year did UND give up a goal in the first five of the third and then end up not in a good way? Michigan gave up a goal in the first five of the third last night and it made it 8-1 ... so they stuck it 11-1 as a message. 

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All of these B1G teams having success doesn’t surprise me. In the last 5-7 years, that’s been the NCHC. Maybe not the offensive explosion, but these teams have played their top talent teams all season. East teams do not. So come tournament time they’re already battle tested. ECAC and HEA can steal one in this format against a DU or Western. 
 

When NCHC has a down year they’re bound to stumble against another “good” team. Who really tested DU week in and week out with UMD and UND in a slump? SCSU? Omaha? Western? Good teams but not the level of the usual top 3-4 of typical NCHC talent. 
 

Western I see as a fluke. They had a goal called off and then hit a pipe. Either one goes the other way that could’ve been a whole different game. Oddly, DU just looked lackadaisical and it ended their season. 
 

With all that said, barring matchup, I still don’t see UND having a successful run if they made it. One, maybe two, and done. They don’t reach Tampa if they make the tourney IMO. 

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10 hours ago, dustnyou said:

That’s dumb. After 4 it should be fourth line guys on the pp. 

Depends on the penalty is my philosophy. Tripping or Hooking penalty, give some 4th liners some power play time. Slashing or roughing penalty or guys taking runs at our players and I am rolling top units out there.

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1 minute ago, petey23 said:

Its Fucking Embarassing Letter Kenny GIF - Its Fucking Embarassing Letter  Kenny Mad - Discover & Share GIFs

I had a couple Gopher fan friends reach out to me to see if I knew where they could maybe find some tickets. I told them I would look for them because I did not want them to see that Facebook page because of the Embarrassment by Association....Thankfully I did discover over the last couple days that Minnesota has a facebook page as well with a similar cringe factor.

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