I’m intrigued to see what Bob can do. I can’t believe our top 4 D men returned. This is the best defensive corp we have had since 2002 (Hobey Baker winner Jordan Leopold, Paul Martin & Keith Ballard). The goalie is average though and isn’t going steal a game. The front lines have tons of talent but are really young. #3 overall pick Cooley is playing with 5th rounder Pitlick and #23 overall Jimmy Snuggerud (last 2 went to HS together) and that line is going to be exciting. Early on I’m afraid of teams like Notre Dame that play with structure and discipline but we handled Mankato. As it grows I hope it’s a Championship ceiling.
Not a great weekend for the NCHC. #1 Denver gets swept by #13 UMass #3 UND ties (win by shoot out) and loses to #8 Quinnipiac #4 UMD gets swept by #5 Mankato State #10 St. Cloud sweeps Wisconsin (unranked) New poll:
Highlights for this weekend: #7 UND @ #1 UMN (best rivalry in college hockey) #2 Mankato State @ #8 St. Cloud State #11 Providence @ #4 DU #14 UConn @ #9 BU #19 UMass-Lowell @ #12 Northeastern #13 Notre Dame & #17 Western Michigan H/H
The ad spend/timing for North Dakota seems less than ideal. Tough 1:45 of hockey for UND. They were outplayed but had a late lead until the Gophers pulled their goalie and Mason Nevers, the extra attacker, found the back of the net with 1:24 to go. Then Knies scored on the first shot of OT.
Great Friday night for B1G hockey #1 Gophers beat #7 UND 3-2 in OT Wisconsin beats #10 UMD 5-2 #13 Notre Dame beats #17 W Michigan 2-0 #5 Michigan beats Lk Superior 5-2 #16 OSU beats Bentley 3-1 #18 PSU beats UST (St. Thomas) 3-2 in OT MSU beats LIU 3-1
Entertaining weekend of Hockey at Minnesota. Gophers are extremely talented. Controlled play for the majority of the game both nights. UND played really well in their own end on Friday night but The Gophers got the extra attacker goal and forced overtime and Knies showed why he could be in the NHL right now with a nice move and power and the arena went nuts. Very frenetic pace on Friday night, barely any whistles. Game started at 7:07 and was over at about 9:10. Saturday was a little chaotic after the horrible 5 minute call on Kleven towards the end of the first. Gophs score a power play to go up 1-0 and then Pitlick scores to make it 2-0 and decides to flip his stick into the crowd like game over with 31 minutes left to play. Unfortunatley for him and Minnesota with 30-35% of the crowd being UND fans it ended up in the hands of of UND fan who decided to send it back onto the ice like he was at Wrigley Field and the momentum changed in a hurry. Three minutes and 21 seconds later it was 3-2 UND and 2 minutes later it was 4-2 UND. 2 overtime games and a split. Just glad that if UND ends up playing Minnesota again this year it won't be on Olympic Ice. The Gopher team is definitely built to break through and win the Title this season. 26 NHL draftpicks on the ice last weekend. Both teams have some dynamic freshman forwards and Minnesota has 3-4 guys who could be taking regular shifts in NHL right now.(Johnson, Faber, Lacombe, and Knies) Onto Vegas this weekend for the Hall of Fame game against Arizona State. Should be a good time!
I would have said unfortunately for the Gophers the stick in to the crowd was a 10 minute misconduct. And then that was followed by a review that gave Cooley a 5 minute major/game misconduct for facemask for grabbing a players mask while that player grabbed Knies mask. Fortunately the Gophers switched back to its normal goalie after trying a freshman, which righted the ship and allowed them to come back and bring it to OT. The refs swallowed their whistles after the 5 minute majors and seemed determined not to impact the game even though they had a major impact already. I went Friday and it was a hell of a weekend of hockey.
Ranked opponents this weekend #17 Western Michigan / #4 Michigan - Home/Home (it feels like the series of the week although would have been more interesting if Mel was still around) #1 UMN @ #11 OSU #9 BU vs #18 UMass-Lowell - Home/Home #20 Cornell @ #19 UMD Womens has a showdown with #2 UMN @ #1 OSU.
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t tailgated in the Wagner lot and watched the ladies play field hockey while drinking beer before going into Pegula.
Our backup goalie who has only ever played two games at UM. He was alright at Robert Morris as a freshman, but not having Portillo is not good.
Yikes! PSU buzzin. Just tryna survive out there with West. Looking into if Portillo had contact with tunnels of any kind.
Terrible effort by Luke Hughes on that bullshit pinch, immediately gives up OMR. Nice play by PSU to finish it.
That’s a great win by PSU. At no point did it ever appear that Michigan was even going to make it a game