Congratulations to the North Dakota Fighting Sioux for their 3-2 overtime defeat of the Minnesota Gophers in the NCAA Hockey tournament. It was a hard fought game that could have gone either way. Chris Porter scored the game winner in the first overtime to end the Gophers season. Where is Porter from? Grand Forks, ND? Bismark, ND? Anywhere in North Dakota?? How about the United States???
No - Thunder Bay, Ontario. Canada. Of course. (Rumor has it that Porter actually heard rumors of the State of North Dakota before signing his Letter Of Intent with the school, but could not locate the state on a map). Please see my March 18th post for more information on how I feel about this.
But let's not mince words here. This game came down to goaltending. The goal that Jeff Frazee let in during overtime was weak. My 11-year old son would be embarrassed to let that type of goal in while playing street hockey in our driveway. Granted, Frazee made some great stops to keep the Gophers in the game. And he's a college student after all, not a professional, so it's hard to get too down on him. Goaltending has always been a weak spot for the Gophers, to say the least, and it cost the Gophers their season. I guess it's really hard for me to watch the outstanding combination of Backstrom, Harding & Fernandez play for the Wild, and then flip the channel over to the Gophers and see Frazee and Briggs struggle for the Gophers.
Anyway, the season is over. What the hell. Go Wild.
Peace.
Jeff
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13 comments:
Hi Jeff, I'm a ND native, and Fighting Sioux hockey fan, even thought I've lived in St. Paul for a while now, and I get tired of the worn-out bit about bitter Gopher fans being mad about how few Sioux players are actually from ND, so be prepared for a rant. (I hope it comes off as good-natured.)
Anyway, I ran a few numbers, using the UND roster, and the UofM roster, combined with a few basic population statistics, and here's what I found:
UND has 3 ND natives on the roster, and a state population of 640,000. U of M has 23 MN natives on the roster, and a state population of 4,900,000.
So, this year the state of ND provides 1 UND player per 213,333 North Dakotans, and the state of MN provides 1 UofM player per 213,043 Minnesotans.
Hmmm, not so big a difference, Goldy.
Granted, the state of Minnesota provides 8 players to UND, so if you add those to the state of Minnesota's total, their ratio improves.
However, as a Grand Forks native, I can tell you that in ND, only the larger cities (Grand Forks, Fargo, Bismark, etc.) play hockey. Hardly any small towns in ND have high school hockey programs like the small towns in MN. I don't know why, that's just the way it is. So, rather than a population of 640,000, ND has a hockey playing populace, of, lets say for the sake of argument, roughly 400,000, which significantly improves the ratio I presented earlier.
Add this to the fact that one reason the UofM won a couple national titles a few years ago was that Lucia changed the stupid policy of the Wooger of only recruiting MN kids. Matter of fact, three of their better players from that era, Danny Irman and the two Potulnys, hail from, you guessed it, North Dakota. Matter of fact, the older Putolny, can't remember his name, who scored the winning goal for the U in overtime of the National Championship game a few years back, is actually from Grand Forks, and UND stupidly didn't try very hard to recruit him! Yet, I don't recall many Gopher fans lamenting the fact that he was an import. (Probably because they were too busy burning down Dinkytown, if I recall correctly.)
But, I'll give you some slack and allow that you're probably mad about the result of the game last night, and had to vent somehow. Completely understandable.
BTW, in case you're wondering who I am, my wife Kris knows your wife from something or other, (I think something kid related) and somehow read your blog once, and she showed it to me because she read something funny. It is pretty entertaining mostly. We see eye to eye on most things, except for the college hockey parts. ;-)
Neil K
In case you didn't notice, the Minnesota defenseman that Porter beat easily was none other than the "Great" Eric Johnson, go figure.
With out trying to ignite too much provincialism about where college hockey players come from see the following two discussions at “Inside College Hockey”, if you’re a stat junkie this should give you lots numbers to crunch.
http://www.insidecollegehockey.com/7Archives/Features/0607/states_0512.htm
http://www.insidecollegehockey.com/7Archives/Features/0607/statesall_0512.htm
Caution, Minnesota sports whining below:
While I think the Fighting Englestad's are the best team, the NCAA hockey seedings were a joke. MN and UND, along with BC, were hands down the best teams at the end of the year. UND in the same regional as MN didn't allow the best teams to compete in the frozen four and now that UND has to play BC in the semi's is also a travesty. For being the #1 seed, MN had probably one of the hardest roads to the NCAA Championship. The East and Midwest Regionals were full of lame teams and no way should MSU and Maine be in the Frozen Four. Proper seeding would have seen MN, UND, and BC in frozen four which would have meant the best teams going for a championship. Again I'm not whining about UND, they are a great team and probably deserve to win the whole thing.
I guess my ND pick was a week early.
All this talk of hockey - didn't anyone notice that the Packers re-signed free agent TE Tory Humphrey today?!
All is right with the world again...
Didn't mean to start a discussion about where the most hockey players come from....I think I'd have guessed Minnesota hands down without even looking at those links. That's a given. I just don't understand criticisms of where another team gets their players from, that's all. This is Division I athletics, where the only goal is to win. If local kids can be hired to do the job, great. If not, I really don't see the difference.
Cheers,
Neil K
It goes along with all of your other insensitive posts that you failed to point out that this North Dakota team's rink is riddled with mocking likenesses of Native Americans.
You know who's from North Dakota? Cordell Deitz, that's who.
Hey Neil - I can finally respond to your comments, now that the kids are in bed! Actually, I'm glad to hear the North Dakota perspective - feel free to comment any time. You're actually correct on a couple of points. One, my post was written in frusturation after the loss, although I consider myself a much bigger Wild (and NHL) fan than Gophers, so I didn't lose a whole lot of sleep over it. Also, you make a logical point about teams "picking up the needed players to win" no matter where they are from. I was often critical of Doug Woog for never going outside of Minnesota's border to add talent. I guess where I have been critical is specifically with adding large numbers of Canadians (once again John Robbins - no offense, it's a compliment). I have no problem with WCHA teams stocking up with players from ND, SD, WI, MN, MI, etc., but Canadians seem like hired mercenaries on American University hockey teams. Now, I know Thomas Vanek, one of the Gophers best players a few years back, was German (or Austrian?). Most of the time, however, the team is 100% American. I don't know. I guess it's my own hang up! Anyway, good to hear from you - comment any time you would like! Good luck in the Frozen Four!
No-Dak can suck it. At least the Badgers sucked this year.
ronnie-san
Jeff,
I have a brother-in-law from Canada, and they are definitely weird. I can never get over how they say the word "about".
However odd they may be, I'm not sure I agree that recruiting Canadians is inherently more mercenary than recruiting anyone else, so we'll just have to agree to disagree on that point.
Yeah, Ronnie, the rink is riddled with mocking likenesses of Native Americans. But I'm not sure which is more embarrassing for a hockey program: Having it's rink's benefactor being a Nazi sympathizer like Ralph Englestead, or having such a complete dork ex-coach like the Wooger.
http://www.lacrossetribune.com/articles/2006/03/24/sports/myers.txt
Blog request topic= Carlos Silva.
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