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0:24
Now, here's Joop and Vego.
0:37
Good evening, and welcome to a special GPL Podcast, episode number 174.
0:46
Well, Veegs, this is not what we planned.
0:49
It's a Saturday night.
0:51
We should be in, just finishing up a Big Ten semi-final right now.
0:58
A couple of the leagues would have been playing there, you know, their weekend series to see who goes to, like, you know, the NCHC tournament or ECAC.
1:08
But that all came crashing down really quick after our podcast on Wednesday.
1:17
Yeah, I mean, things started happening so quickly, you know, with the Utah Jazz and the player testing positive and then all the decisions right on the table with the basketball tournaments.
1:30
And I think, you know, Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren stepped forward and said, really, in the best interest of our students, this is something we need to take care of right now.
1:41
And, you know, the big thing right now is to flatten the curve and try to nip this thing as best we can.
1:48
Can you remember a crazier time in sports?
1:52
No.
1:52
I mean, this is this is not even close.
1:55
I know.
1:55
You saw the game stories about when Baltimore played in front of empty crowds because of police violence and things like that.
2:05
And you see games in Europe where there's hooliganism that forces or racism that forces them to play in front of empty buildings.
2:13
But something like this, just nothing in my memory that can compare.
2:19
Yeah, I would say once the NCAA basketball tournament was shut down, that was kind of it.
2:28
It was like the Big Ten was kind of leading the push on these things.
2:32
They were until the very end, I would say.
2:36
I think, you know, everyone's like, is the Big Ten going to cancel their tournament?
2:40
Is the Big Ten going to cancel the tournament?
2:41
It was, they eventually did because everyone else did.
2:44
But, well, they actually, well, not only did they think about it, they never really did cancel their tournament.
2:50
I think they just knew that the NCAA was going to come in and cancel everything.
2:54
And once that happened, they're like, yep, we're not having a tournament.
2:57
So, it's like, because it was a good couple hours.
3:00
We're all kind of waiting Thursday afternoon, just waiting for the hammer to drop because all the other tournaments were, you know, all of a sudden canceling, canceling, canceling.
3:08
And then there was just this big silence for a couple hours around the lunchtime hour.
3:12
Where's the Big Ten?
3:13
They're still scheduled to play, what's going on?
3:16
And it's almost like they just knew it was coming from the NCAA and they just kind of waited it out.
3:20
I think we're all joking that the Big Ten forgot they had a hockey conference.
3:24
Oh, that is true because they did cancel basketball in the morning.
3:29
And then he'd see, he'd look at it in the afternoon.
3:31
And I'm like going, hello, dude, really?
3:34
Well, it sounded to me after listening to Mark Coyle talk that their number one concern was making sure that their teams didn't leave campus to go to games and that they could get everyone home.
3:47
So I think that was really where the priority was for them.
3:50
The games were far enough out where they didn't have to rush to announce that part of it.
3:55
So I think the wheels were already in motion even though they didn't make the announcement.
4:00
Unlike a few teams around the country, you had Colorado College on a bus heading to North Dakota, you had Michigan Tech almost to the Twin Cities here on their way to Mankato, and they had to just stop and turn around and go home.
4:15
Yep, and that's the benefit of having a charter.
4:19
You don't have to take those long bus rides.
4:21
But it's pretty amazing, and it's hard for these players, I think, to come to grips with it in the best interests.
4:29
I'm sure they wanted to keep playing, but it's just a responsibility that is bigger than sport.
4:36
That is true.
4:38
And it seems like right at first, the NCAA says, hey, we're canceling everything.
4:44
And so that's going to be pretty much the case for the winter sports.
4:47
It's not coming back.
4:48
We're done.
4:49
There's going to be no champions.
4:50
The play is over.
4:52
But it does sound like they might be kind of walking back some of their spring sports a bit, giving it a little bit of time to, hey, let's see how that goes.
5:03
Maybe like baseball or softball and the like may come back in a month or so.
5:10
Well, I think it's so hard to tell what's going to happen over the next couple weeks.
5:14
I think everybody's trying to take a pause here and look at April 1st as kind of the date when you re-assess where we're at as a country and what's the best decision going forward.
5:27
You can see that some countries who really take it seriously like South Korea and China, they've had dips back down where they're not seeing very many new cases.
5:36
But in the US, we're just getting started.
5:39
I think I saw in New York, we're already up to 613 cases.
5:44
If that's the trend for the rest of the country, this could be something where we're looking at what's going to happen next year.
5:52
Yeah.
5:53
We got E-Setter asking, have they announced anything for eligibility for winter sports?
5:57
I'm thinking that it's a moot point.
5:59
We were in the playoffs for winter sports.
6:02
I don't see or anticipate any eligibility changes.
6:07
Although, there were some talks of granting a supersede.
6:13
I think you just mooted yourself, Veegs.
6:16
I think there were some discussions coming out about giving a super senior eligibility to some of these teams, where they wanted to extend the opportunity.
6:27
But I think for coaches, that gets really complicated.
6:31
For hockey, you already have the delayed enrollment piece.
6:35
It's very rare to register players.
6:38
The finances for taking on a couple extra hockey players for a lot of programs.
6:44
The SOAR students who don't get that opportunity to play the next year, I think it just is too big of an issue to introduce, especially for hockey.
6:53
I can see something like football, where that would make sense, but not for a sport like hockey.
6:58
Yeah, it's just not going to work.
7:01
This weekend, we were hoping Minnesota could stay alive, beat Penn State coming in.
7:06
It was starting to look promising because Penn State hadn't played in a long time.
7:10
Their last game was Minnesota three weeks ago.
7:14
Then all of a sudden, they're like, wait a minute, they're taking away the fans.
7:17
This is looking better for Minnesota.
7:21
Then all of a sudden, it just ripped out from underneath of these.
7:25
You look at the seniors that, Zulsdorf and Nanny who played more, and then Lesser Point, is it Munson?
7:33
Maroney.
7:34
Maroney, yes.
7:35
He played really well this year.
7:36
Yeah, he did.
7:37
But it seemed like in previous years, I think we talked about this the week before, he'd have a tendency to take bad penalties or to get overly aggressive on the forecheck and put himself out of position.
7:49
But I thought he played really well this year as a role player who could chip in some hard shifts when they needed them.
7:57
And then if you look over on the women's side, Veegs, they were further along.
8:01
They were ready for a semifinal, or not semifinal, a quarterfinal weekend.
8:05
You know, like the women, they had Ohio State coming in here.
8:10
Wisconsin was ready to make another run.
8:12
They were even further into their playoffs and they had it taken out right from beneath them as well.
8:19
Yeah, it's hard to see, you know, that team has so much talent.
8:23
And once you get to this point of the year, it's really a toss up who can win those games.
8:28
Yeah.
8:28
It's got to be tough for them as well, because that's probably their big, big stage.
8:33
You know, if they're not going to be Olympians, that's pretty crushing to lose.
8:39
Boy is it, I mean, and then a lot of people, I can guess like a lot of people around this area are happy since North Dakota has been number one most of the season there.
8:48
They're happy that the pairwise champions North Dakota are not going to have a chance in another title.
8:57
But then, you know, we've both spoken and been around Mike Hastings down in Mankato.
9:02
He had built a wonderful team down there this year.
9:06
This was kind of their year to make a stamp in the NCAA playoffs, maybe make it to a frozen four.
9:13
And if, of all the teams, I feel mostly bad for them because this was their year.
9:18
Yeah, they had really put together a lot of pieces.
9:20
They had players turn down pro contract opportunities to be back for this.
9:25
And it seemed like maybe they had enough to get them over the hump this year and win a playoff game.
9:30
And it would have been fun to watch.
9:33
They probably would have had to do it on the road at someone's building this year again, but it was an opportunity.
9:40
Yeah, so that's a big, unfortunate part, too.
9:42
And then, you know, we've got the whole logistics of, you know, what's planned, you know, Detroit had a Frozen Four planned here, Veegs.
9:49
I'm guessing that Detroit will likely get the next available one, which is, I believe, 2023, or I think it's close to that.
10:02
And then maybe they could just kind of shift the regionals out to the end after next year's regionals.
10:07
I mean, that seems to make sense.
10:08
I don't know if they're gonna, you think they'll actually rebid some of these things?
10:11
It's really hard to know, and I think that's why it's not very clear what the plan is going forward.
10:17
Because you have a lot of these groups in schools that bid in sequential order for when they have staffing available.
10:25
Like I know the University of Minnesota, you know, they scheduled a bunch of their bids the last couple of years based on hosting a Frozen Four, the Final Four basketball, the wrestling event this year, trying to get other regionals around.
10:40
So there's a lot of planning that goes into these things and syncing up the timelines.
10:44
And I think that's why we're not hearing any kind of long-term planning for the NCAA regionals.
10:51
Yeah, it might be a little while.
10:55
You know, I could, I see the Frozen Four just, you know, we've got two other, I believe, oh boy, I believe they're back in Pittsburgh next year.
11:05
And was it, boy, I can't remember who the other team was after that, but they hadn't gone out too far.
11:11
So I'm thinking Detroit will probably get a nice break here and it'll be kind of pushed to the end.
11:16
Those regionals are a different thing.
11:17
Yep, Boston, you're correct.
11:18
They're Frozen Four.
11:20
It's Boston.
11:21
So, you know, you've got Pittsburgh in 21, Boston 22.
11:24
I'm thinking you really have to give, you know, Detroit in 23.
11:29
It's far enough out.
11:30
They could probably, you know, handle all that.
11:33
The regionals next year are already set, Figs.
11:35
They hadn't gone out any further than that.
11:38
So maybe they can swap 2020, you know, regionals with 2022.
11:44
We'll just have to wait and see.
11:45
There's just a, it's just kind of a big mess right now, isn't it?
11:49
Yeah, it's a big mess.
11:49
And I think NCAA hockey doesn't quite know what they want to do with their regional play in their tournament.
11:56
Cause there was a lot of talk.
11:57
I know Tom McGinnis was one of the guys pressing for some campus sites for first-round games and trying to get some momentum on it nationally, and that just didn't catch any fire out east.
12:10
And those programs really resisted going to that kind of format.
12:14
But I think something we might see, especially as times are uncertain here in the years ahead.
12:20
Well, I'm seeing a couple of questions in the Mixler Chat.
12:22
But before we get to some of those questions, let's hear from our sponsor.
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13:32
So I'm just kind of looking at Twitter right now, Veegs, and someone's, you know, hockey fan's kind of wanting, doesn't Tampa have 2023?
13:37
And actually we know that we hear that quite a few schools or I should say arenas are bidding for you know, 2023, 24 and 25.
13:48
I think even that's going to be put on hold with the Detroit thing here.
13:51
I think they should be the next school or next school, next arena.
13:56
And then we'll see what happens after that.
13:58
I mean, I think that's the most fair.
14:00
And like you said, that the schools and the NCAA trying to figure out the regionals, maybe we'll see a new thing come in 2022 and, you know, just kind of finish out 21 and maybe change it up, who knows?
14:17
Yeah, it's hard to know.
14:18
I think people do get excited for the regional in Tampa Bay, or the Frozen Four in Tampa Bay is an option.
14:27
I think everything is going to be on hold here for a little while until they decide, you know, what is the plan going forward long-term.
14:35
So we'll see what's going to happen.
14:36
I don't think we'll hear anything soon.
14:38
The way that these bids have been announced in the past, it takes a while.
14:43
They have to go to these conventions and ratify them and certify them, and it will take a while.
14:48
And it's also going to take a while because everything stopped.
14:53
When you have an NCAA basketball tournament, which is the biggest money maker from the NCAA of any other sport, that's taken away.
15:04
That's going to be the NCAA's first priority bar none.
15:07
It's going to be NCAA men's tournament, women's tournament, and then the rest of the sports will kind of be put on a backburner.
15:14
Yeah.
15:14
I mean, there's no recruiting that's supposed to be happening right now.
15:18
You know, no even practices or development or strength training.
15:22
You know, the players are supposed to be on their own isolating and just trying to keep this thing from going any further.
15:32
It's just a big mess, Figgs.
15:35
I mean, it's just a big mess.
15:36
It makes me laugh though a little bit.
15:38
Some of the stuff you see on Twitter, like I know Ryan Stanzel said that the UST campus is a lot busier than finals with all the parties going on.
15:48
Well, I was at my girlfriend's house in Belle Plaine earlier today, and she was disappointed that all of the official St.
15:55
Patrick's Day, things happened on the Saturday before or as close to St.
15:59
Patrick's and get.
16:01
All that stuff had been canceled.
16:02
But when I drove through town, the people didn't cancel it.
16:07
The people were still all over the place, walk in the streets, out in the bars.
16:12
So people aren't really, they're not isolating themselves this weekend as far as I can see.
16:20
No, it doesn't seem like it.
16:22
I've been to a Costco or two this week.
16:25
Oh boy.
16:26
It's been very hectic there.
16:30
So we will see how this all works out.
16:35
It's hard not to think about the possibilities of what we'll see once there's a little bit more testing.
16:42
Hopefully Minnesota is kind of on the trailing edge of some of these things.
16:46
Most of the cases are directly linked to travel and direct contact and it's not the community transmission that we've seen in other parts of the country.
16:56
Yet.
16:57
Yet.
16:58
But it's hard to know until we get some of these drive-through clinics where people can get tested if they're concerned.
17:04
We won't really know.
17:06
Yeah.
17:06
And then, you know, I would say the State High School League may have gotten lucky.
17:12
You know, this happens a week earlier and it's during the Boys High School Hockey Tournament.
17:18
That would have been a cluster.
17:21
Well even with the Boys Basketball Tournament well underway, they were kind of slow on making these decisions.
17:28
As all these other institutions were shutting down their seasons and getting their teams home, I saw a bunch of high school teams on campus going to the PAV, going to Williams Arena, and there were big crowds for these things.
17:43
Those were definitely over 250 people.
17:46
And the weird thing about that, it's similar to the NCAA or the Men's Big Ten Basketball Tournament.
17:52
These tournaments already started.
17:53
They were playing games.
17:54
They completed games.
17:55
And it's like it was killed right in the middle.
18:00
Yeah, I know.
18:01
I was on campus thinking, oh, maybe I'll go check out the Gopher Hockey practice on Thursday, you know, see what's going on, make sure everybody's still healthy.
18:11
I know Bryce Brudzinski had to get screened for pneumonia the previous weekend.
18:16
So I wanted to see how he was looking.
18:18
He was playing with Sammy Walker and Blake McLaughlin, wanted to see if he was back to full speed.
18:24
And they were kind of hanging around wondering if their season was going to get canceled, because I know Bob Motzko was getting some conversations in the morning, don't go anywhere.
18:36
Yeah, that wasn't, you know, and he said, he just mentioned in the Mixer chat, you know, even some of the youth teams were at the rinks getting ready to play and they were canceled.
18:47
Yeah, the State Banham and Peewee, which is a big event.
18:50
I know Minnesota Hockey had made a deal to stream the games for free to try to keep people away from the ranks.
18:57
But really, I think these administrators just get to these situations and they think, is it really worth it?
19:05
Yeah, I mean, I mean, I was feeling really good about this weekend, too, Veegs.
19:11
I mean, I was feeling good this weekend, too.
19:12
I thought it was going to be a great weekend for Minnesota.
19:15
You know, and then we learned, you know, the crowd's not going to be there.
19:16
But I was feeling good long before that.
19:19
I think the team had started putting it together.
19:20
I think, I think that Friday game really woke them up.
19:26
And the players kind of really changed their attitude for those last two games against Notre Dame.
19:33
And who would have thought, I mean, how many teams just won their last game of the season?
19:38
And that's it, Veegs.
19:40
Yeah, I think we've seen Bob Mosco really get a hold of his teams the last two years, where in the second half, they really find a spark and they start playing the right system that he wants them to be implementing on the ice.
19:55
I think we've seen discipline improve the last couple years in terms of turnovers.
20:00
I think if this team would have figured out their power play a little bit earlier in the season, they would have been really dangerous the second half.
20:09
So we were just kind of just going to be kind of handling, you know, this week and you know, what happened this week in the craziness.
20:16
The plan is here is on Wednesday night will be our finale of the GPL Podcast for this season.
20:22
And we're going to look forward to next season then.
20:26
I think there's a lot of positive and stuff, so we're going to have a lot to talk about.
20:28
But you know, tonight we're going to keep it a little shorter.
20:31
And we're just kind of talking about the craziest week we've ever seen in sports.
20:36
I mean, because it's not just college hockey, it's all of college sports.
20:41
It's all of pro sports.
20:43
And I even heard some people earlier this week saying, oh, can't they just pick it up again?
20:48
And yeah, you could do that in the pro leagues, because that's their job.
20:51
But NCAA is just a different beast.
20:55
If it gets canceled, that's kind of it.
20:58
You can't do a lot of shuffling.
21:02
Well, and these kids are going to have to figure out their academics here in a couple of weeks.
21:07
The U of M campus extended spring break a couple days here, but they're going to be trying to figure out that side as well and figure out the rest of their academic calendar.
21:18
It's going to be an interesting time.
21:20
And even with the NHL and the NBA and things, if they do pick up, it's hard to pick up right from zero again.
21:28
We're talking about Penn State having to deal with a couple off weeks.
21:32
We're going to have a lot of teams out there coming off a complete off weeks without practice.
21:38
Maybe we got Skye Miller, our boy, asking about, does Caulfield for Wisconsin bolt?
21:44
Because Turcott Miller just did today.
21:46
I don't know where they're going.
21:47
I'm not sure what the hurry was.
21:49
Maybe they just wanted to get out of Dodge and get out of how that season ended.
21:54
It would be nice to get a signing bonus.
21:56
So you can get away with the next couple of weeks here and figure out your life a little bit better.
22:02
I think Caulfield wants to turn pro, whether or not Montreal allows him to.
22:07
We'll see.
22:08
I think if he were to go pro, he'd be better off in Leval than in Montreal.
22:14
Yeah, definitely.
22:16
We'll have to see though.
22:16
I mean, what is this guy?
22:19
We could talk about that, I guess.
22:20
I don't want to get too much into the future here because it leaves some to talk about Wednesday night.
22:28
But what are you going to write about now, Veegs?
22:32
Well, I was just thinking about that.
22:33
Like, what are all the athletic?
22:36
Like, they're all about sports.
22:38
How do you cover a world where there's no sports happening and everybody's kind of on hold?
22:43
There's only so many features you can do about how people heard about the day that the season was canceled and what they're doing here in this off time to get by.
22:55
So it will be interesting.
22:56
I know that they had an all-staff meeting for the athletic this week and try to come up with what they're going to do going forward.
23:03
But it's an interesting time.
23:05
I think it's going to be all NFL for them.
23:07
They're just going to be focusing in on free agency and the draft.
23:10
And then obviously not a great week for the athletic.
23:15
All the sports shutting down and then obviously the terrible story with Chad.
23:21
Yeah, Chad had to say goodbye to his daughter.
23:24
13 years old.
23:26
It just makes you sick.
23:29
That's really too bad.
23:32
Yeah, it's just a tough thing all around.
23:36
It kind of puts things in perspective.
23:38
We're complaining about people maybe getting sick.
23:44
It's just tough all around.
23:46
He's getting a lot of support online, which is really great.
23:51
On the opposite side, like Skyuma just said, we can celebrate Sid because Sid turns 100 years old tomorrow.
23:58
And holy cow.
24:01
That's definitely a positive thing.
24:04
You hear him on the radio, he's maybe not quite coherent these days, but to be in the business he's in for so long, holy cow, Veegs.
24:14
Yeah, he's an icon for sports journalism around here.
24:18
He's an interesting guy to be in the trenches with sometimes, especially now, but he's seen a lot and he's really invested the time in it too.
24:29
Sid is older than Gopher Hockey.
24:33
Well, yeah, we do celebrate the 100th season next year, so Sid is older than Gopher Hockey.
24:41
Well, it's just true, so it's kind of goofy.
24:45
Anything else on your mind, Veegs?
24:46
Obviously, we're going to get it more into, you know, maybe kind of wrapping up, a little more wrapping up this season on Wednesday, definitely looking to the future.
24:56
I think on a positive note, the future is very bright for this team, so I think we'll have quite a bit to talk about on Wednesday.
25:03
Yeah, I think there's bright times ahead for this program and it'll be an interesting off season for them.
25:08
They don't have a lot of moving pieces and we'll be talking about that on Wednesday.
25:12
Yeah, definitely will.
25:13
So that's going to do it for this episode of The GPL Podcast.
25:16
Like we just said, this coming Wednesday will be the season finale of the podcast for the year where we'll take a look ahead at what will be the 100th season of Gopher Hockey.
25:26
So be sure to tune in then when we start all that.
25:30
So for those of you listening live, we'll just have a little bit of over time.
25:35
Vegas got kids, he's got stuff to do, so, and I got some drinking.
25:40
You know, for the rest of you, thanks for listening.
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