0:04 This is The GPL Podcast, part of the Pulltab Sports family. 0:10 Oh boy. 0:12 Jup makin mistakes. 0:13 I love it. 0:28 Oh, he's moving the goalposts. 0:29 They could be 25th and the third place. 0:31 Oh my gosh, it's unbelievable. 0:34 You know, I think there is some shenanigans happening in the goalie community. 0:37 Are you going to speak on that? 0:38 In the goalie community? 0:40 We're going to get a ride with Goalie Nation, but... 0:44 Now, here's Jupiter and Vegoe. 0:52 Jûpe Good evening, and welcome to The GPL Podcast, episode number 291, Veegs. 1:02 Jûpe A pretty decent trip to Grand Forks this past weekend. 1:08 Jûpe I would say both games were a tale of young teams. 1:13 Jûpe Very, I mean, just seems like that's just what happens when you have young teams. 1:18 Jûpe One team dominates one night, one team dominates the other night, well, in the third period. 1:22 Vegoe Yeah, I think we're seeing a lot of parity in college hockey this season. 1:25 Vegoe You know, even the top teams that everyone is ranking highly is struggling a lot of mistakes happening out there and on the on the rinks these days and entertaining hockey between North Dakota and Minnesota as always. 1:39 Jûpe Well, Tanner hopes to be filling in quite a bit on the radio the past couple series, but Eric Schierhorn is going to be back in the booth this weekend. 1:48 Jûpe So let's bring him in as a guest. 1:50 Jûpe Eric, how's it going, man? 1:52 Eric I'm doing well. 1:53 Eric Thank you guys for having me. 1:54 Eric I had to match what Rammer took the lead, so I got to keep pace with him. 1:59 Jûpe Well, I sent that text out to him kind of poking at you. 2:02 Jûpe And you just let it kind of ride. 2:05 Jûpe You just kind of let it simmer, didn't you? 2:07 Eric Yeah. 2:07 Eric Well, you got to ignore him. 2:09 Eric You know how Rammer is. 2:10 Eric You've had him on enough to understand now. 2:12 Eric So I just let it be. 2:13 Eric I knew I was going to get an invite back. 2:15 Eric So you'll have to get me in one more time before the end of the year so I can pass him back up. 2:21 Jûpe Geez, well, who's paying favor? 2:23 Eric Yeah, right. 2:24 Eric I know what you like. 2:25 Eric It's whiskey, right? 2:28 Jûpe Maybe. 2:28 Eric You might have to airdrop something. 2:30 Jûpe Oh, I like the way you think. 2:34 Vegoe Yeah. 2:34 Jûpe All right, back to HockeyVegs. 2:40 Jûpe Boy, Rude got his first goal Saturday night. 2:43 Jûpe I love that. 2:45 Vegoe I think it's good for his confidence. 2:47 Vegoe I know, you know, after last year, you know, people were kind of like, what's going on there? 2:52 Vegoe You know, I haven't seen him getting a lot of practice time. 2:56 Vegoe And I think the coaching staff is pretty pleased with him. 2:59 Vegoe You know, they like the way his attitude was through last year and the way that he's embracing things this year. 3:05 Vegoe It's good confidence to get a goal. 3:08 Vegoe You know, it's not exactly a laser beam from the point, but, you know, it found its way there. 3:12 Vegoe And that's a good memory for him to have it be against North Dakota. 3:16 Vegoe But I think he's a player that just adds a little something to the back end, and just a little bit of calmness that we're seeing. 3:23 Vegoe And that's something that the Gopher Blue Line needs more of. 3:26 Vegoe You know, you look at some of the minutes that guys were playing this past weekend. 3:29 Vegoe I think Cal Thomas hit 27 minutes one night, and then the next Gruba and Middelstad are both over 25. 3:36 Vegoe So you got to find some guys back there that can take on some ice time and do it calmly. 3:41 Jûpe Well, I think on that rude goal, Eric, I think he kind of got an assist by the goalie on that one. 3:48 Jûpe It seemed to deflect up in the air on the goalie. 3:51 Jûpe I don't know if he swatted it up, but I think he swatted it between his legs. 3:55 Eric This is a little panicky, wasn't it? 3:57 Jûpe It was. 3:57 Jûpe It's like... 3:59 Jûpe Personally, I think he maybe saw it, you know, move, and then he caught it in his eyes last time. 4:04 Jûpe So he tried to react, and that's just all you could do, I guess. 4:07 Eric Yeah, well, it's... 4:08 Eric If you lose visual of the puck as a goalie and you're, you know, fighting it or maybe not seeing it as well as you normally do, you can get a little flinchy with that. 4:21 Eric You know, maybe a little bear swat at it. 4:23 Eric And from there, I mean, obviously, as we saw, anything can happen. 4:27 Eric But yeah, that's usually a sign of a goalie who's either lost it, honestly, and is just trying to react in that split second where they see a flash of black right in front of their eye, or they're fighting it a little bit and they're not feeling that calm and comfortable in the net. 4:44 Jûpe One thing I noticed this weekend was teams were just dead even in those first and second periods, but I think Minnesota had a nice advantage because they scored on their first shot in both games, which automatically gets you through that first 10 minutes of hell. 5:04 Vegoe Well, they made such a big deal about that all week is that in North Dakota, the first 10 minutes are a storm. 5:10 Vegoe You have to weather. 5:12 Vegoe Minnesota was on the right side of the luck for the first 10 minutes of both games. 5:17 Vegoe I think when you go on the road, you hope for starts like that, where you can get a scoring chance early and capitalize. 5:24 Vegoe I think Mason Moe's goal on Friday was just textbook, just touch, touch in the net. 5:32 Vegoe I've been going to quite a few practices this fall. 5:34 Vegoe Ben Gordon works on that with the Fords after every practice it seems like. 5:38 Vegoe Just getting that touch, touch, shot or touch, catch and shoot. 5:42 Vegoe They really want to get those quick releases off and catch the goalie a little off guard. 5:47 Vegoe Then the next goal on Saturday, just beautiful sauce and great hand eye. 5:53 Vegoe Really an impressive goal to start that game as well. 5:57 Vegoe I think it brought a little smile to all the players on the bench. 6:00 Jûpe It definitely did. 6:03 Jûpe Eric, what is it like to go to into a hostile environment like Grand Forks in North Dakota? 6:10 Eric Yeah, it's honestly not really like anywhere that you play. 6:17 Eric Obviously, the energy is heightened, but there's other places where the atmosphere and the fans bring the noise like they do in North Dakota, like Penn State's one that comes to mind, Yost is another that comes to mind. 6:29 Eric But I probably told this story before. 6:32 Eric I remember when we played there, we won Friday and we were walking through the hotel, and there's a bar in the bottom of the hotel that we were staying at that we had to walk by to get to the room that we were having our meal in. 6:44 Eric It's filled with North Dakota fans all wearing their green jerseys or whatever. 6:48 Eric We're walking single file by and they start the Gophers chant and they're flipping us off. 6:55 Eric If you're in Penn State, you might walk by a storefront or down the street, and people are just like, oh, there's another college team in town, and it could be the baseball team or whatever in North Dakota. 7:07 Eric It's onsite their mother avenue. 7:11 Eric Whenever they see you, you're walking down the street to the gas station to grab a water, so it's different. 7:16 Eric It's the same in the midst of the game, but the energy surrounding it. 7:21 Eric I remember the students, I think, lining up as our bus was pulling in, and they're all flipping us the bird and whatnot. 7:28 Eric You don't get that energy anywhere but North Dakota. 7:31 Jûpe I would have to agree with you on that. 7:34 Jûpe Just around town, just going and grabbing a meal somewhere, every restaurant had people in it with sweatshirts and jerseys, and there was green everywhere, VEGs. 7:44 Jûpe I know you experienced that a couple of years ago. 7:47 Jûpe It is different than any other place. 7:50 Vegoe Well, it makes the rivalry the rivalry. 7:53 Vegoe You need to have fans engaged to elevate everything and make it mean more. 7:58 Vegoe You think of the weekends that Brody Lamb had and Leo Groba had with their cellies and their goals. 8:05 Vegoe Those are going to be lifetime memories for those guys. 8:08 Vegoe That's why you play the game at institutions like Minnesota and North Dakota is for the chance to make that mark. 8:15 Vegoe I got to experience it up there with you a couple of years ago. 8:18 Vegoe Couldn't be there this year. 8:20 Vegoe Looking forward to seeing it in the future though, because it's a great one. 8:25 Jûpe It's definitely a great one. 8:27 Jûpe Veegs, I kind of mentioned, you know, I think teams were just dead, even those first two periods, but each night on North Dakota Friday night, Minnesota Saturday night, what happened in those games that caused the third period to get out of control? 8:42 Vegoe Well, I think for Minnesota on Friday was definitely all the penalties. 8:46 Vegoe You know, special teams really was a big factor. 8:50 Vegoe I don't think Bob Mosco was especially happy with the way the officials were calling the game. 8:55 Vegoe And when you have to throw out your high end guys quite a bit, it's very taxing, especially early in the year. 9:01 Vegoe And I think that was an issue on Friday. 9:04 Vegoe I think Saturday for North Dakota, they probably ran out of gas. 9:07 Vegoe You know, that emotional high of winning on Friday at home in front of your home fans. 9:11 Vegoe I think that plays a big factor in the weekend. 9:14 Vegoe And then when Minnesota wants to split the series, you know, just see that emotion and that energy level switch a little bit. 9:23 Jûpe So, you know, you know, they did have to kill a lot of penalties on Friday. 9:27 Jûpe Some of them, at least I know a couple were pretty phantom penalties. 9:32 Jûpe I can understand why Bob's mad. 9:34 Jûpe It's just what coaches do. 9:38 Jûpe But, you know, the only power play goal they technically gave up was an empty net goal on that Friday. 9:46 Jûpe So, it's clearly, you know, their coverage on the power play was pretty good. 9:52 Jûpe It's just like you said, it wore them out. 9:53 Jûpe And like the only goal was the empty net one. 9:57 Vegoe Yeah, I think as they're fighting for the goal late on Friday, you know, they give up that empty netter. 10:04 Vegoe You know, it's tough. 10:06 Vegoe You know, the Birdie Zemur, Cal Thomas, Luke Milstead, a lot of ice time for them. 10:10 Vegoe And then just to try to have one more special team's chance at the end, and not enough in the tank. 10:17 Jûpe What does the coach say, Eric, when you do lose a game like that? 10:21 Jûpe Because I'm guessing even on the other side, you know, you win the game, and boy, they're going to come at us tomorrow night. 10:26 Jûpe Is it kind of a similar thing on the opposite end? 10:29 Jûpe We need to put more into it. 10:30 Jûpe What's the coach speak after a loss? 10:33 Eric Yeah, the coach speak is pretty predictable. 10:38 Eric You got to do the little things better. 10:40 Eric We got to stay out of the box. 10:41 Eric He knows what Bob was saying. 10:44 Eric He hates penalties more than anyone. 10:46 Eric Not that anyone likes him, but they make him particularly angry. 10:51 Eric And just higher compete level, which is all true. 10:55 Eric But at the same time, it is all coach speak, regardless of how you turn it. 11:01 Eric And then on the flip side, on the winning team, you know, they're going to come out gunning out of the gates tomorrow. 11:09 Eric You know, we're not going to get the same penalties that we got tonight, so on and so forth. 11:14 Eric So it's really the same. 11:16 Eric And it's a constant spin zone from the coaches to try to re-engage the players depending on what the angle is, so that you don't get a let down spot or you're extra motivated going into tonight too, regardless of what night one looked like. 11:35 Jûpe And Veegs, you've kind of talked about this over the past. 11:38 Jûpe You know, when does Bob, you know, throw the garbage can type of thing? 11:42 Jûpe Probably not this type of instance on this weekend, but he tends to save it for maybe two or three times a year. 11:50 Vegoe Yeah, you can't kick the garbage can every weekend, or otherwise it becomes a comedy, like in London, Kenny. 11:56 Vegoe But I heard from August Faluna at Media Today that the coaching staff really emphasize effort. 12:02 Vegoe You know, Eric's right. 12:03 Vegoe You know, they're gonna target one thing, and they're gonna point out, you know, the guys who have a little bit more effort to give on plays, and maybe you're taxed. 12:12 Vegoe Maybe you've had a lot of ice time, but you still have to give that effort if you want to win games like this. 12:17 Vegoe And so that was the big message from the coaching staff. 12:20 Vegoe I think one thing I noticed about Saturday was John Milstadt really set the tone on a lot of forechecks. 12:27 Vegoe And he is just so good at stick positioning and body contact, where he doesn't give defensemen easy outs. 12:36 Vegoe And I think that's something for some of the younger guys to learn and pick up on. 12:40 Vegoe Because you saw on Friday night, at least, a lot of guys who were in on the forecheck, but they weren't making contact. 12:46 Vegoe They weren't taking away options. 12:48 Vegoe They weren't foreseeing closeout plays. 12:52 Vegoe And John Middlestad just has an energy to them that I think is contagious. 12:56 Vegoe And Bob says, you know, our older guys are setting the tone. 13:00 Vegoe It's up for some of the younger guys to learn from that and start bringing that to the game. 13:05 Vegoe And you saw flashes of that, I think a little bit more on Saturday than you saw on Friday. 13:11 Eric Well, Eric, one thing, too, on the kicking the trash can, I think that is a little dependent on the team that you have, right? 13:20 Eric And with the Gophers not being overly experienced and being pretty young, I think you reserve the kicking the trash can until a little farther into the season than you maybe would if you had an older, more experienced team that, not to say they shouldn't be doing better than they have, but if we have last year's team with the production that was returning and the age, this start looks a little different and feels a little different than it does this year with a younger team. 13:53 Vegoe And I think to build on that, we're not seeing lots of mistakes being made by Minnesota in critical parts of the ice. 14:01 Vegoe You're not seeing bad turnovers. 14:03 Vegoe You're not seeing guys not back checking. 14:06 Vegoe You're seeing sometimes little mental mistakes where they're not quite picking up a stick in front of their own net or they're not finishing a check. 14:14 Vegoe But it's not, I don't think it's like the mental lazy mistakes. 14:18 Vegoe It's just the level of engagement just has to rise a little bit more. 14:22 Vegoe And Bob's a very patient coach. 14:24 Vegoe He knows that the team at the end of the year is not the team that he has right now. 14:28 Vegoe So I think he's trying to be patient. 14:30 Vegoe I often, you know, talk to him and he says, I don't want to over coach this team right now. 14:34 Vegoe I want them to kind of figure it out on their own. 14:38 Vegoe And I think that's a, it's a difficult thing to do. 14:41 Vegoe Like you have to let them go out and try different things to figure out the problems on their own. 14:46 Vegoe But I think in the end, you get better development if you can be that patient. 14:52 Jûpe Well, one thing I wanted to talk about from the Friday Night Game is, you know, I thought the defensive coverage was not great. 14:58 Jûpe They were letting guys open, Veegsz. 15:01 Jûpe And then one of those turnovers that wasn't as common did happen. 15:05 Jûpe And it was Mr. 15:06 Jûpe Errery, who kind of threw the puck along the boards when he could have just left it for his player, went right to a UMD player and less than five seconds later, it's in the back of the net. 15:16 Jûpe So a combination of a turnover and coverage all at the same time is what kind of started the UMD engine Friday night. 15:26 Vegoe Yeah, I mean, at times, they, they need to learn, you know, the intensity of the game. 15:32 Vegoe You know, I think sometimes players think, yeah, I was in the right spot, but I wasn't doing the right thing, is what the coaches are going to be telling them. 15:39 Vegoe And the key is, don't let it happen again. 15:42 Vegoe You know, be aware that EJ Emory had a great game on Friday. 15:45 Vegoe He saw that he saw the space in front of him. 15:48 Vegoe He saw the jersey numbers. 15:49 Vegoe He knew they weren't going to be able to pick them up, and he was able to come down from the point. 15:53 Vegoe You know, as teams get a little bit older, you know, they're more aware, they're scanning the ice improves. 15:59 Vegoe They see that stuff coming, and that's when you can maybe turn the tables. 16:04 Vegoe And as that player comes down from the point, you lift a stick, he misses the puck, you're going the other way, he's below the goal line. 16:11 Vegoe You know, so I think those are things that they have to learn from and get some experience. 16:15 Vegoe But I think the key for Minnesota is that they came back on Saturday and they solved the puzzle. 16:21 Vegoe You know, if they couldn't do it again the next night and got swept, totally different vibe going into this week. 16:26 Vegoe Just like we talked about the BC game. 16:28 Vegoe Yes, it was a tie and a shootout, but I think if they tie and lose the shootout or they give up the lead completely and lose the game, the vibe is totally different going into the week. 16:39 Vegoe So. 16:40 Jûpe And Eric, I believe, you know, I just mean we saw my own my own eyes that the team defensively played much better in front of Luca Saturday night than they did in front of Airy Friday night. 16:50 Jûpe I mean, I noticed there was guys covered all over the place. 16:55 Jûpe Luca could even though there's traffic, could see the pucks. 16:57 Jûpe And I thought he also played better than Airy did Friday night as well. 17:03 Eric Yeah, and I think that's just the sign of a young, inconsistent team, right? 17:08 Eric That the effort is going to be inconsistent. 17:11 Eric The quality of play is going to be inconsistent naturally when you have a young, unproven commodity that either one is now six games into their college career or two playing in an elevated role that they maybe weren't last year and they're asked to be playing greater minutes and in a role that they might not totally be comfortable with. 17:36 Eric Or quite frankly, be ready to step into yet. 17:41 Eric Because that stuff takes time. 17:46 Eric In years past, they've had guys come in and make immediate impacts because you can see now when they're playing in the NHL, they had ultra-high end talent. 17:55 Eric They had Jackson LeCombe, they had Matthew Nyes, even Benny Meyers from the Hop. 18:00 Eric Granted, he was an older freshman. 18:02 Eric Logan Cooley, Jimmy Snuggerud. 18:05 Eric I don't know if any of these freshmen are them. 18:11 Eric I don't think we can expect that kind of production and that kind of immediate impact from them stepping right into a role that they're being asked to play in that immediate production. 18:25 Eric Again, to go back to your initial question, that was a long-winded way to say, I think this is natural out of young teams to have kind of a flat effort one night and need to be kicked in the butt the next night to go out there and take some action and right the ship. 18:43 Jûpe And Vegas, what it kind of comes back to, I think both teams suffered the same thing. 18:48 Jûpe They're both young. 18:50 Jûpe They both played tough for a couple periods, and then they both elevated in the third period. 18:55 Jûpe Just not consistent. 18:58 Vegoe Well, I think a big part of being a College Hockey player is managing your emotions and consistency. 19:04 Vegoe And I think that's a really hard thing to do. 19:06 Vegoe And that's why I think we're seeing so many teams in college hockey split right now is because it's hard to manage that stuff and hard to bring the consistency. 19:14 Vegoe And Minnesota, I think having Tanner Ludke in the lineup is really smooth things out for them. 19:21 Vegoe Like if they don't get him in the portal, this team looks pretty different. 19:25 Vegoe He's come in very smoothly into this program and we've seen other transfers where it hasn't been as easy coming into Minnesota. 19:33 Vegoe But he seems like a perfect fit for this roster and is producing pretty well. 19:38 Vegoe And I think he's going to have a better season than I anticipated coming in. 19:43 Jûpe Yeah, shorthanded goal Friday night. 19:45 Jûpe He had that power play goal on Saturday night, which was one of the most beautiful power play goals we've seen, Veegs. 19:53 Jûpe I just thought it's like they almost anticipated, at least on that goal, UMD being aggressive and knowing exactly where to go with the puck. 20:04 Jûpe When the faceoff happened, they tried to almost do that play. 20:08 Jûpe The first pass miss went to corner, came back out. 20:10 Jûpe They did it again. 20:11 Jûpe I don't know if that was the plan, but it looked like the same kind of set up and boom, it was just a wide open tap in goal basically. 20:19 Vegoe Yeah, Cal Thomas today was very congratulatory to Steve Miller and Ben Gordon for the scouting job that they did on special teams coming into the weekend. 20:29 Vegoe And I think Minnesota did great on the penalty kill and the power play. 20:32 Vegoe It seemed like they were a step ahead. 20:34 Vegoe Like you always know North Dakota is going to be ultra aggressive on the penalty kill. 20:38 Vegoe So if you can move the puck smoothly quickly, you're going to get good chances. 20:43 Vegoe I think there's another power play chance that LJ Mooney just missed a little bit. 20:49 Vegoe That was another one of those quick moving power play opportunities. 20:52 Vegoe And I think LJ is maybe gripping the stick a little bit tight right now. 20:56 Vegoe You know, he's got a lot of energy and he flashes the hand eye all the time. 21:01 Vegoe I think he's been a little slower to, you know, produce in the score sheet than he'd like. 21:06 Vegoe You still see the effort and the intensity and the skill there. 21:09 Vegoe I think it's going to click eventually. 21:11 Vegoe You just have to be patient. 21:12 Vegoe We're only a couple of games into this thing. 21:14 Jûpe And the jersey pop on an empty net goalie. 21:20 Eric You got to love that though. 21:23 Eric In North Dakota, you got to love that. 21:25 Eric I don't know if I would have done it myself, but I don't hate watching it. 21:30 Jûpe Well, not many goalies show much emotion at all, do you? 21:35 Eric No, I just, I never really liked it, because, I don't know, for whatever reason, like, yeah. 21:42 Jûpe Because the puck's coming at you. 21:45 Eric Yeah, and the goalie can impact the game as much as anyone, but I always felt being flashy, and if you want to call it being a prick, like popping the jersey or whatnot, it's just the goalie is a protected species, right? 22:00 Eric And so, you can give it, but you're not allowed to take it because you know that five guys on your team are jumping a guy who even comes near you. 22:11 Eric So, it always felt a little phony to me for goalies who are mouthing off and are in the face of the other players, because you don't really have to answer the bell like you would a forward or defenseman. 22:21 Eric Not that you can fight in hockey anyways, but you can still take a few lumps and get into a wrestling match. 22:28 Eric Realistically, that's never going to happen to them if they have good teammates. 22:32 Vegoe It feels like Marc-Andre Fleury is the flair of a goalie to thank the pipes and do a little extra flash of the leather here and there. 22:41 Eric Yeah, but it's not like an in-your-face kind of thing, like popping a jersey. 22:46 Eric Peter Muraszek was one that is high-energy, kind of like that. 22:50 Eric Honestly, Swamen's like that a little bit now. 22:53 Eric But again, like if someone touches Swamen or if someone's even mouthing off to Swamen, there's gonna be five Bruins that are shedding their gloves immediately to pound a guy. 23:04 Jûpe It's not like the old days of college hockey, which we love to bring him up, like at least once a year, send away Wallen Eimo out of Denver. 23:11 Jûpe Um, Agoli, I think he's now like, he's like, I think he's part of like Congress or Parliament in Finland. 23:20 Jûpe He was just like that. 23:21 Jûpe He was, he would egg on the crowd, you know, something would happen. 23:26 Jûpe He would just do outrageous things. 23:28 Jûpe And the thing is, he was good too. 23:31 Jûpe That was just the thing, the cream on top for him. 23:36 Jûpe So, Andre Flory loved, loved having him here for the wild, loved seeing him in the NHL for so long. 23:42 Jûpe And the thing is, that's just it. 23:44 Jûpe Everybody loved him, so they didn't really care if he was doing that kind of stuff. 23:48 Eric Right, yeah. 23:48 Eric If you're likable enough, you get a pass. 23:52 Jûpe Definitely. 23:54 Jûpe Well, Veegs, North Dakota comes back again in October next year. 23:59 Jûpe It won't be MEA weekend. 24:01 Jûpe They come, they come the week before. 24:04 Jûpe Next year, I think if anyone's subscribed to the calendar, you'll see it on there. 24:07 Jûpe It's, I can't remember the exact dates, but like the second or second weekend in October. 24:12 Jûpe So they'll be there. 24:14 Jûpe And then hopefully we get to go back up there again, Veegs, in a couple of years. 24:19 Jûpe To thank Alec Johnson and our guy, Eric Martinson, up there for getting me in there. 24:25 Jûpe I had a great time. 24:27 Jûpe And of course, did have a couple of drinks with Schloss on Saturday night, which I just sent you a photo. 24:32 Jûpe I didn't want to FaceTime you Veegs, because for one thing, you probably kept busy and you just couldn't hear in there. 24:38 Jûpe So, but it was a good time up in Grand Forks. 24:41 Jûpe At least it wasn't reasonable. 24:42 Vegoe I hope to make it for the next one. 24:43 Vegoe So you know, these schools are going to be playing each other again soon. 24:48 Jûpe They might play each other again this year. 24:50 Jûpe Yeah, so you make it to a tournament, you know, it could be sent to Soup Falls. 24:55 Jûpe We'll have to see. 24:57 Jûpe But one thing we need to talk about here, Veegs, is Gateway Fiber, who is sponsoring the GPL Podcast. 25:05 Vegoe Yeah, Gateway Fiber, Minnesota State of Hockey, bad air net connection for us is like a bad line change. 25:12 Vegoe It slows everything down, causes chaos. 25:14 Vegoe You might even lose the 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year. 26:10 Jûpe It really has been. 26:12 Vegoe It's hard to know what to make of the top teams, you know, because they've all kind of had some falls so far. 26:18 Vegoe You know, Michigan State, you know, big weekend on ESPN. 26:22 Vegoe You know, our buddy Paul Caponegri was in the studio for that weekend covering for ESPN and getting a lot of eyes on College Hockey. 26:33 Vegoe Michigan State, you know, performed pretty well. 26:35 Vegoe BU is a younger team. 26:37 Vegoe So, you know, that roller coaster of a season is continuing for them. 26:42 Vegoe The big surprise for me is how well Michigan has played so far. 26:46 Vegoe You know, they had that big series against Maine and they just took it to them. 26:51 Vegoe So, very impressive out of Michigan so far. 26:54 Jûpe And they've got like 40 goals of the season too. 26:57 Vegoe Yeah, they're really putting them in there. 26:59 Vegoe So, it's pretty impressive. 27:02 Vegoe We all know that on this show, we don't always give Nerado a lot of credit, but he's got them going right now. 27:11 Jûpe North Dakota and Penn State in there, obviously. 27:15 Jûpe There's the big drop, Boston University, Quinnipiac jumping up every week, Veegs. 27:20 Vegoe It was Quinnipiac in Maine. 27:21 Vegoe That's who I was talking about. 27:22 Vegoe Michigan played Robert Morris. 27:24 Vegoe Michigan had the good weekend the weekend before. 27:26 Vegoe So, they play a big game this weekend, I think. 27:29 Vegoe Michigan against Western Michigan. 27:32 Jûpe Yes, starting tomorrow night. 27:34 Vegoe Yeah, so that's the big one this week. 27:36 Jûpe It's gonna be on BTN as well. 27:39 Vegoe I'm a little razzled on my college hockey from this last weekend. 27:43 Vegoe I had a lot going on. 27:44 Jûpe So, hey, did you storm the field? 27:47 Vegoe I did storm the field on Friday. 27:49 Vegoe I got to go to the football game with my 13-year-old, and I called it more of a field pass for every one night. 27:58 Vegoe You know, I didn't think it was a storm. 28:00 Vegoe I don't think it was a violent storm in the field. 28:02 Vegoe It was kind of like, hey, you can take the stairs and go on the field and take pictures kind of night. 28:07 Vegoe The students wanted to storm the field. 28:08 Vegoe The rest of the fans are like, I'm not going to pass up a time to go down there and take a photo on the field and enjoy the red tears. 28:16 Jûpe Yeah. 28:18 Jûpe It was a good game. 28:19 Jûpe Yeah, definitely a good game. 28:20 Jûpe They definitely perform well. 28:21 Jûpe I'm just not sure about storming the field. 28:27 Jûpe All right. 28:27 Jûpe Denver and Maine with the big drops on your 20 there, Veegs. 28:32 Vegoe Yeah. 28:33 Vegoe Denver losing a game to Lindenwood. 28:36 Vegoe Is that is that really allowed? 28:39 Vegoe If you're going to be Denver, you know, Denver got goalied a game earlier in the year with Ferris State, I believe. 28:48 Vegoe And so they drop another one to Lindenwood. 28:50 Vegoe You know, we've got a lot of faith in David Carl as a coach, as opposed to maybe the guy at Michigan. 28:55 Vegoe He'll probably get things figured out and maybe a loss like this and a loss like that earlier will help him get his message across. 29:03 Vegoe You know, he's being patient with his team. 29:06 Vegoe Maine, yeah, dropping games to Quinnipiac after dropping games to Michigan the week before kind of takes him down the poll. 29:16 Jûpe Looks like, you know, Providence, Colorado College, Minnesota moves up a little bit. 29:22 Jûpe Quite a few non-rated teams in there. 29:25 Jûpe Augustana, Ohio State, Minnesota Duluth Union. 29:29 Jûpe We'll get to Minnesota Duluth later, but their offense is really, their first line is amazing right now. 29:34 Vegoe Yeah, they haven't really played the toughest schedule so far for Sandlin's team, but they're scoring a lot of goals. 29:41 Vegoe But a lot of teams at the back of the 20 drop games this past weekend. 29:45 Vegoe So you're trying to look at, you know, other teams who are maybe overlooked a little bit. 29:50 Vegoe Ohio State, Augustana, Augustana had the big weekend against Arizona State. 29:55 Vegoe So impressive win for them. 29:57 Vegoe They had another impressive win earlier. 30:02 Eric They beat Duluth. 30:05 Vegoe Duluth, that's right. 30:06 Vegoe Duluth's one loss. 30:08 Vegoe And I think Duluth thought maybe that was a bad loss originally. 30:11 Vegoe But maybe Augustana is actually pretty good. 30:14 Vegoe Garrett Reboin doing good things out of the Dakotas. 30:17 Jûpe Yeah, that's definitely good. 30:19 Jûpe And he'll be on the World Junior Staff along with Greg Brown and Bob and Killer. 30:28 Jûpe That should be fun. 30:29 Jûpe Anything else about your 20? 30:31 Jûpe Who's kind of below it right now? 30:33 Jûpe Who are you kind of watching? 30:35 Vegoe Well, I think I'm watching Wisconsin. 30:38 Vegoe It's probably the next team on here. 30:40 Vegoe I need to see them play some tougher competition before I start putting them in the polls. 30:47 Jûpe You know, drop Minnesota State. 30:49 Jûpe I noticed they're not on the list anymore. 30:51 Vegoe Yeah, Minnesota State hasn't really been very consistent so far this season. 30:56 Vegoe You know, St. 30:56 Vegoe Thomas, they were on my poll earlier. 30:58 Vegoe They dropped a game to Air Force. 31:00 Vegoe Michigan Tech was on here. 31:02 Vegoe They dropped a game to Alaska. 31:05 Vegoe You know, one thing about CC on my list, I've got them at 12 right now, but they lost Max Burkholder for probably the rest of the first half of the season. 31:13 Vegoe That's not, you know, they were able to withstand that and have a good weekend in Northern Michigan. 31:19 Vegoe Once they play some tougher competition, we'll see if that continues. 31:23 Vegoe He was a big part of that team. 31:24 Vegoe You know, we talked about him with Schlossman last week as really being, you know, a standout player in the entire NCHC. 31:33 Vegoe So, a tough loss for them there. 31:35 Vegoe I think one of the interesting things coming out of the national picture right now, the Big Ten and NCHC are doing very well in their out-of-conference games. 31:44 Vegoe Atlantic Hockey's been a little bit better this year. 31:48 Vegoe CCHA has not done very well. 31:51 Vegoe Hockey East has just kind of been so-so. 31:53 Vegoe So, I think we're seeing that stratification nationally again of NCHC and Big Ten doing quite well. 32:01 Jûpe I did notice, Veegs, that I was a tweet today saying that, you know, if you think there's more upsets this year, there actually are. 32:08 Jûpe I want to say in the past, roughly around 25% around this time of year, now it's up to 33% this season. 32:15 Jûpe So, there have been quite a bit more on the upsets. 32:20 Vegoe Well, I think, there's more parity in College Hockey, because you don't have as many fifth years. 32:25 Vegoe So, you're seeing teams have to go younger this year and fill more holes, and they're less experienced. 32:32 Vegoe You know, I think the last couple of years, there's been a lot of those fifth year seniors that have kind of evened things out. 32:38 Vegoe Scoring is up nationally. 32:40 Vegoe You know, we talk about Minnesota-Duluth having a high scoring team against maybe a not-so-impressive schedule, but you look overall, there's a lot of games, especially on Saturdays, where scoring is up. 32:51 Vegoe We're seeing seven, eight, nine goals a game, sometimes 10 in some of these, like Michigan against Robert Morris this last weekend. 33:00 Vegoe So, scoring is definitely up, and I think it's because of all the young players who are being inserted and the CHL players. 33:06 Vegoe Yes, there's a lot of CHL players playing college hockey this year, and I think the college game is a little bit different than the CHL game, and it's a bit of an adjustment for them. 33:17 Jûpe All right, Eric, you're going to be back in the booth this weekend. 33:22 Jûpe It's been a little while. 33:23 Jûpe You're excited to get behind the mic again? 33:25 Eric Yeah, I'm going to be rusty. 33:27 Eric I think my last game last year was December, so we're over the 10-month mark. 33:34 Eric But yeah, I love it. 33:37 Eric It's super fun, and the more that I do it, the more I get a little more comfortable with it. 33:42 Eric I'm not going to pretend to be even near Frank Mazzacco's prowess, but yeah, it's great. 33:49 Eric It's fun to stay close to the program. 33:51 Eric Wally is terrific at what he does, so it's fun to watch that up close and see him. 33:57 Eric The man's got, so just picture three printed out sheets, single space line, like 10 font, just top to bottom and he's, someone will pick up the puck in on Duluth. 34:11 Eric And I'm like, oh, that's, you know, Zam Plont and he played at blah, blah, blah. 34:15 Eric And you know, he had a point per game or 75 points with the Fargo force. 34:19 Eric >And I'm like, how the, how the, how did you find that? 34:23 Eric There's a method to the madness, but I think Frank sends it to him. 34:27 Eric >Yeah, right. 34:28 Eric >Hey, how about Frank? 34:30 Eric I turned on, what was that? 34:32 Eric The Michigan Tech Series. 34:34 Eric And they were doing the pre-game or whatever. 34:37 Eric I was like, is that Frank? 34:39 Jûpe Is Frank doing it? 34:39 Jûpe It was. 34:40 Jûpe It was special. 34:41 Eric Just tap in for one weekend? 34:43 Jûpe Jim Rich of Fox9 was covering the Vikings in London that week. 34:50 Jûpe So they brought him in to just kind of fill in for Jim. 34:54 Jûpe And we had him on our first pod, our second podcast. 34:59 Jûpe But he just kind of snuck on, just because, actually was the first podcast as a guest for about five, ten minutes. 35:07 Jûpe Because we knew this was coming. 35:10 Jûpe And he had not called a game, you know, play by play or on television since the 2010 final five. 35:20 Jûpe So more than 15 years. 35:23 Eric That's wild. 35:24 Jûpe And his voice struggled a little bit Friday night, Saturday night was better. 35:29 Jûpe It was a lot of nostalgia there. 35:31 Jûpe It felt good. 35:31 Jûpe I know, you know, you might have struggled with some names in here because he hadn't, you know, he hadn't even seen half the team before. 35:38 Jûpe It's a lot of new players. 35:41 Jûpe But Veegs, I would have to say that the nostalgia was pretty high with Frank calling those games. 35:47 Jûpe And it was an old WCHA foe in Michigan Tech. 35:50 Vegoe Yeah, and I think it's fun for some of us long time followers of the program to hear and do the goal calls with new players, you know, because I thought he nailed those in the games. 36:00 Vegoe But I think the first weekend especially was challenging for calling the Gophers because there's so many new faces. 36:07 Vegoe Yes. 36:08 Vegoe And the line combinations, you know, aren't set. 36:11 Vegoe So I think especially play by play, it's so hard to read who's out there. 36:17 Vegoe Because, you know, usually you rely on picking up the handedness, the number, the line combinations, then just in the early part of the season, it's hard to understand that stuff exactly. 36:28 Vegoe So you need an experienced hand like Frank to get to get through it. 36:32 Jûpe Whereas, you know, after most of a season, you're like, you could, you know, a lot of times you don't need to see the number, Eric. 36:38 Jûpe You just see the style that somebody's skating and you know, you know, that's so and so skating out there. 36:43 Eric You see their gloves, you see how they wear their cage, you see their jersey, their pant length, like their sock tape. 36:52 Eric It's second nature. 36:54 Eric When I was playing, I mean, granted, it's not the same because I was practicing against these guys every day. 37:00 Eric Like you could blind test me just showing the heel of someone's stick to the toe of someone's stick and I guarantee you, I can nail every single person on my team. 37:09 Eric It just becomes second nature. 37:12 Eric It's 10,000 hours, right? 37:13 Eric Like it's right away. 37:18 Vegoe It's very deceiving. 37:18 Vegoe You see LJ Mooney out there, just the stride, the white stick. 37:22 Vegoe You identify him immediately. 37:25 Vegoe Jimmy Clark with the bubble and Eric Paulson with the bubble. 37:28 Vegoe There are two different looking players out there. 37:30 Vegoe You can tell those guys right away, but it can be a challenge sometimes. 37:34 Vegoe Oh, jeez. 37:35 Jûpe I just saw this pop up from Moate. 37:38 Jûpe He wants to talk, he wants to hear about the Olive Garden visit I visited this weekend. 37:44 Jûpe Yes, I did visit the Olive Garden, the famous Olive Garden that was made famous by Marilyn and her last names. 37:51 Jûpe Escaping me right now, she just passed away in September. 37:54 Jûpe Was it 2012? 37:56 Jûpe She did a review of the Olive Garden and Grand Forks for the Grand Forks Herald. 38:01 Jûpe That went viral. 38:02 Jûpe It went crazy. 38:03 Jûpe People just loved it after she got ripped. 38:06 Jûpe She did a book with Anthony Fordane after that. 38:08 Jûpe So I'm like, Saturday afternoon, like, yeah, I'll head down there about three and load it up on some on some carbs, like Mote said there. 38:18 Jûpe I think I went through six breadsticks. 38:20 Jûpe Oh my God, it was so good. 38:21 Jûpe That was a lot. 38:22 Jûpe But it was just it was just fun because, you know, I needed a meal anyways, because it was an early game. 38:29 Jûpe But oh yeah, there it is. 38:31 Jûpe Breadsticks, six of them. 38:34 Vegoe What else made the itinerary of this trip? 38:36 Vegoe I know last time we did Rhombus, Halfbrothers, Rhombus, Pizza, Brick and Barley. 38:43 Jûpe Brick and Barley. 38:44 Jûpe That's where Brad and I met Saturday night. 38:47 Jûpe Saturday night, Brick and Barley. 38:49 Jûpe And it was just so noisy. 38:51 Jûpe It's like because when we went to Brick and Barley with him, it was Thursday night. 38:56 Jûpe It was pretty open. 38:57 Jûpe Imagine that whole building just packed full of students and it's like, no. 39:02 Jûpe So we went to the tap room, which is right next door. 39:06 Jûpe And I had gone to the tap room with Wally and Tanner Hoops the night before. 39:10 Jûpe It's kind of a cool thing. 39:11 Jûpe They have about 20 taps along the wall with these little digital displays of a beverage. 39:17 Jûpe You give your card, you get a card back, you put a card up there, and it charges you by the ounce. 39:25 Jûpe So this drink might be 45 cents an ounce, this drink might be 70 cents an ounce, doesn't matter. 39:30 Jûpe But then if you want, you can only make maybe one ounce of something you want to try. 39:35 Jûpe So it was a unique place. 39:36 Jûpe I had never seen that before. 39:38 Jûpe VEGS is an experienced beer person. 39:40 Jûpe I'm guessing you've seen something like that? 39:43 Vegoe Yep. 39:44 Vegoe Malcolm Yards over on campus. 39:46 Vegoe They've got a beer wall like that. 39:48 Jûpe There you go, Steve. 39:49 Jûpe Steve says. 39:50 Vegoe Exactly. 39:51 Vegoe So it's a popular thing at some of those places, a little self-serve area. 39:56 Jûpe And the one thing I did is we'd said hi to Tanner Morgan in the past. 40:01 Jûpe Tanner Morgan. 40:02 Jûpe Tanner Hoops. 40:03 Jûpe Sorry. 40:03 Jûpe I was like, no, no. 40:05 Eric Is he making a guest appearance for the football team? 40:07 Jûpe No. 40:08 Jûpe Sorry. 40:08 Jûpe Tanner Hoops. 40:09 Jûpe I had no idea. 40:10 Jûpe You'd see him passing. 40:12 Jûpe Didn't really know him, but got to meet him. 40:13 Jûpe And in person, that voice is just, it's like, wow. 40:20 Jûpe You think, because you know, you hear a lot of announcer guys and they've kind of got their voice. 40:24 Jûpe They talk like this. 40:25 Jûpe You know, Jamie Verbrugge is very much that whenever you met Jamie at football or hockey, whatever he calls. 40:31 Jûpe But his normal voice is not so radio like. 40:35 Jûpe That is Tanner Hoops' voice. 40:37 Jûpe It is just like that. 40:39 Jûpe And it's like, whoa, just, just wow. 40:43 Eric So yeah, it's made, it's made for sports broadcasting. 40:47 Eric He, he interviewed me for like the little alumni bit. 40:52 Eric Yeah. 40:53 Eric Either for the first series or the second series of the year. 40:56 Eric I can't remember, but he started talking. 40:58 Eric I was like, whoa, it's like, it's like projecting play by play slash analyst voice. 41:07 Eric And I'm like, I'm like, is this thing turn off or does it, is this real? 41:12 Eric And it's full, full real. 41:14 Eric I told them at the end, I'm like, dude, this is, your voice is tailor made for sports broadcasting. 41:18 Eric It's crazy. 41:20 Jûpe It is. 41:21 Jûpe And he's got a bright future. 41:22 Jûpe He does a lot of baseball, a lot of volleyball. 41:25 Jûpe He does so much bright future for him. 41:28 Vegoe He's like the PJ Fleck of radio. 41:30 Vegoe He's just like that personality, that voice, that that perspective all the time. 41:36 Vegoe Can't turn it off. 41:39 Jûpe Get turn off the charm. 41:41 Jûpe Veegs, we did have a tweet earlier asking about Teddy Townsend. 41:46 Jûpe What's his injury? 41:46 Jûpe Things like we don't really know much on his injury. 41:49 Jûpe We've heard that he's skating maybe an upper body injury. 41:53 Jûpe So, we don't really have any answers on that, do we? 41:56 Vegoe Yeah, not really. 41:58 Vegoe At the media scrum today, there are some people asking questions about him and what's going on. 42:03 Vegoe And Bob's just kind of saying he doesn't want to talk about what the injury is and anything about that. 42:09 Vegoe Just that, you know, he's skating. 42:11 Vegoe They hope to have him back. 42:13 Vegoe It's a little bit up to the doctors to clear guys. 42:16 Vegoe Bassimo got injured earlier in the year. 42:18 Vegoe Leo Gruber got injured earlier in the year. 42:20 Vegoe The trainers cleared those guys. 42:22 Vegoe They're back playing. 42:24 Vegoe Teddy, I think, is still a little bit a ways away from joining the lineup. 42:27 Jûpe So I wish we knew we just don't. 42:32 Jûpe Veegs, I have a couple notes here. 42:34 Jûpe I noticed you reposted my picture of Leo Gruber when he was just screaming after scoring his goal on Saturday night. 42:42 Jûpe And you said he is just such a Minnesota guy. 42:47 Vegoe Yeah, I mean, he's all in with his team. 42:49 Vegoe He's got this attitude where he wants to make an impact this year. 42:54 Vegoe Talking to August Faloon, who was his roommate last year, he's like, Leo dedicated himself this off season like nobody else. 43:01 Vegoe You know, he was really strict on his diet. 43:04 Vegoe He cut like six percent off his body fat. 43:06 Vegoe He dropped like 10 pounds. 43:08 Vegoe He knew to make an impact at this level. 43:10 Vegoe He had to be quicker, leaner, more explosive because he was able to see a lot of opportunities, but he just deferred a lot last year. 43:19 Vegoe So he wanted to be in position to be more active and make more plays. 43:24 Vegoe And so for him to get that goal the other night, I think is really important for his confidence. 43:29 Vegoe I think he's a player that needs a few good things to go his way for his game to grow. 43:35 Vegoe And, you know, that's an encouraging sign for him. 43:37 Vegoe And, you know, he's getting some power play opportunities here and there. 43:41 Vegoe And, you know, there's a huge opportunity for him on this roster. 43:44 Vegoe You know, with all those question marks at D, you know, Leo grew as something that the coaching staff wants to see blossom. 43:52 Vegoe They want to see him embody that role and really start to be a point producer for them. 43:57 Vegoe Because I don't know if Cal Thomas is a point producing D. 44:01 Vegoe He's a very steady guy. 44:02 Vegoe He's great on the penalty kill. 44:05 Vegoe Luke Middlestad, I think, is showing that role, especially in that first power play. 44:09 Vegoe But I think Leo Gruber is that guy who they really want to see shine this year. 44:14 Jûpe And yes, it wasn't a power play goal, Veegs, but it was like one or two. 44:19 Jûpe I mean, it was the end of the power play. 44:20 Jûpe So it was essentially a power play goal. 44:22 Jûpe Yeah, about Leo Gruber's goal, Eric, you don't see very often that a rebound comes straight back to a player. 44:32 Jûpe So he just kind of walked around the play, the defenseman that tried to block it. 44:37 Jûpe But also a lot of times, you don't see players following up their shot. 44:40 Jûpe Like a basketball player would follow his own shot. 44:44 Jûpe I thought that was kind of unique on that play. 44:47 Eric Yeah, unique, good instincts. 44:50 Eric He had the space that he knew he could win a puck race because that's a dicey one for a defenseman, right? 44:55 Eric If it gets poked by you, now it's going the other way. 44:57 Eric It could be an on-man rush, especially if there's a jack in the box, right? 45:01 Eric So yeah, I mean, why not? 45:05 Eric Dennis Rodman of Gopher Hockey. 45:09 Eric But I love it. 45:09 Eric But to Vegue's point, I mean, that's potentially a sign of some growth and some confidence and willing to dive deeper in the offensive zone and take a few chances that he maybe wasn't comfortable with as a freshman. 45:23 Eric And they're going to need him and Luke for sure to provide some points from the back end because it's to be determined if others can. 45:37 Eric But you know those two can. 45:38 Eric So they're going to need to put up some points to make this thing go. 45:44 Vegoe Well, and you just look at some of the better Gopher defense in the last couple of years, like Rinzel and Lecombe. 45:49 Vegoe They were very comfortable knowing when to jump up and when to go chase offense in the offensive zone. 45:57 Vegoe And I think that's a confidence thing for players and also knowing that the teammates around them are going to allow them to do that and cover for them. 46:06 Vegoe So I think that takes a little bit of trust as well. 46:10 Vegoe So we would say, you know, you don't touch the stove when the coach tells you, you know, you don't touch the stove when you've done it before. 46:18 Vegoe And you say, I can't do that, but you know, maybe I can grab something next to the stove. 46:22 Eric Yeah, it's, well, it's a TOI thing too, right? 46:25 Eric Like if you're playing mid to high 20s in minutes, you are comfortable, you're feeling confident in your ability to, you know, take a few more chances because you are likely to get out and continue to get a regular shift. 46:40 Eric Whereas if you're a freshman playing mid teens and you're the fifth or sixth defenseman, a lot of times the mentality is like, let's just not screw this up. 46:48 Eric Like, I'm out here to provide defense, I'm out here to not get scored on, I'm out here to give Rinzel a rest so he can score next shift. 46:57 Eric But now I'm the guy who's playing high 20 minutes and I'm the guy who needs to score, so I'm going to go make it happen. 47:02 Eric So it's a little bit of a mentality shift too. 47:06 Jûpe Veegs, honestly, I don't think he would have followed up his shot, you know, last year. 47:12 Jûpe Cause it is a risky play. 47:13 Jûpe There is a guy just coming out of the box. 47:17 Jûpe If it does go the other way, it's dangerous. 47:19 Jûpe It's obviously a big confidence boost and I'm not even sure how he got it passed. 47:23 Jûpe There was quite a few bodies there and he went clean into the goal. 47:27 Vegoe He's got the vision. 47:28 Vegoe He's just got to have a little confidence to go with it apparently. 47:33 Jûpe Definitely interesting. 47:34 Jûpe Well, we need to get in to this week's opponent, but before we do that, we need to talk about our favorite, Cub Foods Veegs. 47:45 Vegoe That's right. 47:45 Jûpe Sorry. 47:49 Vegoe You threw it up and I was waiting for it to come down. 47:53 Vegoe I got it now. 47:54 Vegoe Cub's got you covered too. 47:56 Vegoe I was just down at my Quarry Cub this week. 47:58 Vegoe I got some pumpkin bread loaf. 48:01 Vegoe It was delicious. 48:02 Vegoe The bakeries at Cub's are awesome. 48:05 Vegoe If you want fresh picked apples, pumpkin spice, loaf like I got, Cub's your one stop shop for that stuff. 48:11 Vegoe And they're one of us. 48:12 Vegoe They support this podcast. 48:14 Vegoe They're on PJ Flex headset. 48:16 Vegoe They sponsor the Wild on 7th podcast. 48:18 Vegoe They support all of us. 48:20 Vegoe So swing by your local Cub. 48:21 Vegoe Stock up on your seasonal favorites because nothing says fall in Minnesota like comfort food from Cub. 48:28 Vegoe Cub. 48:28 Eric Shop happy. 48:30 Jûpe Sorry, I didn't mean to throw you off there, Veegs. 48:33 Jûpe This is live. 48:34 Jûpe This is how we do it. 48:35 Eric You just need more TOI, Drew. 48:39 Vegoe He's a 16-year vet now. 48:43 Vegoe We don't have any moments like that anymore. 48:45 Eric You guys track the number of podcasts that you've done? 48:48 Jûpe This is 291. 48:50 Eric 291. 48:51 Jûpe And we've had a couple others like I haven't counted some of the summer shows and some of the like, I think we did some postgame shows and Tampa and things like that. 49:00 Vegoe But and I was in the minor leagues for the first first couple of seasons as well. 49:05 Jûpe Yeah, actually, I think you were on season two. 49:08 Vegoe Yeah. 49:09 Jûpe So you were on season one. 49:12 Jûpe Me, Ryan Cardinal and Hammy, Scott Hamilton. 49:16 Eric Right. 49:17 Jûpe And you know, Hammy kind of retired a couple of years ago. 49:20 Jûpe He just felt his connections with Gopher Hockey. 49:23 Jûpe A certain assistant coach wasn't there anymore. 49:25 Jûpe And he didn't feel he had the insights he used to have. 49:27 Jûpe So sure. 49:28 Jûpe And Ryan Cardinal, he got a job at the Vikings. 49:30 Jûpe He's been doing media for the Vikings for quite a while now. 49:34 Jûpe He used to travel with the team every week. 49:35 Jûpe I think he's more homebound now because he's got kids, but like I said, Veegs came on the second year. 49:42 Jûpe And I mean, he there's sometimes he broadcasted from where Veegs? 49:48 Vegoe The Honda Civic in the parking lot, because I had a newborn in the condo and not a lot of space in a 900 square foot condo to do a podcast and have a baby and a spouse. 49:58 Vegoe So, you know, we had to get creative some years. 50:01 Eric I love the dedication. 50:04 Vegoe I could still get the Wi-Fi from the Civic in the parking lot. 50:07 Eric That's impressive. 50:08 Eric But honestly, you had to have some podcasts with terrible connection. 50:13 Eric There's no way you didn't have a clean slate the whole time, right? 50:17 Jûpe Yeah, we've done fairly well, haven't we? 50:21 Jûpe It's pretty good. 50:22 Jûpe Yeah. 50:23 Jûpe I mean, because we didn't start doing it live until like season three or four. 50:29 Jûpe I'm not really sure. 50:30 Jûpe Because we used to do at least audio live on this program called Mixlr, and we could at least do the audio. 50:37 Jûpe And people could listen in and we could check. 50:39 Jûpe Because we've got the comments here. 50:41 Jûpe We love the interactivity of people, be able to take questions live. 50:47 Jûpe So we've been live for, I want to say, more than 10 years, at least, probably longer. 50:53 Eric Here's a question for you guys that my wife asked me today that I didn't know the answer to. 50:59 Eric How many people do you think listen to the radio broadcasts of the games? 51:08 Jûpe I'm not really sure that. 51:09 Eric You could tell me 18 different numbers and I'd say, yeah, okay, that sounds right. 51:16 Eric I have no idea. 51:18 Jûpe Well that's just it because it's not just radio anymore. 51:23 Jûpe I'd say a lot of people are doing the stream. 51:27 Eric You can go to gophersports.com and the schedule or whatever and you click the link. 51:32 Jûpe Yeah. 51:33 Vegoe You go to the iHeartMedia app and you can get it that way. 51:37 Vegoe I often will have that at the arena and listen on delay to catch up. 51:42 Vegoe Because sometimes the Gopher staff doesn't give us all the information like they do the radio and TV guys. 51:49 Jûpe They do sneak up to the radio guys. 51:51 Vegoe I think that when Leo Grubbo went down in the opening night, he went over to the TV and it's like Leo's out for the game. 51:58 Vegoe He goes to Wall-E, Leo's out for the game. 52:00 Vegoe I send a little note and they're like, he's not in there right now. 52:06 Jûpe I just happened to be there shooting right next to Wall-E and I think Tanner was calling that game and so I heard that. 52:14 Jûpe But I'm not going to say anything because it's not for me to say. 52:17 Vegoe You're respectful. 52:20 Jûpe You just want to stay out of trouble most of the time. 52:25 Jûpe For people who do listen, I Heart has quite a long delay. 52:30 Jûpe It's sometimes a minute and a half or more. 52:32 Jûpe If there is the varsity, was it the varsity sports set? 52:35 Vegoe Varsity was a little quicker. 52:37 Jûpe Varsity will be a little quicker. 52:38 Jûpe So if you're annoyed by it, it's like maybe sometimes 30 to 45 seconds. 52:43 Jûpe It just depends, but that's a good way as well. 52:47 Jûpe And of course, the radio will be what? 52:49 Jûpe Six, seven, ten seconds? 52:53 Jûpe Because it has to go back to... 52:54 Vegoe Even with TV. 52:56 Jûpe Has to go back to wherever in Missouri and then broadcast back or whatever though that stuff is. 53:02 Jûpe So. 53:04 Jûpe Why? 53:05 Jûpe I'm looking. 53:06 Jûpe Yeah, there we go. 53:07 Jûpe Thank you, Motay. 53:08 Jûpe You've been inspired us the last week. 53:11 Jûpe We're trying to get those subscribers up on YouTube. 53:14 Jûpe Obviously we're live there right now. 53:17 Jûpe I've been trying to put more content out from just me showing a quick clip at practice Friday afternoon to I think I did a little pregame thing about how the Gophers are going to do Saturday night. 53:29 Jûpe We tried to take clips from this podcast, put it on YouTube shorts, as well as just clips from interviews during the postgame. 53:39 Jûpe We're trying to build it, Veegs. 53:40 Jûpe We're trying to build it. 53:42 Vegoe That's right. 53:42 Vegoe We appreciate all you come along for the ride. 53:46 Eric You should do a day in the life game day edition of Joop and Veegs. 53:51 Eric >Close to that. 53:53 Eric In between the glass, snapping shots. 53:55 Jûpe Oh, gosh. 53:57 Jûpe I think between the glass, you would have way too much editing. 54:01 Eric Yeah. 54:01 Jûpe Sometimes I just, I did a little clip of just Javon Morris, his very first goal of him just going right by the camera. 54:09 Jûpe Knock, knock, knock my earphones on, right by the camera. 54:13 Jûpe It had like 5,000 views, which is pretty high for content for us. 54:20 Vegoe I like a few days. 54:21 Vegoe I think we'll have to embrace that. 54:23 Vegoe So we'll have to workshop it a little bit. 54:26 Vegoe We will talk about it. 54:27 Vegoe OT and get some ideas. 54:30 Eric I bet you guys, I bet the subscribers on YouTube would love to see what it's like up in the press box and I don't know, rolling through the locker room into the press room or whatever. 54:40 Jûpe Press box would be easier. 54:42 Jûpe Ice level, it would be a lot of, well, you know what happens to them. 54:45 Jûpe Well, actually, you don't. 54:46 Jûpe You're in gold. 54:46 Eric I don't really. 54:47 Eric Yeah, I don't. 54:50 Jûpe Hey, there were times where Pat McAleady broadcasted as the third guy on radio from the box. 54:57 Eric See, I kind of like that. 55:00 Eric I like that because you can give a more authentic feel for what's going on at ice level or maybe how the teams are feeling and reacting at various points in the game. 55:09 Eric But on the flip side of it, when I'm doing radio, I'm often kind of looking at Wally out of the corner of my eye to see when I can jump in and speak and I could see how that could get all messed up when you're not kind of right next to each other. 55:28 Jûpe I think what they did was basically, you know, it was Frank and Wally in the booth and they would just kind of go down to him because... 55:34 Eric Call down. 55:35 Jûpe Yeah, you couldn't keep that mic live. 55:37 Jûpe I mean... 55:37 Eric No. 55:39 Jûpe Well, you could for streaming because technically it's just no FCC when it comes to streaming. 55:45 Jûpe Obviously, the radio portion would be a little different. 55:49 Jûpe You know, I've had some videos, you know, players going by and you hear somebody just go, FNA and like, well, I guess I can't use that video. 55:56 Jûpe You know, you just shouldn't be putting that stuff out. 55:59 Jûpe But I've heard some of them a little bit under their breath. 56:02 Jûpe It wasn't loud enough and I let that go. 56:04 Jûpe But yeah, it's fun. 56:07 Jûpe It'd be interesting, you know, because, you know, Veegs is up in the booth. 56:11 Jûpe He's listening. 56:11 Jûpe He's talking to people. 56:12 Jûpe You're making things happen up there, Veegs, aren't you? 56:14 Vegoe That's right. 56:15 Vegoe I've just brainstormed myself. 56:17 Vegoe We got to do it at the Regional. 56:19 Vegoe Oh, because at the Regional, the Regionals are fun for a lot of people. 56:24 Vegoe Usually we can focus my youth hockey coaching will be done by then. 56:29 Vegoe I'll have more time. 56:31 Vegoe There's always lots of great people at Regionals, other media, other scouts, other coaches and stuff. 56:37 Vegoe I think that's that's our goal. 56:39 Vegoe So stay tuned. 56:40 Vegoe Sue Falls, we hit a thousand subscribers, we'll prep that up. 56:44 Jûpe Sue Falls, I think that's a good idea, Vakes. 56:46 Jûpe I like the way you're thinking. 56:48 Jûpe I like the way you're thinking. 56:49 Jûpe UMD coming in this weekend, Veegs. 56:52 Jûpe Boy, yes, they have been playing lesser competition. 56:56 Jûpe So what? 56:57 Jûpe That first line is deadly. 57:01 Vegoe Yeah. 57:01 Vegoe In a Scott Sandlin team that's successful, the other lines will be hard to play against. 57:07 Vegoe That is usually UMD Hockey as they have a couple of really talented scores who are enabled to play at a high, high level and the rest of the team is hard and structured and chippy and in your face. 57:21 Vegoe You know, the way the Bulldogs have been down the last couple of years, getting off to the start they've gotten off to, we'll probably like prop them up a little bit and be ready to go this weekend. 57:33 Vegoe I think Mary G should be an interesting arena with them coming to town. 57:38 Vegoe I think one thing about the Bulldogs, they do have really good goal-tending this year too. 57:43 Vegoe Gageon and Nett is, you know, highly thought after tender. 57:47 Vegoe So I think Minnesota have their hands full there. 57:51 Vegoe And, you know, we haven't seen Minnesota play consistently. 57:55 Vegoe So playing against a team like Duluth where, you know, the idea for that roster usually is hard to play against consistently. 58:02 Vegoe That can lead to problems for Minnesota sometimes. 58:06 Jûpe Well, since I see this, let's ask the goalie that Eric, who gets start and goal from Dale Beers. 58:13 Eric Yeah, I mean, I think you probably start Luca, right? 58:17 Eric At this point, I mean, don't get me wrong, Eric played great against Boston College. 58:22 Eric So it's not that you necessarily toss him aside yet, but I mean, you kind of got to run with the hot hand because quite frankly, neither of them are really proven commodities yet. 58:31 Eric So I don't know if either one has the workload or the resume to warrant sticking with a guy for an extended period of time without a good run, I guess. 58:47 Eric I'm guessing Bob's going to flip flop them depending on how they play until one emerges, kind of like they did last year, honestly. 58:53 Eric That's typically how he does it and generally how everyone does it when you don't know what you got. 59:01 Eric But you know, you got to reward good play and Luca played good enough to get the win and he only let in one goal last Friday or last Saturday. 59:08 Eric So why not start them again Friday? 59:11 Vegoe And one other thing, Nathan Airy didn't practice today. 59:16 Eric Good school. 59:17 Vegoe It gives a little look at that as well. 59:20 Eric Is it injury or sickness? 59:24 Jûpe Don't say it didn't practice. 59:26 Jûpe It'll go around the whole. 59:28 Jûpe Yeah, you know what it's like. 59:29 Eric I've been to that movie. 59:31 Eric I've been to that movie. 59:32 Eric I remember, God, we were living in the house, so it must have been my junior year. 59:40 Eric We had a game against Michigan and there was a bug going through the whole team, and it was hitting people like a ton of bricks. 59:47 Eric It was fast, but it was hitting people. 59:50 Eric It was going through the whole team all week. 59:53 Eric I lived with Junior Gates at the time, and he woke up fine. 59:57 Eric By 2 p.m., it was not good, and not to get graphic, it was coming out of both ends, and he was like, I just can't play. 1:00:05 Eric We had four guys like that for that weekend. 1:00:09 Eric When you're all living together, and you're all eating meals together, and you're showering together, and you're sharing water bottles, it can get bad fast. 1:00:18 Jûpe Well let's hope it's not that for Aerie. 1:00:21 Jûpe Yeah. 1:00:21 Vegoe So Aerie and Townsend were the only players missing today. 1:00:24 Vegoe Everybody else looked fine for the skate. 1:00:27 Vegoe It was also one of those events where the Gophers opened up practice to some of their supporters. 1:00:34 Vegoe So there are a bunch of fans in the building today watching practice. 1:00:37 Vegoe So I'm not the only person this time who got that kind of information. 1:00:42 Vegoe There are probably another 100 or so faithful and some GPL Podcast listeners there. 1:00:47 Vegoe And they saw that as well. 1:00:50 Jûpe So right out of Vegas. 1:00:52 Jûpe Well, we definitely know Duluth is going to remember what Minnesota did up there last year. 1:00:57 Jûpe 7-5 victory, which was a crazy Friday night, and a 5-1 victory for the sweep. 1:01:04 Jûpe They're going to remember that. 1:01:07 Vegoe Yeah. 1:01:07 Vegoe Last year was a tough year for Duluth Hockey. 1:01:10 Vegoe I think they just had a lot of things going on. 1:01:12 Vegoe Injuries, some kind of departures from their program. 1:01:17 Vegoe You know, Hobie Baker winner left that I coward that they probably were counting on to be back in terms of their roster construction. 1:01:26 Vegoe And just, you know, Scott Sandlin doesn't love the portal as much as some of the other coaches. 1:01:31 Vegoe So I think that maybe kind of hurt them at times and just some challenging time. 1:01:36 Vegoe Sandlin had his hip surgery that he had to go through. 1:01:39 Vegoe So there's that time where he wasn't on the ice really to coach as much as he wanted. 1:01:43 Vegoe So just some some struggles. 1:01:45 Vegoe And I think Sandlin feels like his team's back in a good position this year. 1:01:49 Vegoe And this will be their first real measuring stick. 1:01:52 Vegoe So I think you're going to see a big effort from the Bulldogs and Minnesota is going to have to match that. 1:01:57 Vegoe As Bob says, you know, they've got a long list of enemies and they're playing a lot of them this year. 1:02:03 Vegoe And they all they all have the big target on the M and they want to take their shot. 1:02:10 Jûpe Yeah, like Max is saying here, Mr. 1:02:14 Jûpe Max Plant was missing last year. 1:02:17 Jûpe So we'll see how it goes this year. 1:02:21 Jûpe Eric, give me your prediction on the weekend. 1:02:28 Eric I mean, with what we've seen so far, I don't know how I couldn't go with a split. 1:02:36 Eric I'm going to go lose Friday, win Saturday, coming off a high at Nodak on Friday. 1:02:46 Eric Might be hard to replicate the energy Duluth's playing well. 1:02:50 Eric But again, you said it, they haven't played the sexiest schedule. 1:02:56 Eric But they've taken care of it. 1:02:57 Jûpe They definitely ramped their game up for Minnesota. 1:02:59 Jûpe That's a rivalry for them. 1:03:02 Eric No doubt, no doubt. 1:03:04 Eric But the thing is, if they can corral that top line, I mean, that top line has more than half their goals, right? 1:03:10 Eric And so they're not getting a lot of scoring from other people. 1:03:13 Eric So assuming they can contain them to an extent, I would think that the Gophers have more depth and would have the upper hand as long as those guys don't run the show. 1:03:27 Eric So either way, I mean, with the lack of consistency right now and still feeling it out, I mean, there's six games in, I'm going to say split. 1:03:36 Jûpe Okay, before your prediction, Veegs, how would Minnesota shut them down? 1:03:41 Vegoe I think we're going to see a lot of Luke Middlestadt and Kel Thomas again. 1:03:45 Vegoe You know, that's a recipe that Minnesota can lean on, matching those guys. 1:03:49 Vegoe One of them on the ice every time, Minnesota-Duluth's top line is out there, and having those guys have that defensive focus, maybe putting Jimmy Clark and John Middlestadt exclusively on those guys too, where you just always have kind of a checking line going out against them, looking to stall, put bodies on them, create momentum changes, make them play defense, and then you have your skilled lines get out there looking for more offense. 1:04:18 Vegoe You know, your Paulson line, your Ludkey line, they're looking for a different kind of shifts out there. 1:04:25 Vegoe So I think that's something I would maybe look for out of Minnesota to match up with Minnesota-Duluth this weekend and really focus on making someone else beat you. 1:04:35 Jûpe I'm looking at Kel Thomas is plus three right now for D. 1:04:39 Jûpe The second is Rombach. 1:04:41 Jûpe A third is Gruba. 1:04:44 Jûpe Rombach could plus three Gruba plus two. 1:04:48 Jûpe So they're well, Rombach, everyone's like, oh, he had a bad game. 1:04:52 Jûpe Well, he's plus three right now. 1:04:53 Jûpe So it's hard to argue with those numbers. 1:04:56 Vegoe I always think that bigger players can take a lot of shots from fans because they just, they move one stride a lot, you know, and when they're out of position, it's usually difficult for them to get back into position. 1:05:12 Vegoe But when you have players that have that kind of length and that kind of size, as long as they stay in the good parts of the ice and force the team to the bad parts of the ice, they can kind of dictate the way a game is played. 1:05:24 Vegoe And so I think just Rombach getting comfortable in that and learning where to make the impacts is going to be huge for his learning experience. 1:05:32 Vegoe And having guys like Cal Thomas to help him through that is going to be huge for his development. 1:05:37 Jûpe So what's your prediction? 1:05:40 Vegoe I've got to sweep this weekend for the Gophers. 1:05:43 Vegoe I think they're learning some lessons with how their effort on Friday night can dictate the way a weekend goes. 1:05:51 Vegoe I think the other thing is Minnesota-Duluth is going to see a totally different pace this weekend than they've seen all season. 1:05:58 Vegoe And we've seen that with some Gopher teams where they don't play a very difficult schedule and all of a sudden they play a ranked team, and the mistakes come out. 1:06:08 Vegoe Because you're just not used to that pace, you're not used to that pressure. 1:06:12 Vegoe It can be a difference maker. 1:06:15 Vegoe And I feel like Minnesota at this point of their season, they're ready to maybe put two games back to back. 1:06:20 Vegoe I do think maybe we see Luca get a weekend. 1:06:23 Vegoe The coaching staff wanted to see Aerie get a weekend. 1:06:25 Vegoe Maybe if Luca plays well on Friday, he gets Saturday as well, especially with Aerie missing practice today. 1:06:31 Vegoe So, opportunity for him to get some momentum as well. 1:06:35 Jûpe All right. 1:06:36 Vegoe And I really like the Gopher Top Power Play. 1:06:39 Vegoe With Ludkey on there, they look really dynamic with him as that bumper. 1:06:44 Vegoe And they just were moving the puck so well against North Dakota. 1:06:48 Vegoe And I've seen it continue in practice. 1:06:50 Vegoe They just look really comfortable together. 1:06:53 Jûpe All right. 1:06:55 Jûpe I'm going to pick Sweep as well. 1:06:59 Jûpe I was kind of thinking, Split, earlier, but you convinced me, Veegs. 1:07:03 Jûpe You got me on the moté bandwagon there, Taylor Kearns. 1:07:08 Jûpe So, that makes moté happy. 1:07:11 Jûpe What else we got work going on this week, Veegs? 1:07:14 Jûpe So, you went to media today. 1:07:15 Jûpe It was good, except for Aerie not playing. 1:07:18 Vegoe Except for Aerie not playing and Townsend still being slow to come back. 1:07:23 Vegoe I think having Leo Gruba have a good week. 1:07:25 Vegoe Yeah, it's good for his confidence. 1:07:27 Vegoe And I think having that power play unit looking like they're clicking in the penalty kill unit looking like they're clicking, bodes well for Minnesota going forward. 1:07:37 Jûpe All right. 1:07:38 Jûpe Eric, thanks for coming on again, man. 1:07:40 Jûpe You ready for some overtime? 1:07:42 Eric Yeah, let's do it. 1:07:44 Jûpe Definitely, definitely got to do it here. 1:07:45 Jûpe Let's go. 1:07:46 Jûpe Well, that's going to do it for this episode of The GPL Podcast. 1:07:50 Jûpe We'll be back next week for the big Badger series in Madtown with, of course, our guest will be Todd Molesky. 1:08:00 Jûpe And then who knows? 1:08:02 Jûpe I love that Badger weekend. 1:08:03 Jûpe I'm still considering going down there. 1:08:05 Jûpe We'll have to see. 1:08:07 Jûpe But for the rest of you, either watching live or on YouTube, stay tuned for overtime. 1:08:11 Jûpe But the rest of you will catch you next week on The GPL Podcast. 1:08:28 Jûpe If you are watching on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and get notified each time we go live or post a video. 1:08:34 Jûpe If you listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please rate our show and leave a review. 1:08:45 Jûpe For those of you watching live, you know what's next. 1:08:48 Jûpe It's Vegoe's Beverage of the Week. 1:08:53 Jûpe It's time for Overtime.