0:05 This is The GPL Podcast, part of the Pulltab Sports family. 0:10 Oh boy. 0:12 Jup making mistakes. 0:13 I love it. 0:28 Over, under for this game, it's seven. 0:31 Over, which is a big number. 0:34 Hammer, here's the hammer. 0:35 Hammer, over, hammer the over. 0:40 Freddy, let's go to Cabela's. 0:43 Take that, you stinkin Badgers. 0:45 Now, here's Jupiter and Vegoe. 0:53 Jûpe Good evening, and welcome to The GPL Podcast, episode number 292. 1:01 Jûpe Veegs, there he is. 1:03 Jûpe How are you doing tonight? 1:05 Vegoe Great. 1:05 Vegoe You brought the A-game with that opener. 1:07 Vegoe Holy smokes. 1:10 Vegoe What a good one. 1:13 Vegoe Much better than the Gopher performance on the ISIS last weekend. 1:18 Jûpe It is true. 1:18 Vegoe Way to change your best. 1:20 Jûpe Yeah, you gotta do what you gotta do. 1:24 Jûpe I got a good one coming up for Dan Moog in about a month or so. 1:28 Jûpe So that'll be fun as well. 1:30 Jûpe Veegs, you know, we've been trying to push our YouTube channel a lot lately. 1:35 Jûpe You know, we've been doing video on the podcast for five years now, since kind of the COVID thing around that time. 1:42 Jûpe But, you know, we still have the audio podcast, but the video is really where we've been getting more into doing more clips. 1:49 Jûpe Obviously, we've been doing post-game videos for quite a while. 1:53 Jûpe So we're just trying to push content. 1:54 Jûpe So if you're watching live on Twitter right now, go over to our YouTube page. 1:58 Jûpe You can watch us live there. 1:59 Jûpe You can comment while we're doing the show live here on Tuesday night and subscribe to our channel, Veegs. 2:06 Jûpe We're just trying to push more people towards our channel. 2:10 Vegoe One of the funnest thing about our little podcast we have going here is our community. 2:15 Vegoe When I'm at the rink and people say hi, that's awesome. 2:18 Vegoe Hey, if you're one of those people that really support us, subscribe to the channel, it helps us quite a bit. 2:23 Vegoe It helps more people find Gopher Nation and talk about the great game of hockey. 2:29 Jûpe And while speaking with Dan, he became our 800th subscriber. 2:33 Vegoe No prize, Dan, I'm sorry. 2:34 Jûpe All right. 2:35 Vegoe 800. 2:36 Jûpe Hopefully you got notified, Dan, and you're watching right now. 2:40 Jûpe Veegs, before we get into this weekend, it's Badger Week, man. 2:44 Jûpe Are you excited? 2:45 Vegoe I am excited because I think the Badger program is back on an even playing field with the Gophers again. 2:53 Vegoe They had a little bit of a setback to their program for a couple of years. 2:56 Vegoe I think Mike Hastings has finally righted the ship. 2:59 Vegoe And I think we've got someone on who can maybe enlighten us about that process. 3:03 Jûpe Well, he is our number one guest, Todd Milewski. 3:06 Jûpe Let's bring him in now. 3:07 Jûpe Todd, how are you doing tonight? 3:09 Todd Oh, look at that. 3:10 Todd GopherPuckLive YouTube subscriber, Todd Milewski. 3:13 Jûpe Yes, look at that. 3:14 Jûpe Just like Jack Ramsey a couple of weeks ago. 3:17 Todd That's who I'm stealing it from. 3:19 Todd Apologies, but yeah. 3:22 Jûpe Well, we appreciate it, Todd. 3:23 Jûpe And you know, I miss your videos. 3:26 Jûpe You don't do them much anymore. 3:28 Jûpe You know, the station doesn't, or the newspaper doesn't like, yeah, it's not getting enough clicks. 3:32 Jûpe But a lot of us Gopher friends enjoyed your Facebook videos. 3:37 Todd It's, yeah, thank you. 3:41 Todd It got to be a like, okay, I can spend this 20 minutes finishing this story and getting home, or I can spend this extra 20 minutes on Facebook, which I enjoyed. 3:53 Todd And I think you guys, you know, probably saw that in it. 3:57 Jûpe But Veegs, you were a guest too, weren't you? 3:59 Todd He was, yeah, a couple of times. 4:00 Vegoe Couple of times I popped on there. 4:02 Vegoe I was excited. 4:03 Vegoe I'd hear it going on in the background. 4:04 Vegoe I was like, I gotta be a part of that. 4:07 Todd All right, maybe it comes out, maybe this weekend. 4:09 Todd All right, maybe I do this Thursday, Saturday. 4:13 Jûpe Thursday, although it's got it's about TV is eight o'clock. 4:16 Todd Start. 4:17 Vegoe Oh, you're going to be Saturday. 4:19 Vegoe Just just recap it again for us. 4:21 Vegoe All right. 4:21 Todd Yeah, that sounds that sounds fair. 4:22 Jûpe And then we'll come bug you in the live chat. 4:27 Jûpe Sure. 4:27 Jûpe I think that's fair. 4:28 Todd I'm good with that. 4:29 Todd Yeah, absolutely. 4:29 Vegoe It's called engagement, Jupe. 4:31 Vegoe We like engagement. 4:32 Jûpe Yeah, yeah, we do like engagement, yes. 4:36 Jûpe But we do give Todd a hard time. 4:37 Jûpe But OK, OK, we don't give you too much of a hard time. 4:40 Jûpe But I do notice a lot of Gopher fans that are watching our podcast are the ones watching your Facebook videos. 4:47 Jûpe So the more the people do that, the better. 4:50 Jûpe And the more he'll do it often. 4:51 Jûpe But hopefully this weekend, knock on wood, we can get you to do a Facebook video. 4:57 Todd I will plan one for after Saturday, because that will be after the double border battle. 5:02 Todd We'll recap it all. 5:04 Todd Let's do that. 5:06 Jûpe Well, Veegs, let's recap this past weekend. 5:09 Jûpe Minnesota-Duluth comes to town and pretty much takes care of Minnesota 3-0, 4-1. 5:17 Jûpe I know you love the second game better, but one goal on the weekend for Minnesota is just not going to work. 5:27 Vegoe Yeah, I think it was kind of one of those weekends where Minnesota played pretty passively against Minnesota-Duluth, and that usually is not going to work well unless you have high-end talent. 5:41 Vegoe And the Gophers have talent, but they don't have that first-round pick, you know, one of the best player in college hockey type talents. 5:50 Vegoe And I think this team has to figure out that they're going to play a different way. 5:55 Vegoe And too many times this year we've seen the Gophers be kind of hesitant in the game, and you can't be successful with a roster like they have playing hesitant. 6:06 Vegoe You have to play confident, you have to play with authority, and I thought they did that in the first four to six minutes on Friday night. 6:14 Vegoe I talked about going into the series that I thought Minnesota would surprise UMD with their speed, their pace, their aggressiveness, because we saw that against North Dakota, we saw that against BC, we saw that against Michigan Tech, we saw the speed that this team can play with. 6:30 Vegoe But once UMD got that first goal, everything got fell apart. 6:36 Jûpe It was all gone. 6:37 Vegoe It was all gone. 6:38 Vegoe And all the confidence slipped away, and I kept looking back at that winter classic Bruce Boudreaux tongue lashing he gave to the Capitals. 6:46 Vegoe You know, when they're leading up to the winter classic, he's like, I've never seen a group of guys feel so sorry for themselves. 6:54 Vegoe Get that out of your brain. 6:56 Vegoe You're in the NHL. 6:57 Vegoe So they scored a couple goals against you. 6:59 Vegoe You have the opportunity to change things. 7:02 Vegoe And I just felt like it took Minnesota a long time to change things. 7:06 Vegoe And even on Saturday, they did play better. 7:09 Vegoe But you know, you can't have that kind of effort and expect to get good results. 7:16 Jûpe Well, let's talk about Saturday then. 7:19 Jûpe Because I know you were a little happier about Saturday. 7:22 Jûpe The results just weren't there. 7:24 Vegoe Yeah, I think they had more contributors on Saturday. 7:27 Vegoe They looked like they had a little bit better pace getting out of the zone, getting pucks in the offensive zone. 7:32 Vegoe And they were just a little more connected. 7:36 Vegoe And guys were harder on the four-check. 7:38 Vegoe They were harder in the one-on-one battles. 7:40 Vegoe And that's where they're going to have to get their offense from. 7:43 Vegoe You know, a couple of bad bounces didn't go their way. 7:46 Vegoe Maybe a tough call at the end when it looked like Minnesota was having some momentum. 7:50 Vegoe But just, you know, it's not enough. 7:52 Vegoe You know, you can't have all these series where you're getting one or two goals a night. 7:56 Vegoe You know, you got to get to three. 7:58 Vegoe And Minnesota didn't look like they were getting there in any fashion against UMD this weekend. 8:05 Jûpe And on the opposite side, Todd, Wisconsin's had a great start to the year. 8:09 Jûpe They haven't lost the game yet. 8:12 Todd Yeah, you can look at the competition as a path towards being 4-0-1-2. 8:21 Todd The first two wins against Lindenwood, at Lindenwood. 8:24 Todd They had to go there, but they stumbled right out of the gate against Lindenwood last season. 8:29 Todd So I think that was a step. 8:33 Todd Having a pretty impressive couple of games down there, that was one step. 8:37 Todd I had a week off, played the under 18 team, and did what they need to do there, which last year they lost to the under 18 team. 8:46 Todd So it's another one of those things of like, okay, you're turning the page, you're doing a different thing. 8:50 Jûpe Not getting any injuries too. 8:52 Jûpe That's always key. 8:53 Todd Well, getting there a little bit, but the under 18 team in October is a lot different than the under 18 team in February and March. 9:01 Todd So that's also a difference. 9:03 Todd And this year's group, I don't know if, you know, it's quite there, but then having Minnesota State here in Madison, obviously, there's a lot built into that one with the Mike Hastings, Todd Knaut connections there, the players on both sides that played for the other team, got out of that with two ties in which they, you know, didn't play all that well for most of the series, but found a way which was progress for them. 9:33 Todd And then, Alaska, this last weekend here, fell behind again, came back, got a win, got two wins. 9:43 Todd So yeah, it's been a better start than they had last year, which was desperately needed. 9:51 Todd They couldn't fall into another hole like they did last year and think they were going to get out of it easily. 9:59 Jûpe Now, I saw your photos at the drop of the puck every game. 10:02 Jûpe I was kind of disappointed in the Mankato crowds. 10:07 Jûpe Yeah. 10:08 Jûpe That first game, I believe it was a third, was that a third game or? 10:12 Todd Yeah, right. 10:12 Todd That was a Thursday, Friday. 10:14 Jûpe Yeah. 10:15 Jûpe It usually fills in a little better because like, it's always kind of a later-Iron crowd. 10:19 Jûpe People come in after every stoppage. 10:21 Jûpe So it wasn't as bad as your photo. 10:24 Jûpe But I was still a little surprised that, you know, Hastings is playing his old team and the crowd just wasn't there. 10:32 Todd It's a little bit of a October trend lately, that October games here just don't get a lot of traction, even if the team, like a couple of years ago, started off really well, but the interest doesn't pick up until January, February. 10:53 Todd And that's one of the reasons why they're not thrilled with having the Minnesota Series last year in November, this year, October, November. 11:05 Todd But it happens. 11:06 Todd Minnesota had it early at home two years in a row before that, so it all evens out, I'm sure. 11:15 Todd But yeah, it's, things have been slowly coming up a little bit, I guess. 11:24 Jûpe You know, winning helps. 11:25 Jûpe Winning's big. 11:26 Todd It does. 11:27 Todd And attendance got so far down that apathy did set in. 11:31 Jûpe We know all about that. 11:33 Todd Well, right. 11:35 Todd It's really hard to dig out of that. 11:36 Todd You need to find a way to connect with people, and whether it's promotions, whether it's, you know, having the buzz of a big student section that maybe you just let in for free and here, makes noise for us and makes us a fun place to be. 11:54 Todd That can turn things around, too. 11:56 Todd They've done a pretty good job in getting youth hockey groups in. 12:01 Todd And so that's been good to see. 12:02 Todd But, you know, that's not exactly easy because a lot of them are playing on the weekend. 12:07 Todd So that isn't a real stable kind of group to count on there. 12:14 Todd But yeah, winning cures a lot and winning cures attendance problems in a big way. 12:22 Jûpe And Veegs really, it's kind of a similar problem for Minnesota. 12:25 Jûpe I was surprised at the crowd that showed up against BC, a crowd that showed up against Duluth. 12:34 Jûpe I think I saw the attendance for Saturday was, it said 9,500. 12:38 Jûpe So that's telling me when you get your scan data, you'll see that there's quite a bit of scans that probably fairly high, 2,000 to 3,000. 12:50 Vegoe Yeah. 12:50 Vegoe I mean, you're always expecting 20 to 30%, you know, not showing up. 12:54 Vegoe And so when you're only selling 9,000, 9,500, you're not expecting probably more than eight in the building for those games. 13:02 Vegoe So I've been surprised, Minnesota, you know, such a strong schedule to have, you know, old rival Tech opening weekend, and Tech brought a lot of fans. 13:10 Vegoe You know, Boston College, you know, national power team, you know, a lot of draft picks, good team, good rivalry, good hockey. 13:18 Vegoe Minnesota-Duluth, you expect that building to be sold out, at least for that one, because we talk about these in-state rivals being so important and we just haven't seen it in the crowd so far. 13:32 Vegoe It's interesting to see because I think the ticket prices for Gopher Hockey are pretty reasonable right now compared to everything else in town. 13:40 Vegoe So it has been a little bit of a surprise for me. 13:43 Jûpe And even on the media side, Todd, I've found that I have been down there alone with Bob Motzko after the Thursday BC game and after one of the Duluth games. 13:56 Jûpe And Tech. 13:58 Jûpe So it's not just, you know, we're there, but these are not our jobs. 14:02 Jûpe VEGGS, you've got coaching. 14:04 Jûpe It's like we can't be at every game. 14:05 Jûpe We try to get as many as we can. 14:07 Jûpe But the media is not covering. 14:09 Jûpe How is that on your end? 14:10 Jûpe Are you sometimes one of the few people there at the end of a game at home? 14:16 Todd Yeah, that's been the way that it's kind of trended over the last few years. 14:22 Todd There's been a little bit more interest lately. 14:25 Todd Occasionally, the Milwaukee Paper has someone there, and there's some other websites that are there occasionally. 14:35 Todd But yeah, I think in Minneapolis, we know once football season ends, then there's more availability, right? 14:46 Todd Randy Johnson is there once football is done. 14:51 Todd And yeah, it's, you know, people show up for games that matter, right? 14:56 Todd And that's why October is tough. 14:59 Todd And maybe not the best, you know, example to put up on anything. 15:03 Todd But the games in October count for the same as the games in March, you know, the games in February and early March. 15:10 Todd So it's unfortunate that way, but it's also a product of just the length of the season that hockey has. 15:18 Todd And you know, they've talked about this in NHL too. 15:21 Todd It's a long time to keep in fan-based interest. 15:27 Todd And it's, you know, I think it's the same way with college hockey, that you're asking people to pay attention for close to six months, if not more than six months. 15:38 Todd And when there's all sorts of other things going on in their lives, if not just the sports world around them. 15:46 Todd So, yeah, it's a lot to ask, and there's a lot more demands on people now. 15:53 Todd So I understand it. 15:55 Todd It's not a great visual, like you talk about, but it's part of the world today. 16:02 Todd And I think people look at the half empty coal center, and, you know, oh, that's terrible. 16:08 Todd It's like, yeah, it's still one of the biggest crowds you're ever going to get in college hockey. 16:12 Todd And that's when people, you know, maybe forget. 16:15 Todd Yeah, when there were 14 and 15,000 in there on a nightly basis back in the in the mid 2000s, how much of an anomaly was that? 16:24 Todd That was the like, probably the unsustainable part. 16:30 Todd And now it's fallen the other way. 16:33 Vegoe How many seats are there in Le Bon? 16:37 Todd 2,200 and change. 16:39 Vegoe I sometimes wish that these other... 16:42 Vegoe I wish these other rinks were just like a little bit bigger. 16:45 Vegoe And it would be such a good fit for a passionate crowd. 16:48 Vegoe Cause you look at all the new rinks being built in College Hockey, they're all in that four to 6,000 range. 16:54 Todd Perfect size, yeah, where you got the man, yeah. 16:57 Vegoe Yeah, USCHO did a great podcast this last week where they were talking about all the investments in hockey that have been made the last decade in these buildings and just they're intentionally building them this size. 17:09 Vegoe Like UConn was criticized for being too small. 17:13 Vegoe It's probably perfect for them. 17:15 Vegoe Right. 17:15 Vegoe You know, you're guaranteeing a great atmosphere most nights. 17:18 Vegoe And I think that's really when College Hockey delivers is a passionate crowd that looks full. 17:25 Vegoe And that's why I think for Wisconsin and Minnesota, the bar is so high to fill those buildings. 17:30 Vegoe It can be a challenge. 17:32 Todd I think about Michigan State in that context of, you know, five years ago, they were struggling to get more than 3,000 in that building. 17:39 Todd And then, you know, now they are full up with a waiting list and people are, you know, hurting to try and get in for games. 17:49 Todd And that's at, you know, 6,000, I want to say, around 6,000 seat venue. 17:54 Todd And which, I mean, is really good for College Hockey. 18:00 Todd That's about what a building should be. 18:08 Todd You know, for years, Wisconsin played at the Dane County Coliseum. 18:12 Todd 8,600 fans, you know, sold it out for decades. 18:19 Todd And even that got to be a challenge toward the end. 18:23 Todd And so then you move into a much bigger building, got a lot more seats to fill, prices are about the same, the demand isn't there. 18:30 Todd It really changes the dynamic of, instead of, you know, having to be a season ticket holder, and then you've sold your tickets for the season, now you can pick and choose. 18:41 Todd And it's a lot more on the school to make it a draw, to make it a promotion thing. 18:47 Todd Is it a, you know, winning obviously does it like we're talking about, but there's more to it that has come into it over the last couple of decades here. 18:58 Jûpe And of course, St. 18:59 Jûpe Thomas just opened up their arena this past weekend as well. 19:02 Jûpe Looks gorgeous. 19:03 Vegoe Yeah. 19:04 Vegoe I mean, that's the way to do it, right? 19:06 Vegoe Is to build these really nice arenas with nice suites, club sections, you know, premium seating. 19:11 Vegoe St. 19:12 Vegoe Thomas definitely delivered on the recipe right now. 19:16 Jûpe But you got to look at the times too, you know, when Minnesota built Mariucci and then, you know, you got the Cole Center, you've got the Ralph. 19:23 Jûpe When they opened those things, they were all full, and they were all rolling in the money vagues. 19:30 Vegoe So I think when you didn't have the NHL in town, it made a lot of sense to have a big Mariucci. 19:34 Vegoe You know, it just was perfect time in the Wilderback. 19:37 Vegoe You know, the team of 18,000 over there draws a lot of dollars and fan interest, and it's just a different level. 19:45 Jûpe Definitely a different level. 19:48 Jûpe So let's close the book on this weekend, Veegs. 19:52 Jûpe Bob wasn't happy with a lot of execution. 19:56 Jûpe I noticed he kind of separated effort execution a bit on Friday night. 20:02 Vegoe But he keeps bringing up the word effort. 20:04 Vegoe And all of his media, like since then, it's like he's like, I really put my foot in my mouth, but he keeps bringing it up. 20:12 Vegoe And I think that's frustrating as a coach, that you have to have effort from your team. 20:17 Vegoe Like that should be a non-negotiable thing as a coach at this level. 20:21 Vegoe His players should just bring effort every night, and that shouldn't be a concern. 20:27 Vegoe I don't think I've seen Minnesota have a weekend where that's been lacking, probably since Bob's first year here. 20:34 Vegoe You know, it's been a long time since effort's been mentioned by a coach in the postgame. 20:40 Vegoe And that's the biggest takeaway from the weekend for me. 20:44 Jûpe All right, then. 20:45 Jûpe Well, that'll finish this kind of first second. 20:47 Jûpe That means we need to talk about one of our sponsors, Veegs, Gateway Fiber. 20:53 Jûpe They're getting everyone set up on the north end with high-speed internet. 20:57 Vegoe Yeah, Gateway Fiber brings the effort all the time. 21:00 Vegoe And if you, you know, need high-speed internet, if you're doing, you know, Zoom meetings, if you're doing a podcast, if you're watching a good stream, you got to have fiber. 21:09 Vegoe And in Minnesota, we're the state of hockey. 21:11 Vegoe Bad internet connection is like a bad line change. 21:13 Vegoe It slows everything down, causes chaos, might even lose the game. 21:18 Vegoe It's going to be frustrating. 21:19 Vegoe You know, we want someone who's not going to be in the penalty box or put us in the penalty box. 21:24 Vegoe You want two gigabits per second. 21:26 Vegoe Gateway Fiber is your internet. 21:27 Vegoe So they're just not another provider. 21:29 Vegoe They're on your team. 21:30 Vegoe Visit gatewayfiber.com or call 1-800-201-4339 to see if Gateway Fiber is available in your area because life is too short for bad internet. 21:43 Jûpe All right, let's get to Veegs top 20 for this week. 21:50 Jûpe You're starting to get a little more sense of what's going on Veegs, but it's still a little crazy trying to figure out where you want to put people or teams, I should say. 22:01 Vegoe It feels like everybody in the top 20 is losing games at some point. 22:05 Vegoe It's not like someone is just clearly running away with things. 22:10 Vegoe I've still got Minnesota in my top 20. 22:12 Vegoe They are just hanging on by a thread. 22:15 Vegoe I heard Jim Connolly on his podcast kind of chastised voters who still have them in their top 20. 22:20 Vegoe I look at some of these teams that are on the fringe of the top 20. 22:24 Vegoe I just don't think a lot of those teams have key wins. 22:27 Vegoe Where they'll have a key win and they'll have like four or five bad losses to go with it. 22:31 Vegoe So it's really tough in College Hockey this year to figure out who's who. 22:36 Vegoe One thing that's becoming clear is you look at the inter-conference records. 22:40 Vegoe Michigan State, Michigan, Penn State are really good. 22:45 Vegoe Those are three teams that are winning a lot of games. 22:47 Vegoe You look at the national picture for tournament bids. 22:51 Vegoe Those three have pulled a lot of weight for the Big Ten. 22:54 Vegoe Wisconsin as well, they made my top 20 this week. 22:57 Vegoe You know, they've had a very good non-conference record so far. 23:00 Vegoe I don't know if Wisconsin has quite the schedule strength, but when you don't lose many games, it still contributes quite a bit. 23:09 Vegoe The middle of the top 20, who knows what's going to happen. 23:13 Vegoe Minnesota-Duluth really impressed me this weekend. 23:16 Vegoe They hadn't really played anybody until Minnesota. 23:19 Vegoe So, very impressive performance from them. 23:22 Vegoe You know, Hockey East, you know, they're a good league, but there's a lot of inconsistency there. 23:27 Vegoe You know, BU, BC, Providence, Maine have all had, Connecticut, all had kind of some struggles here, but I'm confident those are good teams. 23:35 Vegoe Who's the best team out of that group? 23:37 Vegoe Are they going to be like a number one type seed? 23:40 Vegoe I don't really know yet. 23:44 Jûpe How does this compare to your list, Todd? 23:46 Jûpe Who did you have as number one? 23:48 Todd Top is pretty similar. 23:50 Todd I'm thinking through, I know through five for sure. 23:54 Todd I don't remember where I had North Dakota, but somewhere in that six to eight range somewhere. 24:02 Todd Yeah, and look, you know, BU's had, you know, some losses, they're going to be fine. 24:07 Todd I mean, this is, it's October. 24:10 Todd It's, everyone's bouncing around everywhere in the first month of the season. 24:19 Todd I'm, I think I'm higher on Ohio State. 24:24 Todd This is probably about where you, where I have them now, but I had them higher before. 24:29 Todd I'm, this is like the Steve Rollick, like perfect set up. 24:35 Todd No one's expecting much out of them coming into the season. 24:38 Todd A lot of players, you know, who's on the team? 24:41 Todd I don't know. 24:42 Todd You know, we're throwing out this group that we have. 24:46 Todd And they're, we're gonna all know them by the end of the season. 24:49 Todd And this is the way it works for them. 24:51 Todd They consistently over deliver. 24:54 Todd And so I'm, I'm cautiously thinking they are a team that really could, now they could make a jump here. 25:04 Todd The results so far have been a little, you know, a little up and down for me. 25:09 Jûpe You know, I look at this comment, one little comment here, no Cornell on there. 25:13 Jûpe Ha ha. 25:15 Jûpe I think someone's poking at Adam Woden, but he did get some, they did get some votes, didn't they Veegs? 25:20 Jûpe Yep. 25:21 Vegoe They're, they're in the poll this week. 25:25 Vegoe So the one team I'm probably maybe a little low on here is Quinnipiac. 25:29 Vegoe You know, maybe they're better than seven. 25:33 Vegoe You know, they just have had some games where I haven't been impressed. 25:36 Vegoe I've watched a little bit of ESPN Plus and seen them. 25:40 Vegoe But you know, it's hard, it's hard to know right now. 25:44 Jûpe And it doesn't help, but there's been, like you said, a lot of chaos, a lot of strange upsets, you know, big teams losing to weak teams at home. 25:52 Jûpe It's just, it's been chaotic, Todd. 25:56 Todd I think that's, that's good in general, though. 26:00 Todd Yes, I think I don't want to see somebody, you know, three teams run off to 10-0 starts and, you know, nobody touches them and they don't play each other. 26:09 Todd So a lot of this is that we've seen a lot of, especially non-conference, you know, games so far, the big teams are playing the big teams, and that's refreshing to see. 26:20 Todd Michigan State, BU, Michigan, Western Michigan last weekend. 26:26 Todd We're going to see more, you know, as the conference season go on, but we don't always see those, maybe this number of big games this early in the season. 26:37 Todd And I think that's, that goes into the why, you know, there's so many losses among those top 10 teams coming in, because they're playing each other. 26:45 Vegoe Yeah, I mean, we had the Quinnipiac main series last weekend too, like a good hockey, ECAC matchup. 26:52 Vegoe So I think we're seeing a lot of the top teams play each other, but we're also seeing some like the bottom teams play each other. 26:58 Vegoe So you're trying to say, okay, they're like 6-0, or they're like 7-1-1 or something, but how good are they? 27:05 Vegoe Because they haven't really played teams like in the top 15. 27:09 Vegoe The Miamis of the world? 27:10 Vegoe Yeah, the Miamis of the world. 27:13 Vegoe So I think it's interesting there, because I look at the MPI right now, and it's basically useless. 27:18 Todd Right. 27:19 Vegoe So sometimes you look at it this time of year, and you're starting to see some trends or something. 27:27 Jûpe It kind of stays close to around what the top 20 is. 27:31 Jûpe It's not too far off. 27:34 Vegoe But right now, the MPI seems pretty useless to see anything nationally. 27:38 Vegoe Because usually, you know, as we get done with the non-conference schedules, I feel like pairwise started to show some stuff at this point of year. 27:47 Todd Yeah. 27:48 Todd We're gonna have to kind of figure out with the NPI when is it legitimate, or at least somewhat legitimate of a record, yeah. 27:58 Jûpe Because I think, well, you know, Adam Wood did publish his and it was just all goofy. 28:03 Jûpe And Tim Bruhle showed up on Saturday VEGS and he's like, I did it and it was just so bad, I refused to publish it. 28:13 Jûpe And he's kind of along the idea of UITS. 28:16 Jûpe He's thinking more still late December. 28:19 Jûpe I think just that's just more him kind of, you know, protecting his numbers like since he kind of came up with that whole thing, you know, 20 years ago, but he's thinking it might be closer to, you know, getting into some league season and December. 28:36 Vegoe But what was crazy about the pairwise is it sort of made sense at this time of year. 28:41 Vegoe I mean, it wasn't going to tell you everything, but you could at least look at the pairwise rankings and they kind of made sense with results and things like that. 28:50 Vegoe Like right now, I think MPI, like you're looking at teams at the top. 28:53 Vegoe It's like Minnesota State and Wisconsin. 28:56 Jûpe Wisconsin. 28:58 Vegoe How's that possible? 29:01 Jûpe So a live update from Nick Angel, Vegoe has some flow rocking. 29:08 Jûpe He's liking the flow tonight. 29:10 Jûpe Yeah, you're looking good there, Veegs. 29:12 Vegoe Yeah, you know, I got a little Duke Cannon in there. 29:14 Vegoe So I do have the flow in there. 29:18 Vegoe So it's helping. 29:20 Jûpe All right. 29:21 Jûpe Let's take a look at other things here. 29:24 Jûpe Veegs, I go to the game Saturday night. 29:27 Jûpe I didn't really look at the roster. 29:28 Jûpe I'm like, I didn't really know. 29:29 Jûpe So wait, what was it? 29:31 Jûpe Graham Harris, my wife, nice Graham Harris. 29:35 Jûpe Both Thomas and Luddke were out and we really had no idea that was even coming. 29:41 Vegoe Yeah. 29:42 Vegoe Tanner Luddke has something viral. 29:45 Vegoe I was trying to read the tea leaves about Thomas being short term and Luddke being maybe a couple of weeks. 29:52 Vegoe And it turns out Luddke is going to be out a couple of weeks. 29:55 Vegoe So he was dealing with it a little bit at North Dakota, was playing through it, went through it on the first game against Minnesota Duluth. 30:02 Vegoe And they just decided to pull him for Saturday and let him get back to 100%. 30:07 Vegoe So that was a surprise. 30:08 Vegoe Mason Moe had to move back to center. 30:11 Vegoe Maybe actually that's a good fit for him. 30:13 Vegoe He was one of the players from Minnesota that impressed me during the weekend. 30:18 Vegoe You're trying to look at the Gopher roster and like what forwards are delivering right now. 30:22 Vegoe Mason Moe was definitely one of them. 30:24 Vegoe And then Cal Thomas has an injury that is nagging him right now. 30:30 Vegoe They held him out of practice Monday and Tuesday this week. 30:33 Vegoe But Bob Motzko at Availability Today said it's looking like he can play this weekend. 30:38 Vegoe I think one of the things is with the Thursday, Saturday game, maybe it makes it easier for him to play through it. 30:45 Vegoe It has a little time in between the games to recover. 30:48 Vegoe So they're hopeful that he's going to play this week. 30:51 Vegoe Kind of a nagging injury. 30:54 Jûpe And I'll bring this one up from Matthew. 30:57 Jûpe Graham Harris is an absolute dog and deserves a spot in the lineup. 31:02 Jûpe I noticed him right away Saturday night, Veegs. 31:06 Vegoe Yeah, I mean, he's one of those players who wasn't waiting for things to happen. 31:10 Vegoe He was engaging. 31:12 Vegoe He was making quick decisions. 31:13 Vegoe He was forcing the other team to make decisions. 31:16 Vegoe Those are things you want out of your forwards right now. 31:19 Vegoe You want them to be direct. 31:21 Vegoe Minnesota has played really well against North Dakota and BC. 31:24 Vegoe It's because they were on the battle's early physical contact before the puck beat battle even happened. 31:30 Vegoe That's going to be critical for Minnesota. 31:32 Vegoe Graham Harris continues to do that. 31:34 Vegoe You know, he's going to get spot in the lineup. 31:36 Vegoe I mean, you look at his age. 31:38 Vegoe I think he's the same age as Brody Lamb or older. 31:42 Vegoe So he's an experienced player who's paid his dues. 31:45 Jûpe How has Wisconsin been doing on the injury area? 31:49 Todd If it's been dinged up a little bit early, Zach Schultz has missed the last, I want to say, two weeks. 32:00 Todd I think he went, and a lot of the injuries have been in practice, honestly, which is not encouraging, but lower body for him. 32:09 Todd They had backup goalie Eli Pulver had a injury in practice last week. 32:14 Todd Didn't dress in either of those games. 32:16 Todd And you get into the coaches are really hating the roster limits and the goalies and everything like that, because it's a tricky spot. 32:29 Todd If you lose a goalie for a long period of time, and you only have two, and the coaches don't love going through practices, and we can practice for two goalies. 32:38 Jûpe But unless you're Michigan Tech, don't they have like 30 guys in the roster? 32:42 Todd Well, when you don't opt in to the settlement, I guess you can still do that. 32:51 Todd But yeah, it sounds like they're both on their way back, and Scholl is expected to play this week. 32:59 Vegoe I do wonder how quickly that rule changes. 33:03 Vegoe The decision was made by non-Hockey people. 33:06 Vegoe It sounds like the NCAA is maybe turning over their rules committee to Hockey people instead of going through this process that they've gone through for years. 33:15 Vegoe Because I think this is impacting a lot of teams. 33:18 Todd Yeah, it's just that that was baked into the settlement, which is then codified in all sorts of... 33:29 Todd becomes NCAA bylaws there. 33:31 Todd And so I don't know how much when you get into the sport by sport level, they're going to have a say over that part of it, the number. 33:42 Todd But I do hope they add some leeway, some tolerance for... 33:51 Todd specifically for a goalie in hockey. 33:53 Todd Because it's... 33:54 Todd this is different than any other position. 33:58 Todd You know, in baseball, you have, you know, 20 pitchers. 34:02 Todd In hockey, you have three goalies, and you have to dress two. 34:05 Todd You have to dress two, or the game cannot start. 34:08 Todd So if you lose two of them, you've got to throw somebody in the pads and just have them sit on the bench and hope your other goalie doesn't get hurt. 34:17 Todd So, you know, illness, injury, all that can happen. 34:22 Todd I hope there's some way of figuring this out, because the real concern is the practice week of, you know, not overtaxing goalies through that and still getting the reps in for the rest of the players against goalies. 34:36 Todd So I don't know if there's some way of, you know, making some opportunity for a practice goalie that isn't technically on the roster but can do something in practice to help the team. 34:51 Todd It sounds like that's a heavy lift though from the people I've talked to, to get something like that done. 34:56 Jûpe We saw that similar two years ago, Veegs, because, you know, speaking of Grand Forks, I remember Nathan Airy was nagging injuries in his freshman season. 35:05 Jûpe I think it was Matt Bryant they brought in. 35:08 Jûpe That was kind of his first. 35:10 Jûpe He was on the road trip. 35:11 Jûpe He was their third goalie. 35:14 Vegoe And Potter even had to put on the pads for practice because they were down to one, and they were tired of shooting against the shooter tutor in practice. 35:22 Vegoe Like you see a team practicing their power play, and they got the shooter tutor up there, and you've got a D1 college team with number one draft picks, and that's how they are preparing themselves and developing. 35:33 Vegoe I just, you know, I think of women's basketball, who's got the men practice players that come to help them prepare for the season. 35:40 Vegoe I just don't understand how you can't have that in hockey, at least for the goalies, because, you know, college hockey is always getting bigger and bigger. 35:50 Jûpe And I'm guessing they probably had that. 35:52 Jûpe They probably had that when they had a JV team. 35:55 Jûpe Yeah, 40 years ago. 35:58 Jûpe So it was kind of built in. 36:00 Jûpe And then technically someone could come up from the JV team, couldn't they? 36:04 Jûpe Before our time, we were kind of kids. 36:06 Jûpe But isn't that kind of how it worked? 36:10 Vegoe Yeah, I think so. 36:11 Vegoe You know, Bob Motzko was was like a JV player and, you know, he got cut by her Brooks multiple times from playing hockey at the U. 36:19 Vegoe So, you know, different times. 36:22 Vegoe I think this whole roster limit thing with the settlement just got rushed and hockey didn't get the consideration it should have. 36:29 Vegoe Agreed. 36:30 Jûpe All right. 36:31 Jûpe We had this question sent to me on Twitter, Veegs David S on Twitter asked, I'm curious to what your guys' thoughts are on the following. 36:39 Jûpe No one this year's on this year's team has the it factor. 36:43 Jûpe In recent years, so many players and studs, Snuggie, Cooley, Nyes, Pitlick, Meyers. 36:51 Jûpe No one on this year's team is separating themselves as an elite player. 36:56 Jûpe What are your thoughts? 36:58 Jûpe We do not have an it player. 37:00 Jûpe We have some potential players, maybe later this year or next year, but not right now. 37:07 Vegoe Now is the time for those guys to grab it. 37:10 Vegoe The opportunity is there for guys like Brody Lamb, Brody Zehmer, Jimmy Clark, to take that step, Leo Gruba. 37:18 Vegoe But it just seems a little out of their reach right now. 37:22 Vegoe You need to see consistent impact from them. 37:25 Vegoe I thought Brody Lamb last year had a great first half. 37:29 Vegoe The second half, it kind of disappeared from him a little bit. 37:32 Vegoe He's got an opportunity right now to really make his mark. 37:35 Vegoe He's going to get the ice time. 37:37 Vegoe He's going to get the opportunity. 37:40 Vegoe I just think these first four weekends have all been tough. 37:44 Vegoe There's no easy games. 37:46 Vegoe Everyone's bringing their A-game against them. 37:48 Vegoe They're not playing great. 37:51 Vegoe It's a little bit of a struggle right now, but they definitely do not have an it player on the roster right now. 37:58 Jûpe We'll have to see what happens there. 38:00 Jûpe Definitely have to see what happens. 38:02 Jûpe Kind of a surprise. 38:04 Jûpe We had Eric Sheerhorn last week on the show, Veegs. 38:07 Jûpe I think it was the next morning when he found out he's being upgraded from radio to TV and he did a damn good job on TV. 38:16 Vegoe He looked really comfortable at the game on Friday, so I was just kind of getting bits and pieces of it, but then I watched Saturday on the broadcast and he seemed comfy up there. 38:26 Vegoe I think Ben Clymer's maybe been giving him lessons on the side about how to do TV because he looked very comfortable up there. 38:34 Jûpe He did look comfortable, so congratulations to him. 38:37 Jûpe We're hoping that Pat's back, lower body injury, whatever is going on with Pat. 38:41 Jûpe Who knows right now? 38:42 Vegoe Wish him the best, Pat. 38:43 Jûpe Oh, yes. 38:44 Jûpe He'll get back in the booth. 38:47 Jûpe Hey, I don't know if he'll be back this weekend. 38:49 Jûpe I think Tanner Hoops might be making the trip to Madison, which would be his first. 38:54 Jûpe Of course, it was his first trip to Grand Forks, too, so that was interesting to him as well. 39:00 Jûpe Well, before we get to the end here, Veegs, we need to talk about our other sponsor of the podcast, Cub Foods. 39:07 Vegoe Yeah, Cub Foods. 39:08 Vegoe I got my pumpkin loaf the other week. 39:10 Vegoe Got some caramel apples right now for the Halloween weekend. 39:14 Vegoe If you need some fall stuff, Cub's got you covered. 39:17 Vegoe Fresh-picked apples, pumpkin spice, everything. 39:20 Vegoe Cub's your one-stop shop for everything fall, whether you're baking, hosting game day, craving a cozy night in, Cub has the flavors that make fall feel like fall. 39:30 Vegoe So swing by your local Cub, stock up on everything. 39:33 Vegoe They're one of us. 39:34 Vegoe Shop Cub, shop happy. 39:37 Jûpe All right. 39:38 Jûpe Of course, we thank Gateway and Cub for being sponsors of The GPL Podcast. 39:43 Jûpe It's Badger Weekend, guys. 39:45 Jûpe Take that, you stinkin Badgers! 39:48 Jûpe Glenn, always with the great sound bit there. 39:53 Jûpe Veegs, how are you feeling about this weekend right now? 39:55 Jûpe Little uneasy, maybe? 39:57 Vegoe I mean, I'm definitely feeling uneasy, you know, they're battling a lot of injuries right now. 40:03 Vegoe The Gopher team, I saw some guys getting nicked up in practice today even. 40:09 Vegoe No updates exactly what's going to happen with those guys. 40:12 Vegoe But this is a group that's really fighting through it. 40:15 Vegoe And, you know, I think the coaching staff is kind of in a state where they have to be patient with this group, you know, especially with the roster limits and the way things are. 40:26 Vegoe Like, you kind of have your roster and you have to figure out a way to get them to the finish line. 40:31 Vegoe And it's not going to be by beating the whip right now. 40:34 Vegoe You know, you've got to be patient with them. 40:36 Vegoe I think a lot of Gopher fans are not happy right now. 40:40 Vegoe You know, Bob Oscoe on his radio show says, two, five and one is not what people expect from Gopher hockey and we have to wear it. 40:47 Vegoe You know, that's our record right now. 40:49 Vegoe We have to move forward from it. 40:51 Vegoe So it's kind of a complicated situation right now for the Gophers. 40:55 Vegoe They are heading into a weekend where it looks like Wisconsin is surging a little bit. 40:59 Jûpe Todd, they definitely are surging and you're getting Minnesota at a good time, I think. 41:04 Todd Yeah. 41:04 Todd And this is, you know, it's always a test whenever Wisconsin plays Minnesota. 41:09 Todd We know that. 41:10 Todd But especially right now, after you're coming off of, you know, having, you know, that winning the four games you should have won in non-conference against Linda Wood in Alaska, two ties against Mankato is a sense. 41:25 Todd I was figuring that would be a split. 41:27 Todd And so that's essentially the same thing. 41:30 Todd But it was all kind of leading up to this now where it's this weekend against Minnesota next weekend at Michigan. 41:37 Todd And it's, you're going to find out a lot right now about whether this team could score, about whether the team can defend, whether it can be as disciplined as it needs to be. 41:51 Todd Because that's been a big thing for every of my casings team, is that they do so much better when they're not killing penalties. 41:56 Todd And they don't have to do that as part of the game. 42:00 Todd Can they keep that up? 42:01 Todd They've been, they've had their moments so far. 42:04 Todd They've taken a couple of major penalties and had to kill those off and five on threes. 42:09 Todd And there's nothing that frustrates my casings more than that. 42:15 Todd So this is a point where you're going to know at by the end of this weekend, kind of feels like two years ago when Badgers went up to Minnesota with a pretty good record. 42:29 Todd You want to see how it was going to play there. 42:31 Todd Well, I want to see how it's going to play here at the Cole Center against Minnesota. 42:34 Todd That couple of years ago, they won two games, part of a thing at eight and two started the season, nine and one, whatever it was. 42:44 Todd I don't know if I can expect that this year, but I think we're going to be able to tell which direction they're pointing just kind of in general for the rest of the season by how they play this weekend. 42:57 Todd Maybe not even the results, but how they play, whether they are able to dictate the parts of the game they want to play. 43:04 Jûpe Now, the Thursday, Saturday series, the best I can tell is that we've got the big volleyball matchup between Nebraska and Wisconsin on Friday, which will be on the Big Ten Network, 8 p.m. 43:18 Jûpe I'm guessing to keep some of the crowds happy and keep a little more on BTN itself, that they moved this game to Thursday, at least one of the games to Thursday for TV. 43:29 Jûpe Is that the right line of thinking, or do we still not really know? 43:32 Todd This is going to be a question, so I made some calls this week. 43:35 Jûpe Yes. 43:36 Todd It's actually going to be in a story on madison.com and badgerextra.com tomorrow morning, but I'll give you the preview here, is that, yes, the Thursday game is because of TV. 43:46 Todd The Friday night was already taken up by Wisconsin-Nebraska volleyball, Halloween night game at the field house, so not the Coles Center. 43:54 Todd No, but that's going to be a zoo. 43:58 Todd That match is always remarkable, and throwing it in on Halloween night in Madison, whoo. 44:06 Todd So to get a game on, they had to move that one to Thursday. 44:10 Todd Then the other half of it was they thought they were going to have a window on BTN Saturday night for the second game, so they left it there. 44:20 Todd That fell through. 44:21 Todd But then they just decided, well, we're not going to move it to Friday because, well, they didn't want to move it to Friday. 44:27 Todd So there's also the Women Series at LaBonde that has to be worked around, and that is now Friday night, Saturday afternoon. 44:40 Jûpe So hopefully a lot of hockey this weekend. 44:46 Todd Yeah. 44:47 Todd I'm looking forward to it because, I mean, there's a lot of weekends in the summer where I'm kind of doing nothing and would love to be at a game and instead of writing about, you know, some lawsuit that's being filed or something like that. 45:00 Todd But yeah, I'll take four games between the Gophers and the Badgers. 45:05 Todd Oh, we can cover that. 45:06 Jûpe It'll be fun. 45:07 Jûpe And that women's team of the Badgers, they're so dominant. 45:10 Jûpe Geez. 45:11 Jûpe When's the last time they lost a game? 45:14 Todd Last November. 45:18 Jûpe I mean, there you go. 45:20 Jûpe Yeah. 45:21 Jûpe Last November. 45:24 Todd Nothing but great years with 30, 36 or 37 undefeated, 22 wins in a row, something like that. 45:32 Vegoe It's pretty attractive even for players from Minnesota to consider. 45:35 Todd I've heard. 45:37 Vegoe I've heard. 45:38 Vegoe Even with deep ties to Minnesota. 45:41 Jûpe Did you ever reach out to the polls and find anything? 45:46 Todd I talked to Emily. 45:51 Todd There was, I mean, she said the right things. 45:55 Todd Yeah, that's a tough spot. 45:57 Todd I mean, you've got to acknowledge that. 46:01 Jûpe I'm waiting for the first photo of Johnny Pol wearing Wisconsin gear or or Chrissy Wendell wearing Wisconsin gear. 46:08 Todd Yeah, I don't know. 46:11 Vegoe I'm telling you, I think they're going to have like that NHL Scout black with the black logo. 46:16 Vegoe So it's there, but it's not there. 46:19 Vegoe I think that's that's the style they're going to be going with. 46:21 Todd That's probably the smart way of doing it. 46:23 Jûpe You know what? 46:23 Jûpe It makes a good story for you, though, Todd. 46:26 Jûpe It makes a good, great story for you. 46:29 Todd I there. 46:32 Todd There is going to be some interesting trips back to Ritter there for the for the Badgers in a couple of years. 46:40 Vegoe Yeah. 46:42 Jûpe It's fun. 46:42 Jûpe It's Badger Week. 46:43 Jûpe Let's have fun with it. 46:44 Jûpe I wish we could make it this weekend, but with the day off, it just kind of messed things up. 46:50 Jûpe So I wasn't able to make it because I know Veegs Hastings. 46:52 Jûpe He's like, come on down. 46:54 Jûpe We'll get you all set up. 46:55 Jûpe And we just haven't had a chance to do it yet. 46:58 Vegoe I know he probably would even invite us to practice if we asked. 47:02 Vegoe It would have been really fun to see the Badgers skate. 47:07 Jûpe Wow. 47:08 Jûpe Take that knife right out of Todd's back on that one. 47:12 Vegoe Well, Mike basically had it. 47:13 Todd I do have to say, I was invited in once before the season. 47:17 Todd So I appreciated that. 47:19 Jûpe So still can't see any practices, huh? 47:22 Todd Not on the regular, no. 47:25 Vegoe Wow. 47:27 Vegoe Well, it should be a good weekend of hockey. 47:29 Vegoe I'm going to be busy with my own hockey team and Halloween here, but I will definitely be glued to the TV watching the games on. 47:37 Vegoe I'm most interested to see this weekend if we see a change in the GopherFords. 47:43 Vegoe I feel like the defense has stepped it up a little bit more. 47:46 Vegoe I talked to Max Rudd today about how the D are playing, and he said the biggest thing is that so many guys who hadn't played much the last couple of years, that they were playing hot potato. 47:59 Vegoe They're getting pucks and they're just getting rims. 48:01 Vegoe They're just going off the glass. 48:03 Vegoe They just didn't want to commit turnovers. 48:05 Vegoe I think some of those D, especially John Whipple and Rudd, are getting more confidence and holding on to the puck just another second and making a hockey play. 48:15 Vegoe They're connecting a little bit. 48:17 Vegoe We didn't see it very much on Friday against Minnesota-Duluth, but we saw it a little bit more on Saturday. 48:23 Vegoe We didn't see it so much the first game against North Dakota, but we saw it the second. 48:28 Vegoe I think that's a big thing for Minnesota is that their D are playing better. 48:32 Vegoe The big question mark for me now is can the Fords execute? 48:36 Vegoe Can they get the puck and get North and get their forecheck going? 48:39 Vegoe Because that's been the biggest inconsistency for me with the Gopher team right now, is getting on the other team and creating chances and turnovers. 48:47 Vegoe Because when they did that to Michigan Tech, it looked like, okay, this team hasn't missed a beat, but we just haven't seen that very consistently out of the Gophers. 48:56 Jûpe So how are you dividing up the points this weekend, Veegs? 49:00 Jûpe A certain former SID was not happy that we picked Sweep last week, and it was the opposite. 49:06 Jûpe He basically blamed us. 49:11 Vegoe I almost am leaning Sweep the other way this weekend. 49:17 Jûpe Six points for the Badgers? 49:20 Jûpe Is that your official call? 49:22 Vegoe I'm worried that we might see six for the Badgers this weekend. 49:27 Vegoe I mean, the injury stuff, the effort stuff. 49:30 Vegoe I mean, how often do you hear a coach volunteer that he's disappointed in the effort in their team? 49:35 Vegoe I don't know if that's a one-week fix, and I think we're waiting for some people to step forward and show that they're leading this team into the fight. 49:46 Vegoe Until they do that, it's hard to have a lot of confidence behind Minnesota, especially the way Wisconsin's played, especially the history between the players on the Wisconsin roster now and the players on the Minnesota roster. 49:57 Vegoe I'm sure the Badgers are licking their chops this weekend. 50:01 Vegoe I don't think they've been happy with the way things have gone, and this could be a statement weekend for them. 50:06 Vegoe I don't think it's because the Badgers are going to put up tons of points. 50:10 Vegoe I think it's because the Gophers are going to have a tough time getting to three. 50:15 Vegoe I don't know if they're disciplined enough to not give up three or four goals in a night right now. 50:22 Vegoe I'm just not seeing enough of the detail in scanning and picking up sticks or the detail in engaging and lifting a stick going into a puck battle. 50:32 Vegoe It's just been a little slower to come for the Gophers this year. 50:37 Jûpe I'm going to go with four points for the Badgers, two points for the Gophers. 50:43 Jûpe I think there's some overtime bits there, something along those lines. 50:49 Jûpe What do you got, Todd? 50:51 Todd I hear the Gophers are stars of the shootout now. 50:56 Todd So a development that I wasn't sure I was going to do. 50:59 Jûpe One of them is out sick. 51:00 Vegoe One of them is out. 51:01 Vegoe Lucky he won't be either. 51:02 Vegoe So it's not like the World Juniors. 51:04 Vegoe They can just send out Mooney time after time. 51:10 Todd I'm going to go three on each side. 51:12 Todd I'm going to say that the Badgers get the first one on Thursday, but the Gophers, after having an extra day of hearing about it here in Madison, are going to get a Saturday night win. 51:26 Jûpe Very interesting. 51:28 Jûpe How is it that the guy who covers the Badgers is more positive than us, Beegs? 51:32 Vegoe I guess we just, he hasn't watched the Gophers as closely as we have. 51:35 Todd That is true. 51:38 Vegoe It's been tough. 51:39 Vegoe Friday was a tough night in the press box watching the team play. 51:43 Vegoe They did play better on Saturday, but I just, you know, I see Tassie and Fitzgerald seem to be a little bit better this year. 51:49 Vegoe They've got their mojo back. 51:51 Vegoe I think Logan Hensler is a developing player who's grown a lot. 51:56 Vegoe It's just kind of a scary roster right now for Wisconsin. 52:00 Vegoe I feel like they have more established players playing, and I think it's going to be pretty low scoring. 52:04 Vegoe I would be taking the under in both games if I was betting my pizza money, like Jim Connelly likes to say, especially on Friday night. 52:15 Vegoe Then I think Gophers having to spend Halloween in Madison isn't going to be easy. 52:21 Vegoe I hope they're staying somewhere out of town where they can maybe get away from things, but you never know how it's going to work out. 52:28 Vegoe It's going to be an interesting weekend. 52:32 Jûpe All right. 52:33 Jûpe Well, I think we need to get to some overtime here because we're already getting it from some of the people in the chat. 52:42 Jûpe But here's what Motay thinks. 52:44 Jûpe Todd, he likes you better than us right now. 52:48 Vegoe But he won't put Vegoe minus two. 52:52 Jûpe Give him time. 52:52 Vegoe Because he knows this team is struggling a little bit right now. 52:56 Jûpe So it's true. 52:58 Jûpe It is. 52:58 Vegoe It's showing me time for the Gophers, I think, before I can get a lot of confidence in them. 53:05 Vegoe Fans, be patient with this roster. 53:08 Vegoe Like, these are good players. 53:11 Vegoe They just have to figure it out. 53:12 Vegoe And I think one thing we've seen with Minnesota teams over the years is these players put a lot of pressure on themselves. 53:19 Vegoe So no one wants to win more than them. 53:23 Vegoe You know, as much as the fans would like to see their team win, the players want to win. 53:29 Vegoe So they just have to fight their way out of it. 53:31 Vegoe And the coaches are going to let them. 53:33 Vegoe They're going to keep throwing them over the boards and giving them chances. 53:37 Jûpe Well, thanks for coming on, Todd. 53:38 Jûpe It's always great to have you as a guest. 53:40 Jûpe You're our number one guest, man. 53:42 Todd You know, this is my favorite week of the year. 53:44 Todd Look, one of my two favorite weeks of the year is being here being out with you guys. 53:49 Jûpe Well, we're glad you can always come on. 53:51 Jûpe You know, Cappy's just a little bit behind you. 53:53 Jûpe It's gonna be tough for him to catch you. 53:55 Jûpe But that's fine with us. 53:57 Jûpe You know, you'd be even further ahead if you weren't kind of taken off of hockey for a year or so. 54:01 Todd Miss that that that one series for sure. 54:04 Todd I don't know if I was on the other time, but I think I would because it was the first half and I was still doing hockey that year. 54:10 Jûpe Yeah, I think you were one time you were like Penn State for a basketball or was Nebraska? 54:15 Todd Yes, I remember. 54:16 Todd Yeah, it was a Penn State. 54:18 Todd Yeah. 54:18 Todd Midweek game. 54:19 Todd Yeah. 54:20 Jûpe Yeah. 54:22 Jûpe Cover and be both your favorite. 54:24 Todd Oh, yeah. 54:26 Jûpe But thanks for coming on, man. 54:28 Jûpe It's always great to have you on. 54:29 Jûpe You ready for some overtime? 54:31 Todd Absolutely. 54:32 Todd Bring it on. 54:33 Jûpe All right. 54:34 Jûpe Well, that's going to do it for this episode of The GPL Podcast. 54:37 Jûpe We'll be back next week to recap this series with The Badgers and preview the series with Notre Dame coming into down. 54:45 Jûpe So for those of you watching live on Twitter and YouTube, stay tuned for overtime. 54:50 Jûpe For the rest of you, we'll catch you next week on The GPL Podcast. 55:00 Jûpe Take that, you stinkin Badgers! 55:06 Jûpe If you are watching on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and get notified each time we go live or post a video. 55:12 Jûpe If you listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please rate our show and leave a review. 55:23 Jûpe For those of you watching live, you know what's next. 55:27 Jûpe It's Vegoe's Beverage of the Week. 55:31 Jûpe It's time for Overtime.