0:05 This is The GPL Podcast, part of the Pulltab Sports family. 0:10 Oh boy, Jup making mistakes. 0:13 I love it. 0:28 Is that when I get to, to, to, for another Old Fashioned? 0:31 I was told it's okay. 0:32 Oh yes. 0:32 If I sip this on the show. 0:34 Okay. 0:36 Let's get this bandwagon going folks. 0:38 Take that, Mr. 0:40 Negative. 0:45 Now, here's Jupiter and Vegoe. 0:53 Jûpe Good evening and welcome to The GPL Podcast, episode number 294 Veegs. 1:02 Jûpe Good evening. 1:03 Jûpe You made it. 1:04 Jûpe You had a late practice, but look at that. 1:05 Jûpe You made it anyway. 1:07 Vegoe Yeah. 1:07 Vegoe We had back to backs at Northeast Ice Arena tonight. 1:10 Vegoe So, you know, just got my Duke Cannon products in the shower and I'm ready to go. 1:17 Jûpe I do as well. 1:21 Jûpe Overall, good weekend for the Gophers, a good bounce back. 1:27 Jûpe Appetition definitely down. 1:29 Jûpe Notre Dame is not Notre Dame, but still very positive. 1:33 Vegoe Yeah, and I don't think it was like your typical Notre Dame team that we're used to see with Jeff Jackson, where all the possessions turned into rock fights. 1:41 Vegoe I think we saw the Gophers get in transition a little bit here and there, but it wasn't wide open either. 1:47 Vegoe And to see Minnesota have a pretty good weekend, get good goaltending and get out to leads in both games and hold on to them, was progress for this Pride on Ice program. 1:59 Jûpe All right. 2:00 Jûpe Well, we've got Sam Rossini back on the show. 2:02 Jûpe I believe this is going to be a second appearance on the show. 2:05 Jûpe Except for a couple of weeks ago when he commented on Shearhorn's book collection. 2:10 Jûpe But let's bring him in so we can talk about this this last week at series. 2:14 Jûpe Sam, nice to have you back on the show, man. 2:16 Sam Awesome. 2:17 Sam Yeah, thanks, guys. 2:18 Sam I appreciate it. 2:20 Sam This is number two for me. 2:21 Sam And I heard you guys talking too about a leaderboard section with Ramsey and Shearhorn. 2:27 Sam I'm going to have to up my appearances if I want to get on that. 2:30 Jûpe They did have a little head start on you. 2:32 Jûpe But that's fine. 2:35 Jûpe We did like that you were watching a couple of weeks ago commenting on Shearhorn's choice of books behind him. 2:41 Jûpe So that was very entertaining. 2:43 Sam My guess was that he hadn't read any of them. 2:45 Sam So I kind of panicked. 2:47 Jûpe You know, Biggs, he could have lied to us. 2:49 Jûpe We never know. 2:50 Vegoe We didn't quiz him. 2:51 Vegoe I didn't know the bookshelf titles behind him. 2:54 Vegoe So we could have got in. 2:55 Vegoe We could have done a little AI research and after him. 2:58 Vegoe But we were kind. 3:01 Sam That's awesome. 3:02 Jûpe So, Sam, you're back this weekend, actually. 3:04 Jûpe It looks like you're doing. 3:05 Jûpe Are you going to be doing radio and TV this weekend? 3:08 Sam Yeah, we're doing radio Friday night and then TV Saturday night. 3:12 Sam So should be should be pretty fun. 3:14 Jûpe And then Sherhorn going to be doing TV Friday night. 3:17 Jûpe Then he's going to do radio Saturday or Tanner jumping in there. 3:21 Sam He's doing so he's doing TV Friday night and then Tanner is jumping in radio on Saturday night. 3:28 Jûpe A lot of a lot of guys to fill in. 3:29 Jûpe It's kind of nice to have a good good line up of guys to do all these things. 3:34 Sam Yeah, yeah, absolutely. 3:36 Sam I think learning from Ramsey and Sherhorn and having those guys to kind of go through it with has been awesome. 3:42 Sam And Eric's done a phenomenal job on TV so far. 3:44 Sam So that's been that's been fun to watch. 3:46 Sam And now I get a chance. 3:48 Sam So it should be should be a good weekend. 3:50 Jûpe Yeah, it'll be interesting for you. 3:51 Jûpe See, last time we didn't know. 3:53 Jûpe I don't think Sherhorn knew until kind of last minute that he was going to be on TV when we had him on that show. 3:58 Jûpe But good for him, good experience for him. 4:01 Jûpe And now you're going to get the chance of TV. 4:03 Jûpe It's going to be fun. 4:05 Jûpe Vig's a lot of fun things. 4:06 Jûpe You know, we've had Sherhorn on TV. 4:07 Jûpe We had Mazako back in a booth, you know, beginning of the season. 4:11 Jûpe It's been quite fun. 4:13 Vegoe And I think the most fun is it's a it's like our cradle of color commentators from GopherPuckLive. 4:18 Vegoe I feel like all these all these alums have spent a little time with us before they've gone on to radio and TV. 4:24 Vegoe And so Sam, you got some big shoes to fill. 4:26 Vegoe I was talking to Jim Rich today, and he was very impressed with Shearhorn on the television. 4:31 Vegoe He's like, Eric, have you ever done this before? 4:33 Vegoe And he's like, No, he's like, gosh, you're doing great. 4:36 Vegoe Keep it up. 4:37 Vegoe So yeah, yeah. 4:39 Sam I've been watching to we Jack Sadick, Tyler Sheehy and myself were all watching the games together last weekend and we're texting him on the side to try to get him to say some words on the TV and whatnot. 4:49 Sam But he did a good he did a really good job. 4:53 Sam And obviously, we all hope Pat feels better soon too. 4:56 Sam And he's back in the saddle. 4:57 Jûpe But yeah, I care because then the craziness will just continue vegs with Pat. 5:02 Jûpe Yeah. 5:02 Vegoe And then Jim will be able to save on his vocal cords because he can just let Pat run with it for a long time. 5:07 Vegoe But yeah, we're all thinking about Pat. 5:09 Vegoe You know, he's going through some some medical stuff. 5:11 Vegoe So hopefully he's he's back and gets healthy and does all the work that he has to do there. 5:16 Jûpe So and as soon as he's back on there, we'll get him back on the show. 5:19 Jûpe And I want to bug him right now, because it's kind of a brutal break for us when Pat comes on. 5:24 Jûpe You know, we said to Pat, he could just go for three or four minutes, a little break, have a drink. 5:31 Vegoe Of course, it's awesome. 5:32 Jûpe It's awesome. 5:33 Jûpe Well, Sam, did you get a chance to watch the games this past weekend, kind of a bounce back weekend for the Gophers? 5:38 Jûpe Definitely. 5:39 Sam Yeah, absolutely. 5:40 Sam It's good to see that. 5:41 Sam It was good to see them kind of starting the final plucks back towards the net. 5:44 Sam And I think that was their season high for shots on goal, too. 5:46 Sam So that was good. 5:49 Sam Also, I think they were better in the face off circle, which again, that always helps you win hockey games. 5:53 Sam Obviously, Notre Dame team has a little bit different identity without Coach Jackson there. 5:58 Sam But it was still good to see the Gophers get the sweep this weekend. 6:04 Jûpe Teddy Townsend got his first bit on the ice leagues. 6:07 Jûpe It was great to see him out there. 6:10 Vegoe Yeah, he didn't look hesitant out there. 6:12 Vegoe You know, he had that upper body injury that he was dealing with. 6:15 Vegoe So you're always kind of wondering how guys are going to handle the compete and the contact. 6:20 Vegoe Because especially in Division I Hockey, Big Ten, there is not a lot of space. 6:26 Vegoe And you get a lot of body contact. 6:29 Vegoe You have to battle through everything. 6:31 Vegoe And I thought his skating stood out. 6:34 Vegoe You weren't quite sure how that was going to go for him. 6:38 Vegoe I saw him in practice leading up to it. 6:40 Vegoe And he wasn't in all the contact rolls that I was watching. 6:44 Vegoe So I was surprised to see him in there. 6:46 Vegoe But I medically cleared. 6:48 Vegoe And he didn't look out of place at all. 6:50 Vegoe And I think he adds an element to the team that they're missing a little bit. 6:53 Vegoe You know, we talked about how this team looked really big. 6:57 Vegoe Now, there's a lot of guys who can play physical. 6:59 Vegoe But we were looking for a little more speed somewhere in the lineup. 7:03 Vegoe And hopefully, Teddy can provide that for them. 7:06 Jûpe So apparently, my video is not doing well. 7:08 Jûpe You guys getting good video from me? 7:10 Sam No, it's just a little delayed. 7:13 Sam I can hear you, but then your lips don't start moving for like three seconds after you start. 7:17 Jûpe Wow. 7:18 Jûpe Yeah, I see that in the chat there. 7:20 Jûpe Everything's fine for me. 7:21 Jûpe I don't know. 7:22 Jûpe Barb, stop streaming upstairs. 7:24 Jûpe Stop streaming. 7:25 Jûpe That might help for connection. 7:28 Jûpe Well, not much I can do about it right now. 7:31 Jûpe So we're gonna play through it. 7:33 Vegoe We're gonna play through it. 7:34 Jûpe Yeah, because you know, I see it perfectly fine for me and you guys are coming through fine for me. 7:38 Jûpe So I don't know. 7:41 Vegoe Your video is a long way from the heart, so. 7:45 Jûpe Well, when we do the commercial, maybe I'll jump out and jump back in and see how bad that goes. 7:54 Jûpe So, you know, we talk about Townsend, Thomas is still out, Viggs, and it sounds like he's still 50-50 this weekend. 8:02 Vegoe Yeah, I mean, he skated today and he looked fine from what I could tell. 8:06 Vegoe He still has to get cleared by the doctors. 8:08 Vegoe You know, we were kind of pressing Bob a little bit because it's like it looks like everybody's healthy. 8:13 Vegoe Axel Begley was the only player not on the ice today. 8:16 Vegoe So guys are back. 8:17 Vegoe It's just whether or not they're going to get cleared for the weekend. 8:21 Vegoe I think they've done okay without Cal Thomas the last couple of weeks. 8:25 Vegoe And so if he's still not ready to go, maybe Eli used the game series, you can get away with not playing him if he's not 100% ready to go. 8:35 Vegoe Tentner Ludke, I feel like he's been one of the best centers for Minnesota this season. 8:40 Vegoe And so losing him in the lineup was a big hole for them. 8:44 Vegoe You know, the one benefit of him dropping in the lineup is Mason Moe. 8:48 Vegoe I think he's really solidified himself as a center on this roster. 8:52 Vegoe He has looked really good when Moscow put together that freshman line with Prichard and Mooney. 9:00 Vegoe It looked like Minnesota's best line at times. 9:02 Vegoe You know, those guys did not look like freshmen out there. 9:05 Vegoe They started the Friday night game. 9:08 Vegoe And I think they really set the tone and the coach even acknowledged that in the post game. 9:14 Jûpe Well that'll be interesting to get all down eventually here because you know, Ludky virus who knows him will be back. 9:22 Jûpe Obviously, Thomas knows he'll be back. 9:24 Jûpe I mean, that's a big series come up because we could use all the bodies we need. 9:28 Vegoe So yeah, at Falun is still the one player who's going to be out as well. 9:32 Vegoe I said that glue is the only one. 9:33 Vegoe Fluin's also out. 9:34 Vegoe He's going to be out another three weeks, probably. 9:38 Sam Is Gruba, is he all right? 9:40 Sam I thought I saw a picture of him in like a no contact jersey. 9:43 Sam Was that? 9:44 Vegoe Yeah, they mic'd up Luke Middlestad. 9:46 Vegoe Yeah, that was from early in the year. 9:48 Vegoe So that's that's long ago. 9:49 Vegoe Gruba's back. 9:50 Vegoe He's fine. 9:51 Vegoe He looks great out there. 9:52 Sam Social media team's getting some old posts out then, huh? 9:55 Jûpe Well, I think it just takes them that long to get it together. 9:58 Sam Yeah, fair enough. 9:59 Jûpe He edited it because I'm probably sure he's got probably an hour or so of video, hour long practices are VEG's, right? 10:05 Jûpe Yep. 10:05 Vegoe And Luke said there's a couple potty mouths on the team that weren't aware that he is mic'd up. 10:10 Vegoe So he, the economy is like, hey, I'm mic'd up. 10:13 Vegoe You got to watch your mouth today. 10:14 Vegoe He's like, you know, they had to edit some of that out. 10:19 Jûpe So good weekend VEG's. 10:23 Jûpe Look at the pass. 10:24 Jûpe Well, let's one goal in on the weekend. 10:26 Jûpe That's a huge positive. 10:28 Vegoe Yeah. 10:29 Vegoe And on Friday, he didn't have a ton of work. 10:31 Vegoe But when he did kind of late in the game, he came up with some key saves. 10:36 Vegoe That was a nothing, nothing game for a long time. 10:38 Vegoe One nothing game for a long time until the empty netters. 10:41 Vegoe So for him to stay solid was really important. 10:44 Vegoe It's one of those games where if the goalie gives up a softie, it really puts the Dobbers down the bench. 10:51 Vegoe So him able to take control of the net, stop the great A's when they showed up was really important. 10:58 Vegoe And then Saturday, he got a lot more work and looked just as steady. 11:01 Vegoe And I think he even showed a little bit of swagger during the game. 11:05 Vegoe You could see him do the slow clap, goalie paddled on the ice as the penalty was going out. 11:10 Vegoe He's coming out, playing the puck. 11:12 Vegoe He's flashing the leather. 11:13 Vegoe He's doing the spins on the pad slides. 11:16 Vegoe That was a guy who looked happy and we actually got to talk to him after the game. 11:20 Vegoe And he lost a little bit of his voice. 11:22 Vegoe And I could tell he had a good time out there. 11:26 Jûpe Sam, that's kind of how it is with goalies. 11:28 Jûpe It's such a two-way thing. 11:29 Jûpe A goalie could bail you out and you could bail out the goalie a lot of the time. 11:35 Sam Yeah, absolutely. 11:36 Sam I think it's important for them to play with confidence too, because they're such different players. 11:41 Sam A goalie with confidence versus without confidence is a world of difference. 11:44 Sam And like you said, Viggs, he kind of lost his voice at the end of the game, which tells me he was talking quite a bit out there. 11:50 Sam And as a defenseman, I think that that helps you and that helps that entire decor, just like breaking the puck out, whatever it might be. 11:57 Sam And so I'm glad to hear glad to hear he's got his swagger back. 12:01 Jûpe Plus, he also got an assist, Viggs. 12:04 Vegoe Yeah, that's not often you have a goalie get a shutout and he assists. 12:07 Vegoe So I know Jack Ramsey and Eric Sheerhorn pointed that out during their broadcast. 12:11 Vegoe So they're on their A game there as well. 12:14 Jûpe I mean, and that was that may have been the longest goal I've ever seen from Whipple. 12:18 Jûpe His body was against the end boards. 12:22 Vegoe Yeah, I mean, they don't track the advanced stats like they do in other sports, but that's about as far away from the net as you can get. 12:28 Vegoe And you could just tell from the reaction by Whipple that he was excited. 12:31 Vegoe You know, he went through kind of a tough year last year, not really getting a chance to contribute too much ahead of a very experienced decor that he wanted to be a part of and throw his hat in the ring. 12:42 Vegoe And now, you know, especially with some injuries, you know, he's been forced into some more minutes. 12:47 Vegoe And I think he's finding some confidence in his game. 12:49 Vegoe You know, he's going to be kind of a physical guy for the Gophers, four way skater, tough physical contact. 12:56 Vegoe So, you know, he's going to add something to this mix. 12:58 Vegoe And, you know, that's the one thing a lot of people have been criticizing the roster. 13:03 Vegoe You know, they should have brought in some CHL guys. 13:06 Vegoe The players on the roster don't develop then if they don't get this experience. 13:11 Vegoe So it's kind of tough to go both ways. 13:14 Vegoe You know, you'd like the CHL guys, so you don't go through the growing pains. 13:17 Vegoe But without that, you don't get to see what you have in guys like Whipple. 13:20 Vegoe You know, Jacob Rombach, we should also talk about he had a great weekend. 13:24 Vegoe So there is some growth ahead for Minnesota on the wool line. 13:28 Sam Yeah, I agree there, Vegas. 13:30 Sam I think like you brought up a good point. 13:32 Sam You bring in CHL guys and those guys don't get to develop. 13:35 Sam And that's kind of like what we had over the past two years, two, three years, is we had that COVID class, right, who stayed and came through the ranks. 13:43 Sam And obviously, that puts Whipple to a back seat. 13:45 Sam It puts some other D kind of to a back seat because you have the Mikey Kesters. 13:49 Sam You have other players who are kind of stepping in and they're playing and they're not going to stop playing, right? 13:54 Sam So you have forwards and D man who are freshmen and sophomore who didn't get the playing time maybe that they would have liked to and the development that they would have liked to. 14:02 Sam So then you lose those two classes last year, essentially, now that there's not a COVID year. 14:07 Sam So definitely, definitely lacking some experience, but it's good to see those guys getting the swing of things. 14:15 Jûpe So we had an interesting series between Michigan and Wisconsin this past weekend, and you were texting me earlier today like there haven't been any suspensions. 14:27 Jûpe What is happening? 14:29 Jûpe And then you sent me a video. 14:30 Jûpe We'll go through it here in a minute, but just kind of what the heck happened in at Yost this weekend? 14:38 Vegoe Well, I think the game got a little bit chippy on Friday night, and I think Michigan doesn't really control its players very well in these situations. 14:48 Vegoe You can tell that the coach kind of gives them the freedom to go out and do what they're doing out there and show that kind of character. 14:56 Vegoe And so on Saturday night, when Wisconsin was having their way with Michigan, it looks like at a point, the coach said, fine, just go run, guys. 15:04 Vegoe And you can see in this clip, there's play after play of Michigan players not playing hockey anymore. 15:12 Vegoe They're out there. 15:13 Vegoe They're looking for revenge. 15:14 Vegoe They're looking to intimidate and maybe injure players. 15:19 Vegoe And you can just see them stop playing their forecheck or their system. 15:22 Vegoe It starts here. 15:23 Jûpe So one hit right there. 15:25 Jûpe So one hit right there. 15:26 Jûpe And then the play goes away. 15:28 Jûpe Puck goes by. 15:29 Jûpe He cross checks them again. 15:30 Jûpe He's still on them. 15:32 Vegoe He's still on them cross checking away. 15:34 Vegoe And the refs here aren't doing anything. 15:37 Vegoe You know, they know it's a 6-1 game. 15:38 Vegoe They know what's out of hand. 15:40 Vegoe And they're just letting this go. 15:42 Vegoe And you can tell it's going to get worse here. 15:46 Vegoe So, yeah, Wisconsin's going to answer a little bit. 15:48 Vegoe They're going to get physical as well. 15:52 Jûpe Yeah, it's just, you know, we saw this last year. 15:56 Jûpe The last player to get suspended was a Michigan player on it with his... 16:00 Jûpe Oh, there's kind of a... 16:01 Vegoe Yep, there's a big hit. 16:02 Vegoe And the refs right there doesn't look at anything. 16:06 Jûpe But we saw the hit on, you know, on Snuggerud late in the game when they were about to, you know, blank them for the weekend, Viggs. 16:13 Vegoe And this play here is the worst part here for me. 16:16 Vegoe Watch Park come in here. 16:18 Vegoe The puck is already at the hash marks, and he's still coming in at a player who's way behind the play. 16:23 Jûpe That's a legal hit. 16:25 Vegoe That's not... 16:26 Jûpe Well, not, no. 16:28 Jûpe And then all hell breaks loose. 16:30 Vegoe And there's punches being thrown here. 16:33 Jûpe Both sides. 16:34 Jûpe By both sides, yes. 16:36 Vegoe And this is college amateur hockey. 16:39 Vegoe This is not pro hockey. 16:41 Vegoe Players aren't supposed to behave like this. 16:44 Vegoe And there's no action from the league. 16:48 Jûpe At least nothing yet. 16:49 Vegoe Nothing yet. 16:50 Vegoe Usually, according to our GPL's tracker of suspensions, typically Monday morning, these things are addressed so that the teams have time for the next weekend to adjust with their lineup. 17:04 Vegoe And this game gets worse. 17:06 Vegoe There's another melee later in the game with 30 seconds left that they give out another 90 minutes of penalties. 17:16 Vegoe But this is just the refs letting things get out of control. 17:19 Vegoe And this just tells Michigan that if they're down 6-1 again, they can just keep doing this. 17:24 Vegoe And there's really no consequence. 17:27 Sam Yeah, this second hit here was insane. 17:30 Sam I saw the first clip a little bit, but I didn't see that whole, what, minute and a half clip that we just showed. 17:35 Sam And you can kind of see it on Ravel. 17:38 Sam You like to see the game kind of police itself. 17:40 Sam But in this case, the refs, they needed to step in a little bit earlier, I think, for sure. 17:46 Vegoe Yeah, I think that one hit behind the play, behind the Michigan net earlier, you probably could have blown it dead there and called the minor and kind of nip this in the bud. 17:55 Vegoe But instead they don't, they let it go and we get this. 17:59 Sam It's ridiculous. 18:00 Jûpe Yeah, so, you know, I kind of, I messaged Cappy and I'm like, is there no risk? 18:05 Jûpe He's like, nothing yet. 18:08 Jûpe There still may be, but like you said, VIGS, they typically do it on a Monday morning. 18:15 Jûpe And maybe, maybe there's some kind of appeal process or something that's going on that we don't know about. 18:20 Jûpe That's possible, couldn't it be, VIGS? 18:22 Jûpe I mean, it could be. 18:24 Sam Both teams would have to forfeit this weekend if they took everyone. 18:29 Jûpe Well, I think they could have, they could have singled out quite a few players there. 18:32 Jûpe I mean, even Wisconsin players who were swinging away. 18:36 Jûpe That's fighting VIGS. 18:38 Vegoe That is fighting, which is typically a no-no in College Hockey. 18:41 Vegoe You know, earlier in the game, there were guys ripping off face masks and helmets, which have sometimes been suspension worthy according to the Big Ten. 18:50 Vegoe If we, people want to go look at the suspension page, you can see what they've deemed suspendable in the past. 18:57 Vegoe And typically, you know, they don't suspend a guy if he does something early in the game and he gets kicked out of the game and has to kind of miss that contest. 19:07 Vegoe But when it's stuff that happens in the third period of a blowout game or the last nine seconds of a game, there isn't really a penalty in that game that impacts them in any way. 19:17 Jûpe VIGS, is Sam on your list anywhere? 19:23 Sam Of suspensions or what? 19:25 Jûpe Is Sam on the list, VIGS? 19:27 Sam Oh, I've had a tough stretch my sophomore year. 19:31 Sam I think I went three games in a row with a boarding or a hit from behind or something. 19:37 Sam And then I think Bob was thankful that I got suspended that third game because he was probably going to sit me anyways. 19:46 Jûpe VIGS is checking right now. 19:47 Jûpe He's getting out his list. 19:49 Sam That would have been 2018, 2019. 19:53 Jûpe What's the story? 19:54 Jûpe Was it Shearhorn that told us a story that somebody Oh, he knew about one of them. 20:01 Vegoe I think he dodged it, Sam. 20:04 Vegoe The Joey Maroni one is one that he told because he got suspended. 20:09 Vegoe Yeah, he has to come out. 20:10 Vegoe I think he might have getting kicked out. 20:11 Vegoe Yeah. 20:12 Sam It was his first game in like probably two months. 20:16 Sam He comes out first shift against Penn State and hits two guys from behind in the same play. 20:20 Sam It was unbelievable. 20:22 Sam He was just so ready to go. 20:25 Jûpe You fired up. 20:26 Jûpe He was ready to go. 20:27 Jûpe Yeah, just like you said. 20:32 Jûpe Oh, boy. 20:35 Jûpe So getting to Wednesday, it's kind of be a little late to suspend a guy, wouldn't it, Viggs? 20:41 Vegoe You would think so. 20:42 Vegoe I looked back at my emails and I didn't see any that were really that late. 20:46 Vegoe I do remember one for Minnesota that was late. 20:50 Vegoe I almost feel like that Leon Bristette one was one where like the team was already prepping to travel and maybe he got notified late. 20:58 Vegoe I remember that really ticked off the coaches because they're like, hey, we're trying to prepare for a game and we were expecting to have them in or game planning for it and then we find out it was suspended a couple days before, a day or two before. 21:10 Vegoe I feel like that's happened once or twice, but it's pretty rare. 21:17 Jûpe Well, we'll just have to wait and see. 21:20 Jûpe Sam, you stayed out of suspension, so that's good. 21:25 Sam I do have one game or something from the consecutive hit from behind, so maybe not. 21:29 Jûpe Well, you know, Viggs would have it, wouldn't you, if it was a suspension? 21:33 Jûpe Because you've been keeping track since the Big Ten started, right, Viggs? 21:36 Jûpe You think you have most of it. 21:38 Jûpe I know Molesky got some for you as well. 21:41 Vegoe Yeah, because of the automatic suspensions, Molesky caught a couple that I had missed because they didn't send out emails for those suspensions. 21:51 Vegoe They were automatic. 21:52 Vegoe So I feel like we caught up our list. 21:54 Vegoe So, Sam, I think you might have gotten kicked out of a game, maybe. 21:57 Vegoe Yeah, for being a dirty player. 21:59 Sam You know, I told Blake, I'm sure he was in Vegas, actually, against North Dakota was the third game. 22:06 Vegoe Oh, I think that's a good game to get one, I guess, against North Dakota. 22:10 Vegoe If you're going to hit somebody from behind, you know, might as well be wearing green. 22:14 Sam Yeah, exactly. 22:16 Jûpe Have you ever been involved in a game where you thought the referees have lost control and they probably should be calling your team or the opponent's team? 22:26 Sam I think, yeah, one doesn't really come to mind specifically, but I mean, it happens at all levels, I think, like you start the game starts getting chippy and it's usually in the games that aren't close, right? 22:38 Sam And that's that's when it gets out of hand because people like they aren't disciplined anymore, right? 22:43 Sam And they just start running around getting away from their game and and they take cheap shots. 22:47 Sam And yeah, not one sticks out to me right now, but I've for sure been in quite a few probably throughout the years. 22:55 Jûpe And I'm still getting very frustrated with the cross checking that happens in this league, whether it's a gopher doing it or an opponent doing it, somebody will score a goal up front and somebody just gets cross checked for it or whatever it may be in front of the net. 23:12 Jûpe It's getting a little out of control. 23:15 Jûpe I mean, it happens, you know, and the NHL is really bad. 23:18 Jûpe I mean, the guys are getting just whacked, you know, being in front of the net. 23:22 Jûpe Yeah, I know you're supposed to be physical in front of that. 23:24 Jûpe But a cross check is a cross check. 23:26 Vegoe Well, I mean, Danny Nelson and Evan Warner at the end of the game on Saturday are going after guys. 23:32 Vegoe And, you know, the game's over. 23:35 Vegoe And heck, maybe there should be suspensions for one of those guys, too. 23:39 Vegoe You know, Warner was the guy that went after Stunkaroode last year at Michigan, and now he's at Notre Dame. 23:43 Vegoe And, you know, he's getting in the same situation. 23:46 Vegoe And, you know, that's not what people are in the stands to see in college hockey. 23:53 Vegoe So I definitely agree with you. 23:54 Vegoe The cross checking stuff just gets out of hand. 23:57 Sam Yeah, that Stunkaroode one last year was egregious. 24:00 Sam At the end of that game, that was crazy. 24:02 Sam That made my blood boil and I wasn't even on the ice. 24:05 Jûpe Well, it certainly made our blood boil as well. 24:07 Jûpe But that was almost a year ago, Vig. 24:11 Jûpe There's been no suspension since then. 24:12 Vegoe So, yeah. 24:15 Jûpe All right, Vigs, we need to talk about one of our sponsors. 24:18 Jûpe And that means we're going to talk about Gateway Fiber. 24:22 Jûpe Yeah, maybe. 24:23 Vegoe Maybe Joop's going to have to switch to Gateway Fiber here because we're in the state of hockey and bad air connections beg a bad line change. 24:29 Vegoe It slows everything down, causes chaos, might even lose the game because you can't make eye contact with your host and you don't know what he's talking about on the podcast. 24:37 Vegoe You're just having to guess. 24:38 Vegoe So Gateway Fiber here to keep your air nets gaining at full speed. 24:42 Vegoe They've been taking on big cable for years and they're here in Minnesota offering faster speeds, better reliability and customer service that doesn't sit in the penalty box. 24:51 Vegoe Gateway Fiber isn't just another provider, they're on your team. 24:54 Vegoe Visit gatewayfiber.com or call 1-888-201-4339 to see if Gateway Fiber is available in your area because life is too short for bad air net. 25:08 Jûpe All right, we've got Vegoe's top 20 this week. 25:13 Jûpe Michigan State putting themselves solidly up top, Viggs. 25:18 Vegoe Yeah, I mean, that was the feature series of the weekend against Penn State and Michigan State definitely took care of business. 25:25 Vegoe Gab McKenna gets the one goal on the weekend for the Nittany Lions and losing effort. 25:31 Vegoe Kind of a perimeter player. 25:33 Vegoe Scott Wheeler was in Monterino for the game talking to a lot of NHL Scouts. 25:38 Vegoe A lot of them have a lot of question marks after seeing them in that game. 25:42 Vegoe Adam Nightingale was asked after the game, did he do anything specific to shut down McKenna? 25:48 Vegoe And he just flatly said, nope. 25:55 Sam Well, yeah, I think I've been watching a little bit of McKenna's game too. 25:59 Sam And it's like, he's one of those players. 26:00 Sam He's kind of like a Trevor Ziegres, right? 26:02 Sam Where he's super flashy and he can make the cool plays, the spinoramas, the shootout goals, whatever it might be. 26:07 Sam But I mean, his 200 foot game is is interesting for a first overall pick. 26:12 Sam I'll leave it at that. 26:14 Vegoe Yeah, I mean, he's definitely not a Celebrini, a Fantilly, a Matthew Dyes. 26:18 Vegoe You know, he's not a play driver. 26:20 Vegoe He doesn't know, heck, even LJ Booney, the way he's able to pick pockets right now and win pucks and create pressure that way. 26:28 Vegoe You don't see a lot of that in McKenna's game right now. 26:32 Vegoe And it's probably because he's never had to do it. 26:34 Sam Right. 26:35 Vegoe So, you know, that's the benefit of him making the leap to college. 26:39 Vegoe And if he can show over the year that he can grow his game and add that to it, it's going to help him, you know, in his development. 26:46 Vegoe But right now it's a big question mark. 26:48 Vegoe But it was definitely fun to see that match up. 26:51 Vegoe I wish it was on ESPN or Fox or something instead of Big Ten streaming. 26:56 Vegoe But I'm sure those student commentators had a great time calling the game. 27:01 Jûpe Well, I think Big Ten did one of the games. 27:05 Jûpe No, they were they did Michigan and Wisconsin. 27:07 Jûpe That's right. 27:08 Jûpe They didn't. 27:08 Vegoe I think they were both 3B and plus because I was watching the condensed game and here in the highlights. 27:12 Vegoe So entertaining for them. 27:15 Jûpe And then it's all in NCHCV because you got North Dakota, Denver and Duluth right up there now. 27:21 Vegoe Yeah. 27:22 Vegoe You know, North Dakota is playing very well, you know, sweeping Omaha. 27:26 Vegoe You know, they have got that goaltender that's really good and the Fighting Hawks were able to solve him. 27:32 Vegoe Denver goes into Western Michigan, sweeps UMD, sweeps St. 27:36 Vegoe Cloud. 27:37 Vegoe You know, I've got the West in my top eight spots here. 27:41 Vegoe I wrote about this in the top 20 on GPL this week. 27:43 Vegoe I don't know what to make of the East. 27:46 Vegoe You know, I had Quinnipiac pretty high up there. 27:48 Vegoe Then they just have a terrible weekend where they tie Alaska and lose to Yale. 27:52 Vegoe I don't think they've lost to Yale in like a decade. 27:55 Vegoe So, kind of a fall there and, you know, in Hockey East, there's a lot of teams that are about 500 or just a game over. 28:02 Vegoe It's hard to know what to make of those programs. 28:06 Jûpe Yeah, then there's a big bulk of East teams there for you. 28:10 Jûpe Ohio State, Miami, CCC, mixed in there. 28:13 Jûpe And then Dartmouth enters your top 20 leagues. 28:17 Vegoe Yep, they had a good start. 28:18 Vegoe They beat Colgate and Cornell. 28:20 Vegoe I mean, the mighty big red got beaten by the big green. 28:23 Vegoe So, I feel like there's probably going to be a team out of ECAC that's going to be dangerous. 28:30 Vegoe It's just really hard to tell which one, you know, the Ivy League teams have only played four games. 28:35 Vegoe Quinnipiac's been up and down. 28:37 Vegoe I don't know if people read my top 20 article, but Ram Pecknold was very frustrated with his team and he didn't hold back when he was interviewed after the game. 28:47 Vegoe He was very disappointed in their compete and effort and they have no confidence. 28:53 Jûpe Interesting. 28:54 Sam I did not see that. 28:56 Vegoe Yeah, he blasted his team. 28:58 Vegoe So, interesting. 29:00 Vegoe I think the trash can might have been kicked. 29:02 Jûpe Oh, it was in the Yale. 29:06 Sam That's tough for the players to see the coach go out there and not have their back, I think. 29:10 Sam Whenever that happens, that's... 29:12 Jûpe But, you know, they do get frustrated. 29:14 Jûpe I mean, if the players are not listening and they keep doing the things he doesn't want them to do, he's basically leaving it up to the players, isn't he, Sam? 29:24 Jûpe I mean... 29:26 Sam Yeah, you got to look in the mirror as a player, for sure. 29:29 Sam But you know, coaches can be frustrated and all that, like behind closed doors, and they can rip you to shreds. 29:35 Sam But to go out in the media and then kind of double down is an interesting tactic, I think. 29:41 Vegoe Well, earlier in this year, you know, for Bob to say, I'm not happy with the effort with this Gopher team earlier in the year, that's a rarity for a Moscow press conference. 29:50 Sam Especially early in the year. 29:52 Sam He usually gives a lot of slack early in the year. 29:55 Vegoe He's very patient. 29:56 Vegoe And I think he was trying to get the attention because it wasn't necessarily the younger guys who were slower to the fight, it was some of the older guys. 30:04 Vegoe I think against Notre Dame, we saw a little bit of a response from Jimmy Clark and Brody Lamb and Brody Zemer, you know, players that this team needs, you know, pulling their weight. 30:15 Vegoe You know, all crew, no passengers. 30:18 Vegoe And those guys can't be on the perimeter, they have to be contributing. 30:21 Vegoe You know, when you have guys like Clark and Lamb on the top power play, you know, they have to show the way to play. 30:28 Vegoe And I thought they did better at that against Notre Dame. 30:31 Vegoe And now they just got to keep it going here against LLU. 30:34 Sam Yeah, to take away from last weekend. 30:37 Jûpe I thought one of the goals is happy to do to see them as a top 20 team, given the strength of the Big Ten splitting series against top dogs. 30:44 Jûpe I mean, well, obviously sweeping this weekend and gosh, I guess to get right back, probably have to sweep Penn State one day. 30:53 Vegoe I think a split with Penn State, you know, a good game against Denver and then a split with Ohio State would maybe give them a chance to get the top 20 for me. 31:02 Jûpe They got to get to 500 or above first, I think. 31:06 Vegoe I don't think so. 31:07 Vegoe You know, they've played a very difficult schedule. 31:11 Vegoe You know, that's one of the things that the coaching staff has said is like, yes, I know the fans aren't happy with how things are going, but you look at the top 20 BCs there, North Dakota is there, Minnesota is there, Wisconsin is there, Michigan Tech is close to being there. 31:28 Vegoe You know, this is a very difficult schedule they've played and they've dealt with some injuries. 31:32 Vegoe So I think if they have a strong finish here, winning five out of the six, and then playing well in the last three games, there's a chance that they could be back there. 31:41 Vegoe And I definitely think because of the strength of the schedule, the Big Ten, that if Minnesota holds its own in the league, they're still going to be in a good place for a bid. 31:50 Vegoe You know, this is a league that could get four or five teams very easily. 31:54 Jûpe I could tell you're looking down at your phone, Sam, from a certain text we all just got a few seconds ago. 32:00 Jûpe That was pretty good. 32:03 Jûpe We'll just keep that on the down low for now. 32:07 Jûpe Viggs is going to look at his text because he was talking at the time, like both going, hmm, what's going on here? 32:14 Jûpe Anything else, Viggs? 32:16 Jûpe I mean, I do like seeing Miami back in there. 32:18 Jûpe They have really kind of struggled for a few years. 32:20 Jûpe It's really good to see that program because they've been, they've been stomped on since they went to the NCHC. 32:27 Vegoe Yeah. 32:28 Vegoe I mean, they've done well in the games they've played. 32:31 Vegoe There's been a bunch of teams that have lost. 32:33 Vegoe I'm giving them a little bit of the benefit of the doubt here. 32:36 Vegoe We'll see what happens when they start playing some real teams in the league. 32:41 Vegoe I think right on the fringe, we do have Michigan Tech, St. 32:43 Vegoe Cloud, Omaha, Bemidji. 32:45 Vegoe They're all on the fringe. 32:46 Vegoe If I was doing a top 25, they would probably be in that next little tier. 32:52 Sam Do you have a history book of your weekly rankings and how long teams have stayed in the top 20 and whatnot? 33:00 Vegoe I do, but it's not great on demand, but I do keep track. 33:07 Sam I'm curious if Dartmouth, ever since you started doing it, is this their first appearance? 33:11 Vegoe It could be. 33:12 Vegoe It could be their first appearance. 33:13 Vegoe I've only been doing this now for two years. 33:15 Sam Yeah. 33:16 Vegoe It's been nice. 33:17 Vegoe It keeps me on top of the national scene a little bit better. 33:21 Vegoe You know, I do get the Western bias because I watch a lot of Big Ten and NCHC and CCHA. 33:27 Vegoe So I don't see as much, but it's kind of forced me to use my ESPN Plus and check out some of the ECAC and Hockey East games and every once in a while hit Flow and get Atlantic. 33:38 Sam Nice. 33:39 Sam I like it. 33:40 Jûpe Darren Bakken's got a question here for you. 33:42 Jûpe When Minnesota is at full strike, which players will be the odd man out? 33:46 Jûpe Harris is tough to take out, in my own opinion. 33:49 Jûpe Harris has played but six games or so now he's played. 33:52 Jûpe He's gotten in there probably a lot more than we thought he would. 33:56 Vegoe Yeah. 33:57 Vegoe He's taking advantage of it. 33:58 Vegoe You know, I thought he's looked the part to be a D1 hockey player. 34:02 Vegoe You know, I was talking about that with Bob Moscow today during the availability. 34:06 Vegoe You know, he's one of those kids who got squeezed out by the Portal and fifth year players. 34:13 Vegoe You know, all of a sudden, it became really hard to be a D1 hockey player because it was just the pipeline got clogged with all these players. 34:20 Vegoe And so guys kept getting pushed. 34:22 Vegoe He was just in that age group where he tufted out in the NHL in New Mexico. 34:27 Vegoe And there just weren't spots for guys like him. 34:29 Vegoe And so he went to Augsburg. 34:30 Vegoe He was a productive player there. 34:32 Vegoe And then he had the chance to come to Minnesota. 34:34 Vegoe He was a good fit. 34:36 Vegoe I know some fans don't like it. 34:38 Vegoe You know, a D3 player was someone they tapped. 34:41 Vegoe But I feel like he looked the part this last weekend. 34:44 Vegoe And he's a guy who's going to keep working. 34:46 Vegoe You know, even as guys get back in the lineup. 34:48 Vegoe And you need guys like that in a program to get through times like this. 34:53 Vegoe Because if you don't have depth and you have this injury stuff, and you're all of a sudden playing 18, 19 year old guys and fourth line roles that they're not used to, have never played. 35:03 Vegoe That doesn't always go very well when you play a schedule like Minnesota does. 35:08 Sam I mean, look at Nick Michael last year, right? 35:10 Sam He stepped in and played some good games. 35:12 Sam He played hard. 35:12 Sam He played a good 200 foot game, I thought, a couple of times throughout last year. 35:16 Sam And I mean, he's a guy coming from St. 35:18 Sam John's. 35:18 Sam So you do need those depth guys. 35:22 Vegoe And I think the difference between like top D3 players and D1 has never been closer. 35:27 Vegoe Yeah, I think because there's so many good American players now with all the junior leagues we have and all the development that's happening. 35:35 Vegoe You know, there are players that that are just going to have to be fits sometimes. 35:40 Vegoe And sometimes it takes a couple extra years. 35:42 Vegoe And you know, Brody Lamb and Graham Harris are the same age. 35:46 Vegoe The one's a senior and one's a freshman. 35:48 Vegoe That's pretty crazy. 35:51 Jûpe Brody kind of got out of a slump this past weekend. 35:54 Jûpe He looked good. 35:55 Vegoe Yeah, he did look good. 35:57 Vegoe He had a little bit of a confident nature to his game again, which is important for him. 36:02 Vegoe I think he's an emotional guy who can kind of let himself go in the highs and lows and the swings. 36:08 Vegoe So seeing him, you know, get the empty net goal, you know, might not mean that much to anyone else. 36:14 Vegoe But for him, it gave him a little bit of confidence. 36:16 Vegoe His line did start the game on Saturday. 36:19 Vegoe And I thought they did a better job setting the tone, something that they maybe hadn't done the past couple of games. 36:25 Vegoe So good, good steps for him. 36:29 Jûpe All right, is that an antique Tiffany lamp in the background VIGS from a certain texture? 36:37 Sam Yeah. 36:39 Vegoe Yeah, a little colored glass back there, you know. 36:42 Jûpe I don't think there's anything wrong with it. 36:44 Jûpe It's nice. 36:45 Vegoe It looks nice. 36:46 Sam I'm waiting for the comments on my old brand new used printer. 36:50 Vegoe Yeah, Sam, you got to do something for your background. 36:52 Vegoe If we do the background rater, it's going to be a blank canvas for you. 36:57 Jûpe You know, Sharon was pretty bad at first, too. 36:59 Vegoe At least you don't have the fan spinning above you right now. 37:03 Sam Yeah, I haven't turned it on yet. 37:05 Sam We just moved into a new house, though. 37:07 Sam So we're we're decorating and still trying to fill it with furniture. 37:11 Sam So that's I got a little bit of an excuse. 37:15 Jûpe Totally. 37:16 Jûpe It's always exciting getting into a new house. 37:18 Jûpe It's a lot of work, but very exciting. 37:20 Jûpe So. 37:22 Sam All right. 37:22 Jûpe Before we get into this week, Viggs, we still have one more sponsor to talk about. 37:26 Jûpe And that is, of course, Cub Foods. 37:30 Vegoe Yeah, Cub Food. 37:32 Vegoe This fall, they've got you covered. 37:33 Vegoe I've been down there. 37:35 Vegoe I'm getting into like my pot roast season, my chicken, chili, my beef chili and Cubs got you covered. 37:43 Vegoe If you want some fullness, you know, fresh picked apples, pumpkin spice, Cub is your one stop shop for everything fall, whether you're baking, hosting game day or just craving a go-see night in, Cub has the flavors that make fall feel like fall. 37:56 Vegoe So swing by your local Cub, stock up all your seasonal favorites, because nothing says fall in Minnesota like comfort food from Cub shop happy. 38:05 Vegoe They're one of us. 38:07 Jûpe All right. 38:07 Jûpe And of course, we thank Cub Foods and Gateway Fiber for sponsoring The GPL Podcast. 38:14 Jûpe Long Island University Sharks Vigs, brand new, never played it before. 38:22 Jûpe How long has the program been around five, six years, I think. 38:25 Jûpe Okay. 38:26 Jûpe Love their jersey colors. 38:28 Jûpe Love that. 38:28 Jûpe I'm kind of doing the blue and the yellow, kind of for the opponent this weekend. 38:35 Jûpe I like to do that. 38:38 Vegoe I do not know much about this team. 38:40 Jûpe Who does? 38:41 Vegoe They have a lot of older kids. 38:43 Vegoe They have a big roster. 38:45 Vegoe The one thing I do know is that they've played everyone tough so far. 38:50 Vegoe That's one of the things that Motzko is really trying to get through to his team, is that this isn't going to be a cakewalk. 38:56 Vegoe There are no cakewalks in college hockey. 38:59 Vegoe They're not just pulling these kids off the pond and putting them in uniforms. 39:03 Vegoe These are hockey players that want to make a good showing. 39:06 Vegoe They went to OT with Penn State. 39:09 Vegoe They went to OT with New Hampshire. 39:11 Vegoe They went to OT with Canisius. 39:13 Vegoe They gave BU a game that was very close, two goal game. 39:18 Vegoe So, Minnesota is going to have to be on point when they play this weekend, because I think they're going to have to generate some of their own juice. 39:26 Vegoe I don't think this is a game where there's going to be big ticket sales and a big crowd. 39:30 Vegoe So, they're going to have to generate it themselves a little bit. 39:34 Jûpe Yeah, Sam, a team like this coming into Marriott, they are going to be pumped up. 39:40 Jûpe This is definitely something the team needs to be careful of. 39:45 Sam Yeah, absolutely. 39:46 Sam This one for them is like, that's been circled on their calendar all off season, right? 39:50 Sam You get to come into a Big Ten school, play in front of, it probably won't be a huge crowd, but in their eyes, a huge crowd, the bright lights. 39:59 Sam I think you look at this team, it reminds me of when it's so hard to get up for games, like that when you're playing a Long Island University, right? 40:09 Sam Because you think, oh, it's going to be point nighter, or it's going to be a cakewalk. 40:13 Sam But you're right, because the parody in college hockey has never been better. 40:17 Sam And I think it was my junior year, we played Ferris State over the Mariucci Tournament, and we ended up losing that game just because we didn't have our foot on the gas and we kind of took them lightly. 40:28 Sam And that's what ended up knocking us out of the pairwise. 40:30 Sam And Duluth snuck in and has a 16 seed and the rest is history obviously on that. 40:35 Sam So you can't, I think Bob always says this, you can't win the National Championship in November, December, but you can lose it. 40:42 Sam So I think it's important that the Gophers don't take these guys lightly. 40:48 Jûpe Viggs, it would be devastating into the NPI if they were to lose one of these games. 40:54 Vegoe Yeah, I still don't know how the NPI handles a bad loss in the end of the year. 40:59 Vegoe It's still, I know that Adam O'Nan had the NPI guy on this week talking about, you know, bad wins being thrown out. 41:06 Vegoe I feel like there's a bad loss thing too. 41:09 Vegoe They're trying to minimize that and, you know, give a benefit to teams that play tough schedules and take away some of the impact of losing to good teams. 41:19 Vegoe But I think for Minnesota's like vibe and momentum, you know, they need to have a good weekend here. 41:25 Vegoe You know, LIU, as Sam mentioned, is going to get up for this game. 41:28 Vegoe You know, this is a team, I think, plays two home games the entire first half of the year. 41:34 Vegoe Like, they are just traveling and collecting checks to pay for their program. 41:39 Vegoe And I think a team maybe can get an identity of that as like, hey, let's take the money and take the points kind of perspective. 41:46 Vegoe And you know, I think they're going to give Minnesota a good game. 41:49 Vegoe And it's one of those games where I think Minnesota has to be aggressive. 41:53 Vegoe You know, I noticed that at practice today, Steve Miller is on this team. 41:58 Vegoe You cannot sit back and glide. 42:01 Vegoe You have to close the space. 42:03 Vegoe You have to put pressure on players. 42:05 Vegoe You have to play on your toes. 42:07 Vegoe And I think, you know, we saw some of that against Notre Dame. 42:10 Vegoe But the rest of the year, it's been lacking, quite frankly. 42:14 Vegoe So it's something they have to, you know, really figure out, you know, is that going to be our identity is being a hard team to play against. 42:21 Vegoe Because at times, when Minnesota doesn't play that way, they can get in trouble this year, because they're not able to outscore their mistakes, like they've been able to in the past. 42:32 Sam That's all I was just going to say, Viggs, is they don't have, they don't really have that one guy who can carry its own line. 42:38 Sam They got to do it by committee. 42:39 Sam And so if they don't have everyone bought in, it's going to be hard to put a lot in the net if they get down early. 42:45 Jûpe But, you know, I think a program like this coming on, I'm trying to just to start a program. 42:53 Jûpe And, you know, you do think of college hockey, there is so much more parity this year, you know, now compared to 15, 20, 25 years ago. 43:02 Jûpe I remember after the 2002 championship, I think it was at Huntsville or somebody came in here. 43:08 Jûpe I think Minnesota put 10 up on them one night and eight the other night. 43:12 Jûpe I mean, we used to see that a lot more common in college hockey, but you know, I think Michigan put up a 10 about one time this year, but it's just not something that happens like it did in the past. 43:25 Vegoe No, I mean, this team, you know, the Gophers are going to play LIU and they gave up three to Penn State. 43:31 Vegoe They gave up three in New Hampshire. 43:32 Vegoe They gave up four to BU. 43:35 Vegoe They're playing against teams with a lot of NHL talent and they're hanging in there. 43:39 Vegoe And I think that just shows how deep college hockey is that a team like LIU, who doesn't play in front of a big crowd and doesn't play a lot at home and doesn't show up on TV very often, they're still able to put together a very competitive roster. 43:56 Vegoe I was just kind of looking at it and it's a lot of guys who played NAHL, BCHL, OJHL, MJHL. 44:05 Vegoe These are leagues where at the end of the season, they know you love hockey. 44:12 Vegoe Because it's not easy to play in those leagues. 44:15 Vegoe You are on the bus a lot, you're eating cold pizza with ice bags on you, and you're not sleeping in nice hotels, and you're grinding out the year trying to get a shot to play college hockey. 44:26 Vegoe And that builds some character in a team that can be tough to play against. 44:32 Jûpe And I believe, kind of the rest of their schedule, obviously, all the other teams will be going into league play. 44:38 Jûpe Are they playing like a team? 44:40 Jûpe Like, somebody's mentioning, like, Anchorage and whatnot, that don't have conferences anymore. 44:45 Jûpe I think they're playing either other D3 schools or other types of schools. 44:51 Jûpe Is that sustainable? 44:54 Vegoe It's probably not long term. 44:56 Vegoe You know, you look at their schedule, the first half, with only playing the two home games and a couple exhibitions. 45:02 Vegoe You know, this is a team that's trying to make money by going on the road and getting guaranteed games. 45:07 Vegoe And they do go to Alaska at the end of January for two weeks, so they'll play five games. 45:13 Vegoe You know, where else would you rather be than Alaska at the end of January, right? 45:17 Vegoe You can probably ask Guy or Shearhorn about that. 45:20 Vegoe With some perspective. 45:21 Vegoe Maybe we can talk about that on the broadcast. 45:23 Vegoe And then they'll play Stonehill for five of their last ten games, too. 45:28 Vegoe So it's a tough way to play D1 hockey. 45:32 Vegoe Part of me hopes that, you know, College Hockey can figure it out and maybe get some expansion and get maybe you get some more conferences to figure this out. 45:39 Vegoe But it's tough when you've got a team like LIU and then you've got schools like Alaska. 45:45 Vegoe That's not a real easy conference to have, you know, unless you do travel partners, you know, where you have like two or three schools in the east and two or three schools out west and you can, you know, do what they do when they're spending the two, three weeks in Alaska and Alaska could come to New York for two or three weeks, you know, there's ways to do that too. 46:06 Sam What is what is the LiU's barn look like? 46:08 Sam Do we know? 46:11 Vegoe I don't know for sure. 46:13 Vegoe You know, it's a 2500 seat building and I haven't seen it. 46:17 Jûpe Braemar basically. 46:18 Vegoe I don't know if it's Braemar or Aldrich or Tria or what. 46:22 Sam Yeah, I haven't seen it either. 46:23 Sam I was just curious. 46:26 Vegoe That's some homework to do this weekend. 46:28 Sam Yeah, absolutely. 46:29 Sam And what is it? 46:30 Sam I also haven't got into their roster yet on like age. 46:32 Sam Are they an older team? 46:35 Vegoe Yeah, they're kind of an older team. 46:37 Vegoe They're an older, bigger team. 46:39 Vegoe If you go to CHN and you go to their Almanac and you can see the team information. 46:47 Sam Yeah, and that's usually kind of the trend with these smaller schools, right? 46:52 Jûpe They get those 22.6 years on average. 46:56 Sam 22.6? 46:57 Jûpe 22.6. 47:00 Vegoe By comparison, Minnesota is 21.3. 47:04 Jûpe So, yeah. 47:06 Vegoe All players, you spent that extra year. 47:09 Jûpe It is in the bottom kind of area of, well, yeah, there's... 47:12 Jûpe Oh, there we go. 47:14 Jûpe I found it. 47:15 Jûpe Yeah, and you know, they're the same age as Mankato, actually. 47:21 Jûpe Sort of fits the thing at Mankato, doesn't it, Viggs? 47:24 Vegoe For sure. 47:24 Jûpe Wow. 47:25 Jûpe So, all right. 47:26 Jûpe Well, what do you think happens this weekend, Viggs? 47:28 Jûpe I'm guessing anything other than a sweep is going to really tick some people off. 47:35 Vegoe Yeah, you know, I'm encouraged with how they played against Notre Dame. 47:39 Vegoe You know, I think we saw some good things. 47:42 Vegoe They got good goaltending, very few mistakes, less penalties. 47:47 Vegoe The penalty kill looked improved. 47:49 Vegoe You know, they cleared the puck when they had to clear the puck. 47:52 Vegoe You know, they did benefit from one pipe being hit during the penalty kill that could have maybe sent things a different direction. 47:59 Vegoe But they, you know, sometimes the bounces go your way too. 48:03 Vegoe And Minnesota capitalized on that. 48:06 Vegoe I like the look of the freshman line and the sophomore line. 48:09 Vegoe You know, I thought that was a pretty good combination for the Gophers. 48:13 Vegoe And then for Bob to put some older guys together and say, hey, you got to figure this out. 48:18 Vegoe And it seems to be working. 48:21 Vegoe I really like the development of Rombach and Whipple as defenders. 48:26 Vegoe I think it provides them a little bit more depth as those guys get confidence. 48:30 Vegoe They can hold on to pucks just a little bit longer, make better connections coming out of the zone. 48:36 Vegoe Because I think it's so critical for this Gopher team to get some transition and not just get in the routine of gain the red line, dump, get off. 48:46 Vegoe The other team comes on or the other line comes on and has to play defense. 48:50 Vegoe This is the program that needs to get some momentum. 48:54 Jûpe Sam, Rumbach is leading the team in plus minus at a plus eight right now. 49:00 Sam Yeah, he was plus four this weekend, I think. 49:04 Sam He was great defensively and I think he's still searching for his first point on the season. 49:09 Sam But I think to get that confidence as a freshman to come in and play kind of those shut down minutes, it's only going to help him obviously get better. 49:18 Sam And I think he's going to become more physical too as he gets more confident. 49:21 Sam Right now, he's just kind of out there kind of trying to make a good first pass. 49:26 Sam And as you grow confidence as a bigger D man, you can start to kind of evolve your game and expand it. 49:31 Sam And I think his physicality is going to be something that's going to be fun to watch as the year goes on too. 49:36 Vegoe I think one thing I've noticed with him is he's very aware of positioning on the ice. 49:42 Vegoe He's not chasing the play outside the dot line. 49:45 Vegoe He's very good at waiting for the attacker to come into his range. 49:51 Vegoe And when you're that big and you've got that much reach, I think you're just inviting players to come into your body and come into your triangle. 49:58 Vegoe It's like, good luck. 50:00 Vegoe He's got those super long sticks like we saw at the World Junior Summer Showcase as he was taking those home. 50:06 Vegoe Those are long sticks that he uses and he uses it pretty well. 50:10 Vegoe And I think just seeing him get the confidence to take the puck below the goal line and nearly get a wraparound goal, that's an impressive step for him. 50:19 Jûpe Yeah, Sam, we met his dad and his brother at the World Junior Showcase and they were carrying his sticks and his dad was telling us that they're the longest he could possibly have without getting special permission. 50:32 Jûpe Isn't that what he said, Vig? 50:33 Jûpe Something going on? 50:34 Vegoe Yeah, if you want the longer stick, you have to get an exception. 50:38 Vegoe So this is the longest legal stick you could just play. 50:41 Sam I did not know that. 50:42 Sam Interesting. 50:43 Sam I know you could get like the extensions built in with CCM or Bauer or whoever, but I didn't know they capped it at a legal limit. 50:50 Sam Interesting. 50:52 Jûpe Well, I mean, and yeah, I think was a Notre Dame had a six, six guy or six, seven guy. 50:58 Jûpe They had a couple of huge trees there, Vigs, this past weekend. 51:01 Vegoe Yeah, they had a six, seven, two, 40 guy. 51:04 Vegoe And I was looking for him in the locker room area after the game, just to see what that looks like down there. 51:10 Vegoe Because, you know, Rombach is a big guy, but he's not quite 240. 51:14 Vegoe No. 51:15 Sam That reminds me of a story my junior year. 51:18 Sam And Vigs, maybe you've heard this one being around the locker room, but Tyler Nanny had a tough stretch his senior year, where he had like five games in a row with multiple, multiple icings. 51:31 Sam And Don brought him into the office on Monday morning, and kind of gave it to him and showed him all the clips of his icings. 51:39 Sam And he's getting to like within five feet of the red line. 51:42 Sam And then he's sending it down and the rest are calling icing every time. 51:46 Sam And so Don looks at Tyler Nanny and goes, like, what's the issue here? 51:52 Sam And he's like, you know what, I think I need a longer stick. 51:56 Sam And then he comes out to skate that day with Tyler Nanny comes out with two sticks taped together that day and it's the kettling around as we're skating around before practice. 52:08 Sam I lost his mind. 52:10 Jûpe I have not heard that one. 52:13 Vegoe I feel like I've heard that one before and I felt like I heard Don was not impressed with that response. 52:19 Jûpe Oh, come on. 52:22 Jûpe That's good. 52:23 Jûpe That is excellent. 52:25 Jûpe I give them all the credit there. 52:27 Jûpe That's... 52:29 Jûpe you messed up sometimes. 52:32 Jûpe You do have to laugh it off sometimes and maybe Don wasn't feeling that. 52:36 Vegoe I think that was a tense time of Gopher Hockey when those days were around. 52:41 Vegoe Yeah. 52:43 Vegoe Just a little tense. 52:44 Sam We had five forwards on the power play at one point. 52:50 Vegoe Had a pretty good one running the point though. 52:52 Sam Yeah. 52:53 Sam Tommy Novak was pretty good on the point. 52:56 Vegoe I was just thinking about Tommy this week when Matthew Woods scored his hat trick for the Predators. 53:01 Vegoe I was like, you know, there's a player who's been overlooked for some, you know, maybe physical deficiencies that they think they see, but you know, that hockey brain, both of those two elite hockey brains. 53:14 Sam That's always an interesting one because like you can always tell he was going to be a better pro than college. 53:19 Sam Because like his hockey IQ is just incredible and like he can find players and as he plays with better players, obviously we've seen him pan out. 53:28 Sam But when you put him in college hockey, it's a little bit more physical and that really is game style. 53:32 Jûpe So this is the image just sent to us. 53:34 Jûpe I'm assuming this is LIU's rank. 53:38 Sam Nice. 53:39 Vegoe Yeah, not bad. 53:42 Vegoe It kind of looks like TRIO. 53:44 Sam Yeah, double sided. 53:46 Jûpe There you go. 53:47 Jûpe Yeah. 53:50 Jûpe So Viggs, you're picking a sweep, right? 53:52 Vegoe Picking a sweep. 53:53 Jûpe Sam, you're doing the same, right? 53:57 Vegoe What's that? 53:57 Jûpe Sweep? 53:58 Jûpe I'm assuming you got to pick the sweep. 53:59 Sam Yeah, I have to pick the sweep. 54:01 Sam If I ever want to be invited back to radio or TV, I got to. 54:06 Sam No, but seriously, I think they had obviously a super positive weekend last weekend against Notre Dame, so they can carry that on and continue to play. 54:14 Sam If they come out and compete and play the right way for 60 minutes, there's no reason they shouldn't win both these games this weekend. 54:20 Sam It's just a matter of staying disciplined and making sure the right team shows up. 54:24 Sam And as we know, it's been a little bit of a roller coaster start. 54:27 Sam So hopefully, hopefully we see the right guys in the marooning gold this weekend. 54:32 Vegoe And I do get the sense that the coaching staff of the players all know that like last week was just a step. 54:38 Vegoe Like it's, it's not anything, you know, it's, they got two wins, great. 54:42 Vegoe But you just have to stay even and they have to keep working to get better because they're, they haven't hit any like goals yet. 54:51 Vegoe So the coaching staff is still on these guys. 54:53 Vegoe I think the players still know, you know, the messages that they have to execute on and yeah, absolutely easy. 55:03 Jûpe All right, well, thanks for coming on the show, Sam. 55:05 Jûpe You ready for a little bit of overtime here? 55:07 Sam Oh yeah, fire it up. 55:09 Jûpe All right, V, you got any last thoughts? 55:12 Vegoe Just keep looking at that top 20. 55:14 Vegoe It's going to sort itself out one of these days. 55:16 Vegoe It looks like the MPI is, is maybe starting to come around. 55:19 Vegoe So hopefully as the Ivy League schools get more games in, that'll make more sense. 55:24 Jûpe Yeah, yeah, that would definitely help. 55:27 Jûpe All right, well that's going to do it for this week's episode of the GPL Podcast. 55:31 Jûpe We'll be back next week to recap the LIU series and preview the series of Penn State. 55:37 Jûpe We've got Paul Caponegre coming in next week for that show. 55:41 Jûpe So that's be nice to have him back on the show for like the bajillionth time. 55:46 Jûpe For those of you watching live on YouTube or X or Facebook, stay tuned for overtime. 55:51 Jûpe For the rest, you will catch you next week on the GPL Podcast. 56:07 Jûpe If you are watching on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and get notified each time we go live or post a video. 56:14 Jûpe If you listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please rate our show and leave a review. 56:24 Jûpe For those of you watching live, you know what's next. 56:28 Jûpe It's Vegoe's Beverage of the Week. 56:32 Jûpe It's time for Overtime.