0:03 This is The GPL Podcast, part of the Pulltab Sports family. 0:09 Oh, boy, Jup making mistakes. 0:12 I love it. 0:27 Okay, we got to complete the same question. 0:29 Duck, duck. 0:32 Goose. 0:32 Oh, it ain't gray duck, it's goose. 0:36 So Sam, I think you might have gotten kicked out of a game, maybe? 0:39 Yeah. 0:39 For being a dirty player, you know, totally, getting sure. 0:44 Now, here's Jupiter and Vegoe. 0:52 Jûpe Good evening, and welcome to The GPL Podcast, episode number 298. 1:00 Jûpe Happy New Year, Veegs. 1:03 Vegoe Happy New Year to you as well. 1:06 Vegoe It was a very eventful winter break around here with the World Juniors coming to town. 1:12 Vegoe I was really hoping I would get a USA gold medal game for my birthday, like I have the last couple of years. 1:19 Vegoe Unfortunately, we didn't get one this year. 1:24 Jûpe Well, we'll get into that in a bit, but really, we kind of knew this was going to be a down year for talent. 1:30 Jûpe I mean, there were questions kind of all over. 1:32 Jûpe We had some good stars in there, but you need more than a couple of stars. 1:37 Jûpe You need some good injuries, but the goaltending was a question the whole time, plus maybe some of the choices Bob made and some of the goaltending as well. 1:48 Jûpe But it was interesting. 1:51 Jûpe It was very interesting, so. 1:53 Vegoe For sure. 1:53 Vegoe Down year injuries played a big role. 1:56 Vegoe Arguably, their top forward, Plon, getting injured and missing games really impacted, I think, their line combination of their top six and their special teams. 2:06 Vegoe Then Cole Hudson. 2:07 Vegoe If there was probably one player on their roster this year that was irreplaceable, it was Cole Hudson. 2:13 Vegoe He was such a dynamic player. 2:15 Vegoe He was plus five in their first game. 2:17 Vegoe He gets back in the quarterfinal right away, scores a goal, gets an assist, looks super confident out there. 2:25 Vegoe Definitely a game changer for USA Hockey. 2:27 Vegoe Most points by a defenseman ever in the World Juniors for USA, and they just couldn't replace him. 2:35 Jûpe They couldn't. 2:36 Jûpe Then like you said, you had the question and goalie. 2:38 Jûpe Who do they go with? 2:39 Jûpe A lot of people thought they should go this way, they should go that way, and then all of a sudden he plays the third goalie out of nowhere for Sweden. 2:53 Jûpe A lot of people were questioning the goalie choice. 2:56 Jûpe They were. 2:57 Vegoe I almost feel like there had to be word from on high that Nalien had to get a game. 3:04 Vegoe He's going to be at BU next year. 3:05 Vegoe He's a development team goalie. 3:07 Vegoe He can come back for the World Junior next year. 3:10 Vegoe Probably the favorite to take the net. 3:13 Vegoe Throwing him into the deep end against Sweden, who I thought was the best team in the tournament, you know, as we were closed out our pods from Grand Casino. 3:21 Vegoe I picked the Swedes to win it. 3:24 Vegoe They were hands down in my mind the best puck possession team of anyone in the tournament. 3:31 Vegoe They made the least mistakes with the puck and their power play was nearly as dangerous as Canada's. 3:37 Jûpe And I initially thought we were going to see a Canada-US bronze medal and a Finland-Sweden final. 3:46 Jûpe Probably would have made a better final, Vegs, even though Czechia did come back in the last minute and a half and get within one real quick. 3:53 Jûpe But I thought Finland was also very good. 3:56 Jûpe They just couldn't score the shootout against Sweden. 4:00 Jûpe And their goalie was amazing in that game. 4:02 Jûpe So you know, Finland ends up, you know, taking fourth, but they were this close to being right there. 4:10 Vegoe Finland was very impressive. 4:12 Vegoe Rimpin in the goalie for Finland looked very good against the USA. 4:15 Vegoe You know, other than that first shot that just eluded him in the Sweden game, I thought he played pretty well throughout the rest of that contest and then was great in the overtime for Finland to even get them to the shootout. 4:27 Jûpe And Finland has shown year after year that if you let them hang around within a goal, even though it doesn't look like threatening, they will make you pay for it. 4:38 Jûpe Yeah, the US certainly found that out. 4:41 Vegoe You know, Finland, for being such a small hockey nation, does a great job turning out competitive teams. 4:47 Vegoe The model that they have for development over there is really impressive. 4:52 Vegoe And I like this year's Finland team. 4:54 Vegoe And I was impressed with their character after the game against the US. 4:59 Vegoe You know, they lost in the gold medal game a year ago to the US. 5:03 Vegoe And most of those players said it wasn't about revenge. 5:06 Vegoe It was a respectful game. 5:08 Vegoe And they understood that, you know, they were lucky this time. 5:11 Vegoe You know, they earned it. 5:12 Vegoe You know, they earned their balances and took advantage of it. 5:14 Vegoe But they were very respectful. 5:16 Vegoe And in a world junior tournament where sometimes the respect isn't given by everyone, as we saw in Canada's exit and how they behaved. 5:24 Vegoe I think that's a lot of important character that the Finns bring to the game. 5:28 Jûpe And we actually talked about that post that Finland lost, how good the goalie was. 5:33 Jûpe And I'm just saying, hey, we were fortunate this time. 5:37 Jûpe And he was pretty good about it. 5:38 Jûpe And then you said, contrast the Canadians and little different on their reaction. 5:45 Vegoe Yeah, Mr. 5:46 Vegoe Gavin McKenna nearly missed the bronze medal game with his behavior. 5:50 Vegoe So it'll be interesting to see other teams pick up on that the second half of the year and maybe get in his face here and there. 5:58 Vegoe I read an interesting note on GPL about Logan Cooley being almost taunted down the strap. 6:07 Vegoe You knew that the fuse could blow there and he could make a mistake. 6:11 Vegoe So it'll be interesting to see how McKenna has to handle that the rest of the year if that's the scouting report. 6:18 Jûpe So disappointing finish for the US. 6:21 Jûpe Crowd issues. 6:24 Jûpe We've talked about that. 6:25 Jûpe No big deal. 6:26 Jûpe Still a successful tournament. 6:29 Jûpe And like we said, I'm not a politics talking guy, but it seems like politics really slowed down a lot of the Canadians to come down to Minnesota this time. 6:40 Jûpe I believe the next US tournament is in 31, 2031. 6:45 Vegoe Yep, 2030 round. 6:46 Vegoe 31 sounded like Seattle might be a favorite to host that. 6:50 Vegoe You know, close to Vancouver, Minneapolis, St. 6:54 Vegoe Paul was probably the first time the US has hosted something that's not right close to the Canadian border. 7:00 Vegoe You know, Buffalo and Grand Forks, Grand Forks, right, right close to there. 7:05 Vegoe So a little bit different. 7:07 Vegoe NHL venues are tough. 7:09 Vegoe I think we saw the World Juniors in Ottawa struggle to sell out games there. 7:13 Vegoe They even had a big, I think, USA Canada Final, and they weren't able to quite sell out the building. 7:20 Vegoe When IIHF wants to set these ticker prices the way they do and handle it and, you know, really make it a tough market, not really make it clear that if you bought a full package to both pools, you wouldn't be able to see all the games anyway. 7:35 Vegoe So some challenges there. 7:36 Jûpe So yeah, this is on them too. 7:38 Jûpe Those prices were extremely high, Veegs. 7:43 Jûpe Sorry, the fans that are watching this, at least a lot of them are blue-collar fans, Veegs. 7:50 Jûpe Somebody priced out like, I think it was made up in Twitter or GPL, somebody said it would have cost them 16 grand to have a family of four through the full package. 8:03 Jûpe What are they doing? 8:04 Vegoe Pretty crazy. 8:06 Jûpe Well, so still success. 8:09 Jûpe It was nice to see Sweden get their second overall title. 8:13 Jûpe That's amazing. 8:14 Vegoe Yeah, first in a long time for them. 8:16 Vegoe They had a lot of success in the preliminaries, but they have really struggled in gold medal games over the years. 8:23 Jûpe Well, before we get to the second part of the season, Veegs, we did have one series after that Denver game in December, where Minnesota went out to Ohio State and got a split. 8:37 Jûpe I don't remember it all that well. 8:39 Vegoe It was a long time ago. 8:41 Jûpe It was a long time ago. 8:42 Jûpe Okay, so a 6-3 win, a 6-5 loss. 8:47 Jûpe You were just talking before the show, boy, they were out and attempted something ridiculous to 28, or something like that, 67 to 28. 8:55 Vegoe It was like 80. 8:57 Vegoe 80 to 28 attempts. 8:59 Vegoe And I mean, I can't remember a lot of Gopher teams that got outplayed like that, in just terms of possession. 9:07 Vegoe But if you look at the College Hockey, it was 87 shot attempts by Ohio State in that game, to just 28 from Minnesota. 9:15 Vegoe And the Gophers still got five goals with some great playmaking. 9:20 Vegoe But if you look at the advanced stats for both games, Ohio State generated more quality chances than Minnesota. 9:27 Vegoe Just the Gophers were able to finish. 9:31 Jûpe So, eh, okay, finished on the first half. 9:35 Jûpe The Denver win just the week before is probably a pretty good high. 9:39 Jûpe What's your assessment of the first half so far? 9:42 Jûpe I know Bob talked a lot about it this afternoon. 9:46 Jûpe I say, hey, we were pretty bad at first, but he really liked November, December. 9:50 Jûpe But how did you kind of see it? 9:54 Vegoe I think the struggles on the penalty kill really blew up the mistakes that this team and the shortcomings this team had throughout the first half. 10:03 Vegoe Their penalty kill is one of the worst in college hockey right now. 10:06 Vegoe And I think that's something that they're going to have to address. 10:09 Vegoe One, from a goaltending standpoint, they need their goalies to make probably another save a game. 10:15 Vegoe If you look at The Wild, the way they started their season, you know, their goalies weren't playing very well, and they just needed that extra save a game to give them a chance. 10:25 Vegoe And I don't think Minnesota got that very often in the first half. 10:29 Vegoe And their penalty kill. 10:31 Vegoe I've been hard on Brody Lamb specifically on the penalty kill, and he owned up to it today in media. 10:37 Vegoe He said, yeah, we need to be more consistent on the kill. 10:40 Vegoe Yeah, we've had some miscommunications among Fords with switches, the top of the zone, that has to be better. 10:47 Vegoe And so, you've got to appreciate a player saying, yep, I know what we need to fix, and we're going to work on it. 10:54 Vegoe So I think those two things are key for me. 10:57 Jûpe And we're going to take a look at some of those stats in our second segment here, just to see where Minnesota is and how they stack up with the best and the worst of the NCAA right now. 11:06 Jûpe So, I've been doing a lot of nerd work these last couple of weeks. 11:09 Jûpe There's a lot of back-end stats trying to get them all collected and on GPL. 11:13 Jûpe So, we'll take a look at some of that in our second segment. 11:17 Jûpe So, team isn't where they want to be. 11:20 Jûpe They're like number two in the NLI, almost at NIL there. 11:26 Jûpe Not where they want to be. 11:28 Jûpe I noticed there was a lot of talk today at the media availability. 11:31 Jûpe It says, do you want to be like Penn State was last year? 11:35 Jûpe Penn State was kind of in last place and they really moved up. 11:40 Jûpe And yeah, obviously they want to do that, but this is a different team than that Penn State team. 11:46 Vegoe Very different team. 11:47 Vegoe And I think Minnesota is counting on their young players to come through, but I think they're also counting on some of their veterans to be more consistent. 11:56 Vegoe I think they need their Brody Lambs and their Leo Grubas and their Jimmy Clarks to have a little bit better production and consistency in the second half. 12:05 Vegoe Now, if you also look at this team, down the middle, not very deep. 12:10 Vegoe I don't think the center has been a strength of this team so far this year. 12:16 Vegoe It needs to be more consistent and they need to stay healthy. 12:19 Vegoe I think Tanner Ludke is an important player for this team and losing him to injury didn't help. 12:24 Vegoe Eric Paulson definitely had a first half to forget and come back here in the second half and be better. 12:31 Vegoe Mason Moe, I think, has been a bright spot for the Gophers at center. 12:34 Vegoe I think he really emerged as someone they can rely on here in the second half, someone who might get elevated at times. 12:41 Vegoe And of course, LJ Mooney has looked great in the faceoff circle at times for Minnesota. 12:46 Vegoe He got a lot of key opportunities for USA and the World Junior, and they're going to need him to play like that here in the second half. 12:54 Jûpe All right, well, I think that's a pretty good assessment of the first half of the season. 12:59 Jûpe Obviously a good high of winning at North Dakota 5-1 and winning at Denver in overtime. 13:06 Jûpe Those are the positives for me. 13:07 Jûpe Obviously, things here and there, but injuries, they're always an issue. 13:12 Jûpe So you take the good with the bad, Veegs. 13:16 Vegoe Yeah, I think injuries, inconsistency, losing to Minnesota, Duluth, Wisconsin, the way they did, two tough weekends. 13:24 Vegoe And with so many home games on the Gopher schedule, that's impacted their rankings in the MPI so far. 13:30 Vegoe So they have a big opportunity ahead in the second half. 13:34 Jûpe All right. 13:35 Jûpe Well, before we move on, Veegs, we have a brand new sponsor, don't we? 13:39 Jûpe And it's something I never thought we'd have, but we found out earlier this week, we've got a new sponsor and it's Cascade CBX Sport. 13:48 Jûpe CBD for the athletes? 13:50 Jûpe Is that pretty much what we've got here, isn't it? 13:53 Vegoe Yeah, CBD has kind of gotten lumped in with THC. 13:58 Vegoe That's not what it is. 13:59 Vegoe CBD has got a lot of properties that athletes can rely on. 14:04 Vegoe It can knock out pain, it can reduce inflammation, it can help you sleep better. 14:09 Vegoe And Cascade CBX Sport is providing those benefits and it's certified for sport with NSF. 14:15 Vegoe So it's something you can take for pain, help you relax and have less stress. 14:21 Vegoe And it's something where it's not going to impact you as an athlete. 14:24 Vegoe So check out cascadebxsport.com and trust the shield to stay on the field. 14:32 Jûpe It's going to be an interesting new sponsor there, Veegs. 14:35 Jûpe You know, I was just talking earlier, maybe somebody's, we're going to get a sample. 14:38 Jûpe We're kind of looking forward to getting some of these samples and trying them, because I've got a bum knee. 14:42 Jûpe I want to try some of that out. 14:44 Jûpe You were just on the ice for three hours tonight. 14:46 Jûpe You've got to be sore, too. 14:48 Vegoe Yeah, we had our skills night for my hockey association tonight. 14:51 Vegoe So we had three hours back to back to back. 14:55 Vegoe So I've got to make some pains that maybe a little CBD would help me relax and come down from that long ED at Northeast Ice Arena. 15:03 Jûpe So we welcome Cascade CBX Sport as a new sponsor on The GPL Podcast. 15:09 Jûpe Let's take a look at your top 20 this week, Veegs. 15:12 Jûpe Oh, we got a little better screen than that. 15:15 Jûpe Michigan takes over the top spot. 15:17 Jûpe I know you've been a little hesitant putting them up there so far because Wisconsin played so well, but Wisconsin tumbled a bit this week. 15:24 Vegoe Yeah, Wisconsin fell to Western Michigan in their little holiday tournament. 15:28 Vegoe You know, it's always kind of weird, these tournaments during the break, when teams are missing players and haven't practiced together and they've given some time off. 15:36 Vegoe But at the same time, Michigan has been really good this first half. 15:39 Vegoe I'm really looking at how they're going to play in the second half of the Big Ten when they have to play at a high level every single week. 15:47 Vegoe You know, Brandon Nerado has done a great job generating offense, but consistency and discipline are two things the Wolverines haven't always had. 15:56 Vegoe Maybe they have enough talent this year to overcome that, and they definitely have a great record in the first half. 16:01 Vegoe Lots of offense for the Wolverines this year. 16:04 Jûpe Michigan State, Western Michigan seems to be a Michigan theme going on here, and it's been a theme kind of all season long. 16:11 Vegoe Yeah, this whole top six of the top 20, the last couple of weeks, pretty consistent. 16:15 Vegoe You know, I definitely think that these teams are the cream of the crop right now in College Hockey. 16:21 Vegoe And then after that, it's a big mix. 16:24 Vegoe There's a lot of teams that have been inconsistent, have some strange losses on their resume so far. 16:30 Vegoe And it's hard to pick who's going to be in that next little group. 16:33 Vegoe It's going to be a real interesting bubble to watch this year with the NCAA tournament. 16:38 Vegoe You know, MPI is new this year. 16:40 Vegoe And one of the things is it throws out some, you know, the winds that hurt your RPI. 16:46 Vegoe You know, some of these teams play games where that's impacted them in the pairwise in the past. 16:52 Vegoe You know, we kind of wonder, how are some bad losses going to affect teams? 16:56 Vegoe Are they going to affect them less? 16:58 Vegoe You know, we saw Dartmouth lose and they didn't quite drop as far as a lot of people were expecting. 17:03 Vegoe We're seeing a lot of ECAC teams still in the top 20 of the MPI. 17:07 Vegoe So it'll be real interesting to see how this shakes out as the year goes on. 17:11 Jûpe And then you've got North Dakota and Duluth. 17:14 Jûpe They've had strong years. 17:15 Jûpe Penn State's been strong all year. 17:17 Jûpe But then you look around it a bit. 17:18 Jûpe You got Quinnipiac, Denver, and even Maine on there. 17:23 Jûpe They've been kind of up and down this season. 17:25 Jûpe Strange losses. 17:26 Jûpe And you had Maine play Denver this weekend, and that was a pretty good series. 17:30 Jûpe But like you mentioned, it's kind of that inconsistency. 17:32 Jûpe You're not really sure where to put those teams. 17:35 Vegoe Yeah, I was just talking with some coaches over break here, and they just noticed there's almost 280 new players to college hockey this year. 17:45 Vegoe If you look at the CHL players and the U-sport players that have come into college hockey, it is not easy any weekend. 17:53 Vegoe So many teams have older, experienced players. 17:57 Vegoe I think it's hard for some of these flag bearers like BC and BU and other schools like that to maintain so much success. 18:06 Vegoe They're going to have bumps in the road. 18:10 Jûpe Augustana. 18:12 Jûpe Raboyne is getting his team together. 18:15 Jûpe He's getting it together. 18:17 Vegoe Yeah, they've had a couple of good weeks. 18:19 Vegoe This could be the year where CCHA gets Augustana and Minnesota State, both in the tournament. 18:24 Vegoe But they need those teams to really get hot and stay hot the rest of the way. 18:28 Vegoe They can't avoid the pitfalls of splitting weekends. 18:32 Vegoe And you look at their MPIs, both those schools are doing very well right now. 18:38 Jûpe All in all, I think it's a pretty good list, Veegs. 18:41 Jûpe How long until, you know, your typical us show voter starts looking at the NPI and kind of going off of that? 18:50 Jûpe Yeah, and you know, it's always interesting. 18:52 Vegoe I was kind of looking at it, this poll, and I just still don't quite see it. 18:58 Vegoe You know, Dartmouth at six, Cornell at 11, Princeton at 12. 19:03 Vegoe North Dakota at two. 19:05 Jûpe I mean, not a bad selection. 19:07 Jûpe I mean, it's really... 19:10 Vegoe I just, Harvard at 17, and you look at the schedules that those schools have played, I don't see it in the MPI rating, but I bet if I look to some of the other power ratings, you'd see their schedules aren't very strong, and yet they're still in contention for bids despite it. 19:25 Vegoe So that's interesting to see. 19:27 Jûpe Well, it comes back to just win, baby. 19:29 Jûpe It really does. 19:31 Jûpe Even if you're playing a weak schedule, if you're winning and not losing or not tying, it's still not a bad thing. 19:38 Jûpe We saw it with Penn State all those years, Veegs, when they played that weak non-conference schedule. 19:45 Jûpe Yeah, but they still won those games. 19:47 Jûpe That's still a big deal. 19:50 Vegoe Yeah. 19:51 Vegoe The one commonality of all the teams is they only have like four or five losses. 19:56 Vegoe You're looking at first half, that puts them in pretty good shape right now in the stats. 20:02 Jûpe All right. 20:03 Jûpe One thing I wanted to look at that you just discussed earlier are the stats. 20:08 Jûpe One of the big ones you talked about was the power play penalty kill and whatnot. 20:16 Jûpe I've been taking some of these stats up. 20:18 Jûpe I'm not sure people could see that so well. 20:20 Jûpe If you're listening, sorry. 20:22 Jûpe Start watching our show, but we'll try to explain as much as possible. 20:26 Jûpe I'm grabbing all these stats. 20:27 Jûpe I'm seeing how the U of M is doing nationally. 20:31 Jûpe Then we're showing who's number one and who's number 63. 20:35 Jûpe Who's the best and worst? 20:38 Jûpe Right there, that second line, penalty kill, Veegs, they rank 62nd out of 63 teams. 20:47 Jûpe That's just not acceptable, like Brody Lamb was saying earlier today. 20:52 Vegoe Yeah, it's a combination of the killers and the goaltending, and neither of them have been very good. 20:58 Vegoe We looked at this roster coming back. 21:00 Vegoe They lost a lot of their penalty killing players and a lot of guys who had an experience there. 21:05 Vegoe And so they've been trying to figure out a formula for them to be successful. 21:10 Vegoe I think when you pair a penalty kill that's struggling and centers who are struggling to win draws, that's a bad recipe. 21:18 Vegoe And then if you don't have the goalies, you can make the saves. 21:22 Vegoe You know, you get a penalty kill that's 64.2%. 21:28 Vegoe They've given up 19 goals so far on the kill. 21:33 Vegoe And you just can't win games when it's like that. 21:37 Jûpe No, you can't. 21:39 Jûpe And you know what? 21:40 Jûpe But, you know, some of that recently didn't matter because they weren't giving up penalties. 21:49 Jûpe You know, if you look here towards, you know, the third stat there, they're 44th of penalty minutes per game. 21:56 Jûpe That's where you want to be ranked really down the list. 21:59 Jûpe I mean, you compare it to Penn State, who's at almost 20 minutes a game of penalties compared to Minnesota's, you know, eight and a half. 22:08 Jûpe You know, they had not very many penalties against Ohio State and Denver, so they couldn't really improve their penalty kill percentage. 22:18 Jûpe Because we did see the power play get better. 22:21 Jûpe They were in the 40s and 50s. 22:23 Jûpe And, you know, they're back up to number 15 now in the power play. 22:28 Vegoe And I haven't been as worried about the power play as I have about the PK. 22:32 Vegoe Because I feel like even though they've had games where they haven't scored, the power play has been pretty dangerous and they've been getting chances, especially the last couple of games. 22:41 Vegoe LJ Mooney just seems to have more and more confidence on the power play, and he's finding ways to make an impact on the game. 22:49 Vegoe I think some of his teammates are starting to figure out that they can get into spots, and they're going to get the puck on the tape and be able to score goals. 22:58 Vegoe So I'm not as worried about the power play. 23:00 Vegoe I don't think it's your typical power play that's going to operate through defensemen at the top. 23:05 Vegoe I think operating through Mooney on the half wall is probably where they're going to have the most success. 23:10 Vegoe I think we're still waiting on Leo Gruba to make a bigger impact. 23:14 Vegoe I think Luke Middlestad has been very good for them, but he's not a high, high end talent. 23:20 Vegoe He's more of a hard working guy who can win pucks and keep place alive and make strong plays. 23:27 Vegoe But I don't think he's, you know, top of the NCAA type puck moving defensemen. 23:33 Jûpe I've highlighted face off win percentages right now. 23:37 Jûpe Veegs 44.8%, 61st in the NCAA. 23:44 Jûpe That has got to change. 23:45 Jûpe And that's something we they haven't been this bad the last couple of years, but we have been talking about face off and key face offs, you know, you know, on the penalty kill on the power play late in the game, you're trying to prevent another team from scoring. 24:00 Jûpe You lose that face off. 24:01 Jûpe Face offs has been an issue for quite a few years now. 24:07 Vegoe Yeah, it's curious, especially on the PK. 24:10 Vegoe I would love to see this broken out by face offs to start a penalty kill because it just feels like they've been struggling. 24:20 Vegoe Or a power player. 24:21 Jûpe Or the power play. 24:23 Vegoe Power play hasn't been as bad. 24:24 Vegoe I think they've found some options on the power play, whether they've had some success and have gotten possession. 24:30 Vegoe I just feel like on the PK, they have not found the recipe there yet. 24:34 Vegoe And typically, you know, Mooney has been going out there in like a second or third PK pair. 24:41 Vegoe I feel like it's been on, you know, Jimmy Clark and Brody Lamb quite a bit to start penalty kills, and they just need to have a little bit more success there. 24:49 Vegoe And I've talked to Gophers in the past about how can you be more effective on the PK. 24:55 Vegoe You know, you're going to have one less player who's able to get to loose pucks after the drop. 25:00 Vegoe And I think you've got to be really aggressive in those first five seconds to try to get to those 50-50 pucks, you know, when it's not one clean. 25:09 Vegoe And it just feels like they can't get there as easily. 25:14 Jûpe So, there you go, penalty kill, face offs. 25:19 Jûpe They're important, Veegs. 25:20 Jûpe They're good. 25:21 Jûpe They're really important. 25:22 Jûpe And right now, they're just not performing there. 25:25 Vegoe So big opportunity in the second half, right? 25:29 Jûpe That's what we talked about during the World Juniors is, you know, LJ Mooney and how he was out there a lot and he was winning a lot. 25:37 Jûpe I don't know what his percentage was. 25:38 Jûpe I wasn't keeping that close track, but it seems like he was doing fairly well on the penalty at the faceoff dot. 25:45 Vegoe Yeah, it seemed like they were picking his side for strong draws. 25:49 Vegoe And if it went to the other side, Stiga is getting them, you know, because you get to pick the side on the power play. 25:54 Vegoe And, you know, that's something where maybe the Gophers are going to have to start putting out two centers when they're on the kill to start potentially. 26:02 Vegoe So you get a strong guy on each side. 26:05 Vegoe We'll see how it shakes out in the second half. 26:07 Jûpe I saved this question for earlier, but Greg here is wondering, is LJ. 26:12 Jûpe Mone a possible one and done or two and done? 26:17 Jûpe He's little that tends to help, doesn't it? 26:22 Vegoe It tends to help NHL teams let them simmer a little bit longer in college hockey when they're smaller. 26:29 Vegoe Now I think Cole Caulfield was a two and done type player, maybe. 26:35 Jûpe But he was Hoby type material too. 26:37 Vegoe Right. 26:39 Vegoe I mean, I wouldn't put it out of the possibility that Mone someday could be a Hoby contender. 26:45 Vegoe Now he's not there right now, but maybe someday he could be. 26:48 Vegoe But I think he's probably at least a three year player just with that size. 26:54 Vegoe And he'll be fun to watch for three years if he sticks around. 26:56 Jûpe Yes, we like to hear that. 26:59 Jûpe Definitely like to hear that. 27:02 Jûpe All right. 27:02 Vegoe The other thing about Mone is it seems like he likes to be here. 27:06 Vegoe He is a player that just looks happy and comfortable. 27:10 Vegoe You can see some players like you just tell, this is just a stop in the road, and they're almost ready to move on. 27:18 Jûpe He's not like his cousin, you're saying? 27:21 Vegoe He seems very comfortable being here. 27:23 Vegoe So, something to think about. 27:26 Jûpe I would agree. 27:28 Jûpe Well, before we get into this week's big showdown with Penn State, you know what we got to talk about, Beegs, Cub Foods, and I just know you've been using Cub Foods this whole holidays, Christmas, New Year, celebrations. 27:42 Jûpe They kept your house full. 27:44 Vegoe That's right. 27:45 Vegoe I'm down to Quarry Cub multiple times a week, getting the great produce there, lots of options for meals. 27:51 Vegoe You always know that if you're looking for something, Cub's going to have it in stock. 27:55 Vegoe Just great variety, great selection, great staff there to help you. 28:00 Vegoe I really love Cub. 28:01 Vegoe If you look at what they've been doing with Dinkytown athletes, you know Cub is one of us. 28:06 Vegoe They've been supporting PJ Flex program, getting players to sign those contracts to come back with NIL deals. 28:14 Vegoe So you know when you go to Cub, you're supporting Gophers and they support our podcast just like they support PJ Flex. 28:20 Vegoe Headset and you know with the new year, maybe you're going sober and you're looking for some NA drinks. 28:29 Vegoe You can find that at Cub, but they've got a lot of liquor stores. 28:32 Vegoe Maybe you're going California sober and you're turning over a new leaf, you can get some THC products. 28:37 Vegoe Or maybe you're going Buffalo sober and you're going to have beer and wine and maybe some of the lighter alcohols, but not all of them like Steve Zahn says, Cub's got you there. 28:46 Vegoe And if you want great drinks, go to Cub as well. 28:48 Vegoe So check out Cub shop happy. 28:51 Jûpe All right. 28:52 Jûpe Of course, we thank Cub for being our sponsor this week. 28:57 Jûpe Penn State Bigs, they were in town not too long ago. 29:01 Jûpe We had a three to two Minnesota win that's ended up when kind of a little scrum at the end of the game, which was very entertaining. 29:09 Jûpe And just that little video of Mooney just shoving the guy up against the boards. 29:13 Jûpe I think it had like three or 4,000 views on Instagram when I put that video. 29:17 Jûpe So that's really good. 29:18 Jûpe And then they followed it up that the next night with the 2-1 loss. 29:22 Jûpe I think they played well. 29:23 Jûpe And then all of a sudden third period, it was 2-1. 29:26 Jûpe So not bad. 29:28 Jûpe But now they go to Unhappy Valley. 29:32 Vegoe It's a place where Minnesota has struggled the last couple years. 29:36 Vegoe The Nittany Lions have had the Gophers number for whatever reason in this series when the Gophers have gone out there. 29:43 Vegoe It's going to be a tough series. 29:45 Vegoe The Saturday game against Penn State really surprised me with how defensive Guy Gadowski's program played. 29:52 Vegoe It's probably the most structure I've seen out of their team. 29:56 Vegoe I think it was the least opportunities allowed. 30:00 Vegoe So it will be interesting to see what kind of weekend we get between these two programs because clearly a lot of talent with Penn State's roster this year. 30:09 Vegoe You talk to some of the Gophers, you know, they make more plays than Penn State teams have tried to make in the past. 30:16 Vegoe I think that's because they have an elevated talent level and they just are trusting them a little bit more. 30:22 Vegoe And so it'll be a real fun series to see what happens on the ice. 30:27 Vegoe The Gophers have a lot of questions to answer in this series in the second half. 30:33 Jûpe I noticed, you know, we're getting some guys back. 30:36 Jûpe I think I heard Matsuko say that Paul said maybe next week, maybe the week after. 30:41 Jûpe How's the health looking right now? 30:43 Vegoe Yeah, Leo Gruba was held out of the Bemidji exhibition. 30:47 Vegoe I think that's just precautionary. 30:48 Vegoe You know, he's been nicked up a little bit in the first half. 30:50 Vegoe They just want to make sure he was ready in the second half. 30:54 Vegoe If you look at the Gopher roster, puck moving defenseman is not something they have a lot of. 30:59 Vegoe And so they needed him to be healthy. 31:01 Vegoe He practiced this week and looks fine. 31:05 Vegoe August Faloon is back on the ice, full contact, ready to go. 31:08 Vegoe He had an upper body injury that kept him off the ice for a little bit there. 31:12 Vegoe But Paulson is still, you know, another week or two with his upper body injury. 31:17 Jûpe Okay. 31:20 Jûpe Is it too late to add somebody, make the 26th guy? 31:23 Jûpe I mean, does school start a couple more weeks? 31:27 Jûpe I don't know what the rules are now. 31:29 Jûpe Of course, I don't think anyone knows the rules. 31:31 Vegoe Well, you have to be enrolled to play, that you can't just add someone who's not enrolled and put them in the lineup. 31:37 Vegoe But I don't think the Gophers are going to be adding anybody at the break for that 26th spot. 31:42 Vegoe You know, I think they kept that option for them. 31:46 Vegoe If there was a major season ending injury to someone key and the player that you would be bringing in would get significant minutes. 31:54 Vegoe They don't have any significant injuries right now where that kind of playing time is there. 31:59 Vegoe So, you would just be impacting the player you're bringing in and costing them development. 32:04 Vegoe The other spot would be a goaltender. 32:06 Vegoe You know, if one of Aerie or DePasquale, DePasquale got injured, you know, you'd want to bring in another goalie as a safety option there. 32:15 Vegoe So that's why they did that. 32:17 Vegoe Minnesota Boy Scout School, they play by the book. 32:20 Vegoe They're not going to cheat the rules and do weird things to game the system. 32:25 Vegoe So I think it's probably not going to happen. 32:28 Vegoe I think two obvious players that the Gophers could have added would have been Kwasnicka. 32:34 Vegoe You know, he came to the World Junior Camp. 32:36 Vegoe He's had a very good first half of the WHL. 32:39 Vegoe You know, he's not really a player that fits what they would need. 32:44 Vegoe You know, I think they probably could use a center who is really good on faceoffs and maybe a little bit bigger. 32:49 Vegoe Kwasnicka is, you know, a winger, smaller guy, you know, lots of compete. 32:55 Vegoe But I don't think that makes a lot of sense. 32:58 Vegoe And then Macio Phillips, you know, he's a big physical defenseman. 33:02 Jûpe Yeah. 33:03 Vegoe But he's not really a playmaking. 33:04 Jûpe A lot of the men also quite not the greatest negative plus minus right now either. 33:10 Vegoe Yeah. 33:10 Vegoe And, you know, they just got to let those guys bake and be patient with them. 33:14 Vegoe You know, I think Bob obviously is playing the long game, whether the fans like that or not. 33:20 Vegoe But, you know, there are answers on this roster that will have an opportunity to prove themselves. 33:25 Jûpe And, actually, I think that's a quick plug for our recruits page that you can find on GPL. 33:30 Jûpe We're keeping track of the stats of all the committed recruits there. 33:35 Jûpe And you see what they're scoring and obviously Carter Casey as well and how he's doing in goal. 33:41 Jûpe So head over there to check that out. 33:44 Jûpe Our guy, Max, here, he's got a question, Veegs. 33:47 Jûpe Is think Gavin McKenna is rattled by the negative media buzz? 33:51 Jûpe Or will he grow slash learn from it? 33:56 Vegoe He better get used to it. 33:58 Vegoe He's going to have to get used to it. 34:00 Vegoe I think the first half was definitely good for his growth as a player. 34:04 Vegoe He looked better with Canada than he's looked with Penn State. 34:08 Vegoe There is a lot of that perimeter play that he has in his game. 34:13 Vegoe I think for him to be an effective player, he's going to have to be more engaged. 34:17 Vegoe The only way you're going to do that is if you're tested from week to week. 34:20 Vegoe He's certainly getting that in College Hockey. 34:22 Vegoe If he had been in the WHL this season, I don't think he would have grown his game at all. 34:27 Vegoe He would just be on the perimeter, scoring power play points and taking advantage of younger players. 34:33 Vegoe Now, it's going to be a challenge for him and he's a known commodity. 34:37 Vegoe It'll be interesting to see if players get in his face in the second half after the way the World Juniors ended for him. 34:44 Jûpe Steve, wondering thoughts on how far the Gophers can move up in the NPI. 34:50 Jûpe Let me tell you, Steve, wins on the road are key. 34:56 Vegoe Yeah, for sure. 34:57 Vegoe If we look at the NPI, road wins definitely help. 35:00 Vegoe There's more of a bonus this year for that. 35:02 Vegoe I think that is kind of against the Penn State scheduling, where you're basically buying teams to come to your building. 35:10 Vegoe NPI discourages that and encourages road wins. 35:13 Vegoe I think the Gophers probably lost some NPI status because that Denver game was a neutral site, not a true road game. 35:21 Vegoe So that didn't help the Gophers. 35:22 Vegoe And then, you know, all the games they played at home, you know, even the wins didn't help them as much. 35:27 Vegoe It would be as if it was a road game. 35:29 Vegoe So I think these games at Happy Valley are huge here coming up. 35:33 Vegoe And those games at Michigan State are huge. 35:36 Vegoe You know, if Minnesota can win at least one game in those series, it's going to help them a ton in MPI. 35:45 Jûpe All right, pressure's on. 35:47 Jûpe What's your prediction for this weekend? 35:50 Vegoe You know, I think a split is what the Gophers are going to get. 35:53 Vegoe I think that's going to help them in the MPI. 35:56 Vegoe And you know, I get the feeling Bob's going to play both goalies this weekend, and one's going to deliver and one is going to have some question marks. 36:06 Vegoe And as far as the long term outlook of this team, you want to figure out who that goalie is going to be. 36:12 Vegoe And so you're going to have to play them both, I think, here and see who rises to the top. 36:17 Jûpe I think there's a caveat, though. 36:18 Jûpe If you win good and the goalie plays good Friday night, I think he goes against Saturday night to try to get the sweep. 36:25 Vegoe Possibly true, but there's no easy games here to get the other guy back in. 36:30 Vegoe So if you get a nice shutout on Friday night against Penn State, maybe you do get the game on Saturday, too. 36:36 Jûpe So January is a murderer's row this month. 36:39 Vegoe Oh, man, it doesn't get any better for top 10 teams here, essentially for the Gophers. 36:46 Jûpe Just win, maybe just when I'm going to pick four out of six points for the Gophers, trying to bring back a little more positivity after some of my negativity earlier this year. 37:03 Vegoe So four out of six over under on goals. 37:09 Vegoe Oh, are we going to see a game that's more like the Friday or the first game or the second game? 37:14 Jûpe I think they're both, you know, six and under, you know, three, two type of games, two, one, three, one type of games. 37:23 Vegoe I think I would go over six and a half on Friday and under six and a half on Saturday. 37:29 Jûpe Well, I just, well, I think if it goes over, that means the Gophers aren't scoring and the other team is. 37:37 Vegoe I think one of the things we've seen in College Hockey this first half is, is some of those first games of a series, the discipline isn't quite there. 37:49 Vegoe So, you know, they figure it out the next night. 37:52 Vegoe I was just going to look at the odds for this weekend. 37:55 Jûpe Oh, boy, and the over-under families. 37:57 Vegoe The over-under is six and a half. 38:00 Vegoe And the over is minus 135. 38:04 Vegoe So it's going with what we were just saying there. 38:07 Vegoe Penn State's minus one. 38:07 Jûpe Well, Mielewski would say, you know, get the hammer, take the over, take the over. 38:12 Jûpe And then like, what was it, two goals for a score? 38:15 Jûpe Yeah. 38:18 Jûpe Oh, boy. 38:18 Jûpe But one note, both games are on Big Ten Network this weekend. 38:22 Jûpe And Big's both 5 p.m. 38:24 Jûpe games local. 38:25 Jûpe I like that. 38:26 Jûpe I early night and then you can actually go out afterwards. 38:33 Jûpe Go have some dinner. 38:34 Jûpe Have a have a late dinner. 38:35 Jûpe Go out and enjoy the weekend. 38:37 Vegoe You could. 38:37 Vegoe I'm going to be going to Bob Motzko's hometown of Austin this weekend for a hockey tournament. 38:42 Vegoe Really? 38:43 Vegoe My PUE team has a nine o'clock game on Friday night. 38:47 Jûpe So well, that sounds so bad. 38:49 Jûpe You'll be done with your go for as long before then. 38:52 Vegoe Yeah, I'll be able to listen to Wally and his dulcet tones on the road on the way down to Austin. 38:56 Jûpe And with Pat McCullough, Pat is getting back on the road from what I heard. 39:01 Jûpe So that is awesome to hear. 39:03 Jûpe And he's going to be on our 300th episode coming up in two weeks. 39:09 Vegoe Special time for that nursing home nursing home post meal podcast. 39:15 Vegoe Just kidding, Pat. 39:16 Vegoe Just kidding. 39:18 Vegoe But we'll go early for that night. 39:20 Vegoe We'll go early. 39:21 Vegoe I'll do that for Pat. 39:21 Vegoe He's a legend. 39:23 Jûpe We got Nick Angel next week before Michigan. 39:26 Jûpe We've got obviously Todd Molesky coming up for Wisconsin and at the end of the month. 39:32 Jûpe So it's going to be a busy month, Veegs. 39:33 Jûpe It's going to be a busy month, big game. 39:35 Jûpe So I'm looking forward to it. 39:39 Vegoe A lot of question marks right now. 39:42 Jûpe Oh, don't I know. 39:47 Vegoe All you got to do is win. 39:49 Vegoe All you got to do is win. 39:50 Jûpe Just win, baby. 39:52 Jûpe Just win. 39:53 Jûpe Well, that's going to do it for this episode of The GPL Podcast. 39:58 Jûpe Like I said, we'll have Nick Angel on next week to preview the Michigan series. 40:05 Jûpe That will be fun to get Nick back on. 40:07 Jûpe I know he's excited about it. 40:10 Jûpe For those of you watching live, keep watching for a short over time this week. 40:14 Jûpe For the rest of you, we'll catch you next week on The GPL Podcast. 40:30 Jûpe If you are watching on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and get notified each time we go live or post a video. 40:37 Jûpe If you listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please rate our show and leave a review. 40:47 Jûpe For those of you watching live, you know what's next. 40:51 Jûpe It's Vegoe's Beverage of the Week. 40:55 Jûpe It's time for Overtime.