0:04 This is The GPL Podcast, part of the Pulltab Sports family. 0:09 Oh boy, Jup making mistakes, I love it. 0:27 You know, it was good to see that the BigTen Network recognized how to cover hockey last week. 0:34 Boy, if North Dakota hasn't won every game. 0:37 Fire the coach. 0:38 Dave Haxdell was fired 32 times. 0:44 Now, here's Jupiter and Vegoe. 0:51 Jûpe Good evening and welcome to The GPL Podcast. 0:56 Jûpe Episode number 301. 1:02 Jûpe January just keeps getting better, doesn't it, Veegs? 1:06 Vegoe I mean, if you like Gopher Hockey, it's been a tough month, but you know, it's still some season left. 1:14 Vegoe You never know. 1:15 Vegoe You never know what's going to happen. 1:17 Jûpe Well, so we know the Gophers have had it rough. 1:21 Jûpe Seven losses in a row. 1:22 Jûpe But our number one guest, Todd Mielewski, is joining us tonight. 1:28 Jûpe His 20th appearance. 1:31 Jûpe Good evening, Todd. 1:32 Jûpe How's it going? 1:34 Todd That's going great. 1:34 Todd It's even better now. 1:35 Todd I've hit 20. 1:37 Jûpe Wow. 1:38 Jûpe I looked it up today. 1:39 Jûpe You were at 19, so now you're at number 20. 1:41 Jûpe Our top guest of all time. 1:44 Jûpe You know, I mentioned like Gophers have lost seven in a row. 1:48 Jûpe The Badgers have lost four in a row at home. 1:51 Jûpe And after you were VEG's number one team for quite a few weeks and in November and December, they've dropped quite a bit recently, but certainly doing better than the Gophers. 2:06 Todd Well, I mean, I was going to make a comment about a low bar there, but I'll pass. 2:13 Jûpe Bring it on, man. 2:14 Jûpe We love it. 2:15 Todd No, it's it's you know that I think the the success they had two years ago was in my casings first season was quicker than a lot of people thought. 2:27 Todd The fallback last year was opposite of what a lot of people thought. 2:31 Todd And now we're kind of starting to see with the where the ups and the downs kind of happen in the same season sometimes. 2:39 Todd So a lot of it has been due honestly to they lost their top two centers to injury a few weeks ago. 2:47 Todd That's that's rough when you when you bring in Michigan State and Penn State to try and be strong down the middle with fill ins and they felt that that's going to be a challenge for as long as those guys are out there hoping they get Gavin Morrissey and Vasily Zelenov back soon. 3:08 Todd They've been skating so but yeah, they need to pull out of this before before it really starts spiraling uncontrollably downhill. 3:21 Jûpe And then we've got Minnesota Veegss actually getting healthier. 3:26 Jûpe They got Paulson back, but 3-2, 3-1 loss, 3-2 loss at Michigan State. 3:35 Jûpe Not terrible losses. 3:37 Jûpe They didn't play terrible. 3:38 Jûpe You look at Lucas, his save percentage has been outstanding. 3:43 Jûpe They just don't have the offense or the defense right now to get a win. 3:48 Vegoe Yeah, I mean, the margins are so fine for this Gopher team. 3:51 Vegoe You know, when you're relying on your goalie and your power play and the rest of your game is a little incomplete, it's tough when you shoot yourself in the foot and you just hand the other team goals. 4:03 Vegoe And that's a little bit what Minnesota has been doing here in these tight games against good teams. 4:08 Vegoe Bob Otsco today said, you know, this team has been touching the stove off and on throughout the season. 4:14 Vegoe Well, when you touch the stove against Michigan State, against Michigan, against Penn State, the stove is really hot and you're going to get burned badly. 4:23 Vegoe And that's what's happening to this group right now. 4:25 Vegoe And, you know, I think they're kind of throwing up Hill Mary here with putting Brody Lamb with LJ Mooney and Brody Ziemer and seeing if that can give them some offense five on five, because you look at their power play, it has been super dynamic. 4:40 Vegoe And those three are a big reason why. 4:42 Vegoe And I think if you can put them together five on five, you're hoping that that can spur your team and give you some offense where you're not finding it right now. 4:50 Jûpe Well, all Ziemer does is score power play goals, Veegs. 4:54 Vegoe Yeah, I think they need him to get some five on five goals. 4:57 Jûpe That would help. 4:57 Vegoe You know, I like the way that those three look together. 5:01 Vegoe I think it forces Brody Lamb to be more engaged as an upperclassman. 5:06 Vegoe They need him to be engaged. 5:07 Vegoe And when you're at the wing, sometimes it's hard to get engaged in the D-zone. 5:12 Vegoe And with him, maybe a little bit more size, a little bit more speed, it can add an element to the Gopher lineup. 5:20 Jûpe It's been interesting. 5:22 Jûpe Todd, we haven't seen this kind of losing streak in quite a while here in Minnesota. 5:26 Jûpe It goes back to 1997 when they won nine, lost nine straight, I should say. 5:33 Jûpe They're at seven now. 5:34 Jûpe We knew January is going to be tough. 5:38 Jûpe I know you guys don't have any sympathy coming from the Badgers, but it's been a bit of an odd year for Minnesota. 5:47 Todd It has been. 5:48 Todd And I mean, I was going to look up earlier this week when the last time both of these teams were on losing streaks of four games or more going into the meetings against each other. 6:01 Todd Well, never. 6:02 Todd So, Oh, jeez. 6:05 Jûpe What's that? 6:05 Jûpe 75 years have played each other? 6:08 Jûpe A long break. 6:09 Todd In games or something like that. 6:10 Todd Yeah. 6:10 Todd There's never been anything like this. 6:12 Todd So that tells you how unusual it is that you have both of these teams on on that kind of. 6:21 Todd Yeah. 6:21 Todd And I think, you know, going back to September, October, you know, everyone kind of felt like, yeah, this may not be the best year for the Gophers, but they've always just kind of gotten through that with a, you know, a fourth place finish or a third place finish or something like that. 6:40 Todd And, you know, hover around, you know, two games over 500 and something like that. 6:45 Todd And it's, but I do think that everyone has these kind of years and some of them last a lot longer than others. 6:54 Todd But you look around the Big Ten and it feels like everyone goes through this at some point. 7:03 Todd It's really hard to keep up with everyone that's bringing in big names. 7:12 Todd And we've seen how much the CHL has meant to the Big Ten this season. 7:20 Todd And that's, I know that's a topic that's come up a few times with Minnesota and how the recruiting went in the off season. 7:32 Todd But I'd love to know, you know, the hindsight being 2020, whether you, whether anything goes differently last off season. 7:43 Jûpe Well, Veegs, just a couple of things here. 7:46 Jûpe So, you know, everyone has a down year. 7:51 Jûpe Minnesota has had five sub-500 seasons in 50 years. 7:57 Jûpe And this is technically, well, depending on how they finish, they're at 340 right now. 8:01 Jûpe They haven't had under 400 since 1972. 8:05 Jûpe So one, it is a little historically bad. 8:09 Jûpe Two, Todd's kind of right on when it comes to CHL because Minnesota decided not to do that this year. 8:17 Jûpe Maybe took the year off and see what happens. 8:20 Jûpe And we're finding out what happens. 8:23 Vegoe Well, I think we're also finding out how deep college hockey is this year. 8:28 Vegoe I think in some of those past years, Minnesota, even if they lost a bunch of players and had to bring up young players, the rest of college hockey wouldn't be as deep. 8:36 Vegoe And we look at some of these CHL players, not all of them are putting up big numbers, but they're providing depth for a lot of these teams. 8:44 Vegoe And they're providing depth that can play minutes, learn on the go, maybe not give away mistakes, but they're able to control the pace of the game. 8:53 Vegoe I think one of the issues with Minnesota this year is they're just not able to play at the pace that we're used to seeing. 8:59 Vegoe And so they're not being able to outscore any mistakes. 9:02 Vegoe Whereas I think you see a lot of these other teams, they've got enough talent where they're still able to capitalize on mistakes and outscore their mistakes. 9:10 Vegoe And you just look at goal scoring for Minnesota, it's down this year. 9:14 Vegoe And, you know, Hindsight's 2020, they definitely could have used a couple of defensemen to help them in their transition. 9:22 Vegoe I think they're, you know, having to be patient with what they got. 9:26 Vegoe It's a very young team. 9:27 Vegoe I know the fans are tired of hearing that. 9:30 Vegoe But you know, the margins are pretty fine right now. 9:34 Vegoe I think if they would have gone 500 through January, there wouldn't be as many concerns. 9:39 Vegoe But the fact that they haven't won yet has a lot of alarm bells ringing. 9:44 Jûpe And it doesn't help for the fan base to see, you know, you bring in a D3 guy late, forward, you leave a roster spot open. 9:54 Jûpe I mean, I could see why the fans are a little more upset. 9:57 Jûpe You know, when I was at the Michigan Series, Friday night, when they announced Bob's name, there was a couple little boos going on there. 10:05 Jûpe I don't know if it happened for you the Saturday night, but there was just a little bit of jeering there. 10:09 Jûpe So we know the fans are noticing it here, Veegs. 10:12 Vegoe Yeah, and this team, when they had injuries to Leo Gruba and Cal Thomas early in the year, that really wasn't something they had depth to cover. 10:21 Vegoe When they lose Eric Paulson, when they've got a couple other guys who get banged up up front, you know, they just don't have the depth to handle that. 10:29 Vegoe You know, the roster limit thing at Minnesota, it was probably smart of them to keep that extra roster spot in case, you know, he had a goalie injury and you wanted to bring somebody in and still stay at 27. 10:42 Vegoe But my understanding is that they probably could have gone over that limit and grandfathered in some players and given themselves a little bit more flexibility. 10:52 Vegoe Because as I see national writers talking and writing about, you know, I don't think this limit of 27 is going to stay where it is. 11:01 Jûpe It's Arizona State. 11:03 Jûpe I saw Schlossman talk about, you know, posting some videos about the Arizona State thing, Todd, that they're stuck too. 11:11 Jûpe Maybe there's nothing to do. 11:13 Todd Yeah. 11:13 Todd And everyone, I mean, go back a year to when the number kind of came out that it was going to be 26. 11:19 Todd And that was going to be what people are going to be playing with. 11:22 Todd Everyone knew that it was going to be a problem. 11:25 Todd But no one could find the people to get to, to, I guess, explain how it was going to be a problem. 11:34 Todd And just the particular situations where this was going to cause issues. 11:40 Todd You lose a goalie. 11:42 Todd You cannot, you lose a goalie early in the season, let's say. 11:45 Todd You cannot go through a full season with two goalies and expect there not to be like a real risk of further injury to one of them. 11:55 Todd That's an awful lot of work to put on two goalies throughout the season. 11:58 Todd Not just talking about games, but the five days of practice, four days of practice. 12:05 Todd It doesn't take long for, especially when you can dress 22 now. 12:09 Todd So it doesn't take long to get into a situation where you're not able to dress a full lineup. 12:15 Todd And we consider 22 to be a full lineup. 12:18 Todd If that happened in other sports, this would have been solved a long time ago. 12:26 Todd But now that this is part of the settlement, the settlement went through so many different hurdles and so many legal approvals and was negotiated, you know, to the extent that it's kind of like as close as it's been to a collective bargaining agreement in college. 12:44 Todd That it's gone through that is going to make it really hard to change that unless you can, you know, really convince everyone that this is in the best interest of a specific sport. 12:58 Todd And you're talking about what NCA has, how many sports are under the settlement? 13:02 Todd 20 some, right? 13:05 Todd So that's where I think there's going to be real issues revisiting this after it's already been decided. 13:12 Todd If you could have convinced someone that say, hey, 27 or 28 is a better number for safety reasons for hockey, that would have been a lot better to do that last year than having to do it now. 13:22 Todd After the fact, unless you can find the right people to persuade that, yeah, this probably doesn't need to be opened again. 13:32 Vegoe Well, I think one of the things is at least having practice players so that you can run a practice. 13:37 Vegoe Because, you know, Minnesota ran into some goalie issues a couple of years ago where Potter had to put on the pads for practice. 13:43 Vegoe And he's like, I'm not doing that again. 13:45 Vegoe So then they're running a practice with all these draft prospects. 13:48 Vegoe And they've got a shooter tutor up in goal. 13:51 Vegoe And so you've got a guy out there trying to do screen and tips, and they're trying to do it off this, you know, net. 13:57 Vegoe And it's just not productive for them. 13:59 Vegoe And I think college hockey is too big of a sport to have this. 14:02 Vegoe And you look at women's basketball, they still have the men's practice players helping them out and they're not part of the settlement. 14:10 Vegoe So you just kind of wonder what are we doing here with this sport and putting handcuffs on it? 14:16 Todd Yeah, I'd love to see that. 14:17 Todd I'd love to see. 14:18 Todd I don't know if this is still the case, but when years ago players were brought up from club teams, from ACHA teams, I believe they lost their eligibility to go back to that ACHA team. 14:34 Todd I don't know if that's still how it works, but if we could solve that problem then too, that if a team needs somebody as a practice player for six weeks, that shouldn't rule that player out for a club. 14:50 Jûpe Well, think about it too. 14:51 Jûpe There used to be JV teams in a lot of these schools until the 80s. 14:56 Jûpe So you could always throw in JV players for practice. 14:59 Jûpe So you always had bodies, Todd. 15:02 Jûpe You always had bodies back then. 15:04 Todd Yeah, and it's... 15:07 Todd I think we see a lot of things differently in terms of what's safe to practice with. 15:14 Todd A lot of guys would probably practice with injuries before that. 15:18 Todd That won't now for good reason. 15:20 Todd Not to say that anyone's, you know, choosing to stay off the ice, but don't put yourself at further risk. 15:31 Todd Yeah, there's a lot of things that, you know, you could see it was going to be a problem, but I just don't know that NCAA hockey has the juice on its own to make this kind of change. 15:50 Todd It's going to take a big effort. 15:52 Jûpe Well, hopefully, they get on it in this off season, at least start talking about it, things like that. 15:57 Jûpe But like you said, we've been talking about, you know, home regionals and all this other stuff. 16:01 Jûpe And hopefully, it's something that at least we could get all the coaches on board to feel that way. 16:06 Todd That's a good point too, because there's still the, you know, the division in what's right for regionals. 16:13 Todd I don't know if we're ever going to get that off of a more, you know, 60-40 kind of split. 16:18 Jûpe It's true, but I'm hoping, you know, at least if we could get all the coaches on board for, you know, the settlement, the 26 rosters, plus the 28 maybe. 16:26 Jûpe But maybe we won't even get that. 16:28 Todd How many schools are even abiding by the house settlement too? 16:32 Todd So that's a factor too of, you know, the ones that aren't limited to that 26, they don't really care about this. 16:43 Todd It's not for them. 16:45 Todd So, that's making a small group even smaller, I guess, when you're talking about the people who are interested in making that change. 16:55 Jûpe Well, we'll just kind of sit and wait on that one. 16:58 Jûpe That's all we can do is just sit and wait, hope for changes. 17:01 Jûpe Veegs, putting out an article this week on Minnesota finances and who made what and who lost what. 17:10 Jûpe You're the only one reporting this stuff for Minnesota. 17:13 Vegoe Yeah, on the day, I was the only one to break the news. 17:17 Vegoe So I was very Veegsilant of the financial reporting. 17:20 Vegoe As we all know, in January, schools have to start releasing that data. 17:24 Vegoe Minnesota is probably more transparent than most. 17:27 Vegoe And so you were able to look at the numbers and, you know, $163 million in revenue for the U, almost $10 million for hockey. 17:38 Vegoe Very impressive numbers for both. 17:40 Vegoe You know, that Big Ten Media Rights Deal is a big chunk of that revenue. 17:45 Vegoe And you can just see how important it is to be a part of the Big Ten Conference. 17:49 Vegoe And as a legacy member, you know, getting that $63 million pays a lot of bills around campus. 17:54 Vegoe And I still think there are programs that wishes they had more money to spend. 17:58 Vegoe But you know, next year's budget is going to be even tighter when they have the $20.5 million of revenue share money to pay out. 18:06 Vegoe And that started July 1 this year. 18:09 Vegoe So, I know the books are probably pretty tight for a lot of schools as they figure out how to manage that. 18:15 Vegoe But those numbers are on GPL. 18:19 Jûpe And it's going to be the same situation for Wisconsin, Todd. 18:24 Jûpe They're going to have to have that same $20 million to deal with as well. 18:27 Todd Yeah, I was looking at those numbers in the last couple of weeks. 18:30 Todd And for Wisconsin side, they're at, I look at the, because of the way Wisconsin does things, I look at expenses first. 18:38 Todd And they're at $193 million for last school year, because their revenues as they list them on the NCAA's financial accounting will almost always match that to the dollar. 18:55 Todd It's a $10,000 difference or something like that, because they only choose to bring over as much donation funding from their foundation as they need to cover the expenses. 19:05 Todd So they're never really going to have a, be too much in the red or black there in terms of the net between revenues and expenses. 19:19 Todd So the revenue side is always a little bit of a, well, that's not exactly how much revenue they brought in total because they don't have to count how much donations they received until they actually spend it. 19:32 Todd So that's one of the tricks of NCAA or finances on individual campuses is that you never really know how someone is choosing to interpret what these numbers mean. 19:47 Todd So comparing between schools is always a little dicey for me. 19:52 Jûpe And you've mentioned that several times, Veegs. 19:55 Vegoe There's always tricks to the accounting, like for hockey, you can see that they're licensing and sponsorship money has gone up. 20:02 Vegoe Part of that's because of the way the books have been cooked by the U this year. 20:07 Vegoe You know, the 3M naming rights for Mary G are now getting attributed to hockey. 20:12 Vegoe So that explains when the increases there. 20:14 Vegoe They're also getting their share of the Lear field from, you know, the broadcast for hockey that shows up there. 20:21 Vegoe And so, just a little bit of accounting. 20:22 Vegoe But you can really look at the ticket sales, though, the media rights and other kinds of revenues, like the football playoff share that comes into the schools. 20:32 Vegoe They've actually separated those out as line items now in the new reporting system. 20:38 Vegoe So I think that gives you a good look at what each program is able to do. 20:43 Vegoe And then it's broken up by sport. 20:44 Vegoe So you can see ticket sales for each sport, which are for the U. 20:48 Vegoe You know, football has declined a little bit in their ticket sales. 20:52 Vegoe Hockey is held about the same. 20:53 Vegoe And you know, that's an interesting look at their budget there. 20:57 Vegoe And the Alston money is in the budget this year, which has gone up significantly at Minnesota. 21:03 Todd I was excited to see a page not being used yet for but for the future of the breakdown of revenue share money spent by sport. 21:11 Todd And I am not sure if anyone's going to try and play games with that and say, well, it all goes to the not not attributed to any specific sport, Penn State, well, 20 and a half million. 21:23 Todd But I will be fascinated to see what that ends up being next year for for a lot of schools. 21:30 Todd I mean, I think we have an idea, a general idea that, you know, 75% or whatever it is going to football at a lot of places. 21:40 Todd But I'd like to see the actual numbers there next year. 21:44 Jûpe I mean, just look at what was said earlier today, or at least I heard earlier today, is Koi for the football, can we get a two million dollar deal from Oregon? 21:53 Jûpe Minnesota is not going to do that, Vakes. 21:55 Jûpe They're just they just don't have that kind of money. 21:58 Vegoe Well, everyone's going to have to pay out the 20 and a half million. 22:01 Vegoe And Mark Coyle said that they are going to they're going to participate in that game. 22:05 Vegoe You know, being a part of the Big Ten means you want to feel competitive teams. 22:09 Vegoe And that's part of doing business these days. 22:12 Jûpe And Brevver is on, his title line is going to affect a lot of this, too. 22:17 Jûpe It's going to be tricky. 22:19 Jûpe Before we go to break, we had some little news out there. 22:23 Jûpe I want to get your guys factor fiction, VeegsS, Oklahoma State Hockey, Fact or Fiction. 22:31 Vegoe I think it's probably fan fiction. 22:32 Todd Would be a great way of putting it. 22:38 Vegoe I don't think there's anybody at Oklahoma State who's who's actually pushing this 100 percent. 22:42 Vegoe I think there's some people that would like it to happen and they're just putting out the ideas. 22:47 Vegoe I would be shocked if we see a big 12 hockey school. 22:53 Jûpe Factor fiction, Todd, you know, you've got 200 millions in your back pocket for a new ice arena, don't you? 22:59 Todd Yeah, that's that's the first thing I'm spending that $200 million on, right? 23:03 Todd It's a rink in Oklahoma. 23:08 Todd Yeah, I'm going to say hopeful fiction. 23:16 Todd I would love to see more schools get involved, but I think we need to step back and take a look at the overall picture right now of college sports and where money is going and needs to be going. 23:30 Todd And that is the reason why I kind of hit pause on any real hopes of schools going fully into adding sports right now. 23:42 Todd We're seeing a lot going the other way. 23:44 Jûpe Tennessee State or something supposed to be coming soon, Veegs? 23:48 Vegoe They announced that they were going to be going D1, I think, this year, but that obviously fell apart. 23:53 Vegoe It's really complicated to launch a D1 hockey program. 23:56 Vegoe You know, you look at these humbers across and you got to have women's school. 23:59 Jûpe You really do. 24:00 Vegoe It's $2, $3 million to run a program. 24:04 Vegoe And you've got to have a facility that works as well. 24:06 Vegoe So it's going to take a big check to make it happen. 24:09 Vegoe And, you know, as much as we'd like to see college hockey grow, there's plenty of players to fill roster spots, but it's going to cost money. 24:17 Todd But we have seen Penn State and Arizona State make it look pretty attractive over the last decade. 24:24 Todd So I can understand where people are pointing to those two places and are like, look, this is what can happen. 24:32 Todd But a lot needs to be figured out financially. 24:37 Todd That's part of the country, though, and a program with some boosters that are not shy with the money. 24:43 Todd So there's a lot of that's why I don't completely rule it out. 24:47 Jûpe Well, Georgia, Alabama, Oklahoma, Texas, they all have big club teams and big support. 24:55 Todd But if you're going to say to someone that's supporting that athletic department, say at Alabama, do you want to spend $4 million on a hockey program? 25:05 Todd Or do you want that 4 million to go into your football program more into your football program? 25:09 Todd I think most of them are going to say, put it to football. 25:13 Jûpe I'm going to say fiction for now. 25:14 Jûpe But I just thought I'd get you guys a little thought on that. 25:17 Jûpe So that's what was kind of breaking today. 25:19 Jûpe But now we're going to talk about one of our sponsors, Veegs. 25:22 Jûpe And Cascade CBX Sports. 25:25 Jûpe You're all over it, aren't you? 25:27 Jûpe After practice with those young kids just wearing you out. 25:31 Vegoe Yeah, I've got a few aches and pains. 25:32 Vegoe You know, I'm not getting any younger. 25:34 Vegoe And so I'm looking for a little help. 25:35 Vegoe And Cascade CBX Sport, our new sponsor this year, is a company looking to revolutionize the CBD industry. 25:43 Vegoe And too often CBD gets lumped right with THC, which gives it a little bit of a stigma. 25:48 Vegoe But Cascade CBX Sport invested time and money to achieve NSF certification for sport. 25:54 Vegoe And that means it's free of any banned substances. 25:57 Vegoe So that means whether you're a weekend warrior or professional athlete, you can have peace of mind choosing completely clean products to manage pain and reduce inflammation. 26:06 Vegoe Check them out at cascadecbxsport.com and trust the shield to stay on the field. 26:13 Jûpe All right, let's get to your top 20 this week. 26:17 Jûpe VeegsS, no change at the top. 26:20 Jûpe I know the North Dakota fans are kind of like you, not putting North Dakota as high because there's number, they've been kind of around two and three in the in the NPI. 26:28 Jûpe But you know, obviously, you had you had, you know, Providence making a good jump, Minnesota Wisconsin going the other way, Minnesota Duluth going the other way. 26:39 Jûpe What are your thoughts here? 26:40 Vegoe Yeah, I'm starting to expand my top 10 to be the elite teams of college hockey. 26:47 Vegoe OK, I see this 10 is pretty strong and it's hard to change them up too much. 26:52 Vegoe You know, you know, we see some splits in this group with some losses as Wisconsin starting to drop a little bit, but I still think they're a very strong team. 27:00 Vegoe You look at them in the NPI, they're still in great position. 27:03 Vegoe And I just think looking at the big 10 right now, that those are the best teams in college hockey. 27:08 Vegoe From what I can tell, you look at the teams that they've beaten, their quality win bonuses, their strength, the schedule. 27:14 Vegoe It all kind of adds up where Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State, Wisconsin all look very, very strong right now. 27:20 Vegoe Now, if you look out east, there's just a lot of churn. 27:26 Vegoe You look at BU is off my list here. 27:29 Vegoe BC has had some games where they've looked good, but they've been very inconsistent and are on the bubble. 27:35 Vegoe Providence, probably the most consistent hockey team out there, but they've had some struggles this year. 27:42 Jûpe Todd, what did your poll look like this week? 27:46 Todd Pretty similar up at the top. 27:48 Todd I don't mind you having Western Michigan at two leagues after seeing them in the tournament in Milwaukee a few weeks ago. 27:56 Todd I mean, that's a team that just knows how to win games, close out games that they're leading in the third period. 28:02 Todd And obviously we saw where it took them last season. 28:08 Todd But my question with Penn State is always the goaltending, and I'm a little more sold on them after seeing them in person last weekend. 28:18 Todd No question with goaltending at Michigan State. 28:21 Todd So yeah, I think I had Michigan, Michigan State, Western North Dakota, Penn State as my top five. 28:28 Jûpe And then we go over and we compare it to the NPI. 28:34 Jûpe Pretty consistent, like you see a lot of movement, Providence going up five, Duluth down, Wisconsin down week over week, a little more movement towards the bottom of the kind of top 20 of NPI vegs. 28:48 Jûpe But are we going to start seeing some of the voters maybe start to lean more towards the NPI? 28:56 Jûpe Or are they still kind of unsure about the whole NPI itself? 29:00 Vegoe I do think that people tend to lean like they compare their top 20 against the NPI, that confirmation bias or see where they've got outliers. 29:09 Vegoe I always look at the 20 through 30 of the NPI, be like, am I missing someone? 29:15 Vegoe Is there a game on ESPN plus that I need to watch a condensed version of just to check out a team? 29:21 Vegoe Are they really that good? 29:23 Vegoe I look at Dartmouth and I'm just not as impressed as their ranking. 29:27 Vegoe And you look at their strength of schedule, it's not very good. 29:31 Vegoe And yet we still see in the NPI, these ECAC teams still looking very strong. 29:36 Vegoe Quinnipiac, even Rand Pecknald early in the year said, he's not sure this team has what it takes. 29:41 Vegoe They're going to have to prove it to themselves. 29:43 Vegoe And they have won some games here the last little stretch, but a little bit of an unknown there. 29:51 Jûpe And then, you know, we've got Augustana and there's St. 29:53 Jûpe Cloud, Minnesota State. 29:56 Jûpe There's your drop on Boston University, dropped seven or six spots. 29:59 Jûpe And, you know, you masked jump seven, bowling green jump seven. 30:03 Jûpe So I do like to see teams are at least able to move around here. 30:08 Jûpe It's not really set in stone, is it Veegs? 30:10 Vegoe Well, I definitely think the NPI, you know, as we unveiled that charting feature that I suggested to you last week, and you immediately got it on the site, you can see that the gaps between teams are getting tighter. 30:25 Vegoe And one of the things that people talked about is that pairwise and NPI looked very similar at the end of the year, regardless of which formula. 30:34 Vegoe But I think we've seen a lot more variability to NPI throughout the year. 30:38 Vegoe So you're seeing some big movement, you know, as the end of the year comes, I think it'll look more like pairwise in terms of what we expect. 30:46 Vegoe But there's still that volatility right now as the season continues. 30:50 Jûpe What are your thoughts on NPI so far, Todd? 30:55 Todd I haven't really had any reason to think of it as anything different than the pairwise. 31:01 Todd I mean, really, we see a number, we don't have to look at a grid. 31:08 Todd This is fine. 31:09 Todd That's kind of like, okay. 31:13 Todd I really was a fan of the pairwise because I understood how it works. 31:19 Todd And I don't know if I can say the same to the degree yet with the NPI because that's a lot of math that just keeps math-ing. 31:31 Todd But we'll all get there. 31:34 Todd I think it's just, it's a different way of saying the same thing. 31:37 Jûpe And you can see, Veegs, it's Michigan's, I went back to the beginning of January. 31:41 Jûpe Michigan's been at top, but everyone else has just kind of jumped around three, four. 31:45 Jûpe Providence up 11 spots. 31:47 Jûpe It's early January. 31:48 Vegoe Yeah. 31:49 Vegoe And one thing I noticed from this last weekend, Michigan Tech, they lost it home to Northern Michigan, which in pairwise was always a huge killer to have losses like that. 32:00 Vegoe And I was really curious to see what kind of impact it would have in NPI. 32:04 Vegoe And it it sunk them down. 32:06 Vegoe You know that they dropped way down here. 32:11 Jûpe Where are they? 32:12 Jûpe You had it like, Oh, sorry, they're 24. 32:15 Vegoe I bet they were I think like 12 or 13 before that loss. 32:20 Vegoe And it just really sunk them down. 32:22 Vegoe You know, things are so tight from 11 to 25 there in the NPI. 32:28 Jûpe So, oh yeah, they dropped six just in one week. 32:32 Jûpe And there's Boston University dropped six, so. 32:36 Vegoe It's a big swing. 32:37 Jûpe I'm glad he gave me the idea of doing this stuff. 32:39 Jûpe It's kind of neat to look at past numbers and just quickly bring them up. 32:45 Jûpe So, fun stuff. 32:50 Jûpe Oh, it's been a little crazy, the NPI, people getting used to it. 32:59 Jûpe Are they going to tweak it, Feex? 33:00 Jûpe You know, we keep hearing, hey, maybe it's not even the final numbers yet. 33:06 Vegoe You know, I haven't heard anyone say anything yet about tweaks this season. 33:10 Vegoe You know, especially at Minnesota, Tom McGinnis would be the one guy who might be involved with that, and he's headed over to St. 33:17 Vegoe Thomas. 33:17 Vegoe So, you know, we lose that source a little bit from the Minnesota perspective. 33:22 Vegoe And Bob always just kind of has that feeling, you know, whatever my schedule is, I'm going to play it, whatever the rankings say, I'm just going to go with it. 33:30 Vegoe I'm not going to complain about it too much. 33:33 Vegoe So that's the perspective I hear around here. 33:36 Vegoe I don't know if Todd hears anything different in Madison country. 33:40 Todd Not really, because it's, you know, I think we've all just gotten used to the fact that you go check what happens after you play, and which way do we go, and how far? 33:54 Todd It's probably a little bit different now than it was 20 years ago with, you know, a lot more prediction capabilities, knowing which way you're going to go, depending on how the result is. 34:06 Todd But yeah, I think we're all just kind of, the thing I'm still trying to get a feel for is, like Vegas was talking about, how much a loss costs you, you know, when you're talking about losing at home. 34:21 Todd How, you know, especially if it's a team, I guess a team that's not highly ranked. 34:26 Todd Does that mean four spots? 34:27 Todd Does that mean five spots? 34:29 Todd How far is that going to go? 34:30 Todd So we'll know more as this goes on. 34:34 Todd And, you know, things, I think, change more, or it's more volatile earlier in the season because there aren't as many games in. 34:45 Todd So there could be more swings that way when you get towards the end. 34:48 Todd It's kind of like, you know, a baseball players batting average could change a lot in one game early in the season. 34:54 Todd But by the end, you're going up point here and there because of so many at bats. 34:58 Todd So I don't know if it's going to be the same as we got used to with the pair wise that way, but I'm thankful that we don't have to track the common opponents and head to heads on flipping comparison because that was keeping track of a lot of different things there to think about in that when you're talking about the last weekend, the regular season. 35:30 Vegoe But I also think that some of that stuff could lock places in for teams. 35:35 Vegoe Whereas the MPI, I think there's volatility because you don't have those factors that might hold one team over another despite an RPI change. 35:45 Vegoe And now, especially looking at the charting feature on GPL, you can just see everything start to tighten up and narrow. 35:52 Vegoe And that always to me shows that it's possible to jump over somebody pretty quickly if a couple of results go a certain way. 36:02 Jûpe One thing, Todd, you know, we don't have historical data for the women, but the women's MPI doesn't really change much. 36:09 Jûpe It's top three in a couple of the teams in the top ten, and it just stays there. 36:15 Todd They're not losing much either. 36:17 Jûpe Yeah, they're not losing much either. 36:19 Jûpe But that kind of wanted to get me into discussion. 36:21 Jûpe I know you've been following a lot of Wisconsin women's hockey. 36:24 Jûpe How are these top teams going to be affected with the Olympics coming up? 36:29 Jûpe Well, it's not going to knock Minnesota, Ohio State, or Wisconsin out of any really spots, I don't think. 36:37 Jûpe But it's an interesting development. 36:39 Jûpe You could lose a higher seed pretty easily in the NCAA tournament because all your great players are off in Italy. 36:47 Todd Right. 36:48 Todd So I believe it's the top four teams in the NPI have lost their leading goal scorer to the Olympics. 36:57 Todd So Wisconsin, Ohio State, Minnesota, obviously, and Penn State. 37:04 Todd Yeah. 37:05 Todd So yeah, it just stands me just a massive shift all in between one weekend and the next. 37:14 Todd Now, if it was the kind of thing where you came back from the break after having three or four weeks off, and then all of a sudden your lineup has changed, that's something else, but now you're doing this between, for Wisconsin's comparison, playing Bemidji State at home last weekend with your full roster and playing at Minnesota this weekend with your scaled back roster against Minnesota's scaled back roster. 37:43 Todd So it's going to be a wild ride for some of these teams, especially, I think Wisconsin doesn't have as much scoring, a percentage of its scoring gone, but they are really the only team that's losing its dominant goalie. 38:03 Todd So that's going to be a big thing to watch there. 38:08 Todd You've got a freshman that's going to go in and play and really play her first big start at Ritter on Friday. 38:13 Todd So good luck and hope the players in front of you are paying attention to that. 38:21 Jûpe Well, luckily, these teams are pretty good. 38:24 Jûpe They can handle this type of thing. 38:28 Jûpe Probably what concerns these teams more, you know, it's not as big a deal when we're playing Minnesota because we're playing each other. 38:33 Jûpe Our rankings are going to drop a loss here and there. 38:36 Jûpe It's when you, like you said, if like Wisconsin's going to Bemidji State or going to Mankato or St. 38:42 Jûpe Cloud, where all of a sudden, boy, we're in a tough game here. 38:47 Jûpe This could hurt us. 38:50 Jûpe That's where things I think become a little more unfair, but it's just the way things are. 38:55 Todd Yeah. 38:56 Todd And like you said, it would take an awful lot for them to drop out of the upper spots. 39:03 Jûpe But you know, a number one seed, number two seed, number three. 39:07 Jûpe I mean, it can make a difference. 39:09 Todd When you're in the three, four, five, six range, those are really big differences. 39:17 Todd You know, when you're near a three, you don't know who you're playing, but you know you're going to be playing a lower team. 39:22 Todd When you're a four, you know who you play. 39:24 Todd It's the number five year at home. 39:26 Todd When you're the five, you know who you play, but it's on the road. 39:29 Todd And when you're six, you got to win two games, get to the frozen four and they're both on the road. 39:32 Todd So yeah, that means that those are big differences in how your playoff path goes. 39:40 Todd And if that's impacted by players being gone, I can imagine there's going to be a lot of raised voices in Florida this year. 39:53 Todd But to what end? 39:56 Todd I just don't know. 39:58 Todd Again, this is another thing where I don't know that they're going to have any power to change anything because this was done this way because now there's the PWHL and they're not going to not have their players for a full season to lose them to a residency for a full season. 40:17 Todd So new world, everyone's just got to get used to it and I think maybe there can be some discussions on scheduling and when things happen. 40:27 Todd But that's that's for another day, probably. 40:32 Jûpe Well, I just thought it was going to be an interesting topic because like you said, Minnesota is facing Wisconsin this weekend. 40:36 Jûpe They're playing each other, probably a good time to play. 40:38 Jûpe At least they're both down or they're both affected at the same time. 40:41 Jûpe But it could get tricky when you have those opponents that are maybe just a little bit further down. 40:45 Jûpe Maybe you're playing at Duluth or whatever it may be. 40:48 Jûpe Who's obviously still a good team, but it can mess up your WCHA points. 40:55 Jûpe Just things here a little bit here and there. 40:58 Jûpe I don't anticipate it, but the potential is there and you know, we saw a little quite a few couple of years ago and we had a couple of Gophers leave for the Olympics. 41:09 Jûpe They obviously got through that. 41:13 Jûpe Probably not as much college players going as some of the women, but we've seen it before. 41:20 Vegoe Well, I think it was pretty rare for the Minnesota Men's team to lose as many players as they did to the Olympics that year. 41:27 Vegoe But it seems like in the women's game, they're used to losing players throughout the year. 41:32 Vegoe So it's just another thing to adjust to and rally from. 41:36 Vegoe I think the one thing is, you look at schools like Minnesota and Wisconsin, they are going to make the tournament. 41:42 Vegoe I think there's such a widespread in the college game right now between the elite teams and everybody else that at least they're insulated from that. 41:52 Jûpe I mean, obviously, you don't want any injuries in the Olympics because that could, I mean, I mean, Wisconsin goalie injured out for the season at the Olympics. 42:05 Jûpe That would be huge, Todd, that would just be huge. 42:08 Todd Changes everything. 42:09 Todd Yeah, absolutely. 42:12 Todd I mean, you never know when you have the, you know, the Tom Brady come in and take over and run with things. 42:20 Todd But I think there's that potential for I mean, there's also the, just the fact that the mental and physical grind that they're going through in the Olympics and then having to turn around, come back, you know, let's say the US wins a gold. 42:40 Todd Do does the team have a lot of appearances lined up? 42:46 Todd Do they all go on Jimmy Fallon? 42:48 Todd Do they all want, is that that next week a celebration for them? 42:55 Todd And when do they get back to their team with that next couple of days being the lead up to the first round of the league playoffs? 43:06 Todd It's a, there's a lot of nerves around teams that have, that have players going to the Olympics because you don't know what's going to happen there. 43:16 Todd Even if they, you know, don't get injuries, they're going to be coming back taxed from being in that tournament. 43:25 Todd And you just hope that they get enough of a rest and enough of a little bit of a chance to recover to, to be ready for, I mean, the women's postseason goes so fast. 43:37 Todd Two weeks of league playoffs, two weeks of the NCAA playoffs, and it's over. 43:41 Todd And it's so if you're, if you're not ready for it, it just it can hit you hard fast. 43:50 Todd So a lot to watch for there when those players come back in terms of just like, what frame of mind are they in? 43:57 Jûpe I guess it all matters in the end bigs that we have Canadian tears, right? 44:01 Jûpe That's what we really hope. 44:02 Jûpe I mean, John Ham didn't understand it, but in the commercials, but Canadian tears is what we need, don't we, Bigs? 44:08 Vegoe I think hockey people understand that. 44:11 Vegoe So we saw it at World Junior. 44:13 Vegoe We saw Canadian tears all over at World Junior. 44:15 Jûpe Oh, what a shame that was, wasn't it? 44:18 Jûpe No, we didn't care. 44:21 Jûpe Well, we need to talk about Cub Foods, Bigs, your favorite local grocery store. 44:26 Jûpe I know that. 44:28 Vegoe Yeah, there's there's a couple of big games this weekend. 44:30 Vegoe So if you, you know, have plans, you know, Cubs got you covered. 44:34 Vegoe You know, you can save five dollars when you spend 25 on Pepsi, Gatorade or Frito-Lay and grab Pepsi 24 packs for 99 when you buy two with your MyCub rewards card. 44:45 Vegoe You know, I've got mine to make sure to use every time I check out and Lay's potato chips are two for six dollars and Pepsi two liters, just 199 when you buy three. 44:55 Vegoe So big weekend coming up, you got to get supplied. 44:58 Vegoe You know, I go to Cub. 44:59 Vegoe They always have everything I want. 45:01 Vegoe Even when it's on sale, you know, they have enough inventory to keep you happy. 45:04 Vegoe And that's why you could shop happy at Cub. 45:08 Jûpe All right. 45:10 Jûpe Let's get into this weekend, boys. 45:12 Jûpe First things first. 45:13 Jûpe Are you coming this weekend? 45:14 Jûpe Todd? 45:15 Jûpe Yes. 45:17 Jûpe I, well, you're gonna be probably covering a lot of hockey though, because they're going to have you on the women and the men, aren't they? 45:22 Todd Yeah. 45:23 Todd So the Friday is gonna be fun. 45:24 Jûpe Yeah. 45:25 Todd Six o'clock and start on one building and seven o'clock in the other. 45:29 Todd So I'll be over at the women's game for the duration of that. 45:36 Todd And then, then you'll come over the rest of the third. 45:40 Todd Yeah, right. 45:42 Jûpe Well, that's good to hear. 45:44 Jûpe Are you staying at VeegsS? 45:45 Jûpe VeegsS, did you sleep in the bed this time? 45:47 Vegoe So I didn't get the bat signal that he needed to. 45:51 Vegoe No, I've added to this bathroom. 45:54 Vegoe Now there's like a mirror, there's light fixture things, lots of improvements at Casa de Veegso. 46:00 Todd No, we've got more of the family coming up this weekend. 46:02 Todd So we are getting a hotel. 46:04 Jûpe So are you going to get the kids to do the Mall of America thing? 46:08 Jûpe Maybe have a little fun? 46:10 Todd No, they've already done it. 46:12 Todd They've been there. 46:13 Todd We've done a bunch. 46:14 Todd I don't actually know if we're going to have a ton of time anyway, because we'll get there Friday afternoon. 46:20 Todd I've got to get to the women's game and then Saturday, the women play it too. 46:27 Todd So yeah, it, hey, if I come up there and spend two full days at the Ritter Mariucci complex, I'm OK with that. 46:39 Vegoe Well, I believe Saturday afternoon is a skate with the women Gophers as well. 46:44 Vegoe So that'll be something to enjoy for hockey fans taking in that part of the border battle. 46:50 Jûpe I'm going to have to go down there early and watch that myself. 46:54 Jûpe We'll have to see. 46:56 Jûpe VeegsS. 46:59 Jûpe Seven straight losses for Minnesota. 47:02 Jûpe They got to do something this weekend. 47:05 Jûpe And I think they have a good chance this weekend. 47:08 Jûpe They've been playing. 47:09 Jûpe They haven't been playing terrible, really. 47:12 Vegoe I feel better about them this weekend than I have the last couple, just because we've seen signs of them getting traction. 47:22 Vegoe I think the long break from December to January with the World Junior Distraction of, you know, not having their coaches around, having some players gone. 47:34 Vegoe Having all the players in their building. 47:35 Vegoe I think that had a bit of an impact on this team. 47:38 Vegoe You know, they're so young. 47:40 Vegoe I think that definitely showed up in some of their games. 47:44 Vegoe And we've just seen a lot of inconsistency breaking out the puck. 47:48 Vegoe You know, that was something we saw right away in October when Minnesota had their bad start. 47:53 Vegoe And then they got better in November and seemed like they figured it out by December. 47:57 Vegoe And then they go on break. 47:58 Vegoe A lot of those problems picked up again. 48:01 Vegoe And you've seen them start to solve the issues against Michigan State, against Michigan at times. 48:09 Vegoe Not so much against Penn State, but there are signs for people. 48:13 Vegoe Bob likes to say, we're closer to turning the page and being the way we want to be than not. 48:19 Vegoe And I know a lot of fans don't believe that, but this team is close and they're getting good goaltending. 48:26 Jûpe And on the flip side, Todd, you know, the Badgers coming in losing four straight themselves at home, but they want the season sweep of Minnesota. 48:35 Jûpe You know, it's a big deal. 48:37 Todd Yeah, that would be a big thing for them. 48:39 Todd I think, but they know they have other things to kind of focus in on first on just getting to having a good three period game. 48:50 Todd It feels like they haven't had that in a long time. 48:54 Todd They were pretty good in the first period last Friday against Penn State, up to nothing, lost seven to two. 49:04 Todd And towards the end of that, I saw a team that just kind of looked vulnerable and looked, you know, the body language wasn't good. 49:11 Todd The reactions were, you know, it was a lot of slamming of sticks and things like that. 49:17 Todd And it just looked like a team that is really trying to find itself through all these injuries that they've had. 49:24 Todd And it got a little bit better on Saturday, but not good enough to get a win. 49:32 Todd They didn't score a five on five goal all weekend against Penn State. 49:36 Todd And that's something that desperately has to change. 49:39 Todd They have to be better there. 49:40 Todd And just getting more, you know, second and third chances off of zone time. 49:51 Todd Goaltending has been a question. 49:54 Todd There have been good spots. 49:56 Todd There have been poor spots. 49:59 Todd I don't fully know where that's headed. 50:05 Todd Daniel Hauser's played most of the season. 50:08 Todd He's had some good games, but of late, it's been a struggle for him a few times. 50:13 Todd So there's a lot of signs that are just not pointing in a great direction for the Badgers. 50:22 Todd And so to me, it becomes a, who's more desperate sort of weekend, especially going into Friday, who's got more just, we need this, we need this win tonight, and we are going to put out everything we have to get that. 50:39 Todd And so that actually makes it kind of cool that there's both teams that are just in that fight for getting back on their feet. 50:51 Todd So we'll see how that plays out. 50:54 Jûpe So what's going on with the no handshakes after the game? 51:00 Todd Well, I didn't shake anyone's hand after the game either, and nobody called me on it. 51:04 Todd So I'm not sure. 51:07 Jûpe No, it was a love the TV. 51:09 Jûpe They're just like focusing on it. 51:11 Jûpe I'm like, come on. 51:12 Todd It's just, yeah, I don't think the TV angle got the way of just the yeah, somewhat dismissive, but they got, they got the taunting from the Penn State players as they're going off the ice. 51:24 Todd And that was at, you know, without Mike Hastings saying it, that was a big part of it, right? 51:31 Todd I mean, there was a lot of emotions at that point. 51:35 Todd There was a lot of, I mean, Wisconsin was upset and they should have been, they just got swept for the second weekend in a row in their building. 51:45 Todd And it was coming, it wasn't like this game had been decided for a while. 51:49 Todd We knew it was ending that way. 51:53 Todd Penn State scored an empty netter in the last minute. 51:55 Todd Wisconsin had some chances before that hit a post. 51:58 Todd And so it was, you know, they were, felt like they were right there and it didn't go their way. 52:03 Todd And, yeah, I think, and then there was a brawl with 10 seconds ago that stirred some things up. 52:10 Todd So, yeah, there were some frayed nerves there. 52:16 Todd Mike Hastings said he called Guy Gadowski on Monday and they talked it out, didn't really say what they said, but they've been friends for a long time. 52:27 Todd So this is that's why it was a little bit surprising for me that, you know, I thought maybe he'd just shake hands, grit your teeth, get through it and move on to the next one. 52:39 Todd But didn't see that happen. 52:41 Todd It became a thing. 52:43 Todd And that's what I think as a team, they hate to have to be dealing with that this week, of just kind of keeping that alive because it's a couple of a few times. 52:55 Todd We've seen it make the rounds on social media and they've had to answer for that a couple of times. 53:02 Todd And so that's never a good thing to have to deal with as while you're also dealing with a four game losing streak. 53:11 Jûpe Veegs, one thing it does do, it can build a rivalry when you have that plays each other the last game of the Big Ten season. 53:23 Jûpe It builds rivalries, we've seen it before. 53:26 Jûpe You know, some of the Michigan rivalry was built, you know, like, you know, players putting out their knee, trying to injure players and things in the past. 53:34 Jûpe And that, you know what, it would be good for Penn State to get some rivalries going because we know from experience here, even though Penn State was beating Minnesota a lot at some points, people just didn't care about Penn State here in Minnesota. 53:49 Jûpe They just don't come to the games and there's no care. 53:51 Jûpe But having Penn State be good now and doing those type of things can build rivalries with Minnesota and Wisconsin. 54:01 Vegoe Yeah, I definitely think Penn State is embracing the villain role. 54:05 Vegoe And I saw this kind of antique from them against Arizona State early in the season. 54:10 Vegoe You know, as the players are enjoying the interactions with the fans. 54:13 Vegoe And I think they probably enjoyed the social media attention that they got from those antics. 54:19 Vegoe And they're like, well, we swept Wisconsin. 54:21 Vegoe So let's do it again. 54:22 Vegoe And so probably not great for hockey to have that kind of stuff going on. 54:28 Vegoe But we've had some players say, you know, this is part of the game. 54:33 Vegoe It's a show. 54:34 Vegoe It's a little bit of entertainment as well. 54:36 Vegoe And if you don't like it, outscore the other team, then, you know, take advantage of it when you have the opportunities to score and win games. 54:45 Vegoe You know, Penn State's good this year, right? 54:48 Vegoe They have improved their style of hockey, their structure, their talent level, their depth, and they are a tough team to play against. 54:57 Vegoe And I think, you know, they're going to be tougher this year than they've been in the past to knock off. 55:03 Vegoe And they will be. 55:05 Vegoe They're on a heck of a run right now. 55:07 Jûpe They also won't have an Allentown regional to sit home at with either. 55:12 Jûpe So that's one. 55:14 Vegoe To do it like most teams have to do it, go on the road into an empty building and win a game. 55:20 Todd Yeah, as of right now, they'd be going into Loveland. 55:23 Todd So to play Denver in the first round. 55:27 Todd There's that possibility, too, that they might feel the other side of it. 55:31 Jûpe And I think that's good. 55:33 Jûpe It just, you know, get more people on board. 55:35 Jûpe I wish Maine was more vocal for last season because it happened to them. 55:41 Jûpe Veegs got both games on Channel 9 this weekend, so that's great for us. 55:46 Jûpe I know, Todd, that I know Wisconsin Stations pick up the Saturday game, I think. 55:51 Todd Both games. 55:52 Jûpe Oh, both games. 55:52 Jûpe So it's going to be on locally there as well. 55:56 Jûpe It's still Badgers Gophers, Veegs. 55:58 Jûpe Let's go. 56:00 Vegoe I do think that fans who follow Gopher Hockey should understand that this team is not as bad as their MPI ranking. 56:09 Vegoe They have one of the hardest schedules in the country and they have lost close games lately. 56:14 Vegoe You know, if they get a couple of bounces, maybe if they had gone to this Lamb Mooney Zeemer line early in the year, they wouldn't have gone through some of these struggles. 56:26 Vegoe But a Bob Monsko team gives players opportunities to develop during the year. 56:33 Vegoe He usually doesn't put a roster together where he pigeonholes players into spots and just says you're here, you're here, you're here. 56:42 Vegoe Fill that role. 56:43 Vegoe He wants his players to learn how to play transition hockey. 56:47 Vegoe He wants his players to be able to have controlled zone entries. 56:51 Vegoe He wants to have power plays that are dynamic and reactive, not static and planned out plays. 57:00 Vegoe He wants to foster creativity. 57:02 Vegoe So the outcome of that is you hope as the season goes on, that players continue to grow and are a totally different team at the end of the year than they are at the start of the year. 57:13 Vegoe And I go to more practices than most people, and they just stick to what they do. 57:19 Vegoe You know, Bob's got this kind of recipe with how to coach a team and how to develop talent. 57:24 Vegoe And it's not yell at them, discipline them, put them in a defensive structure and say, this is how we have to play. 57:31 Vegoe He wants them to play his style. 57:34 Vegoe So he's always pushing development with these guys. 57:36 Vegoe And unfortunately this year because of the youth, it's been bumpy, you know, they've cratered themselves. 57:43 Vegoe They've had some flat tires, but you know, the staff still believes that they've got enough players and you know, they've had some guys respond well, you know, Tanner Lucky with his turnover in overtime that cost the Gophers, that was very challenging for him, but he responded with a better weekend. 58:02 Vegoe Now he's got to keep doing that and keep growing because especially at center, you know, Minnesota needs help. 58:07 Vegoe You know, they need Eric Paulson back healthy and contributing. 58:11 Vegoe And we'll see this is another opportunity for them to show that. 58:15 Jûpe Todd, we know it's unfortunate you don't get to go to Badger practices because they're always closed. 58:21 Jûpe But give me your thoughts. 58:25 Jûpe You're going to have a split, you're going to go sweep. 58:27 Jûpe What are you going with this weekend on your picks? 58:30 Todd Yeah, I would say that in this season as a whole, Wisconsin is the better team. 58:39 Todd But in this window, I don't know that that means a whole lot because it's been a different look for this group. 58:47 Todd Obviously, we talked about the guys who aren't in the lineup and that makes a big difference in just their, I guess, their puck control and their ability to keep the puck off the other team's stick. 59:03 Todd So I feel like if they get a split out of this, that's probably, well, one, it breaks that losing streak. 59:10 Todd And I think that is a step they have to make. 59:16 Todd And they'd probably be happy with getting that, getting a win this weekend. 59:23 Todd I just, I know they have to not let the start get away from them. 59:29 Todd Because we've seen where the Gophers get going early, and then it just snowballs downhill at Mariucci. 59:37 Todd We've seen that how many dozens of times over the years. 59:43 Todd If they can have a good start and not get complacent with it, I think they've got a good chance this weekend. 59:49 Todd But we haven't seen that for a while. 59:51 Todd So that's what gives me the pause of saying, well, I don't think I can pick them to win two games this week, because that hasn't been there in a while. 1:00:03 Jûpe I'm going to say split. 1:00:06 Jûpe Hopefully, Minnesota can get off the schneid, because I don't want to see what it's like if they get to nine losses in a row. 1:00:14 Jûpe So I'm trying to be somewhat positive here, and I'll say split. 1:00:19 Jûpe What do you think, Veegs? 1:00:22 Vegoe I think we're going to see some overtime this weekend. 1:00:24 Jûpe Oh, here we go. 1:00:27 Vegoe And I feel like there is this chance the Gophers might just get two points out of the six. 1:00:35 Vegoe But I think we're going to see some OT this weekend, and we'll see if Minnesota has learned from their three-on-three mistakes and executes a little bit more cleanly. 1:00:45 Vegoe But I think that's the recipe of this weekend. 1:00:47 Vegoe Minnesota just has a hard time scoring goals five-on-five. 1:00:51 Vegoe Vonner here commented, Henderson has scored on 50% of his chances, and they have a record. 1:00:58 Vegoe And I asked Bob about that today, because I saw him have probably a 10-minute conversation with Beckett after practice today, just kind of talking things through. 1:01:08 Vegoe And I think the coaching staff, as Bob said, in availability today, it would be a problem if he wasn't getting scoring chances. 1:01:16 Vegoe But the fact that he just continues to get grade A after grade A speaks well of his play. 1:01:22 Vegoe And you have to focus on the process here. 1:01:25 Vegoe If you're Minnesota, if you're a fan, if you're a player, you can't get caught up in all the struggles. 1:01:31 Vegoe But this team has got to find guys who can play and contribute. 1:01:35 Vegoe And I think we're still going to see some bumps in the road with that. 1:01:38 Vegoe You know, Luke Middlestadt can't play 30 minutes a night the rest of the year. 1:01:42 Vegoe Like, he's got to have some help. 1:01:44 Vegoe And I think, you know, it's tough for the staff to do that at times with their players, you know, give other guys opportunities. 1:01:53 Vegoe But they have to, because you can't, you're going to lose Luke next year, you know, you're going to lose Cal Thomas next year, you've got to continue to develop these guys. 1:02:02 Vegoe And there's no better way to develop players than the crucible of the Big Ten schedule and big games against rivals like Wisconsin. 1:02:12 Jûpe There you go, folks. 1:02:13 Jûpe Todd and I are the positive ones this week, you know. 1:02:17 Jûpe It's big, Mr. 1:02:18 Jûpe Negative. 1:02:18 Jûpe I saw Motay give you a negative one. 1:02:20 Vegoe I'll take it, Motay. 1:02:22 Jûpe Motay is the toughest guy to please though, I mean, he's tough. 1:02:28 Jûpe It's just how it is. 1:02:29 Vegoe Power place for the watch. 1:02:34 Jûpe Well, thanks for coming on for the 20th time, Todd. 1:02:38 Todd Love it. 1:02:38 Todd I'm love it. 1:02:39 Todd Here's to the next 20. 1:02:41 Jûpe All right. 1:02:41 Todd And here's to your next 300. 1:02:43 Todd Oh, for that matter. 1:02:44 Todd Starting at that. 1:02:46 Jûpe I'll be in social security long before that. 1:02:52 Jûpe Oh, boy. 1:02:52 Jûpe So we appreciate you coming on. 1:02:54 Jûpe Veegs, any last thoughts? 1:02:55 Jûpe Obviously, people go read your finance article. 1:02:58 Jûpe It's wonderful. 1:02:58 Jûpe It gives a lot of insights. 1:03:00 Jûpe What else? 1:03:02 Vegoe I think just stay patient with this group. 1:03:05 Vegoe I'm seeing some progress out of McLaughlin, out of Rombach, out of Whipple. 1:03:10 Vegoe Those players need to develop. 1:03:12 Vegoe And so just watch for progress with them this weekend. 1:03:15 Vegoe See if they make the right plays in transition and if they find opportunities to get involved in the rush. 1:03:21 Vegoe That's the number one opportunity for development with this team is seeing how those three guys play, because if they don't develop, maybe we'll talk about OT. 1:03:31 Vegoe What could happen? 1:03:34 Jûpe I'll just have to see. 1:03:35 Jûpe Well, that's gonna do it for this episode of The GPL Podcast. 1:03:39 Jûpe We'll be back next week with Cappy coming on to preview the Buckeyes coming to town. 1:03:45 Jûpe For those of you watching live on YouTube or X and even Facebook, stay tuned for overtime. 1:03:52 Jûpe For the rest of you, we'll catch you next week on The GPL Podcast. 1:04:07 Jûpe If you are watching on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and get notified each time we go live or post a video. 1:04:14 Jûpe If you listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please rate our show and leave a review. 1:04:24 Jûpe For those of you watching live, you know what's next. 1:04:28 Jûpe It's Vegoe's Beverage of the Week. 1:04:32 Jûpe It's time for Overtime.