0:04 This is The GPL Podcast, part of the Pulltab Sports family. 0:12 I love it. 0:27 Gotcha, I didn't even know that. 0:29 Yeah, blame it on Don. 0:35 So, Sam, I think you might have gotten kicked out of a game, maybe? 0:38 Yeah, for being a dirty player, you know, in total weight, getting sure. 0:44 Now, here's Jupiter and Vegoe. 0:51 Jûpe Good evening, and welcome to The GPL Podcast, episode number 303. 0:59 Jûpe Veegs, I think we should just stop picking GopherSweep for until next season. 1:06 Vegoe Yeah. 1:09 Vegoe I mean, we got so much faith out of the Wisconsin weekend. 1:12 Vegoe And then a double clunker, as Steve Miller called this last weekend, not, not an ideal weekend for GopherNation. 1:20 Vegoe And no more sweeps from us. 1:21 Vegoe We promise, Motay. 1:23 Vegoe I swear. 1:24 Jûpe Motay is going to be pissed, but you know, that's just how it is. 1:28 Jûpe What do you do? 1:29 Jûpe So Gophers get swept at home by Ohio State. 1:34 Jûpe But, you know, I had been, we had been talking, Veegs, you know, Parawise has been going forever, NPI is the new thing this year. 1:41 Jûpe So we figure we'd bring in the expert on all this stuff. 1:44 Jûpe And I realized this week, Veegs, we have not had Tim Brule on since season number one of The GPL Podcast. 1:53 Vegoe He's like one of the founding fathers of College Hockey. 1:55 Jûpe He kind of is. 1:56 Vegoe And I'm right. 1:57 Vegoe I mean, he's been in this for a long time. 1:59 Jûpe So let's bring him in. 2:01 Jûpe Tim Brule from an ice house in North Dakota right now. 2:04 Jûpe Wait, you're not in an ice house. 2:06 Tim I'm not in the house. 2:07 Tim I'm at the cabin. 2:10 Tim But yeah, we went ice fishing this week. 2:12 Vegoe You're at fish camp. 2:13 Vegoe You're at fish camp this week. 2:14 Tim I'm at a fish camp. 2:15 Tim A fish camp, yep. 2:16 Tim Absolutely. 2:17 Jûpe Well, you were on season one, man. 2:19 Jûpe And I keep thinking, we had to get you back on sometime because I'm sorry, nobody knows who the hell you are. 2:28 Jûpe You've been running US. 2:30 Jûpe College Hockey Online, short, Uscho for short, for now, is it 30 years? 2:37 Jûpe Is this your 30th anniversary? 2:40 Tim 30 years. 2:41 Tim So it started the year before, but it was known as the College Hockey Home page. 2:47 Tim I had done a website, donated it to the University of Minnesota for Gopher Hockey. 2:53 Tim We put up this other links tab, and it was called College Hockey Home page. 2:58 Vegoe It's a black web page. 2:59 Tim Some of your probably earlier followers remember that page. 3:06 Tim That was the season that the Paralyze was created, Vote for Hobie was created. 3:14 Tim The Paralyze was first implemented in the math department at the University of Minnesota. 3:19 Tim Probably a little known fact. 3:22 Tim I was the first person to actually publish it. 3:24 Tim I was the person that named it the Paralyze. 3:27 Tim I originally called it the Paralyze Comparison. 3:29 Tim My partner at the time, Learton, who compiles the poll still for USCHO or Uscho to date, said the Paralyze rankings would be better because it's PWR, so power. 3:44 Tim So that's what he wanted to do. 3:45 Tim That's what we went with, but it was in the math department at the University of Minnesota. 3:50 Vegoe So that's probably... 3:52 Jûpe Wait, you're a gopher? 3:55 Tim Yeah. 3:55 Jûpe You're a gopher fan? 3:56 Jûpe Wait, Uscho is an Eastern bias website. 3:59 Jûpe There's something going on here. 4:01 Tim Absolutely, we're an Eastern bias website. 4:03 Tim That's why the poll now says Hackensack, Minnesota. 4:07 Vegoe That's where I live. 4:08 Tim So I lived in Victoria and all that. 4:11 Tim I'm the publisher, I own Uscho. 4:13 Tim I do hire people that work out East. 4:17 Tim There's quite a few of them that work out East. 4:18 Tim There's some that work throughout the country. 4:22 Tim Then I do freelance writers. 4:24 Tim Eric has written a piece herself for us. 4:27 Tim So yeah, freelance writers, we look for people to contribute, just to try to continue publishing the game, promoting the game. 4:35 Tim It's always been a hobby, work, love thing for me. 4:39 Tim I kind of more or less do it full-time now. 4:42 Tim I'm not really paid, but you know how that goes. 4:48 Tim You do GPL for the love of it, not for the big, huge paycheck. 4:51 Tim So I have some great times, go to the Frozen Four every year. 4:57 Tim Yeah, it's good. 4:59 Jûpe You know, what I think I love most is that, you know, we'll see you at Regionals and you'll have a camera with you. 5:05 Jûpe She'll be taking photos, so you'll be working a little bit. 5:08 Jûpe But when it gets to the Frozen Four, you're in fan mode. 5:13 Jûpe You do have the big party, but you're in fan mode. 5:16 Jûpe And you throw on a jersey, it could be any team. 5:18 Jûpe I've seen you in Duluth uniforms. 5:20 Jûpe I've seen all kinds of uniforms or jerseys. 5:23 Jûpe That's your time to just kick back and enjoy everything, isn't it? 5:27 Tim Yeah, yeah, absolutely. 5:28 Tim I try to wear a jersey for the old WCHA. 5:32 Tim I'm still a diehard. 5:33 Tim I love that tournament. 5:35 Tim I still miss it. 5:37 Tim I know there's a lot of people like, get over it. 5:39 Tim It's a Big Ten now, but I still love it. 5:41 Tim I still loved it. 5:43 Tim It was one of the funnest weekends of the year. 5:46 Tim I loved it more than the Frozen Four. 5:48 Tim Just getting everybody from the community together in St. 5:51 Tim Paul was amazing. 5:53 Tim And so yeah, I'll kick back. 5:54 Tim I'll relax. 5:55 Tim For many years, we've hosted some parties and gatherings. 5:58 Tim You guys have been to them. 6:01 Tim It's been a good time. 6:04 Tim Yeah, we try to enjoy it. 6:06 Tim I do this last year and maybe this year, I'll probably do on some social media stuff just because a little short staff. 6:14 Tim But I'll get the march on going into the venue before the games, things like that on video and get it out on social media. 6:24 Jûpe And Veegs, we see Tim a couple of times a season. 6:27 Jûpe He'll be at Mariucci in his spot in the press box. 6:30 Jûpe And he doesn't really watch the game much though, does he Veegs? 6:32 Jûpe He just, he's too busy coding and doing more improvements to his website. 6:39 Vegoe Yeah, I think, I think during the Minnesota, Ohio State game, had Tim been there in the second period, he would have been better off coding than watching the game because the product on the ice, especially during the second period this last weekend on Friday was not as entertaining as the coding that would be on Tim's computer in front of him. 6:58 Tim Yeah, yeah, I do have done a lot of coding, a lot of stuff in, in there, just to, it's my chance to, one of the chances I have to bolt, I multitask, I watch two things at once, I listen, watch, you know, feel, try to get a feel if I, these guys will react because they literally sit next to me. 7:19 Vegoe So, yes, three years now, so. 7:24 Jûpe Well, one thing that Tim mentioned before, you know, he came on, before you got online, Veegs, is that something you've been talking about all season, Minnesota breaking out of the defensive zone has been brutal. 7:39 Jûpe And he even mentioned that a couple of months ago, and it's still killing Minnesota. 7:45 Vegoe Yeah, I mean, we saw it on Friday night, a couple of those goals in the second period, just simple D2D passes, not being executed, going right to Buckeye's sticks and ending up in the Gopher net. 7:57 Vegoe And, you know, that's just been a problem all year. 7:59 Vegoe And I just think that there's a lack of confidence on the Gopher blue line right now, because it's been such a struggle. 8:06 Vegoe And when you're not playing confident, you start trying to almost play safe, you don't get very aggressive, and you don't play north quickly. 8:16 Vegoe And it just gives the other team time to get in your kitchen. 8:21 Vegoe And once they're in your kitchen, then they're making eggs at your own table. 8:25 Vegoe And then they're eating your food and going in the fridge for seconds. 8:28 Vegoe And that's kind of what's been happening in the Gophers this year. 8:31 Vegoe They get stuck. 8:32 Vegoe And it's been it's been a difficult process for them. 8:35 Vegoe And, you know, the only way is through. 8:37 Vegoe I think we've seen some great play from Luke Middlestadt. 8:41 Vegoe I think we've seen John Whipple play better. 8:43 Vegoe But they just need a little bit more help on the back end. 8:49 Jûpe So this has not been a good year, Tim. 8:52 Jûpe And you're like, boy, I don't remember the last time they've been so bad. 8:56 Jûpe And they haven't really been this bad in our lifetime. 9:01 Jûpe Nope. 9:03 Tim As a long time fan, as a going back to the 80s, early 80s, going to at the Civic Center or going to those WCHA Championships versus Northern Michigan and stuff like that, I cannot remember a team like this. 9:19 Tim I can't, they just, and it's not just, they have trouble getting out of the zone. 9:24 Tim It's not just the defensemen. 9:26 Tim I think sometimes the forward aren't chasing down and putting pressure on the teams. 9:30 Tim They're not getting to the loose puck. 9:33 Tim They're a step behind always. 9:36 Tim And they're not getting it out. 9:38 Tim It's, I cannot remember a team like this. 9:42 Tim You know, the one thing that you always could count on was Gopher Hockey being an elite program. 9:48 Tim I always count on the, they had their down years. 9:51 Tim Every once in a while, they wouldn't make the NCAA tournament. 9:53 Tim A bad year would be three games above 500. 9:57 Tim It ain't happening this year. 9:59 Vegoe Sorry. 10:00 Vegoe I would have to think historically, like, looking at pairwise, this would be the worst record we've seen in the pairwise era, MPI era. 10:11 Vegoe You know, it's, it's gotta be. 10:15 Vegoe Without a doubt. 10:16 Tim Without a doubt. 10:16 Tim You were, you were saying something. 10:19 Tim It's one of the worst, the first time they've been below 400. 10:24 Jûpe Since the 7172 season when they were at 250. 10:29 Jûpe And they've had five sub 500 seasons in 50 years. 10:35 Jûpe And this is one of them. 10:37 Tim It's not fathomable. 10:37 Tim I mean, I, I, it just doesn't make any sense. 10:41 Tim I mean, a team that, that has this level of tradition that gets this many top prospects to, to, to struggle this much. 10:51 Tim But I mean, they're young, but that's only an excuse so long. 10:55 Tim I mean, this is the end of the year. 10:57 Tim You got to start putting something together and get schooled by Ohio, Ohio State the way they did. 11:01 Tim That wasn't, that was ugly. 11:03 Tim That was ugly. 11:03 Jûpe And, and, and, and Veegs, we, we got fooled by that Wisconsin weekend. 11:10 Jûpe It was clear. 11:10 Jûpe We picked the sweep coming. 11:11 Jûpe Even Cappy had, you know, Minnesota get the sweep and we learned pretty quickly. 11:16 Jûpe You know, 6-2 loss was pretty bad Friday night. 11:20 Jûpe Saturday night, two to one loss, not as bad, but still a loss. 11:26 Jûpe And, and lo and behold, look out, Veegs. 11:30 Jûpe Ohio State's like one or two points behind them, and they have two games in hand over Minnesota. 11:36 Vegoe Well, I think the Saturday game was probably more evident of what Minnesota's resume looks like this year. 11:43 Vegoe A team that's, that's close to playing good hockey or good enough hockey. 11:50 Vegoe You know, they've beaten Michigan Tech. 11:52 Vegoe You know, they beat North Dakota. 11:53 Vegoe They beat Denver. 11:54 Vegoe They beat Penn State. 11:55 Vegoe They swept Wisconsin. 11:56 Vegoe You know, this team looks like they do have some qualities that allow them to compete. 12:02 Vegoe But then on Saturday, they're not able to get five on five goals. 12:06 Vegoe Without LJ Mooney, their power play is not very effective. 12:10 Vegoe And then they have two careless turnovers that both wind up in their net, you know, by young players. 12:15 Vegoe You know, we've got a breakout play that's, that's right to the D on the other team. 12:20 Vegoe And they transition it quick, get a goal. 12:22 Vegoe We have a player going through the neutral zone, turning it over, quick transition the other way, ends up Minnesota goal. 12:27 Vegoe And that's kind of what's bitten this team this year, is they make these careless turnovers and hand the other team offense. 12:34 Vegoe This isn't getting grinded down in your defensive zone where a team just, you know, manhandles you. 12:40 Vegoe This is you handing them offense and not be able to produce enough offense on your own to compete. 12:46 Jûpe Yeah. 12:47 Tim Especially on Saturday. 12:48 Tim Yeah, I thought Saturday, they definitely, it wasn't that they ground down on their own. 12:54 Tim So I thought Friday night, maybe they did. 12:57 Tim Maybe they got stuck. 12:59 Tim They couldn't do a thing on Friday night. 13:02 Tim But Saturday night, I think it was, currently, they had big mistakes that were incredibly costly. 13:12 Jûpe What did you hear about Moody, then, this, at Media Day today? 13:15 Jûpe Did anything? 13:17 Vegoe Of course, Bob says, you know, after availability, I'm going to go talk to the trainer, and it could be good, it could be bad. 13:24 Vegoe I won't go until then. 13:26 Jûpe Come on. 13:28 Vegoe I think Bob is trying to keep a whole card hidden. 13:31 Jûpe Well, we had this, back, back, back, says, nice questions at Media Today, Vegoe. 13:35 Jûpe Bob was combative. 13:37 Jûpe Was he combative? 13:38 Jûpe I haven't listened, I put it out, I haven't listened to the whole thing through yet. 13:42 Vegoe I mean, I think he's a little frustrated. 13:44 Vegoe You know, this is probably the worst season he's ever had as a coach. 13:48 Vegoe And on his radio show, he mentioned, you know, they got caught with their pants down with players leading early today. 13:56 Vegoe He said they got kicked in the stones with players leaving early. 14:00 Vegoe And he kind of reiterated to me today is like, you know, guys weren't coming into my office and saying, hey, these are going to be my last couple of weeks with this program. 14:08 Vegoe You know, I just wanted to let you know, you know, I'm not coming back. 14:12 Vegoe None of the guys who left made those intentions clear to the coaching staff. 14:18 Vegoe And so you look at the guys who left, you know, really only Snuggers and Wood are guys who are having success. 14:24 Vegoe The rest of them are all struggling as professional hockey players. 14:28 Vegoe And I think the coaching staff saw that and the players didn't. 14:32 Vegoe And maybe their advisors and agents and, you know, people talking to them also didn't see that. 14:37 Vegoe But it caught the gopher shorthanded. 14:40 Vegoe Bob didn't really recruit for it to replace those guys. 14:44 Vegoe He was sticking with his pipeline and he was kind of explaining that today. 14:49 Vegoe And I kind of pressed him a little bit about the transfer portal and CHL players. 14:53 Vegoe And I think that's just not where Bob wants to go to solve all his problems. 14:59 Vegoe And as we see this year, they're struggling through it. 15:02 Jûpe Tim, I see you nodding your head at that. 15:04 Tim Well, I mean, it's amazing how you had to know that the CHL or slash OHL, the Canadian professionals were going to be available. 15:17 Tim The major juniors were going to be available. 15:19 Tim That was the writing was on the wall. 15:21 Tim Ten months ago, there was the kid that committed to Arizona State. 15:25 Tim You knew this was happening. 15:26 Tim And to not have some sort of contingency plan, involving CHL players, just in case, all the more leaves. 15:36 Tim I didn't expect that. 15:39 Tim Maybe the guy I've been talking to in the Canadian juniors will come over and be a good fit. 15:44 Tim I know it's not the ideal thing. 15:47 Tim I grew up in Pride on Ice. 15:50 Tim Every kid had to be a Minnesota kid. 15:53 Tim That's not the case anymore. 15:55 Tim It's not the case anymore. 15:56 Tim This is a completely different era with NIL and major juniors. 16:02 Tim It's a completely different era. 16:04 Tim I'm stunned that they didn't have better contingency plans. 16:09 Vegoe I do think though with the CHL player, it's hard to know if they're going to be three year players, which I think you need to have a majority of your roster be three year players for you to have success. 16:20 Vegoe And so if you bring in these CHL guys and they're one or two and done, and they're not first round talents, that's a tough thing for a college program to invest the time in. 16:32 Tim Absolutely. 16:33 Tim A two year player is very difficult. 16:35 Tim It's not the right length of time. 16:37 Tim The third year is very, very important. 16:41 Tim The difference, look at Snuggeroot. 16:44 Tim If he would have left after two instead of the third, the team wouldn't have been the same. 16:50 Tim That third year was so critical. 16:52 Tim You know, it's a lot to ask for. 16:55 Tim You know, you're not going to get Leopold staying for his fourth year all of the time. 17:00 Tim But Snuggeroot sticking around for that third year is the difference, you know, making the NCAA tournament slash, you know, being competitive for the Frozen Four and not a lot of times. 17:13 Tim One or two players is the key. 17:16 Vegoe And I think if you look at Snuggeroot specifically, his third year, he started to carry the load. 17:22 Vegoe He held on to pucks. 17:23 Vegoe He scored in the big games. 17:25 Vegoe He was the go-to guy. 17:26 Vegoe He was the leader, you know, and you he wasn't that player as a freshman or softball. 17:31 Tim No, no, no. 17:32 Vegoe I think that allows him to go to NHL and be successful. 17:36 Tim I thought he made a tremendous improvement in his ability to skate with the puck, see the ice, assist. 17:43 Tim He was a goal scorer when he first came in. 17:44 Tim So he's nice. 17:46 Tim At the end, after his third year, he was way beyond that. 17:49 Tim He was a real leader. 17:50 Tim He was he was everywhere on the ice. 17:52 Tim He was very, very consequential player. 17:55 Tim And that's that third year. 17:57 Tim That's the difference. 17:58 Tim And Oliver Moore could have been that player this year and should have been that player this year. 18:03 Tim But maybe Rinzel, I don't know. 18:06 Vegoe I mean, I think you look at a player like Luke Middlestadt, you know, not saying he had a lot of options last year to sign. 18:12 Vegoe I don't know if Montreal knows what they have in the player they have the rights to, but he is a dominant player for Minnesota this year. 18:20 Vegoe You know, there's a reason why they play him 30 plus minutes a night. 18:23 Vegoe It's because he competes really hard. 18:25 Vegoe He controls the puck. 18:27 Vegoe He's physical. 18:28 Vegoe He battles. 18:28 Vegoe He wins the loose ones. 18:30 Vegoe They just wish they had more guys like him on the roster this year. 18:38 Jûpe It's tough. 18:40 Jûpe It's tough. 18:41 Jûpe I mean, well, back to back, Tim, speaking the truth. 18:48 Jûpe We also had this juke. 18:49 Jûpe Did I pick up an embellishment penalty Saturday night? 18:54 Jûpe No, I didn't. 18:55 Jûpe But, Veegs, what do you think? 19:07 Jûpe Okay, embellishment, Veegs. 19:10 Vegoe I mean, he's overplaying it a little bit. 19:13 Vegoe You know, the stick's up, but you kind of see a little comical acting there, going to the ice like he did. 19:19 Jûpe And there's an audible, oh, as well when he gets hit for the second time. 19:29 Jûpe For me, I'm just more worried about getting hit with a stick there, because I'm a little vulnerable there. 19:35 Jûpe But yeah, that was the big controversy. 19:40 Jûpe Saturday Night Vague, so it was that whole thing right there. 19:47 Vegoe I wish we would have had better video of Mooney getting hit along the Ohio State bench earlier. 19:53 Vegoe Big Ten didn't really show a great camera angle of what happened to him. 19:57 Vegoe But that was the big takeaway for the weekend for me is losing LJ Mooney is a significant piece to lose. 20:04 Vegoe The power play without him on the ice looks completely different. 20:10 Vegoe You look at the goal, they scored on Friday. 20:12 Vegoe That's just LJ drawing all the attention to himself, trading places with guys, getting the puck to Lamb, Lamb having plenty of time and space to pick a corner. 20:22 Vegoe You know, it's a different look with him on the ice. 20:25 Jûpe So, Tim, we had that 28 game scoreless streak on shootouts. 20:31 Jûpe Amazing stat. 20:33 Jûpe You as a number guy probably were just like for five years, 2000 days, whatever it was. 20:40 Jûpe But now we've got a stat for Minnesota. 20:43 Jûpe They're the number one power play in the country and they're the number 63rd penalty kill. 20:51 Vegoe How is that even possible? 20:53 Vegoe I know. 20:55 Jûpe How is that possible? 20:57 Tim I mean, I know some players are better defensively and some of the skill doesn't match, but a lot of the aggressiveness in chasing down and anticipating when the puck is being bobbled and putting pressure on them, a lot of that skill is translate to get you into the scoring goals on the power play. 21:26 Tim And I do not understand why they're so bad on the penalty kill. 21:32 Tim This is mind-numbing. 21:36 Tim They have more skill than this. 21:37 Tim I don't get it. 21:39 Jûpe Veegs, it's just another one of those mind-boggling stats that Minnesota just has had the last couple of years. 21:45 Jûpe You hit the shootout thing, and now you've got the penalty kill and the power play. 21:51 Vegoe Yeah, the penalty kill has been a huge issue. 21:54 Vegoe You know, we talked about lack of communication with the units early in the year. 22:00 Vegoe We talked about some of the goal-tending maybe not being as good as you'd hope it would be on the penalty kill. 22:08 Vegoe You know, now they've kind of gone to Luka. 22:10 Vegoe It seems like the goal-tending has been solidified, but they're still giving up some goals on the penalty kill here even in the second half. 22:18 Vegoe And it's just a soft spot for this program right now. 22:21 Vegoe And it's hard to explain. 22:23 Vegoe You know, they've got good coaching. 22:25 Vegoe They've got, you know, the same kind of systems that they've run. 22:28 Vegoe They're just not very crisp with executing it. 22:32 Tim And missing 28 straight penalty shots. 22:35 Jûpe Or shootouts. 22:37 Jûpe Shootout attempts. 22:38 Tim Is also very difficult to explain. 22:41 Tim You think they're on a high level of skills. 22:43 Vegoe You think it's there. 22:44 Tim Oh, man, Minnesota would be great at shootouts. 22:48 Vegoe No, apparently not. 22:51 Tim Apparently they defy a bath because it's really bad. 22:54 Vegoe Yeah, it's a low probability thing. 22:58 Jûpe And we haven't really had any since that, what, the BU game or the BC game, Veegs? 23:02 Jûpe There's been no shootout, knock on wood. 23:04 Vegoe But well, they've had a different problem this year, which has been the three on three OT. 23:10 Vegoe They have not looked very confident in those sessions. 23:13 Vegoe I think Denver was the only OT they've won, if I remember correctly, and they lucked out in that one as well. 23:21 Vegoe I think they gave away some good chances to the pioneers and were able to weather the storm on those. 23:28 Tim They're not surviving three on threes. 23:29 Tim They're losing those games. 23:31 Vegoe Right. 23:32 Vegoe A lot of times. 23:33 Tim And it might be this, again, I don't know if it... 23:37 Tim I look back, is this a fast team this year? 23:41 Tim Or they just don't seem to be on the puck very quickly. 23:43 Tim They don't seem to be... 23:44 Tim I mean, everybody talks about their speed. 23:47 Tim I... 23:50 Tim Am I missing something? 23:52 Vegoe I think the skating on the back end is a little bit of a concern this year. 23:58 Vegoe I don't think it's as good as we've seen over the past couple of years. 24:04 Vegoe And these guys are a little bit slower on their retrievals. 24:07 Vegoe They're a little bit slower to jump into the play. 24:09 Vegoe They're a little bit slower to hold possession in the zone. 24:12 Vegoe And some of that's confidence and some of that's skating skill. 24:17 Tim Yeah, and to me, a lot of it seems like confidence, too. 24:20 Tim Yeah, like you were saying, it's just they're not aggressive. 24:22 Tim They're not... 24:23 Tim They don't have the confidence to chase somebody down and be on somebody quickly. 24:26 Tim And I think that shows up and they play very tentative. 24:29 Tim And three on three, you play tentative, you're in trouble. 24:33 Vegoe There's a lot of... 24:35 Vegoe Bob and I sometimes talk about touching the stove. 24:38 Vegoe If you touch the stove against Michigan, it's really hot. 24:40 Vegoe Well, I kind of feel like the Gopher Defense are looking at one of those electric cooktops and they're not exactly sure which burners are on. 24:48 Vegoe So rather than like touch it anywhere, they're just kind of standing back and going, I know it's a stove. 24:55 Vegoe I'm not sure where it's hot. 24:58 Vegoe I'm just going to be very careful. 25:01 Tim The one that's glowing is hot. 25:04 Vegoe Or the one that's on fire. 25:08 Jûpe Oh, you couldn't have said it better there, Veegs. 25:11 Jûpe I think that's a great explanation. 25:14 Jûpe Or maybe, is this a stove? 25:15 Jûpe I'm not sure. 25:16 Jûpe Is this induction? 25:17 Jûpe Does it get hot? 25:21 Jûpe Oh, boy. 25:22 Jûpe Oh, boy. 25:23 Vegoe You want to make sure you have confident chefs in the kitchen. 25:26 Vegoe I didn't know how to park it. 25:30 Tim I'm a huge Gopher fan. 25:31 Tim You guys know it. 25:33 Tim I'm passionate about them, but there's just something a little off. 25:38 Jûpe There's that Eastern bias. 25:40 Jûpe Geez, I can't believe you're so biased. 25:43 Vegoe Yeah. 25:45 Vegoe We'll just lump you into the gym and add in Derek. 25:48 Vegoe Yeah. 25:48 Vegoe It's the same viewpoint. 25:51 Jûpe Well, we'll hear a little more from Tim in a bit here, but Veegs, we need to talk about Cascade CBX Sport and this great deal they've got going on, and Kinger himself is challenging us to get more people to try out this new deal. 26:07 Vegoe I'm not saying it's a contest, but we like to win here at GPL, and we're having a hard time seeing the wins everywhere, so we'd like to see one here with Cascade CBX Sport. 26:16 Vegoe You know, I'm coaching my kids these days. 26:19 Vegoe I'm active. 26:19 Vegoe I'm playing some men's league stuff. 26:21 Vegoe I need a little of this Cascade CBX Sport. 26:24 Vegoe You know, I'm a little bit of a believer here. 26:26 Vegoe I rub a little bit on. 26:27 Vegoe It's got that cool menthol feel. 26:30 Vegoe I know it's NFF certified. 26:32 Vegoe You know, there's no banned substances in there, so I'm not cheating in any ways. 26:36 Vegoe It's not going to impact my life, but it's going to make me feel good. 26:39 Vegoe So visit cascadecbxsport.com/team. 26:43 Vegoe And for five bucks with free shipping, you can get a sample jar of this stuff on the left, a 300 milligram sample jar. 26:51 Vegoe And, you know, they're in startup mode. 26:53 Vegoe They're in hungry, hungry entrepreneurship, and they want your business. 26:57 Vegoe Try it out. 26:58 Vegoe It's free shipping. 26:59 Vegoe It's five bucks. 27:00 Vegoe It's going to make you feel good. 27:02 Vegoe Check it out. 27:03 Vegoe Trust the shield. 27:04 Vegoe Stay on the field. 27:05 Jûpe Trust the shield right there, Veegs. 27:07 Jûpe We've got ours. 27:07 Jûpe You got yours right there, too. 27:08 Vegoe Yeah, you got mine. 27:10 Vegoe I've got a big one here. 27:11 Vegoe And then this is a sample one. 27:14 Vegoe I took a puck to the leg in my men's league game the other day. 27:16 Vegoe So I've been rubbing a little of this on there. 27:19 Vegoe Feels good. 27:20 Vegoe I got a little sore wrist from shooting pucks. 27:22 Vegoe It works there, too. 27:24 Jûpe All right, then. 27:26 Jûpe So let's bring Tim back in here. 27:28 Jûpe Vegoe, your top 20 this week. 27:30 Jûpe Not much is going on except the big old Michigan, Michigan State flip flop. 27:35 Vegoe Just a flip, you know, they had the duel in the D and Michigan State came out on top. 27:40 Vegoe You know, I do think in these big, big games, Michigan State's the more reliable program. 27:46 Vegoe You know, I think Nightingale does just a little bit better job putting in structure, discipline than Colorado, Michigan. 27:53 Vegoe Michigan is very, very talented. 27:55 Vegoe They have the ability to score lots of goals. 27:57 Vegoe But as the season comes to a close, sometimes that style gets them in trouble. 28:03 Jûpe Tim, Michigan State still needs to prove it in the NCAA Tournament. 28:09 Tim They seem to have not found their way to the Frozen Four the last three years now, and they should have been there at least once. 28:16 Tim Michigan finds a way to slip in here and there. 28:20 Tim They had a really good run there for a bet. 28:24 Tim Michigan State absolutely needs to prove it. 28:27 Tim They have the bullet, the dot on them now. 28:32 Tim They're the one in the poll, the one in the NPI. 28:38 Tim They need to prove it. 28:42 Vegoe Big Ten needs to prove it. 28:45 Vegoe Big Ten, since it's come around, no champions at NCHC office seems to have that engraver working every single year. 28:53 Vegoe Big Ten's waiting for their first. 28:56 Jûpe Michigan State's the last one to win. 28:59 Tim Yeah, yeah, that was St. 29:01 Tim Louis back in the day. 29:04 Tim That was a miracle come back to in regulation against BC. 29:09 Jûpe That was a great game. 29:12 Jûpe That was a great game. 29:15 Jûpe The rest of your poll, it's kind of like top ten and everyone else isn't a big top ten or it's been that way for a while. 29:22 Vegoe Yeah, I think I flipped North Dakota and Western maybe in my poll here, move them around a little bit. 29:28 Vegoe You know, North Dakota had the road series at UMD lost in overtime one night, came back strong the next night. 29:36 Vegoe So that's that's a good squad. 29:38 Vegoe Western Michigan did it, lost an overtime game at Miami, but came back in one. 29:43 Vegoe So those are the other teams there. 29:44 Vegoe Providence is looking like the top team in hockey East. 29:48 Vegoe I've probably been higher on them than most all year, even when their MPI has dipped a little bit, I've still kind of held the faith in that squad and Nate Lehman there. 29:58 Vegoe But yeah, I'm a little outside the MPI on schools like Dartmouth and Cornell from time to time, but Cornell is putting together a good second half here. 30:08 Tim Well, Dartmouth has slipped a ton, they're falling apart. 30:15 Tim Definitely their strength of schedules is going to play a big role in whether they even make the NCAA tournament. 30:25 Jûpe Tim, how much longer will your Uscho poll matter? 30:31 Tim Oh, does it matter at all? 30:34 Jûpe It's true. 30:35 Jûpe I mean, I keep thinking these polls are getting less and less important. 30:38 Jûpe The beginning of the season is kind of a popularity contest a little bit. 30:42 Tim But it's definitely a popularity contest. 30:45 Tim Yeah. 30:46 Tim But at the beginning of the season. 30:47 Tim Yeah. 30:48 Jûpe Should we even be paying attention to it? 30:50 Jûpe Is it just people that like it? 30:51 Jûpe I mean, what do you think? 30:52 Jûpe I mean, you've been doing this poll a long time. 30:56 Tim So, it does, like Veeg, if you go back to what Veeg just said, you downplay Dartmouth a little bit. 31:04 Tim Because you have a sense that they're not, they're kind of a, you know. 31:10 Jûpe Where's the NPI, by the way? 31:11 Tim Paper tiger. 31:13 Tim You know, they're not that strong. 31:15 Tim And it doesn't take much for them to pre-fall. 31:19 Tim And where the poll stirs, what they try to do is anticipate that. 31:25 Tim They try to say, you know, they're not that strong. 31:28 Tim They're, yeah, they might be 10 and 0 to start the season, but they're not going to be there for long. 31:35 Tim One or two losses and it's going to free fall. 31:38 Tim And that's kind of what happened here. 31:40 Tim This is the NPI? 31:41 Jûpe This is the NPI, yeah. 31:43 Tim Yeah, yeah. 31:44 Tim And you can see how Dartmouth free fell quite a bit. 31:48 Tim They were locked in. 31:49 Tim Look at Wisconsin. 31:50 Tim I mean, they were locked into two for the longest time and it free fell. 31:56 Jûpe I mean, there's Dartmouth on the ranking. 32:03 Jûpe Obviously, they were low at first, then they were up at number one for a while and then have just kind of sunk down. 32:08 Jûpe They've recovered a little bit, Veegs, though. 32:10 Vegoe Yeah. 32:10 Vegoe But one of the things I look for with these teams is I'm looking at strength of schedule. 32:15 Vegoe And Dartmouth was in the 50s for strength of schedule. 32:18 Vegoe And that's just not going to cut it when you start dropping a few games. 32:22 Vegoe You have to be playing strong teams. 32:24 Vegoe Like even Minnesota, if they could have split a few more of these weekends, they probably would have been fine. 32:32 Vegoe But the fact is that they were getting swept at home and they just couldn't pull out any road wins that really hurt them in the big scheme of things. 32:41 Tim You're absolutely right. 32:42 Tim You're absolutely right. 32:44 Jûpe Minnesota is at 38 right now. 32:46 Tim Like versus Penn State, Michigan, things like that would have made a world of difference. 32:50 Tim You can't afford not to sweep Ohio State more or less get swept by them. 32:57 Tim That's it in a nutshell. 32:58 Tim I mean, Minnesota has the strongest strength of schedule. 33:03 Tim They've traditionally had a very strong strength of schedule. 33:07 Tim I think I polled for the SID, Scott, I polled the last so many years, like 10 years worth of strength of schedules for them for one of the releases. 33:21 Tim They traditionally have a very strong schedule. 33:25 Tim This year, it was shown that it was going to be strong. 33:30 Tim It does matter. 33:31 Tim You just need some winning percentage. 33:33 Tim I know it looks like it's a lot smaller and less important, but the winning percentage is very important. 33:38 Tim It's 0.25 times your winning percentage and 75% of the strength of schedule. 33:44 Tim But you got to have some winning percentage. 33:47 Tim Eight games or seven games, well, 500, you're not going to cut it. 33:52 Jûpe Well, let's talk about NPI, the new NCAA Percentage Index. 33:56 Jûpe Tim, it replaced your beloved pairwise this year. 34:02 Jûpe Does it offend you at all? 34:07 Tim It was cool, wasn't it? 34:08 Tim I think the only thing that really, it replaced it because there was a big argument that they wanted better math. 34:20 Tim It is a better statistical process. 34:23 Tim I am a mathematician and it is a better statistical process. 34:28 Tim The pairwise, what made it at least somewhat interesting to me is that it was not just a ranking system. 34:39 Tim Last year, the women's side of things, they used the MPI, they replaced the RPI with the MPI and still did a pairwise comparison and ranked all the teams with that. 34:53 Tim What that allowed is for teams to earn it on the ice. 34:57 Tim That is one of the things I liked about it, but a lot of people were critics of that. 35:02 Tim For example, if you beat a team head to head four times, you should win the comparison with that team. 35:08 Tim And it did happen, even last year, there was an ECAC event, all those St. 35:11 Tim Lawrence's like that, that did win the opponent and it dragged the other team down in the overall rankings. 35:20 Tim But they were like 40th in the pairwise, yet they dragged a ninth place team down. 35:26 Tim And they didn't like that, a lot of people. 35:28 Tim They thought that was bad man. 35:29 Tim No, no, that's cold earning it on the ice, in my opinion. 35:32 Tim That's the only thing I don't like about it is that, that's the one thing I did like about the pairwise and not necessarily about the NPI. 35:41 Tim They're gonna constantly play with the numbers and all of that. 35:45 Tim It's not that different, all said and done. 35:49 Tim When everything settles down, it will not be that much different. 35:53 Tim It takes a lot longer to stabilize because I think it's really dependent on winning percentage. 35:59 Tim The strength of the schedule takes a little bit longer to stabilize and the winning percentage will then eventually take over. 36:04 Tim But I always described the pairwise as a minor correction to the RPI. 36:12 Tim And that's really what it was. 36:14 Tim If you looked at it, they almost lined up perfectly. 36:17 Tim And now we're just using a strict ranking system. 36:22 Jûpe We've got a question from Matt Dietz here for you, Tim. 36:25 Jûpe It seems like the home road weight in NPI is killing the Gophers. 36:30 Jûpe Cratch has Minnesota ranked at 25, whereas NPI has it down at 38. 36:34 Jûpe Why such a big difference in rank? 36:37 Jûpe Cratch puts more into the strength of schedule, does it? 36:42 Tim Cratch puts more weight on the strength of schedule. 36:45 Tim Absolutely. 36:46 Tim I do think that the NPI's current formula is very win percentage driven. 36:51 Tim I think if you're going to ask me, you had asked, you had asked me before if you had thought anything could change. 36:58 Tim So the coaches, they want a little bit more stability. 37:02 Tim There are some that are more concerned about it than others. 37:05 Tim I think overall it's going to end up being very similar, but I do think even though it's 25% for winning percentage, it might be too much. 37:15 Tim It may need to go to like 20% and 80% strength of schedule, and then it will align closer to cratch. 37:22 Tim And the reason being is that teams like Dartmouth that go off to 10 and 0, there's no way to move them off the number one overall. 37:31 Tim I mean, these can't because their win percentage is so strong. 37:36 Tim I know, oh, it's only 25% of the thing, but it's actually quite meaningful. 37:40 Tim It's the thing you control the most and and your strength of schedule at the end of the season doesn't move. 37:48 Tim It's just a little bit, but your win percentage, that has its, every win matters and every loss also matters a lot. 37:59 Jûpe Personally, Veeg's, the favorite part I used to like that was part of the prepare wise back in the day was the last 16 games or last games because it seemed like it helped some of those teams that were getting hot at the right time of the year. 38:15 Vegoe Yeah, for sure. 38:16 Vegoe I think the pair wise was what we got used to. 38:19 Vegoe And you could really easily tell like what a team needed to do to improve their ranking in the pair wise. 38:28 Vegoe I think it's a little less clear in the NPI about what scenarios will help you other than winning. 38:34 Vegoe You know, you know, you got to win games. 38:36 Vegoe But I think in the pair wise world, it was easier to see. 38:39 Vegoe Well, if they can do this, they'll flip this comparison. 38:42 Vegoe They'll rise above this team. 38:43 Vegoe I think it's a little more opaque now with the NPI. 38:47 Tim Yeah, they just need to move their NPI out. 38:51 Tim To flip a comparison, sometimes in the old way is if you beat them head to head in the, you know, the WCHA semifinal or the, you know, NCHC or the Big Ten semifinal, you would line up with that team and you beat them head to head. 39:07 Tim You could flip the comparison even if you didn't have the NPI. 39:12 Tim So, that's part of the beauty of it. 39:14 Tim But, you know, it's a lot harder for people to see through just moving the NPI numbers up. 39:24 Tim They have to get a better NPI. 39:26 Vegoe Bottom line. 39:26 Vegoe That's it. 39:27 Tim That's all. 39:27 Tim That all matters. 39:29 Vegoe One number. 39:30 Vegoe Tim, what do you feel about the quality win bonus component of the NPI? 39:34 Vegoe You know, I look at that right now. 39:37 Vegoe Minnesota has, I think it's either the 5th or 6th highest quality win bonus of any team in College Hockey. 39:43 Vegoe You know, it's obviously Michigan, Michigan State, you know, Denver, North Dakota, and then I think it's Minnesota next. 39:50 Tim Yeah, I think that they may have set it too low on the 50s. 39:54 Tim So it's any team above 51, you get a percent of the difference added, a weighted percent of the difference added to your total. 40:04 Tim So it's a weighted number. 40:06 Tim So if, for example, you beat Michigan, who's around 58-ish, and it's 58 minus 51, that's 7, that and then you weight that into your, that number gets weighted into how many games you have and it comes down to a number. 40:28 Tim It needs to probably go up to about 53 or so, 50, 52, so 53, that they're going to tweak little things, they're going to play with little things. 40:40 Tim They always do one of the most frustrating things every year is, okay, what changes did they make this year? 40:45 Tim Who came up with this idea? 40:47 Jûpe Well, the thing is, would they change it or is it set for this year? 40:51 Jûpe I mean, they haven't the system. 40:53 Tim It's set for this year. 40:54 Jûpe Okay, so nothing's going to change this season. 40:57 Jûpe So no weird little thing. 40:59 Jûpe It could change next year, but everything is set. 41:02 Tim Yep, coaches convention. 41:04 Tim That's the only changes can be made at the coach convention. 41:07 Tim So the meeting is coming out of the week after the frozen for two weeks after the frozen or wherever it is in Naples. 41:14 Tim That's when that'll come out. 41:17 Tim There'll be some new stories about it. 41:20 Tim And then I'll forget what they are by the time I have to import them. 41:24 Tim And I'm like, what were those again? 41:26 Tim Okay, they moved it to 53, you know, some of them are easy changes. 41:32 Tim The weights are a little probably to stream back to your previous person questions. 41:35 Tim The weights are probably a little stream. 41:36 Tim I think the win over emphasis on win percentage. 41:41 Tim And I think they played a lot with over time weights this year too. 41:47 Tim They played around a lot with over time weights in the NPI. 41:50 Tim And that's affecting things, especially if you lose in over time. 41:55 Tim It's probably not helping you as much as it once did. 41:59 Tim That's probably, Bernard, that's another answer to the question earlier. 42:02 Tim Sorry, I didn't get that one out earlier. 42:03 Tim But that, you know, there's a lot of little things that are headwinds right now for Minnesota. 42:10 Vegoe I think me is like a personal fan of College Hockey. 42:13 Vegoe I'm okay with diminishing three on three OT as a way to award points. 42:19 Vegoe I just think it's such a different game in College Hockey and it's kind of entertaining. 42:25 Vegoe It's fun for the fans, but I don't think it really shows you who the better team is. 42:30 Vegoe And then I do think you want to be rewarding teams that play strong schedules and have success in those games. 42:37 Vegoe And I think, you know, increasing the quality win bonuses and figuring out strength of schedule I think is really important because you don't want teams to just isolate themselves to an easy schedule. 42:47 Vegoe You know, I think the coaches really went after Penn State initially for playing all those home games and not scheduling tough games. 42:54 Vegoe And, you know, this was one way to maybe try to do that. 42:56 Vegoe But I think they've created this opportunity for ECAC schools and specifically the Ivies to play a small schedule. 43:04 Vegoe And if they win a lot of games, you know, you're going to see these weird rankings in the MPI. 43:10 Vegoe You know, Dartmouth is losing some games, so they're dropping down. 43:13 Vegoe But if they weren't, you know, they'd probably still be like a one or two seed. 43:19 Tim They easily could be a one or two seed. 43:21 Tim No, they're a good team. 43:23 Tim They're just... 43:25 Tim Would I take them over a Duluth or a Denver? 43:29 Vegoe Hell no. 43:30 Vegoe But I would like to see them play a Duluth or a Denver. 43:32 Vegoe Oh, absolutely. 43:33 Vegoe You know what I mean? 43:34 Vegoe They need to play a top team in the Big Ten or NCHC for you to have any validity to their schedule. 43:41 Vegoe And they just don't do that. 43:44 Tim Well, the non-conference games are done in these bunches, and that doesn't help. 43:52 Tim You really stack the conferences up very well either. 43:55 Tim You get all this rash at the beginning of the season, and then, oh, let's do these holiday tournaments, and where some of the players may or may not be around. 44:03 Vegoe And so I don't know how accurate that gauges. 44:09 Tim The conferences are pretty isolated, and the ID is the most isolated. 44:16 Tim There's such few games that are played outside of the ECAC and ID for them. 44:24 Vegoe You know what we need? 44:25 Vegoe We need three stretches in the season where you play non-conference games. 44:29 Vegoe You play some conference games at the start of the year, maybe. 44:33 Vegoe You play some non-conference games. 44:34 Vegoe You get back in the conference. 44:35 Vegoe You have another non-conference stretch. 44:38 Vegoe More conference games, non-conference, finish with your conference. 44:42 Jûpe And play into the second or third week of December. 44:45 Jûpe And then maybe just take the end of December off. 44:48 Tim Oh my God. 44:49 Tim This Penn State 25-week vacation, I mean, six, was it nine weeks? 44:55 Jûpe It was a long time. 44:57 Tim It was nine weeks or something like that, six, nine, it was long. 45:02 Vegoe And then they get back into the flow and players get in trouble, you know, too much time off. 45:06 Jûpe Perfect transition, Veegs. 45:08 Jûpe McKenna is playing this weekend. 45:10 Jûpe Nobody's disciplining anybody. 45:12 Vegoe I think that's what we expected. 45:14 Vegoe You know, we talked about it on our show. 45:16 Vegoe It's like the schools don't want to get involved and police their own players. 45:20 Vegoe You know, it's not a nice discipline thing where the conference would step in. 45:24 Vegoe So we didn't... 45:28 Tim Once the felony charge was dropped, it was all of the... 45:32 Tim Any disciplinary had to come from the school because the conference wasn't going to do it. 45:37 Tim And, you know, this is what was going to happen. 45:41 Tim He's going to play. 45:44 Jûpe Well, we'll see how that goes. 45:45 Jûpe They go to Michigan this week, don't they, Veegs? 45:47 Jûpe It's going to be not easy for them. 45:49 Jûpe And I'm guessing the Children of Yost will be giving Mr. 45:55 Jûpe McKenna a very difficult time. 45:57 Vegoe They will be quite entertaining, I'm sure. 46:01 Vegoe That will be fun to watch. 46:03 Jûpe Oh boy, I can't wait, actually. 46:08 Jûpe All right, we need to move on to this week, Veegs. 46:11 Jûpe But before we do that, we need to talk about your place. 46:15 Jûpe Cub Foods, the big game this weekend. 46:17 Jûpe You talked about this lovely wings you did, and you got all your stuff at Cub, didn't you? 46:23 Vegoe Sure did. 46:24 Vegoe Love going to Cub. 46:25 Vegoe It's real close. 46:26 Vegoe I know they're going to have stuff in stock. 46:28 Vegoe They've got great deals. 46:29 Vegoe Check out your Cub app. 46:30 Vegoe You can order for pickup. 46:32 Vegoe You can get delivery. 46:34 Vegoe And when I go down there, I know I'm going to get good quality stuff at a great price. 46:38 Vegoe You know, I got my loaded baked potato soup tonight. 46:40 Vegoe A lot of ingredients from Cub. 46:42 Vegoe Turned out to be a delicious warm meal. 46:45 Vegoe If I was looking for some beverages, a lot of Cubs have liquor stores now. 46:48 Vegoe Or you can get your beer, wine, your spirits. 46:51 Vegoe If you're looking for those THC drinks, you know, you know, if you're California sober, check them out. 46:57 Vegoe Cub is one of us. 46:58 Vegoe You know, they support our podcast. 46:59 Vegoe They support Gopher Athletics, Dicky Town Athletes. 47:02 Vegoe And you know, it's a good local company. 47:04 Vegoe Shop happy. 47:05 Vegoe Shop at Cub. 47:08 Jûpe Tim, he just loves to tease us with these recipes and the things he's doing and all the stuff he gets at Cub. 47:13 Jûpe And, you know, last week he talked about, you know, I think your wings were marinating at the time by this time last week. 47:20 Vegoe Yep. 47:20 Vegoe I do like a sugar, brown sugar salt brine with some spices, some garlic, some jalapenos. 47:28 Vegoe Are you spice blend? 47:30 Tim Flash frying them? 47:31 Tim Are you smoking them? 47:32 Tim What do you do with them? 47:33 Vegoe So then after they've brined for like 24 hours, I take them out and I get them dry with paper towels and I put them on, you know, sheet trays with racks on there. 47:44 Vegoe So, they get dried out in the fridge overnight. 47:47 Vegoe So, another 12 hours just sitting there. 47:49 Vegoe And then I coat them in a little bit of baking powder and cornstarch, you know, toss them up in a bowl and then I roast them in the oven. 47:58 Vegoe And I start them at 250 for about 90 minutes and then I finish them at like 425 to get a little bit crispy skin. 48:05 Vegoe Toss them again in a bowl with some buffalo wing sauce or barbecue sauce or whatever. 48:12 Jûpe And then you cheese this with what, your soup tonight? 48:14 Jûpe Yeah, the soup was good. 48:16 Vegoe I had the green onion that was fresh from Cobb. 48:18 Vegoe I had the red onion. 48:19 Vegoe I had the jalapeno, I had the Land O'Lakes cheddar cheese, had a little Land O'Lakes cream in there. 48:26 Vegoe It was delicious. 48:29 Jûpe Wow. 48:29 Jûpe Yeah. 48:33 Jûpe You do this right after I've eaten and it still looks good. 48:36 Jûpe I'm like, I want that. 48:37 Jûpe I want that. 48:38 Vegoe Yeah, you shop happy, you eat happy. 48:40 Vegoe It's great. 48:42 Jûpe Oh, well, this weekend, Notre Dame, Veegs, Peacock only for television. 48:50 Jûpe Otherwise, you're going to listen to Wally and Pat on the radio. 48:55 Jûpe Peacock always does a great job streaming. 48:57 Jûpe Obviously, they're doing a great job with the Olympics right now. 49:01 Jûpe But worse, I'm still not picking a sweep. 49:03 Jûpe There's no way I don't trust this team. 49:07 Vegoe I don't think you can. 49:10 Vegoe The one silver lining is I think Notre Dame is not the rock fight team of the past under Jeff Jackson. 49:17 Vegoe This team has been giving up a lot more goals, which I think if you're Minnesota, you're hoping to play a team that doesn't have a lot of structure. 49:25 Vegoe Because when they get structure, it forces your D to play make a lot. 49:30 Vegoe And if they're not comfortable, that becomes kind of your Achilles heel. 49:35 Vegoe So it should be a better match up for Minnesota. 49:38 Vegoe We just got to see if they can get out of their own way a little bit. 49:41 Jûpe But you know, Notre Dame went into Wisconsin last weekend and gave Wisconsin everything they could handle, Tim. 49:48 Tim They sure did. 49:50 Tim It was a tough Wisconsin. 49:52 Vegoe I don't know what's going on with them right now. 49:55 Tim They're on a tailspin. 49:57 Tim I think it made a lot of Gopher Nation say, oh, we look like we could be back. 50:05 Tim Even now, I think it had a little bit more to do with Wisconsin, and Notre Dame gave them everything they could handle. 50:13 Tim This could be challenging for Minnesota. 50:16 Tim I do like Veeg's comment about this is not the Notre Dame team that was in a rock fight in path, where you would struggle to move the puck at all, and the lanes plugged up. 50:33 Tim This team you can score some goals against, but if Mooney's not playing, I think the Gophers could be in trouble. 50:48 Jûpe I don't know what to think. 50:49 Tim It doesn't play. 50:51 Jûpe And the thing is, Veegs, you know, if Gophers sweep this weekend, they're supposed to sweep. 50:57 Jûpe Notre Dame's terrible. 51:00 Jûpe They have one win in the Big Ten. 51:07 Jûpe Do they get win number two this weekend? 51:09 Vegoe It's like, how did Ohio State give up six goals in Notre Dame? 51:13 Vegoe It's like, what happened that night? 51:14 Vegoe I should watch that back as a recipe. 51:17 Vegoe But I do think this is a weekend for Minnesota to show what they've got. 51:23 Vegoe You know, the schedule gets harder after this weekend. 51:26 Vegoe You know, they will have the week off to follow this one. 51:30 Vegoe Motzko gave the team a day off on Tuesday this week to try to get them rested up, to get through this stretch. 51:36 Vegoe I think he was kind of hoping he could have got LJ back today for practice. 51:42 Vegoe I still think it's an unknown whether or not he's gonna be able to play this weekend. 51:46 Vegoe But as Tim said, he's such a key player for this team. 51:50 Vegoe They look so different with him on the ice on the power play. 51:54 Vegoe And I thought when Motzko put together Lamb, Zemur and Mooney, he had an elite line. 51:59 Vegoe You just saw the energy they played with and it carried over into the other lines. 52:04 Vegoe Seeing that effort on the ice and without that, this team's a struggle right now. 52:11 Tim And when they moved Mooney to the quarterback of the power play, that power play looked elite. 52:18 Vegoe It looked really good. 52:20 Vegoe It was. 52:21 Tim The day they did that, the first time they did that, you were like, where did this come from? 52:26 Tim I mean, it looked completely different. 52:29 Tim And without him, I don't know. 52:33 Tim I think he's too much of a big difference maker. 52:37 Tim We'll find out if he plays. 52:40 Jûpe Do we know what happened? 52:41 Jûpe I mean, upper body, lower body. 52:43 Jûpe Do we know anything? 52:45 Vegoe We haven't heard anything from the university on what happened there. 52:49 Vegoe You know, he just was he didn't really see the hit coming. 52:52 Vegoe It was kind of from the side. 52:54 Vegoe He was kind of hunched over when he got hit in the boards. 52:57 Vegoe You know, he tried to finish the shift. 52:59 Vegoe He didn't look very comfortable out there and went off as soon as he could and just never came back in that game. 53:09 Jûpe We don't know, folks. 53:11 Vegoe And I'm not saying LJ Mooney is Quinn Hughes, but on the power play, he has these like moments of Quinn Hughes edge work and escape moves and confidence. 53:24 Vegoe And you don't see that all the time, you know, the full 200 feet. 53:29 Vegoe But when they're in the offensive zone on the power play, and there's a little bit more space, Mooney shows that escape ability and it's just super impressive and game changing. 53:38 Jûpe He causes the defense to move out of position to Tim. 53:42 Jûpe I mean, you see him, he'll hold that puck and tease he's going to do something. 53:46 Jûpe And he pulls a guy right over out of position. 53:50 Vegoe Yep, exactly. 53:51 Tim Absolutely. 53:52 Tim And then and then he's looking this way, draws the attention over that way. 53:58 Tim And the pass goes back that way for a wide open tap in and the guy's standing alone on nobody near him. 54:05 Tim The lane is clear and they haven't moved the puck that well on the power play in well since his cousin probably. 54:16 Vegoe So if I was a college hockey player, I would want to play with him on the power play. 54:21 Vegoe It would make me look very, very good. 54:24 Tim Yeah. 54:24 Tim You're wide open for you. 54:29 Tim You have a clear line. 54:30 Tim There's nobody near you. 54:31 Tim He just opens up lane. 54:33 Tim The defense, like Jupiter said, they get way out of position. 54:35 Tim They don't know what he's going to do. 54:37 Vegoe His edge work. 54:38 Vegoe Yeah. 54:39 Vegoe If you're looking for a power play, right shot D in college hockey in the portal, you probably just show clips of Mooney on the power play and say, hey, opportunity there. 54:50 Tim Are you suggesting he would go on the portal? 54:52 Tim Is that? 54:53 Vegoe No, no, no, no, attracting players out of the portal. 54:57 Jûpe Would you say a right handed D? 54:59 Vegoe Yeah, that's what they could use. 55:01 Jûpe Could that be Levi Harper? 55:04 Vegoe Well, he's already committed. 55:06 Vegoe Yeah, I know, but I think there's a decent chance he comes, but you want options or you can't just have one right handed D as we see this year with the roster with Leo Gruba being the only right handed D on the roster has created some problems. 55:20 Jûpe To say the least, it's frustrating. 55:25 Jûpe Okay, Tim, we know you're Mr. 55:27 Jûpe Uscho, but you're a former Gopher fan. 55:30 Jûpe Give us your picks. 55:33 Jûpe Well, you try to be as neutral as possible. 55:36 Jûpe You do, but your heart is still there. 55:39 Jûpe Yes. 55:41 Tim My heart is there. 55:42 Tim The team I watch first is the Gophers, and then I watch other teams. 55:45 Vegoe So, yeah. 55:47 Jûpe Okay. 55:48 Jûpe Predict this weekend. 55:49 Jûpe How many points do the Gophers get? 55:54 Tim In terms of schedule points, out of the six. 55:57 Jûpe Out of the six. 56:00 Vegoe Four. 56:02 Jûpe So, like an overtime or shootout loss and a win? 56:06 Tim Overtime loss. 56:12 Vegoe I'm going to pick... 56:13 Jûpe I know. 56:14 Jûpe I'm going to pick split. 56:16 Jûpe I think Friday night might be the low of the season, because they get beat like four, five, one. 56:23 Jûpe And that's as low as... 56:26 Jûpe Mote! 56:29 Vegoe Mote, can we skip predictions at this point? 56:32 Jûpe Oh, sorry, kid. 56:33 Jûpe Oh, hey, Mote, you just made my day. 56:35 Jûpe Thank you. 56:36 Jûpe That was great. 56:37 Jûpe I'm picking split. 56:39 Jûpe What are you picking, Veegs? 56:44 Vegoe I mean, I said I wasn't going to do it, but six points for the Gophers. 56:49 Jûpe Oh, what the heck? 56:51 Vegoe I have a feeling Mooney. 56:52 Vegoe I have a feeling Mooney is going to kill you. 56:54 Jûpe Deutsch is going to kill you. 56:56 Vegoe I have a feeling Mooney plays. 56:58 Vegoe Club Foods kicked in. 57:02 Jûpe I swear. 57:02 Jûpe I because, you know, what did we get a message from Cappy? 57:08 Jûpe He's like, what are the idiots who picked that or something like that? 57:10 Jûpe Or maybe it was Deutsch or somebody, Brian Deutsch. 57:13 Vegoe There were a lot of texts. 57:14 Vegoe There were a lot of texts. 57:15 Vegoe There were a lot of texts. 57:18 Jûpe All right. 57:19 Jûpe I like that. 57:20 Jûpe I like that. 57:22 Vegoe I just think the style that Notre Dame plays is going to be helpful for this Gopher team. 57:28 Vegoe And I just look at like their schedule and their wins. 57:31 Vegoe Like they have beaten good teams. 57:33 Vegoe Like there is talent on this roster, you know, and they've got good goaltending. 57:41 Vegoe Yeah. 57:43 Vegoe Stay out of the penalty box. 57:44 Jûpe I just... 57:46 Jûpe It's hard to trust them. 57:48 Jûpe Prove it to me. 57:50 Jûpe Like they thought they did against Wisconsin. 57:55 Vegoe Who knows? 57:56 Vegoe Who knows? 57:57 Jûpe Veegs, you got anything in the hopper? 58:01 Jûpe I know you're probably keeping... 58:02 Jûpe I know you probably keep track of attendance. 58:05 Jûpe You like to do that story every year. 58:09 Jûpe Wisconsin had about 2,000 no shows each game, but it was still good crowds. 58:14 Jûpe Do we have an idea what attendance is looking like this year? 58:19 Vegoe Not on the scan tickets yet. 58:20 Vegoe I usually try to save that for the end of the year. 58:23 Vegoe Yes. 58:24 Vegoe So I will get to that at the end of the year. 58:26 Vegoe I'm trying to get all the coaching contracts of Big Ten coaches. 58:30 Vegoe Some of the schools have been more proud than others just for a little bit of comparison about financials across the Big Ten. 58:37 Vegoe And I'm starting to do my deep dive on just where this program has been at since Bob's been the head coach. 58:46 Vegoe We have not seen the program at this point in a long time, but the previous couple of years were pretty good. 58:52 Vegoe I know people are still frustrated that they didn't win in Tampa, but this team has been to a couple of Frozen Fours. 59:00 Vegoe They've made a lot of NCAA tournaments. 59:03 Vegoe I don't think they're going to be down for long. 59:06 Jûpe Well, the team didn't win in Tampa, Tim, but the Uscho party in Tampa was top notch. 59:13 Tim Thank you. 59:14 Vegoe That was a good one. 59:14 Vegoe That was fun. 59:15 Vegoe Yeah, it was great weather. 59:17 Jûpe Oh, actually, the St. 59:18 Jûpe Paul one a couple of years ago was the way it's pretty decent weather for that too. 59:21 Tim So I think Veegs managed to not go to either. 59:26 Vegoe I stopped in Tampa. 59:27 Vegoe I was there in Tampa. 59:29 Tim Yeah. 59:32 Jûpe I think he was okay. 59:35 Jûpe You were at the Thursday game in St. 59:37 Jûpe Paul, Veegs, but then you were off to Cabo. 59:40 Vegoe Yeah, I was off to Cabo. 59:41 Jûpe You missed the second game. 59:42 Vegoe Yep. 59:43 Vegoe Funny enough, I saw Bob Motsko on the way back from Cabo that time. 59:47 Vegoe So he did. 59:49 Vegoe Yeah, we both needed a little getaway. 59:51 Jûpe What was it like? 59:52 Jûpe Was it the line? 59:53 Vegoe The customs line. 59:54 Jûpe Customs line going back and forth? 59:55 Jûpe He kept running into Bob. 59:56 Vegoe Yeah, we just kept... 1:00:00 Vegoe Pretty funny. 1:00:02 Jûpe You're having a big party in Vegas this year? 1:00:04 Jûpe That we won't probably be there before? 1:00:07 Tim I am. 1:00:09 Tim We're probably not this year. 1:00:12 Jûpe It would be so expensive. 1:00:15 Tim It would be so expensive. 1:00:17 Tim And there's just so much to do. 1:00:21 Tim That, you know, it's not planned at this point in time. 1:00:25 Vegoe So it's the first one and I can't remember one. 1:00:28 Vegoe You just got to get your media member with the most Marriott points. 1:00:32 Vegoe Hope they get like a nice little villa. 1:00:34 Vegoe And then everybody can just come to that room and it'll be like an old WCHA hotel room party. 1:00:40 Jûpe Well, you can also just take over a bar too. 1:00:42 Jûpe You could just do that for fun. 1:00:44 Tim We could take over a bar and just invite everybody to join together at a specific bar. 1:00:49 Jûpe Just not the free drinks. 1:00:51 Tim Just not the free drinks. 1:00:52 Tim Yeah. 1:00:53 Tim We would back in the day, early days of Uscho, we would take over hotel, we'd have two, three hotel rooms. 1:01:03 Tim We'd actually rent an entire hotel room and that would be the party room. 1:01:08 Tim I'd have one extra one for the whole time. 1:01:12 Tim We'd fill the bathtub with beer and now, yeah, we'd be 40 people in the room, the security would come. 1:01:18 Tim Yeah, that was a good time. 1:01:20 Vegoe We're getting old though. 1:01:23 Jûpe We are. 1:01:24 Jûpe We are definitely getting old. 1:01:27 Jûpe Well, Tim, thanks for being on a regular show. 1:01:28 Jûpe Are you up for a little overtime here? 1:01:31 Tim Yeah, sure, if you'll have me. 1:01:33 Jûpe We'll definitely have you. 1:01:34 Jûpe Definitely have you. 1:01:35 Jûpe Well, we thank Tim for coming on the show. 1:01:38 Jûpe I mean, obviously, Uscho, 30 years old. 1:01:41 Jûpe It's just this little site he's been running forever. 1:01:43 Jûpe And we're a little behind you. 1:01:46 Jûpe I think we're at just 22, 23 years. 1:01:51 Tim It's a long time still. 1:01:52 Jûpe It is a long time. 1:01:53 Jûpe It is a long time. 1:01:55 Jûpe Well, we'll thank Tim for coming on, you know, two weeks from now, we'll be back. 1:02:01 Jûpe We're off next week because the team is not playing. 1:02:03 Jûpe So make sure that you're not tuning in next week because nobody's going to be here. 1:02:07 Jûpe After that, we've got Ben Holden coming on the show before the Michigan series that he's going to be covering. 1:02:15 Jûpe So be sure to tune in to that for two weeks from now. 1:02:19 Jûpe For those of you who aren't going to stay on for overtime, stay tuned for that. 1:02:22 Jûpe For the rest of you, we'll catch you next week. 1:02:26 Jûpe Two weeks, not next week on The GPL Podcast. 1:02:41 Jûpe If you are watching on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and get notified each time we go live or post a video. 1:02:47 Jûpe If you listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please rate our show and leave a review. 1:02:58 Jûpe For those of you watching live, you know what's next. 1:03:01 Jûpe It's Vegoe's Beverage of the Week. 1:03:06 Jûpe It's time for Overtime.