0:05 This is the Gopher Puck Live Podcast, part of the Pulltab Sports family. 0:11 Oh boy, Jup making mistakes, I love it. 0:18 They've got the wild going tonight, and they want to have that continue. 0:23 But I said once, there you are, can you mute yourself? 0:27 Oh my God. 0:30 Eric, on the flip side, I bet you just love those defensive games. 0:36 Yeah, if I'm playing, I was the same as you, Drew, if I fell asleep on Saturday. 0:44 You know what a good recruiting tip is, we're going to get a good drink around here. 0:50 Ready, let's go to Cabela's. 0:55 Now, here's Jupiter and Vegoe. 1:03 Jûpe Good evening and welcome to the Gopher Puck Live Podcast, episode number 307. 1:10 Jûpe I am having major internet issues, so I'm going to bring out everybody in at once here. 1:15 Jûpe They might need to run the show a little bit more than me. 1:19 Jûpe Cappy and Veegs, hopefully, you can hear me. 1:21 Jûpe Everyone will be able to hear you, but I may have trouble hearing you. 1:25 Jûpe We're just, we're doing it live. 1:26 Jûpe We're screwing it. 1:27 Jûpe We're just going to go with it. 1:29 Jûpe Cappy, thanks for joining us. 1:30 Jûpe Veegs, thanks for joining us. 1:32 Jûpe Of course, this is all with timing where Bob Motzko is no longer the coach of Minnesota Veegs. 1:38 Jûpe Discuss. 1:40 Vegoe Yeah. 1:41 Vegoe Mutually agreed to part ways with Minnesota where the release a little different verbiage than the one with Brad Frost thanking him for his coaching effort and we're doing a national search. 1:54 Vegoe So the Gophers are without a heads coach for either program. 1:58 Vegoe And hopefully we have our host here with us for the show because we need a leader here and certainly the Gophers next leader is going to be a big topic of conversation. 2:09 Jûpe Cappy, thanks for getting on the show. 2:11 Jûpe Hopefully I'll be able to do some interaction here and understand you guys. 2:14 Jûpe My problem is my download speeds are really slow. 2:18 Jûpe Is this a surprise? 2:21 Cappy You know, it's funny, I asked, I was talking to Ben Holden earlier today and we both said we weren't surprised. 2:28 Cappy We weren't, we didn't think it was going to happen per se, but and I was talking to the Vigs about this before the show. 2:35 Cappy It just, it just felt like there was something different and not just because of the struggling season. 2:41 Cappy It just didn't seem like Bob was all, like his comments were just, you guys talked to him all the time. 2:50 Cappy Just didn't seem the same this year, aside from the wins and losses part of it. 2:55 Cappy And you guys obviously have a closer beat to it. 2:58 Cappy Something felt a little different. 3:02 Jûpe What do you think, Veegs? 3:03 Vegoe I definitely felt like during the first half of the year, Bob was way more reflective and big picture when talking with the media. 3:12 Vegoe And I just kind of could sense him, you know, taking it all in as the year was going underway. 3:18 Vegoe And I don't think he expected this year to go the way it went. 3:22 Vegoe You know, when he went to the fair and was talking to PA, he's like, I expected this team to be loaded. 3:27 Vegoe You know, I expected us to have played this big time schedule against big time rivals, big time games, and just have a loaded team to make it happen. 3:35 Vegoe And as the losses started to pile up, you know, it became a really insurmountable challenge to overcome and fix it. 3:44 Vegoe And, you know, I think during the second half of the year, you know, the fire in Moscow started to come out a little bit. 3:51 Vegoe You know, he's always talked about being a caretaker with this program. 3:54 Vegoe He said that from his first press conference. 3:57 Vegoe He really reiterates it throughout the year that, you know, he's just here helping guide the ship. 4:03 Vegoe And he tells the players the same thing. 4:05 Vegoe It's like, you aren't the program. 4:07 Vegoe You're just, you're making your mark on it. 4:09 Vegoe You're contributing to it. 4:10 Vegoe Do the best you can to make it better when you leave it. 4:13 Vegoe And I just kind of could feel that from him throughout the year. 4:16 Vegoe And, you know, it's hard to have a year like this and not want to try to fix it, but that's where we're at. 4:24 Jûpe And the interesting thing is, Veegs, is that, you know, you and Bob talk and text a little more than people think you do. 4:34 Jûpe Obviously, he's probably gone silent in that area. 4:37 Jûpe I'm sure you've tried to reach out to him, but have you heard anything? 4:42 Vegoe No, he's left me unread this week. 4:44 Vegoe Which I can... 4:45 Jûpe Well, that's tough when you have a mark that way. 4:47 Jûpe When you see it read, you're like, oh! 4:49 Vegoe Yeah, which is understandable. 4:52 Vegoe I'm sure this has been a hard week for him. 4:54 Vegoe He knows what the problems are with the program right now. 4:57 Vegoe He knows that there's a lot of work that's going to have to go into fixing it. 5:01 Vegoe I just think he probably came to the realization, as he talked about it with AD. 5:06 Vegoe Coyle this week, that maybe it's better to hand off to someone who's ready to take it with a lot of energy and someone who can really take the time to address the things that are ailing them right now. 5:18 Vegoe Yeah. 5:20 Jûpe Cappy, it's a double blow for Minnesota because they just fired Brad Frost yesterday. 5:29 Jûpe And now Coyle needs to replace the entire hockey department. 5:37 Cappy Yeah, I mean, two successful coaches, too, by the way. 5:41 Speaker 5 Yes, oh, yeah. 5:43 Cappy But look, women's hockey is big there and it's growing everywhere. 5:49 Cappy And I think the telling sign is that they're clearly at best number three now on the women's side. 5:58 Cappy Like in one of those programs ahead of them is Ohio State. 6:01 Cappy And in your whole life, would you ever thought that would happen? 6:04 Cappy Probably not. 6:05 Cappy I'm sure that's some part of it. 6:08 Cappy And then with Bob, look, you know, I kind of relate him to Nick Saban with football. 6:18 Cappy Nick Saban saw NIL coming and what players are going to be demanding and the change and the whole way of things are being done. 6:27 Cappy And I just, he wanted nothing to do with that. 6:30 Cappy And I think Bob saw it. 6:32 Cappy And I also think maybe he's not getting maybe what he would need to compete with certain Big Ten programs in terms of that money thing. 6:44 Cappy I don't know what situation is at the University of Minnesota, but certain teams, certain universities in the league are getting big bucks now to give to players. 6:55 Cappy And look, every kid, not every kid is going to need to have money, but it's part of the game now. 7:01 Cappy And I don't know if he was ready to kind of play that monopoly type of game or wanted to. 7:10 Cappy You know what I mean? 7:11 Speaker 3 Yeah. 7:12 Jûpe What do you think, Veegs? 7:13 Jûpe I mean, it's definitely a different world now. 7:18 Vegoe Well, I think modern college athletics now requires that CEO presence, to generate the fundraising dollars, to get your NIL program underway, shaking hands with the donors, letting them inside under the hood. 7:31 Vegoe Bob doesn't like to let too many people under the hood on things that are going. 7:34 Vegoe But to get that financial commitment, you're going to have to do some of that glad handing. 7:40 Vegoe And then you're going to have to deal with the kids who one of their questions is when they're looking at schools is how much money can I get? 7:46 Vegoe It's just something that so many coaches across athletics right now are saying, I don't think this is for me. 7:53 Vegoe There's a difference between college athletics, amateur athletics and professional athletics. 7:59 Vegoe And when you start mixing the two, I think it's hard for some of these old school coaches to deal with that and manage and understand that and implement it. 8:09 Vegoe And if you don't going forward in college hockey, it's going to hold you back. 8:14 Vegoe And I know that they had some money involved with Matthew Wood and Jimmy Snuggeroot and they've set up their athletes with deals to help them make some money. 8:23 Vegoe But it's not something they want to make a mainstay of their program yet. 8:26 Vegoe And I think that is going to have to change if they're going to compete. 8:29 Jûpe Well, I remember at first, you know, and the perception was, you know, maybe Bob wasn't embracing it as much as we thought he would. 8:37 Jûpe He's like, Oh, I got a bunch of guys getting free Chipotle. 8:40 Jûpe I'm like, Well, that's, that's not what we're going for here. 8:44 Jûpe I mean, so maybe he didn't quite understand it. 8:47 Jûpe And, you know, we've talked to a few people who have talked to him and it seems like he didn't quite understand the whole thing. 8:53 Jûpe So is this just a generational thing, too? 8:57 Vegoe I think he did understand it. 8:59 Vegoe I think he did understand it. 9:00 Jûpe OK. 9:00 Vegoe You just didn't want to dive into it. 9:02 Vegoe Like Jimmy Stugger got more than Chipotle to come back. 9:05 Vegoe You know, he got some significant dollars to come back. 9:08 Vegoe Matthew Wood got some significant money to come from UConn to Minnesota. 9:13 Vegoe And it's just in college Athletics Day when those guys sign, you got to replace them with other players. 9:20 Vegoe And you have to be aware of who's leaving. 9:23 Cappy I also think it jumped fast, right? 9:25 Cappy Not Chipotle money, but also the you know, what is what was the first thing that the Gophers had? 9:34 Cappy Dinkytown, right? 9:35 Cappy Like that was some athletes. 9:37 Cappy Oh, wow, this could grow me. 9:39 Cappy But you're talking about maybe a couple thousand bucks. 9:41 Cappy I don't know where that is. 9:43 Cappy But, you know, we know what was reported this year on what a couple of guys got, you know, and I obviously that is that going to change? 9:52 Cappy No, if anything, it's going to go up. 9:54 Cappy I don't see nothing's going down anymore. 9:56 Cappy I don't know that doesn't work in the, you know, the financial world or the successful business. 10:02 Cappy So and whoever comes in, I think that's going to be a struggle at first or a we got to figure this out pretty fast or we got to find a path or even if you want to do it but you can't. 10:17 Cappy That's one thing too. 10:18 Cappy Like you got to have the resources too. 10:20 Cappy You can't just make up money also. 10:22 Cappy So that, you know, there's a couple things with that. 10:24 Cappy Not just if you bring a coach in that really wants to do that and is engaged in it, but you got to have the resources to do it, to keep up. 10:33 Vegoe And I think the other thing is as a coach now in college athletics, you have to be super aggressive filling out your roster. 10:40 Vegoe When you have guys sign, you can't be a nice guy out there. 10:43 Vegoe You're going to start stealing players from other schools. 10:46 Vegoe You might have to cut players from your current roster to make room for other players coming in to replace. 10:52 Vegoe You know, if you all of a sudden need an offensive D and you don't have the roster spots, you might have to say goodbye to some of those guys who have basically been like your walk on type D because you need to clear space to acquire new players. 11:06 Vegoe And that's just not typically how college hockey coaches have operated in the past. 11:10 Vegoe They've been able to make it work. 11:12 Vegoe But I think in this era, you have to be kind of cutthroat. 11:17 Vegoe You know, it's, you can see how quick a roster can turn if you make too many of those moves and you aren't quick enough to get in the portal or get into stealing or recruit from another school. 11:28 Vegoe And you know, it's something that Minnesota missed out on this year. 11:32 Jûpe And one concern I was just noticing the other day, Veegs, is, you know, right now when you have, you know, both Collins coming next season, the other anticipated people. 11:45 Jûpe I want to say I'm not, I can't quite remember, but I want to see the roster right now starting next season is 27 players. 11:52 Jûpe And that doesn't include a third goalie. 11:59 Jûpe That's just the players committed. 12:00 Jûpe We know they need to find a third goalie for practice. 12:03 Jûpe We know they're going to look at these rules and try to expand it to 28. 12:08 Jûpe But right now, it's looking like a couple players are going to need to be kind of cut no matter what, right? 12:16 Vegoe And that's pretty common across college hockey right now. 12:18 Vegoe It is this guy's getting cut. 12:20 Vegoe There's a lot of players who have committed to D1 schools. 12:23 Vegoe They never end up there. 12:25 Vegoe So you're just going to see more churn in college hockey where, you know, things aren't going to be so up front. 12:31 Vegoe You know, people are going to adjust on the fly all the time with their roster construction. 12:35 Vegoe And I think in this era with so many CHL players available, you're going to have to do that. 12:41 Vegoe You can't just set, hey, we got a spot for you in three years. 12:44 Vegoe See you then. 12:45 Vegoe It's it's constant evaluation of how players are developing, how they fit, what your needs are. 12:53 Jûpe Is the roster cap going to change, Cappy? 12:56 Cappy I got to think so. 12:57 Cappy I haven't heard one coach that I have talked to or at least asked about it. 13:02 Cappy I don't say like, hey, give me your, you know, I just, what's your thoughts on it? 13:05 Cappy And everyone thinks it should be a little more. 13:10 Cappy So I would guess 28 will be the number. 13:13 Cappy Maybe they go 27 next year and then 28 the next year and then cap it. 13:18 Cappy But and you can't expect teams have injuries. 13:21 Cappy I mean, Penn State couldn't, what, they had two open slots on their roster for a couple of games, right? 13:27 Cappy Because they didn't have, they had that many injuries and that's not going to happen often. 13:31 Cappy But I think now in going back to, you know, the point about cutting players and that, when money starts becoming part of this, aside from a scholarship, that means you can't you got to treat it like a business, especially at where you guys are at the University of Minnesota. 13:49 Cappy A top five program, I would say, in the country with resources, you can't, you know, you're the one school that shows revenue. 14:02 Cappy In all of college hockey, aside from football and men's basketball, Minnesota Men's Ice Hockey is the only other school. 14:09 Cappy I've seen that article or seen that printed out. 14:12 Jûpe So you did the article, Veegs. 14:14 Cappy Exactly. 14:15 Cappy Well, right. 14:16 Cappy And you're locked in on the money stuff. 14:17 Cappy So when money is outside of that and you're draining revenue, but yet you can't afford or you don't have the money to pay the, whatever, that means that you're going to have to start making those tough decisions. 14:31 Cappy And maybe Bob's just didn't want to do that. 14:34 Cappy He's never had to do that. 14:35 Cappy All of a sudden they're telling you, Hey, you got to cut these guys. 14:37 Cappy We got to find a guy and pay him X amount of dollars to come here. 14:41 Cappy We got to do it. 14:43 Vegoe Or on the flip side, you have a guy coming in, and then all of a sudden somebody else enters the portal a week later and you have the option, Ooh, I don't want the guy I had before. 14:53 Vegoe I want to, you know, Yankee Swap to get this new player. 14:56 Vegoe You know, Yankee Swap, I get this player, this player goes out. 14:59 Cappy Go back to juniors, but that guy doesn't want to. 15:02 Cappy That happened this year with Denver and Minnesota, and the defensemen for the Loughlin. 15:07 Jûpe I just wanted to comment real quick on the comments here by Slickwrecks. 15:10 Jûpe You know, UND makes money. 15:11 Jûpe Yeah, some of the smaller schools make money because hockey is their big deal. 15:14 Jûpe But the problem with Minnesota Vegs is that football, basketball are the big money wakers. 15:20 Jûpe Yes, hockey makes money, but they don't see that money. 15:25 Jûpe And there's so many expenses right now. 15:27 Jûpe You got the 20 million that they have to pay out. 15:32 Jûpe I don't think North Dakota has to do it. 15:33 Jûpe I don't think Denver has to do that. 15:35 Jûpe They don't have this issue. 15:37 Jûpe So schools like Minnesota are kind of stuck in a pickle if they don't have an administration that wants to push hockey. 15:43 Jûpe You look at Michigan State, you look at Michigan, you look at Penn State. 15:47 Jûpe They're putting money where their mouth is. 15:49 Jûpe I mean, yeah, you've got that quote, 700,000 that went to McKenna. 15:56 Jûpe We don't know if that's true, but it's making it sound like, hey, we're ready to pay here. 16:01 Jûpe They're not going to do that at Minnesota. 16:02 Jûpe And that's the perception right now, Veegs. 16:05 Vegoe Well, and I think the perception is that the coach has to go out and get on the ground and get the money for NIL. 16:12 Vegoe And that's why Nico Medved is the men's basketball coach at Minnesota. 16:16 Vegoe He's got a plan to go out and make that a reality. 16:20 Vegoe I don't think Bob Motzko was really interested in spending his time doing that. 16:24 Vegoe He wants to go out and get relationships and recruit players and coach hockey. 16:30 Jûpe He needs a general manager. 16:31 Vegoe Yeah, so, you know, it's a little bit different situation in Minnesota. 16:35 Vegoe And by the way, that, you know, men's basketball, football, go for hockey, that's power for schools. 16:41 Vegoe That doesn't encourage Denver or North Dakota. 16:44 Cappy But that's right. 16:46 Jûpe But that's the reality that the Big Ten schools are going to have this problem with. 16:50 Vegoe And the Big Ten schools are seven of the top ten teams in expenses in college hockey. 16:56 Vegoe You get a nice experience when you're at a Big Ten school. 17:00 Vegoe You know, the travel, the food, the lodging, all the extras, all the equipment, all the special gear, all the special training. 17:08 Vegoe You know, if you look at the expenses in college hockey, seven of the top ten are from the Big Ten. 17:17 Jûpe Well, let's kind of talk about the end of the season there a little bit. 17:21 Jûpe They go to Penn State, lose six to two. 17:26 Jûpe They didn't burn the boats. 17:27 Jûpe They definitely didn't burn the boats. 17:29 Vegoe Well, they might have burned the boats. 17:31 Jûpe Wrong boats. 17:33 Vegoe Because you know, that's been the problem with Minnesota for most of the year. 17:36 Vegoe They haven't been able to transition very effectively. 17:39 Vegoe They've had costly turnovers, they get trapped in their own end. 17:42 Vegoe And Penn State just took advantage of that against the Gophers. 17:45 Vegoe Gavin McKenna had plenty of space all night to make his perimeter plays. 17:49 Vegoe And he is really good at making plays when you give him space. 17:54 Vegoe You know, he's had trouble when he's had to penetrate to the middle. 17:57 Vegoe Or if he's got a lot of pressure on him. 17:59 Vegoe But when he has space, his vision and passing and offensive creativity is the reason why he's going to be a top three pick probably in the draft. 18:11 Jûpe So how did the players feel? 18:14 Jûpe We didn't hear from the players. 18:15 Jûpe We didn't really hear from Bob after that loss. 18:17 Jûpe I mean, he gave what maybe a minute, 60 seconds to Slarks in a quick audio file. 18:24 Jûpe But he never connected with the radio squad. 18:27 Jûpe We didn't have a closing press conference. 18:31 Jûpe So we never really got the thoughts on that game other than that short little audio bit. 18:34 Jûpe Did you get to speak with Bob anything about after that game? 18:39 Vegoe No, I was giving him a little space after that. 18:43 Vegoe I've heard things throughout the year that Bob might be done this year. 18:46 Vegoe But the way he talked the second half of the year, I expected him to get another shot to be aggressive. 18:52 Vegoe When we had talked about the off season ahead, he said there were going to be a lot of hard conversations and a lot of aggressive moves being made by the program. 19:01 Vegoe So I think he knew the work that was ahead at the end of the season. 19:06 Vegoe But I just don't think he got enough from the players this year. 19:12 Vegoe And there are a lot of concerns about how the program was run this year. 19:17 Vegoe And it just kind of put them into a bad spot. 19:19 Vegoe And we haven't really heard anything from the players other than congratulations to Brody Lamb and Luke Milstead on signing their pro deals. 19:28 Vegoe You know, I think a lot of the conversation down the stretch was thanking those guys for their service to the program, because this program went on a heck of a run with the five tournament births, the two frozen fours. 19:40 Vegoe You know, those players did a lot to kind of change what happened when Donald LeChia left. 19:46 Jûpe Yeah. 19:49 Jûpe Transparency. 19:49 Jûpe I reached out to quite a few players today. 19:52 Jûpe They just didn't really want to come on and talk tonight. 19:56 Jûpe Cappy, you know, you can talk with you. 19:57 Jûpe You're like, you know, if you find a player, I'll come on. 20:01 Jûpe But you know what? 20:03 Jûpe They're just they're just not in the position to really talk right now. 20:06 Jûpe I think they'd rather have a little cooling off period because they all have their opinions and they'd rather just keep it quiet for now. 20:13 Cappy I get it. 20:14 Cappy If it was my, you know, if I if I was part of that or, you know, if I was, you know, whatever, Ohio State had had something happen, I probably wouldn't be jumping at, you know, to jump on to talk about it. 20:27 Cappy So that's totally understandable. 20:29 Cappy I, you know, obviously, Bob, you know, remember, you know, remember what he came into and what he did. 20:36 Cappy Like, he did exactly everything that he said he would, except for one minute or, you know, one minute or two minutes away from, you know, doing exactly what he set out to do. 20:53 Cappy And, you know, like you said, he was a place setter or, you know, he wasn't he wasn't going to be there for 20 years. 21:00 Cappy And, you know, I think, like they said, I just think it's the times change and it's not it's it's times and change in 10 years. 21:10 Cappy The times change in about 30 seconds. 21:12 Cappy You know, like the way things are now. 21:15 Cappy He didn't see that. 21:16 Cappy And that's he said, still, he wasn't planning to be there for 20 years, but he didn't see at year two that by year eight, everything was going to be different with the NIL and CHL and all that. 21:28 Cappy Because look, Minnesota had a pretty good advantage, I think, of having that home, like, not easy to recruit, but if you do it the right way, you can get the best players from the state. 21:40 Cappy And he was owning that. 21:42 Cappy And then he was getting little pieces here and there, the Coolies and all those guys. 21:47 Cappy I just, you know, things change fast. 21:50 Cappy And I think he saw it coming or now. 21:54 Cappy And, you know, kudos to him for making it what's right for him. 21:58 Cappy If he, don't cheat at a year, like, oh, I can, you know, I can do this. 22:03 Cappy I don't know we're going to get better. 22:04 Cappy But, you know, if he wasn't all in, then I, you know, I give him credit for kind of saying, okay, this is time for me to get out of here. 22:13 Jûpe Veegs, the uncomfortable topic is the thought that, hey, some of the players maybe just wanted to change as well. 22:24 Jûpe We're not going to hear about that, but that's probably obvious. 22:27 Jûpe It could be part of this. 22:29 Jûpe Do you have any thoughts on that? 22:30 Jûpe And will we ever know? 22:32 Jûpe Or is that thing, we'll hear five, six years down the road saying, hey, I didn't like this or didn't like that. 22:37 Jûpe I thought we should have done this. 22:39 Jûpe It's hard to say because no one's going to talk. 22:41 Jûpe You're just going to hear, oh, I heard this person say, or I heard that person say. 22:45 Jûpe So, but I wanted to at least talk about it. 22:48 Vegoe Yeah, I do think it's going to be something that can take time to come out from the players. 22:53 Vegoe You know, we keep going back to Tampa, but Paul Martin is one of the few guys who went out and publicly criticized the game strategy for that performance and saying they got too much on their heels and they changed their game plan and they went into a shell. 23:11 Vegoe You know, he's a guy who, you know, he doesn't need a paycheck the rest of his career. 23:17 Vegoe So I think he's got a little bit of safety to come out and say those things and speak his mind. 23:21 Vegoe You're not going to get that from a lot of players. 23:24 Vegoe You know, a lot of players, you know, as they move on to hopefully playing professional hockey, if they get the brand that they're going to bad mouth their organizations or their coaches, that's going to hurt them in their careers. 23:37 Vegoe So I think it's really unrealistic to expect players to come out and be critical and be open about things they disagreed with that were happening. 23:47 Vegoe You know, the only thing that you can see is when last year all those players left without letting Minnesota know or Bob know and depart early and you know the rumor mills were swirling this year that guys might be looking to get out after the season too. 24:02 Vegoe So that's just the warning signs you see and that's the only smoke that you can get is players leaving. 24:09 Jûpe And really that's just that you hear rumors, you hear rumblings. 24:14 Jûpe But kind of going back to Martin there, you know, he, you know, a lot of us were saying, hey, Minnesota changed his style in the play during that national championship game. 24:23 Jûpe Yeah, beat the dead horse right now. 24:26 Jûpe He kind of, he really contradicted what Bob had said. 24:30 Jûpe And that's like, we all kind of know it. 24:32 Jûpe And I had talked to some former player parents and they were saying it too. 24:36 Jûpe And I'm like, well, Bob says this, blah, blah, blah. 24:39 Jûpe So you know, you know, something maybe he probably did change his style and it looked like he did. 24:46 Jûpe And he said that he didn't, we're still playing the same game. 24:49 Jûpe So that's where some areas where, you know, fans get frustrated. 24:52 Jûpe And like Paul, he got frustrated. 24:55 Jûpe He finally said, yeah, he went on the pod, that podcast and said, you know, he did kind of change her style. 24:59 Jûpe And like you said, that's pretty brave of him to do, because you know what? 25:02 Jûpe Like you said, he doesn't need the paycheck. 25:05 Jûpe So there's just so much out there and everyone has to tiptoe around. 25:08 Jûpe And I'm, I want to talk about it, but I also want to just hang on it either. 25:15 Cappy Well, I, I mean, from a player's side, and I was there watching it too. 25:20 Cappy Look, none of these guys have been in that position of where they're 20 minutes away from a national championship. 25:28 Cappy And speaking from a player's side, sometimes it's not on the coaches. 25:32 Cappy They can say everything they want. 25:35 Cappy They can say, hey guys, keep pushing, keep pushing. 25:37 Cappy But you know what, sometimes, this is a Mike Hasing. 25:40 Cappy Sometimes he asks puckers, you know, under the pressure, especially you don't know how you're gonna react in a place you've never been before. 25:49 Cappy Like sometimes you thrive in it. 25:51 Cappy And then this moment, I don't want to say it got too big for him, but sometimes your brain goes a little wacky and a few guys start doing it and then it snowballs. 26:00 Cappy And it's hard to just, you know, you don't have four timeouts to call. 26:04 Cappy I mean, there are TV timeouts, which help in college hockey in the NCAA Tournament, but it's not, look, I'm not going to throw all the shade on Bob. 26:13 Cappy That's the players. 26:14 Jûpe I would agree with that. 26:15 Cappy The players, look, it's not an easy game. 26:18 Cappy Otherwise, we'd all win national championships. 26:20 Cappy And that Quinnipiac team was really good and very experienced too. 26:25 Cappy So like, Bob, look, he didn't lose them that game, in my opinion. 26:30 Cappy That was a total thing where it's, look, you played with the lead and you got a little scared and that happens in hockey sometimes. 26:40 Jûpe And Veegs, that's probably where it is. 26:42 Jûpe The truth is kind of somewhere in between. 26:44 Jûpe Bob probably changed styles, but maybe the players didn't execute the way he wanted them to. 26:49 Jûpe And in playing that style and trying to finish this game. 26:54 Jûpe So it's just a combination of everything, but everyone, but that's the poppy thing, got to have somebody to blame, got to have somebody to blame. 27:01 Jûpe And it's just, that's probably where things started because, you know, we even heard at the end of last year, some former players not wanting Bob to come back because he can't win the big one. 27:14 Jûpe But man, it's just, it's so much more complicated than what people are saying. 27:19 Vegoe It's a player's game that the players have to execute. 27:22 Vegoe And even if the coaches are telling them what to do, the players still have to be the ones to decide how to play and decide what plays to make. 27:31 Vegoe And you know, you look back at some of the losses the last couple of years, there are critical mistakes that the players have been making in the big games. 27:39 Vegoe And you know, whether it's a regional final or if it's a national championship game, you know, those mistakes are still there and the tape doesn't lie. 27:48 Vegoe And that's just where the program has been. 27:50 Vegoe And I think just how some of this is handled has created some of those eggshells. 27:55 Vegoe And then creates an environment that's not, you know, the most comfortable environment to be in. 28:00 Vegoe And I think with all the transition and players and things like that, you know, it's created kind of a, you know, there's not a ton of trust with everybody in that kind of environment. 28:11 Vegoe And that's hard to win back, you know, once it starts to dissipate like that. 28:16 Vegoe And, you know, they always say when you hire a coach, you know, it's very rare that they win a national championship and get to retire, you know. 28:26 Vegoe They hire coaches to fire them eventually. 28:28 Vegoe And, you know, you have a shelf life as a coach and your messaging, you know, is limited. 28:33 Vegoe And sometimes it just expires and it's not anyone's fault. 28:37 Vegoe It's just the way things go in sports sometimes. 28:42 Jûpe Well, we need to get to our sponsor here and then we'll get on to a couple more topics. 28:45 Jûpe But then we're going to come back to who's going to replace Bob in a minute. 28:50 Jûpe But first, we need to talk about Cascade CBX Vigs. 28:55 Jûpe You're starting to use this product a lot because you're out there coaching with the kids and need it. 29:02 Vegoe Yeah, I'm just wrapping up the hockey season. 29:04 Vegoe I'm getting ready for golf and baseball season. 29:07 Vegoe The body gets a little achy and I want this Cascade CBX on hand because it relieves inflammation, relieves stress and just makes me feel better. 29:17 Vegoe So Cascade CBX, they believe in their product so much that they're doing this offer for us. 29:23 Vegoe Visit cascadecbxsport.com/team. 29:27 Vegoe And for just five bucks, you can get a 300-milligram sample jar of Cascade CBX and try it for yourself. 29:35 Vegoe I use this stuff on my forearms all the time from shooting pucks when it gets sore. 29:40 Vegoe When I get off to the simulator now and I'm hitting golf balls, this stuff works. 29:45 Vegoe So try it out, shipping's included. 29:48 Vegoe They're betting on themselves. 29:50 Vegoe Trust the shield. 29:51 Vegoe Stay on the field. 29:53 Vegoe All right. 29:53 Jûpe We thank Cascade CBX as one of the GPL sponsors. 30:00 Jûpe Let's look at your top 20 this week, Veegs. 30:04 Jûpe You moved Michigan up to the top. 30:06 Jûpe They're in the Big Ten final. 30:07 Jûpe North Dakota lost to Duluth, Michigan State lost to Ohio State. 30:14 Jûpe So Ohio State is still in there, ready to cause trouble in the NCAA tournament. 30:19 Jûpe What were your thoughts on your poll this week? 30:22 Vegoe Well, you know, I feel like these top five teams are pretty set. 30:26 Vegoe As we go into the final weekend of the season, you know, the seeds are set for the top four. 30:31 Vegoe I've got Denver and Western Michigan flopped here based on the results of the NCHC going down the stretch. 30:37 Vegoe But some pretty good hockey teams at the top of the MPI right now. 30:41 Vegoe And they're at the top of my poll. 30:44 Jûpe And their MPI numbers are all very close. 30:47 Jûpe But so they're set. 30:49 Jûpe But are they set in their positions one through four? 30:52 Vegoe One through four in the MPI right now is set. 30:54 Vegoe If you look at all the simulator, those are set for the year. 30:59 Vegoe And you know, it's we're trying to look at who can knock people out of the tournament here as we get in the last weekend. 31:05 Vegoe You know, how many teams outside the top 14 can win their conference tournaments and create chaos is who doesn't love chaos, especially if your favorite team isn't involved in this bracket. 31:16 Vegoe I mean, what happens if Ohio State somehow pulls off the Big Ten or, you know, what happens if, you know, we see wins? 31:25 Vegoe Yeah, somebody in ECAC, you know, pull something off. 31:27 Vegoe It could be interesting if we we get like three or four teams outside the normal at large bids, it could make things interesting and then make the tournaments brackets pretty interesting as well. 31:38 Jûpe And here's the current live NPI numbers, Wisconsin at 12, Massachusetts 13. 31:47 Jûpe I had heard that Augustana still has like a 20 something percent chance to sneak in. 31:52 Jûpe They need some a lot of help, don't they, Veegs? 31:54 Vegoe It's like a 10 percent chance for them to be in the tournament. 31:58 Vegoe So, you know, they're they're hanging on by a thread going into the last weekend. 32:02 Jûpe Your Buckeyes are just going to cause all sorts of issues, aren't they, Cappy? 32:07 Speaker 5 I mean, but look at that, they're at 19, they're, they're not far off it. 32:11 Cappy And you know, and this was similar to Wisconsin's record last year. 32:15 Cappy So the Buckeyes had, I think, fourth, fourth hardest schedule, I think, in the, in the country, somewhere there, the 181. 32:22 Jûpe Number five. 32:23 Cappy There's five. 32:25 Cappy And they have eight overtime losses. 32:29 Cappy They're one in eight in overtime. 32:31 Cappy So like you go 500 in those and there are 500 team, you know, and I look, over times count, those matter. 32:37 Cappy But it's three on three hockey. 32:39 Cappy They're not a team set up to win three on three hockey. 32:42 Cappy They just don't have those kind of players. 32:45 Cappy Well, I think Jake Carabella, maybe their one freshman forward is maybe a guy that could dominate over time, but they don't have those three guys out there that can, you know, fly up around, up and around. 32:56 Cappy So that really hurt them. 32:58 Cappy But that's why they're at where they're at. 33:00 Cappy And the MPI, they're in the same spot as they are in the rankings. 33:02 Cappy I think a lot of people now, I do, I did it. 33:06 Cappy Full disclosure, once I get to March, I don't, I just go by the MPI. 33:11 Cappy And I'm saying that now in March, up until March, I do it with opinions. 33:18 Cappy But at this point, when you've got a full body, I'm letting the computers, because it doesn't matter anyway, because that's what's going to do the, this is, there's enough of the season done that I'm letting the computers do their thing when it comes to March. 33:33 Jûpe Do you think a lot of voters are doing that, Bigs? 33:36 Jûpe I'm just thinking that. 33:37 Cappy I think that's how Ohio State is in. 33:38 Cappy Nobody was, Ohio State wasn't in the, not even receiving votes last week. 33:43 Vegoe Well, I put them in because they upset, you know, one of the top teams in college hockey. 33:47 Cappy And Wisconsin, went on the road and won two road games against top 12 teams. 33:51 Vegoe So I still have a little bit of fun with my poll, you know. 33:54 Cappy Oh, I get it. 33:55 Vegoe I'm knocking my ECAC teams down a little bit in my voting a little bit here compared to MPI, because I just I don't believe their schedule strength. 34:04 Vegoe I don't believe that their books are accurate. 34:06 Vegoe I think because their schedule, it's cooked a little bit and helps them. 34:10 Cappy And Dartmouth's schedule is really easy. 34:13 Vegoe Yeah, 56. 34:15 Cappy Yeah. 34:15 Vegoe That's one of the easiest in college hockey. 34:17 Cappy Right, Cornell 42, Quinnipiac 40. 34:20 Cappy I mean, you can't help it other than if you're going to can't, you know, Cornell scheduled North Dakota last couple of years, you know, which is good. 34:28 Cappy But they also get screwed on the fact that they only get what? 34:31 Cappy Four to six non-conference teams. 34:33 Cappy And then you got to play those teams in their league. 34:36 Cappy Like, I don't know why they still don't get to play more games. 34:39 Cappy That's the dumbest thing. 34:41 Cappy Ivy league crap I've ever. 34:42 Cappy What are we doing? 34:44 Cappy It's 20-26. 34:46 Cappy They want to play 34. 34:48 Cappy And not to get off schedule. 34:50 Cappy But most coaches now want the games to go up. 34:53 Jûpe They want four more games. 34:55 Jûpe We heard Hastings this week. 34:56 Jûpe It was Carl saying it too. 34:59 Jûpe David Carl in Hastings. 35:00 Jûpe Yeah. 35:00 Cappy Yeah. 35:01 Cappy I mean, and there's plenty of time to do it, whatever. 35:05 Cappy So that's just what was my opinion on the whole thing. 35:11 Cappy Wisconsin, obviously, the Big Ten could get five teams now. 35:15 Cappy It's about 50% chance. 35:17 Cappy If Ohio State were to win, Wisconsin would just need Dartmouth or Cornell to win their league, and they would be in too. 35:25 Cappy So, you know, you run the... 35:28 Cappy I loved running that. 35:28 Cappy The CHN does a great thing where you can run the formulas, and most of them were Wisconsin in, but it's eerily similar to 2018. 35:39 Cappy That's why when Pizzo and I were talking today on the air, I'm like, you can't say Wisconsin's in, because we've seen it happen before. 35:45 Cappy Again, I'm going to get ridiculed by Gopher people on that one. 35:51 Cappy But yeah, like, they're 99%. 35:53 Cappy Now they're 93%. 35:54 Cappy So, you know. 35:56 Vegoe And Wisconsin's definitely locked in at 12. 35:59 Vegoe Like, they're locked in at 12, so they can't go to 13. 36:02 Cappy But the teams could take their spots. 36:05 Jûpe And St. 36:06 Jûpe Thomas is still is eligible. 36:08 Jûpe I think they got bumped up, didn't they? 36:10 Jûpe Well, they got bumped up a season, Veegs. 36:12 Vegoe I believe they got bumped up. 36:14 Vegoe So, they're eligible for the tournament. 36:15 Jûpe So, there's your answer, Nick. 36:17 Cappy Right. 36:18 Cappy And they can't, if they lose, I think that's an elimination game, correct? 36:23 Cappy Or does St. 36:23 Cappy Thomas have a chance? 36:26 Jûpe Too many scenarios. 36:27 Vegoe I think they have to win to get in. 36:30 Vegoe Like, they can't get in as an outage team. 36:32 Vegoe Because we'll drop down outside the range then. 36:36 Cappy We'll know quite a bit, I think, on Friday night, obviously, because you'll have the UC playing. 36:41 Cappy You'll have Connecticut. 36:43 Cappy You'll have a lot of teams playing that are waiting for Saturday, you know, those other games on Saturday. 36:48 Cappy We have the two semifinals out east. 36:52 Cappy BC is obviously fighting for it. 36:57 Cappy Yeah, I don't know. 36:58 Cappy Quinnipiac dropped. 36:59 Cappy They got swept at home, which is wild. 37:05 Cappy I don't know what to think of these teams. 37:07 Cappy It's going to be very interesting if they get sent to Loveland as a three seed, you know, or something. 37:12 Cappy Like, what is that going to look like? 37:15 Cappy Yeah, a lot of things going on. 37:17 Cappy It's kind of cool, you know. 37:20 Cappy You're going to have the home cooking out west, right? 37:23 Cappy Both Denver will be in Loveland and North Dakota's earned the right to be in Sioux Falls. 37:28 Cappy I don't know why they wouldn't be there now as the number two overall. 37:31 Cappy We'll see. 37:33 Jûpe Yeah, I can't imagine them not being there. 37:35 Cappy What's Penn State going to be like? 37:36 Cappy Where are they going? 37:37 Cappy Like, they could put up the goals, but then, you know, watching them short hand, you know, penalty kill was, or on the power play, getting more chances against them at times. 37:51 Cappy They're a team very, they could easily win two in a row and go to the frozen four. 37:55 Cappy They could lose five to one on their first round game, too. 38:01 Cappy Very interesting group. 38:02 Jûpe It is. 38:04 Jûpe I think we talked about this before, Veegs, but how long until maybe we just don't even have polls starting in March anymore? 38:12 Jûpe And because it doesn't matter. 38:15 Jûpe It's whatever this says here. 38:18 Vegoe It doesn't matter at the start of the scene either. 38:20 Vegoe It's just something to have fun to see. 38:23 Vegoe So it's like I always look forward to Brad Schlossman because he does such a detailed breakdown of every league. 38:30 Jûpe Right. 38:30 Cappy He actually knows more players like a lot of people are just literally guessing. 38:36 Cappy Or going by name recognition to an extent. 38:40 Vegoe Yeah. 38:40 Vegoe So one of the things I do when I put together my top 20 is I look at the coaches' polls for each league and see what the coaches are thinking. 38:48 Vegoe I kind of look at historical, how many teams from the Big Ten are going to be in my top 20? 38:53 Vegoe How many from each other league is going to be in there? 38:56 Vegoe Then I start fitting them where I think they could go based on transfer portal additions, recruit additions, guys who turn pro. 39:04 Vegoe So I've had some fun with it the last couple of years here now as I've gotten more into the ranking system. 39:09 Cappy Then there's always some surprise teams, right? 39:11 Cappy Duluth had a big jump this year. 39:14 Cappy The Plam brothers excelled. 39:16 Cappy Their goalie had a sophomore rise. 39:19 Cappy So Duluth wasn't in the top 20, not even near it. 39:23 Cappy And then they had a great run. 39:24 Cappy They swept the Gopher. 39:26 Jûpe Minnesota. 39:27 Cappy So I like that. 39:29 Cappy You want to have some teams kind of jump up. 39:31 Cappy I think Wisconsin, nobody thought they were going to jump back into the mix at least that high. 39:37 Cappy And I don't think anyone had Minnesota dropping that much. 39:40 Cappy You know, so there's always some surprises out there. 39:49 Jûpe While we have you here, is there any news on an Ohio State arena? 39:53 Jûpe Anything? 39:53 Jûpe Do you guys know anything? 39:55 Cappy Honestly, now there better be. 39:57 Cappy They need to do something. 39:59 Cappy Because they, I don't want to see Minnesota be poaching my coach there from the ladies. 40:05 Cappy Because obviously, she's got to be the number one target. 40:10 Cappy You're nuts if you're not. 40:12 Cappy Like, I don't know, you know, and obviously, she's going to go for a contract extension one way or another. 40:19 Cappy And if there's anyone in college, I mean, honestly, I think she could go get a men's team job and be extremely successful, in my opinion. 40:29 Cappy But yeah, no, they need it. 40:31 Cappy She doesn't care. 40:32 Cappy She recruits. 40:33 Cappy She almost fights it, like dares, dares you to like use that against me. 40:38 Cappy You know, like she loves she loves the fact that people will come there because they know they love hockey that much, that the rink and that kind of stuff isn't all about what they're about. 40:49 Cappy That's what I've been told. 40:51 Cappy Anyway, it sounds like it's in the fundraising stages and at least there's that. 40:58 Cappy It's never been that way before this last year. 41:01 Cappy So I don't want to talk about it. 41:06 Cappy Not until it happens, because it's just a lot of if I could tell you more, I could. 41:12 Cappy It seemed the problem now, too, is the president got ousted. 41:15 Cappy Oh, my goodness. 41:16 Cappy I don't know if you guys saw that. 41:18 Cappy Yeah. 41:18 Cappy The guy, you know, the president, that was a hockey player and was definitely... 41:24 Jûpe The one you were hoping. 41:27 Cappy Yeah, maybe if I get the job, I will definitely bring in a new arena. 41:31 Cappy But I don't think that's happening. 41:35 Cappy So... 41:35 Cappy All right. 41:36 Jûpe I was just curious. 41:37 Jûpe I know it's a sore subject, but boy, it would be so good for the league. 41:41 Jûpe And I'd actually want to make the trip out there. 41:45 Jûpe Wouldn't you, Veegs? 41:46 Jûpe Oh, for sure. 41:48 Vegoe We'd hopefully see Cami there. 41:49 Cappy Don't see a women's game. 41:50 Cappy That would be the good thing is you could go like... 41:53 Cappy Women always play like four or five o'clock if they're both in town. 41:56 Cappy And you can walk, you know, it's about a 10 minute walk from one rink to the other. 42:00 Cappy You would just be astounded at what they're playing in. 42:05 Cappy And then... 42:05 Jûpe I've seen pictures or seen video, too. 42:08 Jûpe It's bad. 42:09 Cappy Yeah, I mean, it's not... 42:11 Cappy Yeah, you know, and they've renovated as much as you could. 42:15 Cappy There's nothing more they could do. 42:16 Speaker 5 Yeah, you can't do any. 42:18 Cappy And a story that I read this week about what... 42:23 Cappy You know, I got to Ohio State two years after the shot, the big arena was built. 42:29 Cappy And from what I heard recently, it was Ohio State made fast track that arena to get done to try to block the Blue Jackets from coming to Ohio. 42:41 Cappy And I don't know why you would want to do that. 42:44 Cappy I, you know, I mean, but that's just something I read recently. 42:49 Cappy And that was kind of a new story that I'd never heard of. 42:52 Cappy And, you know, the rink's fine. 42:54 Cappy And when I was there, it was two years old and it looked great. 42:57 Cappy But now it aged pretty fast. 42:59 Cappy And the insides are fine. 43:01 Cappy They redid all locker rooms and all that. 43:03 Cappy But for a hockey game atmosphere, it's just not ideal. 43:08 Cappy And you ask any Gopher players when they go there, right? 43:12 Cappy They're like, there's no atmosphere, you know? 43:14 Jûpe Yeah, well, we've heard Killer many times on... 43:17 Jûpe Well, we've had some wide open mics on the Big Ten network a couple of times. 43:24 Jûpe Bob a couple of years ago, yellow neck clothes, stay in the FN net or whatever. 43:29 Jûpe It was fun. 43:30 Cappy Right. 43:30 Cappy And there could be 8,000 people there. 43:33 Jûpe But it's not going to look it. 43:34 Vegoe Yeah. 43:35 Cappy And it's just not... 43:36 Cappy It's so big. 43:37 Cappy It's big. 43:37 Cappy It's even with just how many seats. 43:40 Cappy It's just like the Coles Center is a little more small. 43:44 Cappy The ceiling's a little low. 43:45 Cappy It helps a little. 43:47 Cappy It's just a big, big space. 43:49 Cappy And it's just not... 43:49 Cappy Even for basketball, you ask the basketball guys, you know, even the guys that are working a game, like Avosturs or Dave Rebson said, yeah, there's just not really a home. 44:01 Cappy You know, even let the students now are sitting below it low. 44:04 Cappy It's just it's so hard to get them to be an advantage there. 44:08 Cappy Like, you know, the place of Minnesota is that place can be bonkers, right? 44:14 Cappy For basketball, you know, and that's smaller and you know, all that. 44:18 Cappy So anyway, I just thought it was an interesting story to hear that that that was something that might have been a thing anyway. 44:27 Jûpe All right. 44:28 Jûpe We need to get into possible Moscow replacements. 44:31 Jûpe But before we do that, VIGS. 44:35 Jûpe We know you want to talk about Cub Foods because that is your place to go. 44:40 Vegoe Yeah, I went down there, my Quarry Cub this week, you know, St. 44:43 Vegoe Patrick's Day. 44:44 Vegoe I needed some ingredients to make a Shepherd's Pie. 44:47 Vegoe So I went down to my local Cub. 44:49 Vegoe I found everything I needed. 44:50 Vegoe I needed some potatoes. 44:51 Vegoe I need some leeks, onions, some seasons and spices, some beef broth. 44:56 Vegoe Everything was there in stock and everyone is super friendly. 44:59 Vegoe And I just love going to one of us Cub. 45:02 Vegoe You know, they're from Minnesota. 45:04 Vegoe They support the GPL podcast. 45:06 Vegoe They support Diggytown Athletes. 45:07 Vegoe When you see some of the players saying they're coming back, you know, Cub Foods is part of that. 45:12 Vegoe They're on PJ Flex headset. 45:14 Vegoe They're sponsoring Pulltab Sports. 45:16 Vegoe So, you know, when you shop a Cub, you're shopping with one of us and make sure to swing by. 45:21 Vegoe They've got pick up online delivery and some of them have the liquor stores now. 45:27 Vegoe So you can do all your one stop shopping and nothing says being a Minnesota like going and supporting another Minnesota company. 45:33 Vegoe So shop Cub, shop happy. 45:38 Jûpe All right. 45:38 Jûpe Of course, we think all the sponsors of the GPL podcast. 45:44 Jûpe We've got Raboin. 45:45 Jûpe We've got Barr. 45:48 Jûpe I heard somebody. 45:51 Jûpe We've had Western Michigan, First Wilder. 45:55 Jûpe People saying that. 45:55 Jûpe I don't think that's a good fit, but I don't think he would come here either. 46:01 Jûpe Oh, who's out there, Veegs? 46:03 Jûpe Who's going to be the coach? 46:04 Jûpe You know, Grant, you know, Grant's going to try. 46:06 Jûpe Grant Patoni is going to try. 46:08 Vegoe Well, you know, people are going to want to support having a Minnesota connection with whoever is in the running. 46:14 Vegoe And I just think this is a really important hire for Minnesota. 46:17 Jûpe Yes. 46:18 Vegoe And, you know, Garrett Raboin, St. 46:21 Vegoe Cloud guy, but he left there to come to Minnesota with Bob. 46:25 Vegoe And he was a big part of that run of teams going to the NCAA tournament five years in a row. 46:31 Vegoe He was one of the guys who got in the car to the rink recruiting players for that team that went to Tampa. 46:38 Vegoe He was a big component of that. 46:40 Vegoe And so I think he's obviously the leader in the clubhouse for the job for Minnesota. 46:45 Vegoe But for all these other coaches, why wouldn't you consider Minnesota? 46:49 Vegoe You know, you look at the revenues that come in at that school and the facilities they have, and the advantages they have with television, fan base, facilities, Cal Deets, you know, strength and conditioning, you know, the alum network. 47:05 Vegoe Minnesota is attractive to anybody. 47:07 Vegoe So when people say, I don't think first-wilder would leave Western Michigan because they're building that new arena. 47:13 Vegoe There's so many advantages that Minnesota has, that you have coaches who say, if I get behind the wheel of that car, how fast can I go? 47:23 Vegoe You know, I think that was what drew Motzko from St. 47:25 Vegoe Cloud after all those fans said he would never leave St. 47:28 Vegoe Cloud, especially not from Minnesota. 47:30 Vegoe He won the keys to the Cadillac and he got them and he took them to Tampa and came up a couple of minutes short. 47:37 Vegoe But I think any coach wants that opportunity. 47:41 Vegoe And if you say that they wouldn't out of some loyalty, well, we can see what can happen really quickly in college hockey these days. 47:49 Jûpe Well, my thoughts on this, Veegs, you know, we've been talking about a general manager for a long time here, they need to do that. 47:55 Jûpe But well, the staff, coil and staff allow them to hire an extra person to do that job. 48:02 Jûpe I'm thinking if I'm a young guy coming in, I need somebody to do a handle a lot of this stuff, and so I can coach. 48:12 Jûpe So that's kind of up in the air right now is is the administration going to allow them to do the future thing now is having a general manager? 48:20 Vegoe Well, I think the thing with the general manager is you just have to be willing to sacrifice one of your on ice coaches to take on that role. 48:29 Vegoe You're allocating one of your staff positions because you can't recruit off campus if you're not one of those paid positions. 48:37 Vegoe If you're a school like Minnesota, do you have Garrett Raboin come in and maybe have assistant coaches like Paul Martin and Ben Gordon and you hire somebody like Scott Bell or Mike Gensel to be your GM to be your guy out there? 48:51 Vegoe Then you have Potter as your goalie coach and maybe you have some more volunteers helping out to run things. 48:57 Vegoe I definitely think it's a model that you're going to have to look at as something in this new era, you need to be in ranks and you need to be able to get guys out of the portal. 49:08 Vegoe You need to be able to steal players from other programs when you have holes. 49:12 Vegoe And I think a GM really allows you to do that. 49:15 Jûpe What should the philosophy be, Cappy? 49:19 Cappy I mean, you got to, like, there's nowhere, there's only two places in the country where there's pressure immediately. 49:30 Cappy And it's there and it's North Dakota. 49:33 Cappy And no one has it like that. 49:34 Cappy And I'd argue Minnesota more because of the city. 49:38 Cappy It just, I don't know, like, you know, I mean, North Dakota, it's just, you know, it is huge because it's hockey up there. 49:45 Cappy But Minnesota, you got, like, the big city vibe, too, that people are a little more armory faster. 49:52 Cappy I don't live that. 49:53 Cappy I'm just, that's kind of my vibe that I see from afar. 49:57 Cappy But now it's not, it's about recruiting, but it's about resources and finding the money, quite frankly. 50:06 Cappy You're gonna have to get some of these guys. 50:08 Cappy And look, the one and duns aren't ideal, but you had a one and dun that was on that Tampa team that was pretty good, that almost had you and Addy. 50:17 Cappy And you'll take that for one year if he's that good. 50:21 Cappy You know, you can build around him. 50:23 Cappy I think Bob had a good idea of that. 50:26 Cappy Like, yes, we're gonna get our core, really our young guys, but we're gonna put Jackson Nelson around him and those guys that stayed for four years. 50:35 Cappy So you had a great combination of these young elite guys, but and then really good guys that would be older and veterans as you come up through the ranks. 50:45 Cappy If you gotta be ready to take all that, the TV, the interview, talking to you guys every week, good or bad, on a bad week, good week. 50:54 Cappy And having these weird, having the backbone to have these tough conversations about money. 50:59 Cappy Hey, we got an opportunity to bring in Matthew Wood last year. 51:03 Cappy We're gonna cut, we gotta cut X, Y, Z, this guy. 51:08 Cappy You gotta have that and like be prepared to do, treat it more like business now than college sports. 51:16 Cappy Not completely, but it's probably at a 50-50 kind of clip now, especially at these top places. 51:24 Cappy See, there's, it's more, it's changed so much. 51:27 Cappy And for these young guys, I, you know, is, is, is a guy like Garrett Raboin, is he ready for that? 51:35 Jûpe Well, my kind of philosophy kind of goes along with Bob. 51:38 Jûpe Bob was saying he was just a steward of Veegs. 51:41 Jûpe He's just, he wasn't meant to be here for a super long time. 51:45 Jûpe He, yeah, he left a couple years early of his contract, but I didn't think he was gonna go much past his current contract, which would have expired after the 27-28 season. 51:56 Jûpe And he's kind of meant to carry the torch onto the next person. 51:59 Jûpe And I personally would like to see somebody in their mid-40s-ish, someone who could come in and establish this new type of general manager, this new type of system and be able to build it and sustain it and for 15 or 20 years. 52:19 Vegoe Yeah, it's a big step here for Gopher Hockey. 52:22 Vegoe And the person they hire has to have the energy to see it through and the flexibility to adjust as the rules change, as things change. 52:32 Vegoe I heard David Karl on a podcast the other day say, you know, tampering is a thousand dollar fine. 52:38 Vegoe It was like, well, we should probably build that into our budget. 52:40 Vegoe Because, you know, if that's what it takes to win, you will just pay the fine. 52:45 Vegoe You know, there's no impact to us as a program, really, other than a thousand bucks. 52:49 Vegoe So, you know, that's the reality of college athletics. 52:51 Vegoe And you have to react to that. 52:53 Vegoe And we'll see. 52:55 Vegoe I do see a big turnover in college hockey with a lot of older coaches leaving and young coaches coming in. 53:01 Vegoe And Minnesota has has a lot of options. 53:04 Vegoe It's a very attractive place. 53:07 Vegoe Certainly, I've talked about Raboin. 53:08 Vegoe You know, Ben Barr is a guy who's embraced like the new college athletics era. 53:13 Vegoe He's fundraised big time facilities improvements at Maine. 53:17 Vegoe He's brought in European players. 53:19 Vegoe He's used NIL money. 53:21 Vegoe He's done a good job there. 53:22 Vegoe They have a won recently with him behind the bench. 53:26 Vegoe But there's signs that he's embracing things, you know, on the other side. 53:30 Vegoe You have a first Weiler. 53:32 Vegoe He's won in this era. 53:34 Vegoe He's used the portal more effectively than probably any program in the country to supplement his rosters for the tournament. 53:42 Vegoe And they've had success. 53:44 Vegoe There's other players as well in the coaching market. 53:47 Vegoe But I think those are kind of the three I'd be focusing on. 53:53 Jûpe I heard someone throw out Toby Peterson to me. 53:56 Jûpe Former CC player and coach, AHL coach, local Minnesota guy, Jefferson guy, actually. 54:03 Jûpe I don't know how that would go. 54:05 Jûpe But who else is out there? 54:09 Vegoe I mean, people have brought up Darby Henderson, who's coaching the AHL. 54:12 Vegoe I think you're looking for a recruiter, though. 54:14 Vegoe You need someone who's familiar with the college game. 54:16 Jûpe Sorry, he's too old. 54:18 Jûpe I want somebody under 50. 54:20 Jûpe Sorry. 54:23 Jûpe I'm going to be ageist here. 54:24 Jûpe I want a young guy. 54:26 Cappy Luke Strand, I've heard that name. 54:28 Cappy You know, I don't know if he's got enough experience. 54:33 Cappy You know, he's kind of taken over and done a pretty good job. 54:36 Cappy You know, and Mike Hastings under what he left him. 54:40 Cappy I don't know. 54:41 Cappy I mean, it's I don't know if there's a guy, a surprise guy out there. 54:45 Cappy I don't I don't know if there's that. 54:47 Cappy I mean, is I like is a guy like Steve Rollick. 54:51 Cappy Is he a guy like he's probably too old? 54:53 Cappy He's too old for for Jupe. 54:55 Cappy He's a Saint Paul guy. 54:56 Cappy I don't like I'm not saying it because I want it to happen. 54:59 Cappy I'm just names, you know, like Rollick coming home to Saint Paul. 55:04 Vegoe I brought up Rollick as the dark horse eight years ago when Motzko was hired. 55:08 Vegoe I think he's a great college coach who really knows how to adjust a roster and balance those young players and those older program guys and coach competitive hockey teams. 55:21 Vegoe Like Ohio State plays winning hockey. 55:23 Vegoe Like they have great structure and they figured it out over the years. 55:26 Vegoe He's done a great job getting goalies. 55:30 Cappy Is there anybody in the program that's gone through the NTDP or anything like that? 55:36 Cappy I'm trying to, you know. 55:39 Jûpe Paul Martin Veegs. 55:40 Jûpe What about him? 55:41 Jûpe You know, we've talked about he doesn't really, he doesn't want to do all the recruiting and stuff. 55:48 Jûpe But maybe that's what a GM is for. 55:49 Jûpe Maybe that would allow him to come into that position. 55:52 Jûpe But he's awfully green. 55:55 Cappy Is he gonna want to like kiss the boots a little bit though? 55:59 Cappy I think that's gonna have to be part of it. 56:01 Cappy Like, to an extent, I, you know, I don't, you gotta find some, you gotta get some NIL money. 56:08 Cappy That's that simple. 56:10 Cappy Not all, it's obviously not all of it. 56:12 Cappy But it's a huge, look at what Michigan, Michigan State and Penn State are doing right now. 56:18 Cappy And I don't know what Wisconsin's doing. 56:20 Cappy I'm sure they got something cooking. 56:22 Cappy But, and I think Notre Dame's gonna probably... 56:26 Jûpe Gonna get left behind if you don't do something. 56:28 Jûpe Yep. 56:29 Cappy And I'm not saying I want this to be this way, but it's the way it is now. 56:34 Cappy And, you know, it's gonna take an interesting hire, I think, because none of these guys, whoever they bring in, first-wiler would be the only one that's really experienced it and had success with it. 56:47 Cappy Cause it's like three years. 56:48 Cappy It's not like, you know, it's been for 15 and you got 12 different guys like, oh yeah, he did it, he did it. 56:54 Cappy It's gonna be a little bit of a, I think that guy can do it. 56:58 Cappy Cause he won't even know if he can do it. 57:00 Cappy Cause it's not been around that part of it, you know? 57:05 Cappy So it's an interesting, interesting time. 57:09 Vegoe The big thing Mark Hoyle always talks about when he gets these new hires is he wants guys who can recruit. 57:16 Vegoe And that has always been his number one quality in a coach. 57:21 Vegoe And so as we evaluate some of these names, you know, Raboin can point to when he was an assistant at Minnesota, recruiting big players, but he can't do that with Augustana. 57:31 Vegoe Ben Barr, he's had some decent recruiting, but I don't think he's been bringing in first round draft picks. 57:39 Vegoe You know, first is the one guy on there who has done a great job recruiting and in the portal. 57:45 Vegoe So, it's going to be really curious to me because I don't think first wilder necessarily fits in with some of the other stuff that Mark Coyle seems to value, but just something to think about when we're evaluating coaches. 57:58 Jûpe What about Martin then? 58:00 Vegoe I just don't think he has the experience, and I don't think, you know, if he cut his teeth as an assistant coach for the last 10 years, instead of his role that he has right now, kind of player development, I think it's a different conversation, but I just don't see him in that role. 58:14 Vegoe It would be really interesting to see Paul Martin embrace being a full-time paid coach and taking on that role, but who knows if he wants that? 58:24 Cappy Yeah, I would say, does he want that? 58:26 Cappy Like, because like you said, money doesn't matter, right? 58:29 Cappy It's if he wants to have the... 58:31 Cappy it's all about passionate. 58:32 Cappy Does he want to have... 58:33 Cappy spend that much time, you know, away from his family and all that kind of stuff? 58:37 Cappy You know, it's hard to say. 58:39 Cappy Only he knows that, obviously. 58:43 Cappy Yeah, it's odd times, right? 58:46 Cappy I mean, it's exciting though, I think too, right? 58:50 Cappy Like you say, you know? 58:51 Cappy How old is Garrett just for if that... 58:53 Cappy Is he around 48, 40? 58:55 Cappy Yeah, I mean... 58:56 Jûpe He's 40. 58:57 Cappy Yeah, I mean, that's around, I think, a guy you want if you're looking at an age thing. 59:04 Jûpe Veegs, how parted ways with Motzko? 59:08 Jûpe Did they part ways with the other coaches? 59:10 Jûpe I've kind of heard different things, like, you know, technically Gordon's gone, technically Miller's... 59:15 Jûpe Everyone's technically gone now until they've... 59:19 Jûpe How does this all work? 59:20 Vegoe I haven't heard anything from the you other than the press will really say they've been really tight lipped. 59:25 Vegoe You know, I started hearing some smoke at the end of last week and a Monday. 59:31 Vegoe But we did, you know, there wasn't really much transparency there and everyone was a little eggshell-y about the conversations they would have on this stuff. 59:40 Vegoe So we don't really know yet. 59:42 Vegoe Yeah, it's really something that the coach will have to consider because if you look at the players committed to Minnesota in the next couple of years, a lot of high end talent. 59:50 Vegoe And so you want to try to keep those relationships, I think a little bit somehow. 59:54 Vegoe I don't know if you'd bring everybody back, but definitely decisions to be made. 1:00:00 Jûpe Yeah, the smoke really started to billow yesterday. 1:00:04 Jûpe And then I get a text from you this morning about Bucci in your like, unbelievable. 1:00:13 Jûpe It just came out of nowhere because it was a quiet morning. 1:00:16 Jûpe I wasn't getting it really wasn't even texting going on. 1:00:18 Jûpe And then all of a sudden, you're like, look what Bucci did. 1:00:23 Vegoe Well, I had enough smoke where I pre wrote the story that we put on GPL. 1:00:27 Jûpe Yeah. 1:00:28 Vegoe So I feel bad for Bob the way it worked out, but you know. 1:00:34 Jûpe But that's how it goes for most coaches. 1:00:36 Jûpe It's just that's just it's part of the game. 1:00:38 Cappy It was his choice. 1:00:41 Vegoe I think after he met with Coyle on Monday that, you know, I haven't heard this from anyone, but he probably said, you know, with all the things that need to be done, it's probably best for somebody else to do it. 1:00:53 Vegoe You know, because there's a lot of work that needs to be done this off season. 1:00:57 Vegoe There's a lot of roster clean up that has to be done. 1:01:00 Vegoe There have to be portal players that will need to be recruited and players that need to be retained. 1:01:08 Vegoe Like, you got to get the ball rolling on this. 1:01:10 Vegoe Monday might be later than you'd want to. 1:01:13 Cappy Right. 1:01:13 Cappy You talk about the roster being full. 1:01:16 Cappy Well, who knows in five days or whatever. 1:01:19 Cappy You know, the portal opens a lot later, right? 1:01:21 Vegoe Later, officially after the frozen four, right? 1:01:24 Cappy Like I saw there was one player in there from Holy Cross, but it's because he can't go there anymore, but he has one year of eligibility. 1:01:32 Cappy He's some weird thing where he can't do grad school there anyway. 1:01:36 Cappy So he's got to go somewhere else. 1:01:38 Cappy So he was able to go in whatever. 1:01:40 Cappy Yeah. 1:01:41 Vegoe I think the graduate players can still go in there. 1:01:43 Speaker 5 So right. 1:01:44 Cappy But yeah, I mean, it's going to be interesting. 1:01:46 Cappy I like that that it's later. 1:01:48 Cappy Maybe it's not a lot of last year. 1:01:51 Jûpe It was crazy during the regionals. 1:01:53 Cappy Right. 1:01:53 Cappy Well, a lot of things are being done right now. 1:01:55 Cappy Agents and everything are there's tampering. 1:01:59 Cappy There's thousand dollar fines going on all over the place. 1:02:04 Cappy They will cancel each other out. 1:02:06 Cappy Right. 1:02:06 Vegoe This should be the new line out of in the financial report. 1:02:09 Cappy I was going to say, there's a big stream of revenue all of a sudden from all the fines that are being had right now. 1:02:15 Cappy I don't know. 1:02:18 Cappy But we're getting into just the different world. 1:02:21 Jûpe We're getting into the weeds now. 1:02:23 Cappy Yeah. 1:02:23 Cappy I mean, it's a lot. 1:02:25 Cappy So many unknowns, right? 1:02:28 Cappy Which is kind of scary, but also maybe exciting. 1:02:31 Jûpe I don't know. 1:02:32 Cappy I guess once you have a new coach, I think you're going to have that hope, right? 1:02:37 Cappy Or that like kind of, let's see what happens. 1:02:41 Cappy Let's see what he can do. 1:02:42 Cappy But also the sphere of, oh, no, what if he's a dud? 1:02:46 Cappy Or you know what I mean? 1:02:47 Cappy Like, it'll be interesting. 1:02:52 Jûpe So I wasn't hired. 1:02:53 Speaker 5 I think I got to go. 1:02:55 Cappy Wait, is it 12th? 1:02:55 Cappy Oh, my God. 1:02:57 Jûpe Oh, it's midnight. 1:02:59 Jûpe We're going to have a very short overtime because I. 1:03:03 Cappy Well, if you want, I can go. 1:03:04 Cappy Hold on. 1:03:04 Speaker 5 Hold on. 1:03:05 Speaker 5 Don't don't show it yet. 1:03:06 Jûpe Vigs, I've got you over because we're kind of I was ready to kind of change, update the format of this. 1:03:11 Jûpe As you can see, we got some new graphics, some new stuff going on here. 1:03:14 Jûpe I was going to do that for next week, but all of a sudden we needed to do a show. 1:03:18 Jûpe And my Internet went out tonight and it's just a little flustered. 1:03:22 Jûpe But we're kind of we're including overtime now into the main audio podcast. 1:03:28 Jûpe So let's get to overtime right now. 1:03:48 Jûpe We are headed to overtime. 1:03:50 Jûpe You know what that means. 1:03:52 Jûpe It's Vegoe's Beverage of the Week. 1:04:06 Vegoe I mean, that's pretty good timing with the poor, with the new intro. 1:04:09 Vegoe But this is Raging Furious. 1:04:11 Vegoe I imagine this is how many Gopher fans were after the Penn State game. 1:04:15 Vegoe And yeah, this is a big 11% Imperial India Pale Ale from Surly. 1:04:22 Vegoe So cheers to all you Raging Furious fans. 1:04:24 Vegoe I got my Vikings glass here from Iceland. 1:04:29 Vegoe That's maybe for the Augustana Vikings coach, Garrett Raboin. 1:04:33 Cappy Is that Kyler Murray on there? 1:04:37 Vegoe I think it looks a little too tall to be Kyler Murray. 1:04:39 Cappy Yeah, there you go. 1:04:40 Cappy Yeah. 1:04:42 Cappy Oh, I like to see it adjust on the fly. 1:04:44 Cappy So, you know, new world of hockey. 1:04:47 Cappy Now we got the new GPL format. 1:04:49 Jûpe Yeah. 1:04:50 Cappy Love it. 1:04:51 Jûpe Yeah. 1:04:55 Jûpe It's been a crazy week, you know, like I was up all night last night coding. 1:05:00 Cappy It was the portal, right? 1:05:01 Cappy You know, the portal stuff. 1:05:02 Jûpe And the thing is, I was doing some changes right before the show, and then the Internet went out, so I got a couple of bugs I need to fix. 1:05:08 Jûpe But it, you know, I'll fix those a little later, but it's much improved. 1:05:15 Jûpe It's so quick now. 1:05:17 Jûpe It loads instantly. 1:05:19 Jûpe It's, you know, I don't have this five-minute delay from a Google Sheet to GPL, which is, it was five to ten minutes. 1:05:25 Jûpe It's going to be so much quicker. 1:05:27 Jûpe I got all these filters and stuff built into it. 1:05:29 Jûpe Now we're just waiting for players to come in there. 1:05:32 Jûpe We're hoping to get a little added access this year, Vig, so we can keep an eye on at least the men's portal as close as we can. 1:05:40 Vegoe It's going to be a big year for portal. 1:05:42 Jûpe Yeah. 1:05:43 Jûpe And you know, there's a service out there where somebody will love it, they'll email you, text you when a player comes. 1:05:50 Jûpe I'm kind of curious to see how the service works. 1:05:52 Jûpe I signed up for this free text for any Minnesota players. 1:05:57 Jûpe I'm kind of curious if they're using our data. 1:06:02 Jûpe If they're just scraping our site and, oh, there's a new one. 1:06:06 Jûpe Oh, it's a Minnesota player. 1:06:07 Jûpe Send this person a text. 1:06:09 Jûpe Wait to see. 1:06:10 Jûpe So it's going to be fun. 1:06:11 Jûpe So the new portal is, it's going to be very slick and hopefully we can get more people to it. 1:06:17 Jûpe And it doesn't take forever to load. 1:06:19 Jûpe And because it's literally just going out and getting like a 15 kilobyte file that Google has exported to it after every change. 1:06:29 Jûpe So we make a change in the portal. 1:06:32 Jûpe It saves. 1:06:33 Jûpe It's live on the site just like that. 1:06:34 Jûpe So it's just a matter of us keeping an eye on the portal, because that's always going to be a manual process. 1:06:42 Vegoe Yes, it's going to be challenging to see how this works out. 1:06:46 Cappy Because I think part of talking about, but if it looks good, I'll be with you. 1:06:51 Vegoe I think part of the off season here is to see how many players are cut. 1:06:57 Vegoe Yeah, because I think that the transition was made to retain the big players. 1:07:03 Vegoe As long as you can hold on to Zehmer and Mooney and Luka, you're in good shape for next year. 1:07:10 Vegoe Those are really good pieces to start building with. 1:07:14 Vegoe They're starting to build a little bit of a national team program here with Humphreys and Whipple coming in too. 1:07:21 Jûpe Humphreys is a great ad. 1:07:23 Cappy I like that. 1:07:23 Cappy That was a good ad, Humphreys. 1:07:26 Vegoe You're getting a little bit of a development program roster put together here, but it's going to be interesting to see how many players they supplement with. 1:07:34 Vegoe I think we've seen with coaches, sometimes they move, they bring a couple of players with. 1:07:38 Vegoe And I know we've been looking at Augustana for a couple of their defensemen as possible transfers. 1:07:44 Vegoe And so if Raboin's the guy, he might be bringing three players with him. 1:07:48 Vegoe We're all going to be seniors, I think. 1:07:52 Cappy Yeah. 1:07:52 Jûpe Who recruited Humphrey? 1:07:54 Jûpe I would probably say is Zeemer and Mooney. 1:07:56 Vegoe Yeah, that would be right. 1:07:58 Speaker 5 Because they and Whipple. 1:07:59 Cappy Yes, he should be a sophomore, right? 1:08:02 Cappy He would be a sophomore because he has three years of eligibility. 1:08:05 Cappy Michigan left halfway and then just played a full year. 1:08:09 Cappy So it'll be 20 year old sophomore. 1:08:13 Vegoe I mean, I mean, he shouldn't have gone to Michigan. 1:08:16 Vegoe He should have played another year of USHL or gone to Kitchener anyway. 1:08:20 Cappy But nobody, he wasn't ready. 1:08:21 Cappy Everyone's in. 1:08:22 Jûpe It's tough. 1:08:23 Speaker 5 That's I get it. 1:08:24 Cappy I get it. 1:08:25 Cappy You can go to Michigan at full sculley and get in there before someone takes your spot, I guess. 1:08:30 Cappy I don't know. 1:08:31 Cappy I mean, you know, but no, I, you know, a guy that I like that looked, I watched in Minnesota. 1:08:38 Cappy I did that game, obviously. 1:08:41 Cappy And there wasn't a lot that stood out. 1:08:43 Cappy And I had the one guy I talked about that I really liked how he came on the second half with Javon Moore. 1:08:48 Cappy He's the one guy I'm looking at these other guys. 1:08:50 Cappy I'm like, some are playing hard. 1:08:53 Cappy Certain guys, I'm like, what is that? 1:08:55 Cappy Your sophomores, you did not make any kind of jump from freshmen to sophomore. 1:08:59 Cappy I have one guy in particular. 1:09:01 Cappy I'm just a head shaking player to me. 1:09:03 Cappy I'm not going to say any names, whatever. 1:09:07 Cappy But Javon Moore looks like a guy. 1:09:08 Cappy Get him in the weight room this summer with your staff. 1:09:13 Cappy He's going to score 15 next year, at least. 1:09:18 Cappy He just looked like a guy that's figured it out at the end of the season. 1:09:23 Cappy He played with confidence in that game, which not many guys did. 1:09:29 Cappy I think you could put him in that little group of guys, the core, if you want to call it, for me. 1:09:38 Jûpe Just a quick apology for my internet issues tonight. 1:09:40 Jûpe That's why we're so late. 1:09:42 Jûpe And I'm thank you, Veegs and Cappy, for coming back after I had given up. 1:09:46 Jûpe And all of a sudden, my internet started peaking up, peaking up. 1:09:51 Vegoe I mean, that's why I stuck around. 1:09:53 Vegoe I mean, the lights went out in here. 1:09:57 Cappy I was ready to be on the couch. 1:09:58 Jûpe Oh, I appreciate you, man. 1:10:00 Jûpe So much. 1:10:01 Vegoe It's all good. 1:10:02 Cappy It's all good. 1:10:02 Jûpe I it's my well, it's funny because we're I was coming into the studio here and they could hear me just fine because my upload was just fine. 1:10:11 Jûpe So they're like, you sound great. 1:10:12 Cappy I'm like, OK, usually I'm usually the internet. 1:10:16 Jûpe Yeah, true. 1:10:18 Jûpe And then I started getting a little connection finally. 1:10:20 Jûpe But so we were like 45 minutes like because you were thinking, hey, we could probably start at 1015. 1:10:26 Jûpe If it wasn't for my damn internet. 1:10:28 Jûpe Now I just checked it 500 megabits up and down. 1:10:30 Jûpe It's all your fault. 1:10:31 Cappy It's all your fault. 1:10:33 Jûpe That's just fine. 1:10:34 Speaker 5 I'll take it. 1:10:35 Jûpe Shame, shame, shame. 1:10:37 Jûpe You feel a shame with two bucks, two minutes. 1:10:39 Cappy You get those like any predictions or anything like that. 1:10:44 Cappy Who's going to win all the time? 1:10:45 Jûpe I want Ohio State to win. 1:10:47 Jûpe I want them to just mess up. 1:10:49 Speaker 5 I want it either going to. 1:10:50 Jûpe Yes. 1:10:51 Jûpe Chaos. 1:10:52 Jûpe Love that. 1:10:52 Vegoe We're in chaos. 1:10:55 Cappy I just, I don't know, man. 1:10:56 Cappy I hope so. 1:10:57 Cappy Like, look, I'm a Buckeye. 1:11:00 Cappy I'm going to be working Saturday night. 1:11:02 Cappy I'm going to call it the way I see it in terms of studio, but they have not matched up well with them all year, obviously, and they did match up well with Michigan State, and they beat them. 1:11:14 Cappy So we'll see. 1:11:16 Cappy This is a neutral ice game. 1:11:18 Cappy I'd give them a little more. 1:11:20 Cappy We'll see. 1:11:20 Cappy Look, a couple of things. 1:11:21 Cappy They can't get any penalties. 1:11:23 Cappy I mean, they have a penalty kill not much better than the Gophers, and Michigan's got the number one. 1:11:28 Cappy If they score a goal, that place is going to go nuts, and it's going to just snowball. 1:11:34 Cappy Yeah, obviously, I hope they win. 1:11:36 Cappy I mean, that'd be great for my school and be great for the Big Ten. 1:11:39 Cappy They get a good chance to get five teams. 1:11:42 Cappy So I just, man, I don't know. 1:11:45 Cappy Maybe Michigan, because they're the number one seed, guaranteed. 1:11:49 Cappy But they're playing at home. 1:11:50 Cappy I think that place is going to be excited to try to win a championship in that place. 1:11:54 Jûpe It's their first time at home to try to win a championship, isn't it? 1:11:56 Jûpe Because they were at Marriott. 1:11:57 Vegoe They've done a couple of those at Marriott, yeah. 1:11:59 Cappy They could win their third, but they're still the only team that has not won a regular season. 1:12:05 Cappy Which is, in the Buckeyes now, this will be their fourth different arena that they're trying to win for the first time. 1:12:12 Cappy Wisconsin, well, the first one was at the Excel in the inaugural year. 1:12:17 Cappy They lost to Notre Dame and they lost to Michigan State last year. 1:12:22 Cappy So they're on three in the Big Ten Championship game. 1:12:24 Cappy So maybe on a year that they're not expected, it'd be pretty wild, a 14 and 20 team to win the Big Ten. 1:12:31 Cappy Then, you know, remember, that was a rule. 1:12:33 Cappy Now, you couldn't be under 500 as an at-large, right? 1:12:38 Vegoe But you wouldn't auto bid and get in. 1:12:41 Vegoe Yeah. 1:12:42 Cappy But they changed that now. 1:12:44 Cappy So not that that matters in this instance, but a team that was 16 and 17, but good enough in the NPI, could get in now. 1:12:54 Vegoe Yeah, we kept hoping that the Gophers would have a better January and be that team that could be at under 500 at large. 1:13:01 Vegoe But then they just right. 1:13:02 Cappy They had a good strength of schedule, as always. 1:13:05 Jûpe Yep. 1:13:05 Jûpe Yeah. 1:13:06 Jûpe You know, I saw some people on the Internet saying, hey, they have one bad year and you fire the coach. 1:13:11 Jûpe Was it more of just historically bad weeks? 1:13:13 Jûpe It was the power of it was terrible there. 1:13:17 Jûpe They play good. 1:13:18 Jûpe They play terribly. 1:13:19 Jûpe No consistency. 1:13:20 Jûpe And the worst record since 1972 is that kind of everything come together. 1:13:25 Vegoe I think it was the roster construction like this. 1:13:28 Vegoe There's no one in the right mind looking back can say this was the right way to put the roster together for this year and use your scholarships effectively. 1:13:38 Vegoe There are just too many players on this roster that are not contributors for a championship level team and they're not going to get there. 1:13:47 Vegoe You know, they probably had seven players who should actually be like two spots on the roster. 1:13:54 Vegoe Yeah, you know, I think that's the thing. 1:13:56 Vegoe And then I think the way that they handled certain things throughout the year just, the answers probably weren't good for Coil, you know, to hear about the way things were handled. 1:14:06 Cappy Yeah, it was strange to see them have some really good weekends. 1:14:10 Cappy Like, there were probably about two or three or four that was, especially like Big Ten weekends, like Wisconsin at home. 1:14:17 Cappy Like, that was just wild. 1:14:18 Cappy And then out of nowhere, then most recently at Michigan, won a game and then too too late. 1:14:26 Cappy And they're playing well and you're like, hey, you know, right at the end there may be. 1:14:32 Cappy And then it just fell off, right? 1:14:34 Cappy The next, you know, there was, yeah, it was just, oof, that was hard to understand. 1:14:40 Cappy A team could go so high and low. 1:14:42 Cappy There wasn't anywhere in the middle too much. 1:14:45 Jûpe And Bob didn't really have any answers for it too, but he's just like, I don't know, how do we do, like, how do we lose 7-1? 1:14:54 Jûpe Or how do we play so well at Michigan? 1:14:56 Jûpe And then come back home and lose 7-1. 1:14:58 Jûpe And then, you know, time when it's just there was no consistency. 1:15:05 Vegoe Yep. 1:15:06 Vegoe And when you have young players, that's what you get sometimes. 1:15:09 Vegoe But they had such high end talent with when they put Zeamer, Lamb and Mouy together, that looked like an elite line. 1:15:17 Vegoe And then Luke Middlestadt, you know, went above and beyond this year with all the minutes he played in the role he had, but he just didn't have a lot of help, you know? 1:15:27 Vegoe And that made things really difficult. 1:15:30 Cappy Yeah. 1:15:30 Cappy And obviously at the end, Lamb getting hurt, which I thought he would be out for a while. 1:15:34 Cappy So was he that hurt? 1:15:35 Cappy I mean, he scored points in the AHL this week. 1:15:39 Cappy But he had juice in that game. 1:15:40 Cappy And as I was saying, like he was almost bringing those two down because he would look like he was playing on a bum knee or whatever it was. 1:15:47 Vegoe Well, I think he just had a lot of swelling in his knee still for that game. 1:15:50 Vegoe And he's just going to battle through. 1:15:52 Vegoe And I think when you start to go to pro hockey, you don't want to be the guy that says, no, I'm nicked up. 1:15:57 Vegoe I got a bad bruise, right? 1:15:59 Vegoe Long ways away from the heart. 1:16:01 Cappy Well, it's also a bruise. 1:16:02 Cappy I mean, four days could be it could heal it. 1:16:06 Vegoe Yeah. 1:16:06 Cappy You know, so. 1:16:08 Cappy But yeah, I don't know. 1:16:09 Cappy I mean, you got like I think Luca, right? 1:16:12 Cappy At least you got kind of the answer because it was a split net for a long time. 1:16:16 Cappy Is Nathan Harry going to be a guy that maybe is, you know, looking for a place to start next year's for his last year if he can? 1:16:25 Vegoe Part of me feels like he's married. 1:16:27 Vegoe He's a very low key guy. 1:16:30 Vegoe From what I can tell, he might just be OK being the number two. 1:16:34 Cappy Like six games next year or whatever. 1:16:36 Jûpe Yup. 1:16:38 Vegoe Be there. 1:16:38 Vegoe Be ready. 1:16:40 Vegoe Enjoy the Big Ten lifestyle. 1:16:41 Vegoe Graduate and start a family. 1:16:44 Cappy He's married. 1:16:45 Vegoe Yeah, he's married. 1:16:47 Cappy Who is that? 1:16:48 Cappy Ben Myers? 1:16:50 Cappy Is he like, who is him? 1:16:51 Cappy Somebody else was married recently. 1:16:53 Speaker 5 I think Ben Myers just got married. 1:16:56 Vegoe Yeah, so I saw some on Instagram for him. 1:16:58 Jûpe Oh, it was of... 1:17:02 Vegoe Hugh Glenn got married during the season. 1:17:04 Jûpe He got married and had a baby. 1:17:05 Cappy Right after that, then he got hurt at the end of his senior year. 1:17:08 Jûpe Oh, yeah, that was... 1:17:09 Vegoe But I think Ben Myers just got married. 1:17:12 Vegoe And then he got in a fight the other night, too. 1:17:13 Cappy You know what, Hugh Glenn and him, some reason, like, I could be, maybe they looked similar to an extent or something, but I knew it was one of those guys. 1:17:22 Jûpe I'm still going with Ben Myers is the reason why we didn't win a national championship in Tampa. 1:17:27 Jûpe If he stays, they win. 1:17:28 Jûpe Just going with it. 1:17:30 Cappy Oh, my God. 1:17:31 Cappy That would have been ridiculous. 1:17:33 Cappy Like, where does he fit in that line up? 1:17:35 Cappy You're going to move... 1:17:35 Jûpe He fits just fine. 1:17:37 Cappy Well, he fits. 1:17:37 Cappy Oh, no, I mean... 1:17:39 Cappy Oh, yeah. 1:17:40 Cappy They're just even... 1:17:41 Jûpe And he's that maturity for the younger players, too. 1:17:44 Cappy Right. 1:17:44 Cappy No, you... 1:17:45 Jûpe Could have, should have, would have. 1:17:47 Cappy Oh, man, the Gopher fans were getting so mad at me on Wednesday night when I... 1:17:52 Cappy In the first period, I kept bringing up that, and I kind of... 1:17:56 Cappy You know, the Tampa... 1:18:00 Jûpe People just go after you all the time. 1:18:02 Jûpe I loved it. 1:18:03 Jûpe I love it because... 1:18:05 Jûpe Well, I loved it. 1:18:06 Jûpe Hey, there's a reason why you were on that broadcast, along with the other guy. 1:18:15 Jûpe They didn't want to use students for any type of Minnesota production. 1:18:21 Jûpe Even if it's BTN Plus, they didn't want students because they know it's still a bigger audience, even if it's a stream in Minnesota's playing. 1:18:30 Cappy Right. 1:18:31 Cappy Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I think that was a rush, rush productions wanted it too. 1:18:38 Jûpe Yeah. 1:18:38 Cappy You know, and they do a lot of the FS1. 1:18:40 Cappy They added that extra FS1 game that was Michigan and Michigan State. 1:18:44 Cappy That was successful. 1:18:45 Cappy And that'll be another thing interesting down the road is what happens with TV and, you know, where that goes with streaming. 1:18:55 Cappy Like I just I'm a firm believer. 1:18:56 Cappy And maybe it's because like I, you know, it'd be more opportunities for us professionals. 1:19:01 Cappy But I don't know if there should be any Big Ten conference games with students when people are paying for a thing. 1:19:12 Cappy But, you know, it's going to happen. 1:19:14 Cappy You can't probably get all when there's too many games. 1:19:16 Cappy But maybe you find a middle ground on it or something. 1:19:21 Jûpe Honestly, I think the biggest people who thought of people buy BTN plus so they could watch a lot of games for sure. 1:19:27 Jûpe And then when it's on the Big Ten network, they might not have it. 1:19:30 Jûpe And then they can't watch it until replay. 1:19:34 Jûpe That's what takes people off. 1:19:35 Jûpe They're like, I'm paying for this. 1:19:37 Jûpe And I can't watch it because it's on the Big Ten network, which is also you got to switch apps to the Fox Sports app. 1:19:44 Vegoe And I'll make choices, Juve. 1:19:46 Jûpe No, no, I understand that. 1:19:47 Jûpe But that's where I hear the frustration from people. 1:19:49 Jûpe Because I can't use the Fox Sports app because I have YouTube TV. 1:19:55 Jûpe I'm sorry, what? 1:19:55 Cappy Well, YouTube TV has Big Ten Network. 1:19:58 Speaker 5 Yeah, true. 1:20:00 Cappy And most every streaming cable or whatever has Big Ten Network. 1:20:05 Cappy I mean, some people don't have any of those, which is, I don't know. 1:20:07 Cappy I could never. 1:20:08 Speaker 5 And I think that's why having the Guide Channel, man, I don't know. 1:20:11 Cappy I'll die on that hill when I'm here. 1:20:13 Jûpe Yeah, I'm with you. 1:20:15 Jûpe I like I'm just saying that's the complaints I hear and I can understand that they're like, I'm paying for it. 1:20:20 Jûpe Why can't I watch it? 1:20:21 Cappy Sure. 1:20:22 Cappy No, no, it's a tough listen, though. 1:20:25 Cappy And look, I'm all for young people getting their opportunity. 1:20:28 Cappy You are literally can't get one player's name right. 1:20:33 Cappy Like I was watching an Ohio State Notre Dame game and every Notre Dame player's name was wrong. 1:20:40 Cappy Every one. 1:20:42 Cappy Like it was Knubbell and Mastro Domenico. 1:20:45 Cappy Like it was like, like, come on, no, it's the minimal of effort, right, to learn the players names. 1:20:52 Cappy Like I'm not going to expect anyone to be everyone to be professional and know every hockey lingo and all that they're learning. 1:20:58 Cappy Everyone's learning. 1:20:59 Cappy But that is the bare minimum is to know names. 1:21:02 Cappy And everyone gets a name wrong here or there, pronounces a little bit. 1:21:06 Cappy But just hearing it, it just that frustrates me because that means, are you really taking this seriously? 1:21:11 Cappy This is your major or whatever you're, you know, as a student, you're doing it for shits and giggles, in my opinion, if you're hearing that stuff, that stuff bothers me. 1:21:21 Cappy It's great that young people are a good opportunity. 1:21:23 Cappy I'm jealous I didn't have it. 1:21:24 Cappy I mean, I was a player, but I mean, if I was a student at that level, but you can't be doing that. 1:21:30 Cappy And I know there's some deal right now, but it's not student you, it's BTN Plus. 1:21:39 Cappy And we don't have that many teams. 1:21:40 Cappy It's not like there's nine games going on where they got to get all those. 1:21:45 Jûpe And all home games for Notre Dame will be on Peacock. 1:21:47 Jûpe So it's a different thing there. 1:21:48 Jûpe So one less team. 1:21:50 Cappy Games are generally, it's Pat and Jim. 1:21:56 Cappy So I don't know. 1:21:58 Cappy I'm going to keep saying it, but we'll see what happens. 1:22:03 Cappy But all right. 1:22:05 Cappy I'm getting ornery. 1:22:05 Cappy I'm ready to go to bed. 1:22:08 Jûpe I think I'm good so too. 1:22:09 Jûpe So I'm ready to bed myself. 1:22:11 Jûpe We're going to call it a night. 1:22:14 Jûpe Veegs, you got any final comments? 1:22:17 Vegoe I think this happens quick. 1:22:19 Vegoe You ready Monday afternoon? 1:22:21 Jûpe All right. 1:22:22 Jûpe I have to be showered and ready that day so I can come out and see it. 1:22:25 Cappy And everyone will be excited and also scared because you don't know if it's going to work. 1:22:30 Jûpe That's just fine. 1:22:31 Speaker 5 That's just fine. 1:22:32 Cappy That's the reality. 1:22:33 Jûpe Bingo. 1:22:33 Jûpe It is just life. 1:22:35 Jûpe Thanks for filling in tonight, Cappy coming on on such short notice. 1:22:39 Jûpe Thanks, Veegs, for patience with my bad internet. 1:22:41 Cappy Watch Saturday night. 1:22:42 Cappy Watch the champions. 1:22:42 Jûpe Yes. 1:22:43 Jûpe Watch Big Ten Network Saturday night, Michigan and Ohio State play for the title. 1:22:49 Jûpe Good night, folks. 1:23:03 Jûpe If you are watching on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and get notified each time we go live or post a video. 1:23:10 Jûpe If you listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please rate our show and leave a review.