0:19 Good afternoon, and welcome to The GPL Podcast, live from the Let's Play Hockey Expo, here at the River Center in St. 0:28 Paul. 0:28 We've got Veegs here. 0:29 How you doing, man? 0:30 I'm doing well. 0:31 Jûpe And we got Brian Bonin joining us for this live show today. 0:35 Jûpe How you doing, Brian? 0:36 I'm well, fellas. 0:37 Thanks for having me. 0:38 It's great to have you. 0:41 Obviously, we're gonna talk all the normal stuff. 0:43 Mr. 0:43 Hockey, Mr. 0:44 Hobie Baker, obviously, you don't hear enough about that. 0:49 I'm more interested in your involvement with crossbar.org. 0:53 That's one of your things, because I heard yesterday from one Joey Miller and one Tyler Sheehy yesterday that Sheehy's new. 1:02 And are you training him in? 1:06 Trying, trying, trying. 1:09 Tell us about Crossbar. 1:10 Yeah, I'll plug them both. 1:12 But I, yeah, I'm trying to train him in. 1:13 I don't know if Joey Miller is going to help you in that or not. 1:15 So that's what he gets for opening his mouth. 1:17 No, they're they're both fantastic guys. 1:20 And yeah, in our hockey division, we're we're going to run strong here. 1:23 And I'm going to go for some hockey folks. 1:25 Why wouldn't I just go right to the backyard, grab a couple of Gophers? 1:28 And maybe, I don't know, to those lady Gophers, I'm interested. 1:33 We're trying to build out this team and build it quickly. 1:35 So but, you know, listen, I'm not going to turn away St. 1:38 Thomas or St. 1:39 Cloud State or the G or anyone else. 1:42 So it's basically, what is Crossbar? 1:46 Well, I'll call it a sport management platform. 1:49 But I think a lot of people are like, what the heck does that mean? 1:51 And it's funny because here in this Expo, might be a good place to educate people nowadays on what's really happening within the world of the youth sport or youth and amateur sport. 2:01 And what do I mean by that is if we back this way back, about 2005, 2006, I'm trying to remember what year it was. 2:10 Sports Engine came into the marketplace and I joined that team a ways back. 2:15 And we were trying to give people a website presence and then allow them to take online payments. 2:21 Make that process easy. 2:22 Get out of spreadsheets. 2:24 Fast forward to 2026. 2:26 And we've got websites, we've got online registration, we've got leagues and teams. 2:33 But then we've got all sorts of modules and background screening and USA hockey numbers. 2:39 We've got NIL. 2:40 We've got recruiting profiles. 2:42 We've got LiveBarn. 2:43 We've got analytics. 2:45 We've got scoring. 2:47 We've got, oh, I don't know, Apple Pay. 2:50 We've got, I mean, you just name it, and the world of youth sports is completely blown up. 2:55 You've got apparel and uniforms, which is different, by the way. 2:58 But I want it all in one spot and I want to make it easy as a parent. 3:02 So we're trying to manage the main portion of that, which is the admin of a club or association or a team, like AAA. 3:10 And how do you get kids to know about you, sign up, try out? 3:16 And then once that's all done and they've paid a fee, how are you going to manage that individual team you're on as you travel around? 3:24 Which if we move outside of Minnesota is crazy. 3:28 I bet. 3:29 Crazy. 3:31 So much too, and this might be interesting for some Minnesota people who might know this but might not. 3:36 In Minnesota, you're going to go to tryouts at your local association or team. 3:41 And after tryout, you're going to be put on a team and they're going to tell you how much that might cost to play. 3:46 If you're outside of Minnesota, you might tryout on four teams. 3:49 And you might wait till you get a specific offer for a specific team. 3:54 And if you don't like the line you're on, you're going to say, No, thank you. 3:57 And you're going to try to sign with the other club. 3:59 But you better do it quick enough before they turn that off at the first club. 4:05 Because the second and third and fourth might say no. 4:07 And now you go back to the first and they say, Sorry, Mr. 4:09 Spot. 4:10 But that's how much you can move and you can move year to year. 4:14 It's kind of out of control. 4:15 We're the only ones left with an association or community based platform. 4:20 And to all Minnesota people, you better hold on tight to this because if we lose it, all you're going to be doing is playing with the same kids in a club system. 4:28 And it's going to be a nightmare. 4:30 Don't let go of our community. 4:31 Veegs, how does this affect you and your hockey association? 4:34 Do you have things like this that you can use? 4:37 We are we are with a competitor right now, but it's crazy. 4:41 It's, you know, you got to communicate with your team. 4:44 You got to communicate with your players. 4:45 You got to figure out who's going to be there for the game. 4:48 Who's going to be there for practice. 4:49 You also want to be able to track who's been at practice and deserves to play and things like that. 4:54 And, you know, it's super complicated. 4:56 It's only going to get more complicated. 4:58 But I love the Association Model. 5:00 I love the Minnesota Hockey Model. 5:02 I think you want to get as many kids playing for as long as you can. 5:05 And you want to get them on the ice and out of the car. 5:08 So as much as you can get them developing and practicing, playing small area games, it's great. 5:13 And I think Brian's got some of that philosophy as well. 5:16 And how's how is it staying together? 5:19 I mean, it's becoming more expensive. 5:21 I mean, more expensive, you know, some people are buying arena. 5:24 You hear about other parts of the country. 5:26 You hear about the situation like Dallas, Texas, how bad it is. 5:31 And really, it's paid to play 100%. 5:34 It doesn't feel community at all. 5:37 It doesn't. 5:38 And it's not. 5:39 And we've had a couple states that had, even within the state, maybe regions, if you move outside of Minnesota, that had these models. 5:48 Massachusetts is one that people like to point to because they had what we had and they let it go. 5:54 And free market, this is part of the challenge with free market. 5:58 And the good of that is it's going to unmask good and bad decisions. 6:02 Because no one's forcing you to do it. 6:04 But at some point, you may get into a little bit of this, well, who's buying up the competition? 6:11 Sorry, but Black Bear is taking a different path. 6:15 And I got to call it out, because not only do we compete against it, but I'm not sure I like the concept for hockey. 6:22 And I'm about hockey. 6:23 And who's in the business of buying ranks? 6:27 No one. 6:27 It's a terrible business. 6:29 It's a losing business. 6:31 Because even when you buy a rank for 25 million, it's going to fall apart. 6:36 So again, to the Minnesota folks, and I know this is backed by several people at the Minnesota Wild are kind of helping this. 6:42 We need the communities in Minnesota to back hockey ranks, just like football fields and gyms and swimming pools. 6:50 If you don't, it's going to go away. 6:52 And you won't have it. 6:53 So you got to pour some money into that. 6:55 But it's for the community. 6:57 And we can do this because we're all about hockey. 6:59 And we're unique in that. 7:00 So keep it going, even though it's expensive. 7:03 Because the other option will be someone will come in and buy that and destroy what you have. 7:07 So let's raise the price. 7:08 I grew up a few blocks away from the Bloomington Ice Garden in Bloomington. 7:11 I'm a former Jaguar. 7:13 Love my old Jag players. 7:15 And you played with quite a few of them. 7:17 But they just put in $40 million into BigTen this summer, or the past summer. 7:21 And I'm thankful they did. 7:24 Because it's just like you're talking about. 7:26 They got a little in disrepair. 7:28 But they put the community money into it. 7:32 I'm glad they did that. 7:33 And that's what you're looking for, aren't you? 7:35 Well, you are. 7:36 And it's a bigger picture in terms of investment in the community, which, what will it bring back? 7:43 You know, hey, all this ice time just for this local association. 7:46 And well, what about all the tournaments and all the people and teams that come and bring that economy, you know, to your location instead of another? 7:53 And it's really hard to do that if you don't have a ring or multiple rings. 7:58 So in Minnesota, I think that will come back. 8:00 And again, it's an investment. 8:01 And in some ways, it's a losing investment. 8:05 But our communities do that. 8:06 They do it all the time. 8:07 These are all losing investments. 8:09 You build roads and they fall apart. 8:11 You build buildings and they all fall apart. 8:13 So it's like, what do you want that long-term outlook to be? 8:18 You know, some of these community centers with swimming pools and or other items within a community center that helps the adults and many other events or activities. 8:26 It's investing in that community like you do with many other things. 8:29 So I'm all on board in this, even though I know it's to the taxpayer, but there's some things that cities, counties, states should pay for and things they should. 8:37 This is one they should. 8:39 And Vig, you kind of had a similar fight, not this past winter, but the previous winter, when they didn't want to open up the outdoor rinks in Minneapolis. 8:46 You had to fight to get outdoor rinks. 8:48 Yeah, I went before the Minneapolis Park Board and spoke during their open time and just exposed them to the fact that these community rinks are important. 8:56 Like we have a lot of kids in northeast Minneapolis where, you know, if they want to play outdoor hockey, you know, it's hard for them to get rides, so they got to, you know, carry their skates and their stick to the rink. 9:05 And if they have to go 20 minutes away, they might not skate. 9:09 But if they can walk 10 minutes and see all their buddies and get on the outdoor ice, it's really valuable for them. 9:15 I think, you know, creating as many entry points as you can in youth hockey is really important. 9:20 I think youth sports are really important because they teach a lot of the things that you can't learn in the classroom and you can't get the community that you do in the classroom. 9:28 It teaches a lot of valuable lessons. 9:30 And I think making as successful as you can works really well. 9:33 You know, Mike Snead with the Minnesota Wild was talking about how Minnesota built six new ice sheets last year. 9:39 That's more than like the rest of the country combined. 9:42 And if you look at participation numbers in the US., I think in 2011, we went over 100,000 8U players for the first time ever. 9:51 15 years later, gold medal. 9:53 Those kids are now 23. 9:54 And you're just building up that base and it's growing and growing. 9:57 It's a great sport to see. 9:59 And I think you're seeing in Massachusetts, in Michigan, even Canada, access to the game is diminishing. 10:06 We're starting to see these clubs where if you're not a AAA elite player by 12, the game's not as attractive for you. 10:16 And I think it's a little early to start saying who's the best player at 12. 10:21 Well, we want the best athletes. 10:23 And you can't pick them at 8 or 12 or 16. 10:26 And certainly, if you go ask Bob Motschkow, you can't pick them at 22 either. 10:29 It's just really difficult. 10:30 So we need more kids playing, boys and girls. 10:34 And I would say all of that just is investment in your communities. 10:38 And so when you think about outdoor rinks and you think about subsidizing ice, let's say, to make it less expensive, well, that becomes a gem within this state for us or within our communities. 10:48 And so, I mean, we could break down every activity or event or again, any spend that a community's gonna do. 10:55 It's all a waste of money in the sense of the dollars go out. 10:59 But you're building people and you're building something unique to you or your community. 11:03 And we are unique in Minnesota in hockey. 11:05 We have a lot of other things, but hockey is super unique to us. 11:09 And it continues to drive hockey throughout the rest of the country. 11:13 People follow our way or our model or they want to compete with us. 11:16 Well, maybe they're not following the way. 11:18 Because you know, you think about it, there's how many hundreds of D1 players, in men and women that come from Minnesota, they go all over the country, because there's not enough teams to play here. 11:29 But maybe in other parts of the country, it's getting tougher and tougher because of commercialization and the money you pay to play. 11:37 Whereas, hey, we've got this community thing going on here. 11:41 And funny, we're putting the most players out there. 11:45 We are, we are because we have the most ice. 11:48 It's a big issue across the country. 11:50 It's a big issue with allowing certain people and companies to buy up the ice. 11:55 Because they can't, they can't keep that running at profitability. 12:00 So it's probably going to end up folding. 12:03 I mean, that's just the reality. 12:04 No one wants to just fork out 5, 10 million bucks a year and not get any return on that. 12:08 At some point, you'll just put your money somewhere else. 12:10 Well, that's because you're not in it for the hockey. 12:13 You're not in it for the kid. 12:14 And so with that limited pool of money outside of Minnesota, there's a lot of real issue that's happening. 12:23 So we could shine even more if we keep investing. 12:26 We'll shine even more. 12:28 And I think that barrier, if you just open that up, we start thinking about outdoor ice again, too, and some of the investment that could go into it, even though our winters might be changing here and there. 12:39 There still could be a short period of time, and you could do more small rings. 12:42 And you could do more small rinks that are covered, small rinks that are indoor. 12:48 I mean, I think we need to start driving three-on-three hockey. 12:51 I think that concept is what's next in hockey. 12:54 I'm coining it all over the place so no one can steal it from me, but we got a couple small three-on-three rinks. 12:59 In white bear, we got a small four-on-four rink. 13:02 And I think kids should play three seasons, three-on-three, four-on-four, and five-on-five. 13:05 I think communities should invest in a three-on-three size rink, because kids will play that, because they have to worry about getting skated around. 13:12 They'll be in the action, and then when you drive them into the five-on-five hockey and say, now we're going to train and work out, and it's going to be ugly, they're willing to do it, because they know what the five-on-five game will be like, because they get to play that three-on-three and four-on-four game. 13:27 And it puts people in all sorts of different positions. 13:29 So we have some other things we can invest in here in Minnesota, too. 13:32 And I'll tell you, these small games that everybody's trying to do, which is driving the talent, we should own that. 13:38 We have an opportunity to own it. 13:39 We've got the money, the community, and the backing to own it. 13:41 We'd be in front of everybody else within the country if we start doing this. 13:45 I wanted to get your thoughts on playing year-round. 13:50 A lot of kids your age never did that at all. 13:53 Oh, look at that. 13:55 10 bucks. 13:57 Kinger. 13:58 10 bucks. 13:59 You better... 14:03 Probably is. 14:04 Kinger is causing trouble right now. 14:06 We're going to get him on later. 14:08 But playing other sports, should kids be playing year-round now? 14:15 Or should they be not playing baseball or soccer? 14:17 You know, just things like that. 14:19 How do you feel about that? 14:20 I can see you're kind of... 14:22 You're wincing out there a bit. 14:24 Well, I hate it. 14:25 I hate the fact that we have to parent everything. 14:29 Yeah. 14:29 And so, we're in a different world. 14:34 I hate that I'm going to say this as well. 14:36 Do we need to then offer more? 14:40 Or are we going to see more offerings of something like a breakaway academy, a gentry academy, any other sort of academy that's going to pop up, which is actually popping up in the rest of the country. 14:54 I'd say, I don't know what's wrong with that when I could. 14:59 So, you know what we're going to do there is we're going to play hockey a lot. 15:02 But I'm also going to force you into training some other sports. 15:06 We're going to play ping pong and pickleball and basketball and soccer. 15:11 All that cross training is super important for you. 15:13 And actually, along the way, you might all of a sudden decide, I should be a soccer player. 15:18 Yes. 15:19 But we're going to force it because some things we've done in the public school system are not good. 15:23 And we've created this problem. 15:24 I used to have three recesses where you could just play all this stuff. 15:27 And so, at school, you would do your learning and some sport, and then you'd go play hockey later and you'd play baseball. 15:33 We can't do that anymore. 15:34 You just seem to have a problem doing that. 15:35 So, like, if you're running an academy like that, you could actually offer other sports and train your hockey players to do other things. 15:42 They'll get all their schoolwork done. 15:44 So, I don't like it, but I don't know how we're going to, like, tell the kids, go to the park and play baseball without all these parents saying, don't let my kid go there. 15:52 He's going to get abducted or something. 15:53 Yeah, but we're old. 15:55 We are old. 15:55 We're old. 15:56 We're Gen Xers. 15:57 We were forced to go outside in the summer, get out of the house, go do something. 16:01 You made up games. 16:02 You did whatever you wanted to. 16:03 But that was part, it was just sports. 16:07 It was just activity and doing that learning skills. 16:10 Throwing them, just shooting hoops or whatever it may be. 16:14 How do we do that, though, when you're, when the communities are starting to get bigger and bigger? 16:17 Like, I grew up in a neighborhood and it's, like, I'm talking to Brian Zollman here, you know, who's running the Expo and, and, you know, he grew up as well and we all did it. 16:26 I mean, everyone did it. 16:27 And so it's so hard to do that now. 16:29 I mean, you might, you probably have to live in Warro to do that. 16:32 You probably got to live in a small town outside the city. 16:35 I mean, White Bear is huge now. 16:37 You got from the south side all the way through Hugo. 16:39 For people who don't know that, that's a big area. 16:41 I mean, Hugo's on, like, three blocks from my house on the north side. 16:46 Well, we would go there with our bikes, but no one lived north of that. 16:49 It was nothing. 16:50 And now that's where everybody lives. 16:52 So it's really hard to say, like, we'll go to the park or get to your buddy's house, you know, when you can't drive. 16:56 And so that's why I say there's, I sense that some parents maybe want that or think they can get that in an academy style or because I'm seeing more and more of it where you see those offerings. 17:08 And I wonder if they're going to, I don't know if I tricked people because they're just going to play hockey anyways, but because my answer is yes, we've got to have more cross training. 17:16 We want better athletes in hockey. 17:18 And yeah, Jack Hughes is special and so is Brock Faber. 17:22 They were going to be special anyways. 17:24 They just were going to be. 17:25 You can't stop the good ones. 17:27 So for the rest of the kids, they need a better experience. 17:30 They need an experience, by the way, of a different coach or a different concept in soccer so they can appreciate hockey more. 17:38 Or like you said, go into something else. 17:39 Maybe they're better. 17:40 All of a sudden they like it. 17:42 I mean, how do you know that you couldn't be great at like five sports? 17:46 Because we used to have five sports stars. 17:48 And by the way, they were stars. 17:50 Joey Dzik walked by here the other day and I said to somebody, I'm like, look at the size of that guy. 17:54 I mean, running back, baseball, hockey, like stud on all of them. 17:59 Like legit stud. 18:01 And we see one of those big guys all the time at Mariucci and Paul Martin. 18:05 Oh my gosh. 18:06 He was a superstar. 18:07 Superstar. 18:07 In so many sports. 18:09 Yeah, football, basketball. 18:10 I know he had a big choice to make whether he's going to play high school basketball or high school hockey. 18:14 Everybody wanted him and he probably could have been at all state goals. 18:17 Joe Mauer, another guy, could play any sport he wanted. 18:21 He still plays pick up hockey. 18:22 You know, that's all these guys. 18:24 There's a bunch of those names. 18:25 And I think one of the things about sports is that you play different roles too. 18:30 Like maybe you're the most experienced at hockey and you're counted on as the leader, the go-to player, and maybe you play football and you're a supporting player. 18:38 You learn how to be a hard practice player, how to contribute there. 18:42 And maybe your athleticism translates. 18:44 I coached high school football for 10 years, and I always would recruit the defenseman to come play D-back. 18:50 It's like it's kind of the same thing. 18:51 You're reading in space and you're just attacking and jumping plays. 18:55 And I had one team that I coached, and our two best players were hockey guys who had never really played a lot of football, but they just had the feel for playing safety. 19:03 And they loved it because they had big hits on guys and they could pick balls and go for touchdowns. 19:08 It totally makes sense. 19:09 They had a blast. 19:10 It totally makes sense. 19:11 I mean, the coordination in baseball, hand-eye, soccer, your feet. 19:15 I mean, I don't think people really understand it, but all the Europeans are kicking soccer balls before the games all the time. 19:20 I mean, all the North American guys would tell you that too. 19:22 And I mean, you use your feet in hockey like crazy. 19:26 I wish I would have done that. 19:27 I played ice football soccer, but I never even really thought about it. 19:30 And I think back a bit to go, it actually probably helped me more than I thought. 19:35 Because you're just you're thinking differently. 19:37 Your brain's doing it. 19:37 You just assume everybody else is doing that. 19:39 It's not the case if you can't cross train. 19:41 So, I don't know, but if you drive your kid off at school and they just never get to do gym and free time and that stuff that we need as actually young people, you can't be sitting in a classroom all day. 19:53 It just doesn't work. 19:54 It never did work. 19:56 I don't know what the hell we're doing. 19:58 It drives me absolutely nuts. 20:00 All this administration is nonsense. 20:02 We need teachers and we need the kids. 20:04 Get the administrators out of here. 20:06 They're driving me nuts. 20:07 They're not even part of it. 20:09 It's like a board in a hockey association. 20:11 They can do some things, but it's so much more important to have those coaches who are on the ice managing it. 20:16 You just got to do it together. 20:17 But that'd be like having, you know, for every team, you've got three coaches. 20:20 So you got 10 teams, that's 30 people. 20:22 And now we got 90 administrators for the White Bear Hockey Association. 20:26 That would never work. 20:27 It's not. 20:28 It's a reverse. 20:29 And so it drives me nuts that we've done that and ruined it in many, many ways. 20:35 We've ruined it. 20:36 So we got to find a way to break that down. 20:38 And these charter schools and these academies and whatever, they're showing you, they're telling you that that system's broken. 20:45 And so these folks got to figure it out. 20:48 I don't like it because we need more opportunity, not less. 20:52 And what's also sad to see is, you know, I'm a Jefferson kid and I went to the last Jefferson Kennedy game last season before Kennedy folded a program. 21:03 Tom Satterdahl was there, even he was, I mean, it's sad. 21:06 And then you look at, you know, other, all the Minneapolis schools are pretty much gone. 21:10 From what we know, they're down to one team now, Vigs. 21:14 Apple Valley and Burnsville combined. 21:16 I mean, those powerhouses. 21:18 Yes. 21:19 So it's not just the the new academies, the new private issues. 21:25 It's some of these public schools just don't have enough players to support it anymore because hockey is still very expensive. 21:32 It's too expensive. 21:33 It is. 21:33 And I'd like to clarify then if anyone's wondering like, Oh, what are you talking about with hockey and inner city and this? 21:40 Listen, I'm talking about sport. 21:41 Yes. 21:42 This isn't hockey focused. 21:43 Hockey needs good athletes. 21:45 So does soccer and football and basketball. 21:47 I don't care what it is. 21:49 These kids need more activities. 21:51 So I don't know. 21:52 Maybe they play in floor hockey and it benefits them and their basketball. 21:56 So it does break my heart that Minneapolis, St. 21:59 Paul, the Bloomingtons. 22:02 Again, that should be a warning sign to everyone. 22:03 Like, wait a sec. 22:04 Do we want to subsidize a bit hockey in a way so we don't lose it in our community? 22:09 And Apple Valley, Burnsville both got to be looking at that. 22:13 You do, right? 22:14 I don't know. 22:15 Parents and people are a little fickle too. 22:17 So at some point, this like keeping up with the Joneses thing is driving me nuts too. 22:23 And I look back at a good buddy of mine, Eric Rasmussen, who played in the NHL for a long time. 22:30 What an amazing player. 22:30 And he's at St. 22:31 Louis Park. 22:32 And he's like, we hated Jefferson. 22:34 And I could have moved. 22:35 I was somewhat on my own as a star, he said. 22:38 He's a first rounder for crying out loud. 22:40 And he's like, no, I'm going to stay with my St. 22:41 Louis Park buddies. 22:42 Stay with your buddies. 22:43 And we're playing Jefferson to get to the state tournament. 22:45 It's more important that we could maybe have an upset there than it is that I'm going to move. 22:50 And now we've got this movement that's out of control. 22:54 I mean, out of control. 22:55 So there's only so much sometimes you can do. 22:57 And then people make their moves anyways. 23:00 And now all of a sudden you're kind of SOL. 23:04 It really is. 23:04 So managing that and did we do something to force this or not? 23:09 I don't know. 23:11 It does beg the question too of like, how do we do a community based and say, we got free market here. 23:16 You can't stop that. 23:18 Here's an opportunity for you above it to move on and play because you're so great and it's going to cost you 5, 10 grand. 23:24 Well, that's too expensive of me. 23:25 Hey, listen, we got this program here that you can play hockey. 23:28 We want you playing hockey. 23:29 We want people playing hockey, loving hockey, watching Gopher games, wild games, any sort of college hockey. 23:35 We want more people doing that. 23:37 I'm not sure everybody gets to play hockey at some point because it's going to be expensive. 23:42 But can we limit that? 23:45 You know, the limitations, we want to shrink that and then find ways to subsidize it in other ways when you get good players and they can maybe move on or we could do some sort of training behind the scenes because we got a lot of great coaches. 23:58 We got a lot of great coaches. 24:00 So we just need more opportunity. 24:01 I don't know how you manage that when you got big schools like Tonka, Dinah, Osso Maple Grove and Wyseta. 24:08 They should all have two programs. 24:11 So, you know, riddle me that too. 24:13 You move all those kids up and now you're going to say like, sorry. 24:16 And then a lot of kids have no place to go. 24:17 They have no place to go. 24:18 So we got problems on all sides of this. 24:20 That, I mean, we just opened that Pandora Fox. 24:24 We kind of did. 24:25 And that's just fine. 24:26 It is. 24:26 It's weird. 24:27 How do we get that? 24:28 Because I want Jefferson to stay. 24:31 I want Kennedy back. 24:32 I mean, on my side of town, North St. 24:34 Paul, Tarton, Irondale, Moundsview, some of these programs are shrinking a bit. 24:38 Like, I was worried about playing those guys every night. 24:42 They were unbelievable, you know, and they're just gone. 24:45 So how do we do this? 24:47 You know, like this brainstorm is super fun. 24:50 Well, I think it's challenging too, because like the Manta Onkka is like, if you grew up in that association and now at high school, you've got kids open and rolling and join your program. 24:59 And then you no longer have your spot that you thought you might have had. 25:03 And now you're trying to find somewhere else to go. 25:05 Like that happens a lot too. 25:06 And it's just it's a tough environment to develop athletes in. 25:11 It really is. 25:13 It makes me worry about this AAA model. 25:16 And the kids are all playing at the summers and it's a supplement. 25:20 But I'm worried it doesn't take much for it to maybe flip over and take this thing over. 25:26 And there goes the community based piece. 25:28 And so, all right, there's some smarter people than me behind the scenes, I think, trying to figure this out. 25:33 But what do you do about that? 25:35 How do we how do we keep that out but work with it? 25:39 Here's the community season. 25:40 Here's your triple A season. 25:41 Because the community season is, you know, six months. 25:44 There's another six months for you to run around. 25:47 But nowhere else in the country can you play with your local friend like this. 25:52 It's just so damn unique. 25:54 Some people are going to have to check their egos and do what's best for the state here instead of what's best for just our local community. 26:02 And I don't know how we do that, though. 26:04 I just don't know how you do that in the free market because there's some, there's a lot of FOMO out there. 26:08 There's a lot of big opportunity out there. 26:10 And so how do you tell somebody like, Brian, you can't take your kid who's one of the top players and move your house or move to Chicago or move to Florida. 26:20 Or how do you stop that? 26:22 It's really got to be me making a good choice for White Bear Lake or for Bloomington Jefferson or for, you know what I mean? 26:29 Yeah. 26:30 It's tough. 26:31 Well, let's move on a little bit here. 26:33 Let's talk about the college hockey and how that has changed. 26:38 NIL. 26:40 I would even say a lot of older coaches have retired recently because it has changed so much for them. 26:46 And being able to just work with younger players, he says, because the players are different. 26:51 They're not like us. 26:52 They're just different kids. 26:55 That brings us to Minnesota. 26:57 This is right now their worst season since before we were born. 27:06 It's tricky right now. 27:07 We're kind of hoping, yeah, they're going to win in the playoffs. 27:09 But this is not normal territory for Minnesota. 27:13 Go for hockey. 27:15 It's not. 27:17 It's never been more difficult to recruit and to keep your players in any sort of commitment. 27:27 And it absolutely breaks my heart. 27:31 Mostly because I look at the kids and go, you don't even know what you're missing. 27:35 The opportunity that you're missing. 27:39 The bond you create in this journey. 27:43 Because that's the journey, by the way, that's so fun. 27:45 I mean, here we are at another state tournament and Warro just wins the Class A. 27:51 And now it's over. 27:53 And anyone that's done any sport, when that season ends, whether you've won or not, it's over. 27:59 You take nothing with you. 28:00 It's the journey that's so dang fun. 28:03 So that's what makes me most sad, is bouncing around in one season here and there. 28:08 And I mean, there's always going to be a couple players, I suppose, or a couple people in life that are going to move on or be able to move on because they're just such a special talent. 28:17 But building character and virtue and those things that we need for the rest of our lives, when jobs and especially sport will just cut you loose at the drop of a hat and actually need to, I mean, that's what we've built here. 28:30 But it's kind of always been around. 28:32 So I'm sorry, but we'll commit to you and you'll commit to us. 28:36 And yet, now it's, if you're not good enough, because we're going to commit four or five years before you can get here at trials. 28:42 I mean, I'm sorry, but I got to win as a coach. 28:44 So that commitment, it means nothing anymore. 28:47 It truly means nothing. 28:48 And I don't know how we were going to stop the CHL from pushing some players down here. 28:52 So I don't know, maybe in some ways that's just going to open some more opportunities horizontally. 28:56 Because eventually, you can run into those players anyways. 28:59 If the goal is the NHL, eventually you run into them anyways. 29:03 So if we just can back that up a bit and say, why are you playing hockey? 29:06 Are you just trying to get better? 29:07 Is there an opportunity for you? 29:11 We need some constraints to it, but I just don't know if we can do it. 29:14 So if you look at like Amatsuka or anyone else, how the hell are you supposed to recruit someone at age 14 when they're going to come in at age 22? 29:23 And along the way, all those hot topics and that the players that everybody wants, do you really want them? 29:30 Because they're going to come in and just wreak havoc on your team if they're not a great team player, or they're going to come in and they're going to screw up your whole draft board and throw people off. 29:39 So you got to put people here and you got to put people there. 29:41 And so I just don't know how these coaches do it. 29:44 I literally don't know how they can do it. 29:46 When we've also, to the Gopher point here, lost our Minnesota being just one of a few great programs. 29:56 There's so many and I don't know if the players even care. 30:00 Like literally, what's the difference between New Hampshire and Minnesota or Arizona State or, I mean, you name it, Denver. 30:08 Whereas before there was more of a hierarchy and now I don't know if there is and whether there can be or not. 30:16 So I don't know. 30:17 How do you do that? 30:17 Because it's like people want to be with the best teams, right? 30:20 Yep. 30:20 That the recruits, but sometimes you the best recruit, don't make that team better. 30:25 You just don't. 30:26 Because it's not one of the puzzle pieces. 30:28 It just doesn't come together. 30:29 And you're so young, so you're playing against these guys from the USHL or the CHL now who are men. 30:36 They're coming down as men and they got experience. 30:39 And so, you know, look at some of the best players and they dominate, but they only dominate to a certain level. 30:47 Macklin Celebrene dominated in College Hockey, but go watch a couple of those games. 30:52 That isn't the player you watch in the NHL. 30:54 So, I mean, he's already risen his game because he was running around with a bunch of other pretty good old players, experienced players. 31:02 That's how hard it is to be good. 31:04 So when you look at that, it might make you go, well, what the heck? 31:09 I might as well as a coach just wait and grab all these 22, 23-year-olds. 31:12 If I really want to compete, that's what I need to do. 31:16 That's not Gopher Hockey. 31:17 It never was. 31:19 It wasn't. 31:19 Let's get some young guys. 31:20 Let's get some Minnesota guys. 31:21 So this is all changing. 31:23 And I think it's hurt us the most just because of what Gopher Hockey always was or wanted to be. 31:29 Veegs, it's probably more of a story of just college sports in general. 31:33 You know, with NIL, and you're seeing what's happening. 31:36 You're seeing coaches that you spoof football, they're like, I don't want this is out of control. 31:42 Just maybe football and basketball need to figure it out before we get some adjusted rules, because it is the Wild West right now. 31:50 And these NIL things of just paying players millions of dollars, not on the hockey side, but it's out of control. 31:58 It's literally pay for play. 32:01 I think college hockey is pretty different than basketball and football because of all the junior leagues. 32:06 You got the USHL, the NHL, you got the CHL now, and you've got the pull of pro hockey. 32:11 Players are leaving college hockey and they're going to ECHL or AHL sometimes. 32:15 They're going to Europe. 32:17 You look at the guys who left Minnesota last year, not all of them are playing in the NHL. 32:22 And it's a pull of agents and advisors and like this culture of what's my next team, what's my next step. 32:30 And I think coaches are having a really hard time. 32:33 I've talked to coaches at the end of the year and players are saying, oh yeah, I'll be back. 32:36 And then two weeks later, they're gone. 32:38 And so when you're when you're planning, when you're planning like five years out your roster, that's really hard to do even one year at a time. 32:47 So it's just such a hard environment. 32:49 And when you have coaches who are also loyal to the players that they've made commitments with, like Bob's a pretty loyal guy. 32:55 He's stuck by players a long time. 32:57 And that's kind of hurt them a little bit this year. 33:01 But man, where does that matter in life? 33:06 Because you're going to live and die by that. 33:09 And at some point, this is going to hurt everybody. 33:12 And again, back to that collective we talked about, community and or the state of hockey. 33:18 Like you want everybody to do good. 33:20 If we can't have several great programs, then there's no rivalry anymore. 33:25 And then it just becomes a little bit more blah than you might think. 33:28 I know you don't think that's going to be because you're going to be up there in one of those top programs. 33:31 And no, that's what makes it fun. 33:34 And so you want the WCHA to be super competitive in the East, you know, ECAC and Hockey East and now the Big Ten and whatever. 33:42 You don't want it to be top heavy, bottom, bottom. 33:46 You want everyone to rotate through that. 33:48 And hey, I got to be worried next year about whether St. 33:51 Cloud State's going to, one of these days beat us at the U. 33:54 I mean, that happened. 33:55 That's beautiful. 33:56 That's what we want. 33:57 And there's just some selfishness in there that in some ways can't be controlled because there's a FOMO and people are worried about missing that opportunity. 34:07 But man, do I see this aged piece and this drive to hurry up to, on the road to nowhere for so many players. 34:19 Why the heck would you want to leave at 17 and play against men? 34:23 I mean, are you ready? 34:25 Well, I don't know. 34:25 Yeah, I had, you know, I scored 10 goals this year. 34:27 And listen, when you're scoring 50 goals at high school, come talk to me. 34:31 Then we can talk. 34:32 When you get to the null, you better be scoring 50 goals before you talk about the next. 34:37 Like, get better. 34:38 I'm sorry, get better. 34:39 Why I should play with better players? 34:41 No, that's not how that works. 34:43 That does not how that works. 34:44 If you're not ready, then you're not going to be ready for better players. 34:48 So I don't know how you slow that down when money's the driver. 34:51 And right now, money is driving all this. 34:54 Like you said, the NIL. 34:55 And we can't prevent it. 34:57 We kind of can't. 34:57 So I wish someone would just push off and let football and basketball figure out the top 30 teams and get them out of the way. 35:05 And then let college, all the other colleges, say, no, we're not doing any of that. 35:09 And we're going to create a league of athletes who want to stick around. 35:13 No transfer rules unless I cut you. 35:15 Just come on down here. 35:16 We'll give you a scholarship. 35:18 But that's it. 35:19 And you can be in a place where people know we're competing and we're this and we're that. 35:23 The rest of that up there, it's going to be a nightmare. 35:26 It's going to be a nightmare for you. 35:28 And it is. 35:28 I mean, look at Nick Saban quitting. 35:30 You know, I mean, long time Alabama coach who just like, I'm out of here. 35:34 That's exactly what you're doing. 35:35 I'm out of here. 35:36 Done. 35:36 That's that is crazy. 35:39 And you know, the rest are feeling it because they don't want to deal with athletes like this that are arrogant and coming in, you know, expecting. 35:48 That was the beauty of the old day. 35:49 You just built teams around. 35:52 Like, we need everybody here. 35:53 And the only difference was you got a little bit more scholarship money, but none of us had a penny on our pocket. 35:58 I mean, you knew which nights the beer was cheap and the pizza was two for one. 36:02 No one had any money. 36:03 And that drives you together. 36:05 And then the guys who made it on, they made money. 36:07 They made money. 36:08 Someday you got your your monies. 36:10 And I don't know, NCAA. 36:12 Nice, nice work. 36:13 You should have shared this somehow some way because they screwed this thing up by not figuring it out. 36:17 And then they kept losing too in court. 36:19 So they lose every court case they've tried. 36:21 And now it's just it's over. 36:23 Completely opposite. 36:24 And now it's out of control. 36:26 Well, it's like you say, it's free market. 36:28 It's really hard to control this stuff. 36:29 And you've got to speak to the better interests of people and get them to to buy in and be part of something bigger than themselves. 36:37 And that's always been the draw of athletics for me, is to be a part of something bigger and be a little bit selfless and teach that to people. 36:45 And that's a quality that's diminishing, I think, by the most days. 36:50 Yeah, I know. 36:51 There's an opportunity for someone to figure this out at some point. 36:54 Literally just, you're going to have to... 36:56 Biggs is going to be our College Hockey Commissioner. 36:57 Let's do it. 36:58 We need a commissioner. 36:59 Stick your neck out. 37:00 And just because there's so many great players in all these sports, that would be the beauty of it. 37:05 Like someday you're going to get NIL. 37:07 I actually don't mind the NIL as much as like, let the market play that out. 37:11 I mean, literally, if you want to give some money to people, go ahead. 37:14 I mean, who cares? 37:15 Like that'll just move its way over here. 37:17 So if you could keep it and someone could create something with some guardrails and just go, listen, this will be good. 37:22 We're so many great athletes. 37:24 And someday the NBA will come grab you. 37:26 So don't worry. 37:27 You'll get rich someday. 37:28 But for the rest of you, come on. 37:30 You've got to earn it first. 37:32 We need to hear no. 37:34 The answer no more often in our world. 37:37 We can't hear no anymore. 37:38 At all times. 37:40 You know, like why not? 37:41 No, the answer is just no. 37:43 Because it will make its way up. 37:44 I mean, I remember with all these lockouts and then going back to hockey. 37:47 NHL locked out because they were giving too much money to guys as free agents before they even stepped on the ice. 37:53 They said, okay, we lock out first year deals. 37:58 You make it the NHL, you make a million bucks. 38:00 If you don't play in the NHL, no, no, your bonus is a hundred grand and you're playing to minors. 38:06 Earn your keep, man. 38:08 I like that. 38:09 We should do that. 38:11 In the world of college, I don't know what happens. 38:13 That's why I think someone's got to break this off and they got to get their act together to be like, listen, we're going to take the money though, and we're going to reinvest it in school or something else. 38:21 Because if you don't do that correctly, that's why the athletes got mad, right? 38:24 You NCAA made too much money and you gave me nothing. 38:27 And you're making money off of me. 38:30 We should have figured a better way to manage that. 38:32 Like again, too much admin. 38:35 Like what do you guys really do? 38:36 So, I don't know. 38:38 They deserve it in some ways. 38:40 Well, Veegs, what does Minnesota need to do? 38:44 I mean, we've talked about general manager stuff. 38:47 Oh, there's Kinger again. 38:50 What is that? 38:51 Kinger always doing it. 38:52 Mariner Dolphins. 38:54 The old second school in White Bear Lake. 38:57 So great. 38:57 White Bear Mariner? 38:58 Yeah. 38:58 Oh my gosh. 39:00 Wow. 39:00 So great, isn't it? 39:03 What does a team like Minnesota need to do? 39:05 Because they're a big university and hockey is not the top dog. 39:12 Well, I think it starts with roster discipline. 39:14 You know, Bob, when he took the job, said, we got to get older. 39:17 And every year, it seems like guys are leaving and he's grabbing somebody that's too young. 39:21 He's talking about Brody Lamb. 39:22 Wish he was a junior this year. 39:24 But he had to bring him in. 39:25 Jimmy Clark, you wish he was a sophomore, but they had to bring him in. 39:28 So it takes some discipline from a coach to say, you know what? 39:32 We are going to get older. 39:33 We are going to have these 22-year-olds that we can bring our young talent up with and support them. 39:38 You know, Brad Schlossman always talks about North Dakota being the last team to win an NCAA title with the number one draft pick. 39:44 True. 39:44 Brock Besser. 39:46 He joined a team that had enough older players that could support a young player like that to flourish. 39:52 You know, I think Minnesota has always been just a little short the last couple of years of supporting players. 39:57 You know, we saw how much Matthew Nyes helped Jimmy Snugger and Logan Thurman. 40:02 You know, you need players like that who can shoulder the load and hold on to the puck. 40:07 And you just need a group of guys that can stick together long enough for that to happen. 40:11 And, you know, it's a hard process. 40:14 And it's not what we're used to in Minnesota. 40:16 Yeah. 40:17 But it's something you need to do. 40:19 And back on the NIL stuff, you know, we've got Abby Murphy sponsoring Drink Drop here. 40:24 She deserves that. 40:25 She won a gold medal. 40:26 She's scored a ton of golds with her time. 40:28 But she's earned the right to do some endorsements and get paid for that. 40:33 Now, a freshman joining the team that hasn't done anything yet, I have a much harder time just handing them a check. 40:40 And that's kind of what Bob's been doing. 40:42 He's like, get here, become part of the team, become part of the GopherHockey community. 40:48 Then we'll get you that stuff. 40:52 No one wants to hear no. 40:55 It's absolutely amazing. 40:57 And we're just in that world. 41:00 So someone's got to step up and figure out how they're going to do that. 41:04 And probably take one on the chin for a really long time. 41:08 But I just was looking up the rankings here because it's so funny to look back at people of today, like the who's who in the zoo for hockey. 41:15 And in the top 10 here, we got Cornell, Quinnipiac, Providence, Western Michigan. 41:21 I mean, no offense, guys. 41:22 Those programs were terrible. 41:25 Dartmouth, Connecticut, Augustana, Massachusetts, St. 41:30 Thomas, and Michigan Tech in the top 20 now. 41:32 Terrible programs. 41:34 So why that's changed is we got a lot of great players. 41:38 Coaches can go grab a lot of great players. 41:41 It tells you how hard it is to win and what some of these programs are up against. 41:47 And so it's great to have this competition. 41:48 But how do you manage that as Coach Bob when you actually are forced? 41:53 When you go get some big dogs, when they leave, you're forced to fill that. 41:58 And man, if you're not hitting like right in sync to pick up what's his name at Penn State, who's probably not going to stay long, you got to hope McKenna is going to tell the next McKenna to come. 42:12 Because McKenna is not going to be there long. 42:14 And it really is going to screw up your program. 42:16 So, you know, right now, there's a couple of these that have been up there, you know, every year, but it's very few. 42:22 It's very hard to keep that going. 42:23 And so they're riding a wave, and a soft spot is going to dump them right out of the way. 42:29 You know, so when you look at, you know, Michigan, Michigan State, North Dakota right now, and I'd say, you know, Denver stays in here, but man, Duluth has been bad for a while. 42:37 Wisconsin's been terrible for a while. 42:39 They're doing okay now. 42:40 That ebb and flow is just so hard. 42:43 And I don't think people understand when you lose one person at the top. 42:47 The guy coming in is number 25. 42:50 It's not the two guy. 42:51 It's 25. 42:53 And sometimes your second center can't play first line. 42:58 And your third line can't play second line. 43:00 It's that important. 43:01 And you don't have unlimited picks. 43:04 And you're totally guessing. 43:05 So all these programs, Brian, are guessing though. 43:08 They are. 43:09 So Boston College at 13. 43:13 Boston University out of it. 43:15 Yeah, that's what I'm looking for. 43:17 Where is BU? 43:18 By the way, Maine at 18 down here below. 43:22 I mean, so when you start looking at some of this stuff, you know, people would be like, well, I'm just telling you what the bowling greens in here? 43:29 I mean, what the heck? 43:30 Union? 43:30 So it's just that's how hard it is. 43:33 And I know we take such great pride in the Gophers. 43:36 And you could say, well, how about a coach change? 43:38 Well, what's a coach change going to do when you're dealing with the same kind of player? 43:43 And Bob isn't the only guy, and we're talking only Minnesota right now, who's doing the recruiting and making the final decision. 43:51 A lot of guys in there making those decisions. 43:54 So, I mean, man, could you imagine the pressure? 43:57 These guys are somewhat feeling inside like, okay, we're going to go with this guy. 44:01 How old is he? 44:02 Well, he's 18. 44:03 Okay. 44:05 When's he coming in? 44:06 Well, I think three years from now. 44:08 Well, he better get better. 44:09 Yeah, but tell you what, it wasn't like that for you because you guys were all 17 turning 18. 44:13 It wasn't. 44:14 You were all young. 44:15 Yeah. 44:16 And you were filling roles. 44:17 The average age was much lower. 44:20 It was, but we had... 44:21 Or higher, I mean... 44:22 We had different commitments all over the place. 44:24 This is starting at the younger ages. 44:26 This is what's really, you know, we say not NIL, but it really is the pressure. 44:29 I think all these coaches would have to agree on this. 44:32 And I don't know how the hell it trickled down into high school like it has. 44:35 Especially in Minnesota, we have such a great opportunity to stay here. 44:38 But all these different places to go and get better when you're not even good enough yet. 44:45 But that movement around causes these coaches to make a guess way earlier. 44:51 When I was in high school, I know this is back date, but the beauty was the USHL was forming some other young men over a two year period, but committed to look at the USHL rosters right now. 45:02 There's 40 guys on a roster that tells you they don't give a shit about you. 45:06 Excuse my language, but they don't. 45:08 They can't. 45:09 Well, that's not good for the player. 45:11 A kid comes in to the USHL, finished high school, I'm turning 19. 45:18 Could you please help me for the next two years, please? 45:20 Because I'm not ready, coach. 45:22 I'm not ready. 45:23 I mean, I came to Minnesota, I was terrible. 45:25 I mean, I look back at some of that stuff and oh my gosh, I didn't know how to play defense. 45:29 I didn't know how to check guys. 45:30 I can't believe Woogie even stuck with me. 45:32 So thank you, Wooger. 45:33 Well, that rest his soul. 45:34 But I mean, like literally. 45:35 But that's kind of what ended up getting Wooger in the end because he was bringing in the 18-year-olds and it got to a point where you're not competing as well as you used to with. 45:44 Does that change at his time too? 45:46 It totally did. 45:47 18 to 22-year-olds, what he was used to. 45:49 Yeah. 45:50 And it had moved to more like 19, 23, 20. 45:54 It had moved. 45:55 It just started moving. 45:56 Yeah. 45:56 It just started moving. 45:57 And there was a funny time. 46:01 Gino Gasparini, Jeff Sauer, Sertich, Wug, they all fell victim to it. 46:07 And it was just a change at the guard then. 46:08 And we might be in another change at the guard here. 46:11 Well, we've seen it already with Cornell. 46:13 He just retired last year. 46:15 We've had a couple of other coaches. 46:16 Jeff Jackson. 46:17 He started the development program. 46:18 How about that? 46:19 It's kind of like that tip of the iceberg where you're starting to take those 16-year-olds out of their communities and bring them to a centralized location. 46:26 And I've always said that works really well if you're a first-round pick. 46:30 But if you're a bottom six forward, not the top 2D, it's very risky. 46:35 Just like the USHL. 46:36 If you'll leave your high school, your junior year and you're not ready, it's the biggest risk you can take. 46:42 Yeah. 46:43 And that's happening in hockey all the time. 46:45 It's crazy. 46:46 And if you think about that a little bit, maybe it's another changing of the guard that's happening. 46:50 So I played for Jeff Jackson in the summer a couple of times. 46:52 I mean, the guy was a wizard. 46:54 And am I right? 46:56 Notre Dame has been not so good for a while. 46:58 Well, they were last. 47:00 Well, who doesn't want to go to Notre Dame and play hockey, though? 47:02 O'Brock Faber and Lowell Cooley. 47:05 Exactly. 47:05 And so you look at some of this stuff and there still has to be this idea of no and the other idea of get better. 47:13 I think we've talked about that a bit. 47:16 I still remember this way back, a couple of coaches even telling me, and I wasn't that great, but I was good as a kid and as a younger kid and it was always like, go make a play and then after that play, go get it again and make another play and make the people around you better, make yourself better. 47:32 I mean, dominate. 47:34 I mean, completely dominate before you move on. 47:38 Instead of, well, maybe I'll get a better opportunity here and better opportunity there. 47:42 And I'm not saying horizontal because maybe in high school, there could be an argument said to the Minnetonkas and some of these big programs. 47:48 We got to figure out how to get those guys more opportunity in high school or something because they have nowhere to go. 47:53 But I mean, the guys that are at the high school and they're like, I'm going to take the step up now to the null. 47:57 I think I'm ready as a senior in high school to go to the null. 48:01 Really? 48:03 I mean, seriously, how? 48:05 You're not even doing anything in high school. 48:06 Well, you haven't done anything unless you are, I don't know, Casey Middlestead, who stayed? 48:12 Unless you are, you know, Riley Tufte, who stayed? 48:16 Or Leo Gruber, who stayed? 48:19 Dylan Godbout, stayed. 48:21 These guys are playing college hockey and they stayed. 48:24 So until you can absolutely dominate, why are you taking that step up? 48:29 Why would you do that? 48:30 And that's not going away. 48:32 You'll have two more years. 48:33 You'll have. 48:34 So it's really weird right now how we got that like vertical piece and that absolutely destroys what Bob Motzkoff is trying to do. 48:41 It just does. 48:42 But Biggs, he might be kind of that old guard that gets kind of going to need to recycle out because it's just things have changed. 48:51 It has changed. 48:51 You either got to evolve or you're going to die. 48:54 Yes. 48:54 So you have to figure out how you can apply yourself. 48:57 And I look at development models. 48:59 You've got a lot of teams where they let their top talent, you know, be creative and experiment and get better. 49:05 And then their bottom half of their roster, get the puck deep and get off. 49:09 Stay high, you know. 49:11 And that's just a model of trying to win all the time. 49:15 And you know, you have these double A teams and these region tournaments, these state tournaments where you want to win those banners at 12, at 14. 49:23 And really those players should be learning how to push the pace and try things and learn how to be offensive players. 49:31 And it's a challenging way to develop players and when they go off to the NOL and they can't score roles, all of a sudden they're a checker. 49:41 And it's hard to get a scholarship as a checker unless you're 22 years old, I think. 49:45 Yeah. 49:45 Oh, yeah. 49:45 And they'll make you a checker really quickly. 49:49 And then they'll bench you and then they'll cut you. 49:51 And then they'll... 49:52 I know that that's the scary part about it is it's really, really ugly in the middle right now. 49:57 Between this U-18, so across the country, U-18 and then, well, let's call it College Hockey. 50:04 I mean, really, and I don't... 50:07 I mean, probably Division III can fall into this because that's really competitive too. 50:11 But Division I and U-18, that is a gauntlet. 50:18 And it will spit you out. 50:20 So buckle up. 50:23 And I don't know why you'd want to go in there at 16 or 17 or 18 or, you know, and so many people know that. 50:30 And I don't know, like, disadvantage, because you, I got to get a little exposure and I got to... 50:36 You're not going to be playing College Hockey, most players, until 2021. 50:43 Maybe 22. 50:45 So why, again, are you trying to hurry that? 50:49 Because the only way in hockey you get better is by making mistakes. 50:52 It's actually the only way you get better. 50:55 A lot of mistakes cost you jobs nowadays. 50:58 You make one and you're off the team. 51:00 It might take you off the double A team. 51:03 And by the way, you made the same play as the other guy, but you're just not quite as good yet and you're learning. 51:08 So you need the coach to say, hey, listen, next time I need you to think this or this instead of, hey, one and done. 51:15 I mean, that's not good for our game. 51:17 And so, again, maturing a bit so you can just be around a couple more games. 51:22 I mean, that's what if you think about it, your senior year of high school plus another summer. 51:26 I mean, how many games these kids play now? 51:28 That's a lot of hockey. 51:30 That's a lot of hockey. 51:32 So, again, what is your, I don't know, so-and-so told me. 51:35 Well, I don't care what Jeff Jackson told you at Notre Dame. 51:37 When he committed to you, what he means is, I think you could be good three years from now. 51:42 But three years from now, when I throw a puck in the corner, I will cut you so fast, it's not even funny. 51:47 Yeah. 51:47 I mean, I don't think people understand that. 51:50 I mean, I have no loyalties to you. 51:52 I can't have any loyalties to you. 51:55 I got a program here, and I have to go find somebody else. 51:58 Matsukawa is trying to do the same thing that every one of the other coaches is doing, and it's musical chairs when you're trying to pick a 16-year-old and go, I don't know, what are you guys saying? 52:08 I don't know, look at his dad. 52:09 Look at Bonin. 52:10 He's small. 52:10 Don't pick his kid. 52:13 That's really what you have to start thinking. 52:15 But college hockey, you could still be small. 52:18 NHL, you could, well. 52:20 You can. 52:21 You know what I mean by that. 52:22 You got to guess it. 52:22 In your era, you couldn't. 52:26 I mean, I look at a guy like Crowley. 52:29 You guys had phenomenal college careers. 52:32 But the way the NHL was. 52:35 That wasn't going to work. 52:36 It just wasn't going to work. 52:37 It's like you came along five to ten years too soon. 52:42 Yeah. 52:43 Which is unfortunate. 52:44 Yeah. 52:46 But it just is, right? 52:47 It just is. 52:48 And all developments that. 52:49 So if you look at Cole Caulfield or Bobby Brink or some of these names that can just come atop ahead, they're really, really good athletes. 52:58 And so I think along the way, most scouts and coaches know too when they see that, they see that shot of Caulfields all the way up. 53:07 So great skater, little guy, compete level like you wouldn't believe, and then this shot. 53:12 All the other kids that played with Caulfield all the way up, you know, and I was like, oh, he's pretty good too, and he scored 30 goals on his line and whatever. 53:18 And it's like, yeah, I know. 53:19 But you are totally different players and you're both little. 53:23 But that guy, he's special in a different way. 53:26 So there still is a bit of that. 53:28 And then, you know, that same risk with like this six foot seven guy or that his dad six foot seven. 53:32 And so he's just going to be, no, he might be a pylon too. 53:35 So you still are kind of like, because Matzka has got to get some size, some beef, some little guys, some shooters, some skilled guys, some this. 53:45 And then hope they stay, hope they don't transfer. 53:46 And hope they develop. 53:47 Yeah. 53:47 Because you pick them, remember, you pick them young. 53:50 Yeah. 53:50 So you're like, well, he's 16, best player in the country. 53:53 Well, I know. 53:54 You know how hard it's going to be to stay good each year? 53:58 I mean, Brock Faber, well, look at him, you know, Brock Faber is super special. 54:04 Super special. 54:05 And he kept developing because he's got a god-given talent. 54:10 Coaches touched him, helped him. 54:12 My guess is Brock Faber was gonna, he just is a special skater. 54:17 Let me look at his skills, you know, and so you got to remember that too when you look at these top top players and try to be like, well, yeah, I'm 16 and I'm playing on this team just like Brock Faber did, and I'm running the power play. 54:30 Well, I know you are, but you're not Brock Faber. 54:32 So just heads up, manage that. 54:34 Don't think you should take his same path. 54:37 You're Brian Bonin. 54:39 So just take your time and someone will yank you out of there if you're Celebrini, or if you're, but Brock Faber stayed through, Lecombe. 54:48 Look at that team of ours, Ryan Johnson, Cooley, Knies and Snuggerud. 54:54 I mean, unbelievable team. 54:57 Cooley and Knies were super special. 55:00 Yeah. 55:00 Super, super special. 55:02 And so you just, I guess just don't be in a hurry. 55:06 Because if not, this game will crush you. 55:09 It will just crush you. 55:11 So I don't know if those guys would have stayed another year, you're telling me that would have held them back. 55:17 Probably not, right? 55:19 I mean, probably not. 55:20 So then that really hurts Minnesota. 55:23 So if you think about Matzkaus last couple years, that hurts you way more than you think. 55:28 It really does because one more year Cooley brings in another recruit. 55:32 Yeah. 55:33 Another buddy. 55:34 Yeah. 55:35 I mean, because remember that next year, people maybe looked at Minnesota and said, oh, no, I'm not going to go. 55:43 And allows a player to learn from Cooley for one more year. 55:46 Crazy good doing that. 55:48 When you're around talent and you see how hard they compete, how hard they work, and you learn from that, it helps you. 55:54 When they're gone and now all of a sudden, you're that guy in practice and you really don't have anybody to lean on or to look to. 56:00 Like you look at, you know, Cody Zimmer right now. 56:02 It's like, who's he looking to as a sophomore himself? 56:05 You know, he's got 23 goals this year, but he can't really look at somebody who's an upperclassman to see as the model. 56:12 He is the model. 56:12 Yeah. 56:13 I mean, I looked at Crowley. 56:15 I mean, I'm sorry, but that's what you did. 56:17 And Ryan Kraft and Reggie Berg and Eric Rasmussen. 56:20 I mean, you just did your part, but, man, did you learn. 56:24 You just learned each year. 56:26 And just because you're around good players doesn't mean you're going to get better. 56:29 It just is that hard. 56:31 But don't kid yourself. 56:32 Having someone take you by the side and lead you or learning how to play defense when favor is your partner. 56:39 I mean, because they're just going to tell you every game. 56:41 There's no better coaching than that. 56:44 There just isn't. 56:45 And so we got, that hurt us. 56:48 Yeah. 56:48 That really, really hurt us. 56:50 A lot of other schools could probably say the same thing. 56:52 So back to the NIL and this other, I don't know how they're going to fix it just to make all of College Hockey better, right? 56:57 And Big Sal, as Bob has said, no one feels sorry for Minnesota right now. 57:01 They just don't. 57:03 They don't. 57:04 I mean, seven Big Ten championships. 57:08 Finally, Michigan State's gotten in there. 57:10 They got three in a row. 57:11 I think the rest of the league has seven. 57:14 The rest of the league has seven championships. 57:17 But there was a time there when all these schools were down. 57:19 You know what I mean? 57:19 When the Big Ten began, it really hurt them because you had Michigan, Wisconsin, and then Michigan State hadn't been good in a while. 57:26 And a long while. 57:26 And that hurt. 57:28 Because those are all great schools. 57:29 They've got great history. 57:31 And now it's all back, and now Minnesota goes down. 57:34 Well, it's crazy. 57:35 But whatever. 57:36 I mean, I'm just looking here. 57:37 We could talk all day in the skies, but Ohio State dropped off now. 57:42 Whatever happened to Nebraska-Omaha? 57:45 They were good for a while. 57:46 I don't see them in here. 57:49 I'm thinking of all these clubs that were, they just come and gone. 57:52 And Mankato State. 57:54 Right on the bubble. 57:55 Right on the bubble right now. 57:56 There they are. 57:56 So they're in there still, but St. 57:58 Cloud State, really good for a while there. 58:00 And all of a sudden they've slipped, and it's like, it's cause it's that hard. 58:04 It just is. 58:04 The game's that hard. 58:05 So you could, all these coaches could probably tell you too, like, I like my lineup. 58:09 I like my players. 58:11 It's just that the game's really, really hard. 58:14 And on the other side is a pretty damn good team. 58:17 It can beat you any night. 58:19 You know, so what, we lose 7-1 the other night, and then last night, they won in a shootout. 58:24 How is that possible? 58:26 Unless... 58:26 We've been asking that all year long. 58:28 What? 58:29 That's like this, this, this, this. 58:31 That's inexperienced. 58:32 And the thing is, being a hockey player, and we've seen the frustration in Bob, too. 58:35 He's like, he doesn't want to say it, but he's, you know, he's going, what the hell has happened? 58:41 What is going on? 58:42 Yeah, where are you? 58:43 And what, it's cause these elite athletes now, that the game is that much harder, right? 58:48 I lived in a great era. 58:50 You did. 58:50 I lived in a great era. 58:52 Oh my gosh, it was, you only played hockey six months a year at the most. 58:56 You fished and golfed. 58:58 That's just it, yeah. 58:59 Yeah, you, and you competed on the rink, but you didn't, you could bring your B game and the ebb and flow might turn into an A game. 59:07 Now, if you bring anything less than your A minus game, you will get destroyed. 59:13 And I'm not sure how you can stay up for that when the puck bounces in our game and there's instantly 10 mistakes at every single time. 59:21 So everyone's adjusting to these 10 mistakes that are happening, cause all the players, you could do A or B or Z. 59:29 And you're making a play and he's making a play. 59:30 And it's like, I mean, if I don't have my A minus game, well, yeah, that's, that's how hard our game is. 59:36 It's how hard this game of hockey is. 59:37 That's why we love it. 59:39 It's tough. 59:39 It is why we love it. 59:40 It is why we love it. 59:41 But thank you for coming on our show. 59:43 We're going to have you on again on our regular show, just by Zoom or whatever. 59:47 Let's do it. 59:47 We'll get you on again. 59:49 So we thank you for coming on. 59:51 Vigs, we'll be back on live Monday nights, won't we? 59:54 Monday night. 59:55 It's a quick turnaround. 59:56 It's a quick turnaround as the Gophers head to Penn State. 59:58 But we're going to say goodbye to everyone. 1:00:00 Thank you, Brian. 1:00:01 Thank you, Vigs for coming in today. 1:00:04 We'll see you folks. 1:00:18 If you are watching on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and get notified each time we go live or post a video. 1:00:24 If you listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please rate our show and leave a review.