UND vs UMN a trip down memory lane

The storied feud continues, Hatfield's and McCoy's. After taking a year off during the regular season, the hockey gods are going to allow this game to happen. UMN and UND will renew their rivalry at the Frozen Four in Philly. The city of Brotherly love. Oh the Irony.



I had actually forgot this game.

Who can forget the Evan Trupp goal in overtime.

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• North Dakota and Minnesota to resume historic series

Gophers excited about this weekend's series.

Looks like the Gophers players are excited to play the Fighting Sioux this weekend in Mariucci.

Should be a good series and you can throw records out the window when these two teams take the ice.

Roman Empire, Red Star and Sickle --- Budish said playing the Fighting Sioux is good. "It is a good measuring point," he said. "Obviously, North Dakota is always a good school. We will get to see where we are at definitely."

He said head coach Don Lucia has been telling the players that the team has to get points every weekend.

"It will be a tough [series]," Budish said. "They have some big defensemen, their top line of [Danny] Kristo, [Corban] Knight and [Brock] Nelson are three very good players. It will probably be the best line we played against this early in the season. We just have to contain them."

Budish said he has confidence in goalie Kent Patterson to do that. " I see him in practice," Budish said. "He robs me a couple times every day. It gets a little bit frustrating but his four shutouts, his goals-against [average], it is ridiculous.

"He had a good offseason and he took last year’s momentum right into this year and started out the year with two shutouts. ... We don’t want him to make 40 saves each night but he has the ability to do it like you saw up in Duluth."

Slashing someone with your stick is considered sticking up for them… Right!

You can't make this stuff up. It’s too bad that Jacob aka C-Piss Cepis isn’t good enough to play in the Swedish Elite league because his bush league tactics would probably be a hit over there, they may swing stick in the Euro Leagues but its frowned upon over here in North America. North American settle their differences on the ice like men. Check out Roman's latest blog post about Jacob Cepis...

ELECTRIC PLACE

"You like playing the best teams and North Dakota is probably the best team we've played all year," Cepis said. "No. 2 in the country [at the time]. Don [coach Don Lucia] gave us some pretty interesting stats. Their record at home on Fridays was just ridiculous. How can you not like playing games like that? It is going to be crazy like it was.

"I enjoyed it. It is the best atmosphere to get it going."

Cepis did his part to stir things up, too, at the end of the second period in the first game. After Sioux center Brad Malone checked Gophers defenseman Kevin Wehrs hard into the endboards, Cepis came to his teammate's aid and got a slashing penalty during a big scrum involving almost every player from both teams..

"I just wanted to back up Kevin to prove a point," said Cepis, the smallest Gopher at 5-8, 170. "If a guy gets hits like that whether it is clean or not clean, there has to be some room to say something to somebody and let them know that is not going to happen. I just thought it was the time to get in there and help a guy out."

Cepis liked the way his teammates responded to his lead.

I like I said last Monday on R.J. Richards radio show on KNOX 1310; C-Piss is lucky he doesn’t have to answer for his antics on the ice by having to fight when he does something questionable or bush league. There is also no way C-Piss would fool around with Ben Blood or Andrew MacWilliam if he had to fight, both players would wipe the ice with C-Piss. This is why I refer to the Gopher as “Minnesota’s Pansies on Ice.” They are a bunch of pansies that run their mouth and then hide behind the on ice officials and beg that one of the refs save them.

The other bush league tactics of cross checking a player when he already had two guys laying on him is looked at as standing up for your teammate; I look at it as being gutless chicken. If you want to stand up for a teammate you do what Mario Lamoureux did when he challenged Tony Turgeon to a fight. You don’t pick out the smallest guy you can find and challenge him you take on the guy that did the hit or act that you took issue with. This is one Gopher hockey player that I wont miss when his eligibility is done.

They said what?

The “halos” are out in Minnesota this morning. I guess the Sioux didn’t get the memo that you’re not allowed to go down when you’re cross checked. Lol!

"Then the penalties came," Lucia said.

Most notably, senior Jay Barriball took an inexplicable penalty, cross-checking Ben Blood from behind in the neutral zone. Blood flew to the ice like he'd been shot out of a cannon.

"I tapped him in the back, and I didn't think I did it too hard, and he kind of flailed his arms out and dove forward," Barriball said. "That was the first penalty." With the referee's arm up, Barriball then knocked down Chay Genoway and drew a second penalty for tripping, resulting in a four-minute stay in the box. On the ensuing kill, Aaron Ness was called for cross-checking when Brett Hextall went down like a ton of bricks in the crease. [Read the whole article]

Yeah! I have to admit that I saw the replay last night at home of the play where Blood got cross checked by Jay Barriball, yeah I admit that Blood might have sold it a bit, one could/might say that Blood took a dive… So what? It was the first time I have seen him embellish in three years of hockey. It would have been a penalty either way because Barriball hit him with a cross check from behind. Roe and Cepis embellish on a weekly basis... On the flip side of that argument, as a player, Barriball and Ness have to know better, just because your team is down two men doesn’t mean that you have a free pass to start hacking and cross checking people and the Gopher paid for it last night. The Sioux cashed in on that power play. I have seen the Sioux get called for the same thing.