2013 Gopher Hockey Preview

This year marks the debut of the B1G hockey conference. We have left the WCHA behind (causing complete chaos in college hockey) for the greener pastures of a 6 team conference.

For those that don’t even know who’s in the Big Ten conference, here’s the list:

Minnesota

Wisconsin

Michigan

Michigan State

Ohio State

Penn State

 “What about the Husky women, all the junior colleges and do the Sioux still suck?”

The short answer is yes. We will still play the MN schools and, yes, the Sioux still suck.

Of the 4 MN schools, only St Cloud isn’t on our regular schedule this season or next. However….

We will also rotate playing the MN schools in a new annual tournament call the DQ Cup North Star College Cup. This year the tournament will consist of UMD, ST Cloud and Mankato. Bemidji State is idle this year and will rotate in next year.

What about those racists to the north? Due to the fact that the U won’t play anyone with an “Offensive Nickname” unless they are in conference, we would not schedule them unless they dropped the nickname. Low and behold, they dropped the nickname. Because our non-conference games were scheduled out 2 years, we won’t be able to play them until the 2016 season at the earliest. Notre Dame takes over in UND’s absence. Not too shabby.

 

“The B1G just wants to fill air time on BTN” 

 One of the main concerns I’ve heard with the new conference was that games would be scheduled on random nights to fill air time for BTN. There is almost no change. The only outliers to the Fri-Sat games are Ohio State (Fri – Sun, football game on Sat), Penn State (Sun-Mon) and Wisconsin (Thurs – Fri).

Also, the TV schedule was just released. The gophs will have at least 31 or their 36 games on TV. 19 on FSN, 9 on BTN, 3 on ESPN and 2 TBD.

“Why it’s going to be 60 degrees in January”

This year, we get an outdoor college hockey game at TCF Bank Stadium. That, of course, means that will be the warmest day ever in January and completely screw up the ice/experience. There’s been so much press about this that I won’t say much: 1/17/14, 8pm - MN vs Ohio State. 

For those that haven’t been to a hockey game at a football stadium, here’s some advice: get drunk, have fun, enjoy the experience.

Those of us that have been know that it’s really not about watching the game: It’s freezing (in theory) and you can’t see shit! However, you do get pretty drunk so you probably wouldn’t remember much even if you could see.

“Will we be relevant?”

Absolutely. We should win the B1G conference. We should be in contention for a national championship.

Our best opponents this year are Boston College and Notre Dame. We’ve got a little rivalry going with BC right now and I’m looking forward to keeping it going.  

While the B1G conference is packed with big name teams, I’m not sure yet who will be our toughest competition. We always seem to play like crap at least once to Michigan and Michigan State. We always split with WI. Ohio State wasn’t good last year. Penn State is brand new.

More to come as the season progresses…