College Hockey Mailbag: Contenders & Pretenders, Gopher Football, & More (Vol. II)

After a hiatus, it's time to bring back the college hockey mailbag.

Let's dig in for this week.

****

with the massive Gopher football win Saturday (biggest in my lifetime), what is the equivalent Gopher hockey win? or is there not an equivalent given gopher hockey sustained excellence.

— Chad Stevermer (@stretch3281) November 13, 2019

Nothing like starting a college hockey mailbag with some football talk, right?

Minnesota's win over Penn State in a battle of 8-0 teams hit a sweet spot as someone following decades of Gopher football. (And I say this as someone surrounded by Nittany Lions fans Saturday. Credit to them for being great sports.) Seeing a maroon and gold crowd rush TCF Bank Stadium was night and day from previous times opposing fans did at the Metrodome. The only similar games in recent history that brought up the same feeling were the last two Axe wins and seeing Minnesota celebrating winning the Little Brown Jug in person in 2014.

None of those games, however, hold the same value for Minnesota from a stakes perspective as Saturday's win. The vast majority of fans rushing the field were not alive during Gopher football's glory days. Throw in the fact that the story has not been completely written and it's tough to come up with a comparable win for Gopher hockey.

Winning the 2002 national championship after 23 years seems too big for the occasion. The 0.6 victory over North Dakota shares more with the Axe and Little Brown Jug games. While Minnesota hockey has its share of big wins, sustained success makes it difficult to reach the highs of Minnesota football. If there is a recent college hockey comparison, it's likely Michigan Tech or Bowling Green returning to the NCAA Tournament in recent years after decades of disappointment.

The closest Gopher hockey victory to Saturday's football win I can come up with would be March 3, 2012 against Wisconsin. Trailing 1-0 in the third period, Minnesota scored a shorthanded goal by Erik Haula and a game-winning-goal by Nate Schmidt that earned one of the loudest roars at Mariucci. Given the Gophers were on a three-season NCAA Tournament drought and won the MacNaughton Cup that night, it's one that sticks out in memory.

College Hockey Mailbag: The New AIC, Minnesota Recruiting, Dark Horses, White Claws & More (Vol. 1)

Welcome to the first 2019-20 college hockey mailbag.

I'd like to make these a regular feature whether it's here or at another outlet during the season. (Get at me folks!) Discuss what's going in college hockey, whether it's men's, women's, big picture, the story of the weekend, Gophers, whatever you want.

If this is your first time visiting, I am currently in the midst of a 60 Days, 60 Teams series where each of the 60 men's Division 1 NCAA hockey teams are profiled one-by-one and one day at a time in 600 words or less. The schedule and links to all previous entries can be found here.

Anyways, this week's first volume features questions on most of the Minnesota schools, the new NEWHA Conference, Arizona State's conference future and much, much more.

May 2018 College Hockey Mailbag (The Athletic)

This week I participated, along with a few others, in answering questions from Athletic subscribers and Twitter followers. We ended up enough college hockey questions to split the whole thing into three parts based on schools. (Part III also has a couple more general college hockey questions.) I can't thank everyone enough for sending such thoughtful questions. Hopefully, we do something similar soon.

They can be read below.

Part I: On Mankato, Bemidji, North Dakota and the NSCC

Part II: On the Gophers' men's and women's programs

Part III: On the national champions and St. Cloud State

BLOG: On Phil Kessel's NHL playoff success

The Puck Dynasty podcast currently is on offseason hiatus so it's hard to have an extra mailbag question. Or any questions, for that matter. However, I've had a few people inquire about the below tweet and decided it'd be a good offseason excuse to dust this blog off and answer a couple questions.

A complete list of @GopherHockey alums to win the Stanley Cup twice as a player:

Phil Kessel

— Nate Wells (@gopherstate) June 12, 2017

Playing a major role on Pittsburgh's back-to-back championship teams, Phil Kessel became the first Minnesota alum to hoist Lord Stanley's Cup twice as a player.

Mailbag Q: How will the 2018 Big Ten hockey conference tournament work?

Every week on the Puck Dynasty podcast we answer Twitter questions from listeners. Unfortunately, sometimes we can't get to each and every one. So because of that I wanted to answer one here, on the blog, which has been asked a couple times by different people yet slipped through the cracks.

@gopherstate can someone explain how they will decide who is hosting next year big ten?

— John Kandels (@captainkandels) March 14, 2017