Random Stuff

Money Magazine released their list of "10 Best Places to Live in America." Tops on the list was none other than Colorado Springs, the home of Colorado College. If, like me, you're curious as to why a seemingly conservative magazine named after cold hard cash picked a town full of hippies that trade shiny beads for currency as the best place to live, the best answer I can offer up is that Money magazine is owned by CNN.

Two other college hockey cities also made the top 10. Omaha was listed at number 7 overall. I think I've got enough readers from Omaha that I'll avoid the cliche "What could be better than a city of steaks and nothing" crack.
And in a bit of an upset, Columbus, Ohio was ranked as the 8th best city to live in.

I have no clue why Columbus was picked that high. As the old saying goes, the only thing keeping them from being in the Deep South is location. The high median income of their college football players must have really bumped them up the list. But I guess putting aside the city's culture of truck driving and chewing tobacco, it does have a few things going for it. For example, a man is not allowed to marry a horse in Columbus. Apparently you have to go to Green Bay if you want to do that.

Pat Kane still hasn't made his decision yet between Michigan and Boston University. It's getting late into the summer, and I'm afraid that there may not be sufficient time for post-decision rationalization when he inevitably picks BU.(Not that I have any inside information that he will. It just seems to be the way these things work out of for Michigan.)So I figured it'd be better to get it all out of the way now with some pre-decision rationalization.

No one is going to deny the fact that Kane is OMG SLICED BREAD good. But does he really fill that much of a need for Michigan? Yes, it's true that Michigan is going to be very thin on forward next year. But the one spot where they're stocked is the small, fast, playmaking center. The Wolverines will have T.J. Hensick back to center the first line, and Andrew Cogliano will likely center the second line. Cogliano did play some wing with T.J. Hensick last season, but wasn't all that effective, and his future in hockey is probably as a center. That would put Kane on probably the third line, meaning less ice time, and probably not getting a ton of time on the powerplay. He's an excellent player and would certainly make Michigan a better team, but I don't think the improvement would be as much as if Michigan could add a talented, big winger to hammer in some goals this season.

Paul Shaheen's monthly Recruiting Article is up on INCH. He's got some good stuff on a lot of 2008 recruits from the Select 16 Festival, as well as a story about 2008 recruit Matt White, who has been offered scholarships from St. Cloud and Colorado College out west, and Ontario prospect Corey Trivino, who passed on the OHL for college hockey. It sounds like he'll be committing somewhere soon, but the only teams referenced in the article are Hockey East schools, so I'm guessing he'll probably end up out east.

Brett Peterson is going to MSU-Mankato.

Hockey in Wisconsin has links to articles featuring Blake Geoffrion and Chris Hickey.

David Fischer "held his own" at the Montreal Canadiens Prospect Camp. It's a tough situation for an 18 year old kid that just got drafted and still has a few years of developing to do to go into a camp like that and skate against guys that are close to making their NHL debuts. Good for Fischer for performing so well.

Erik Johnson was one of the best players at the Blues Prospect Camp according to one account. Former Minnesota State Maverick David Backes also earned praise.

A big story that I've really neglected this summer is the crisis of sorts in the Nebraska-Omaha athletic department. I was holding off with the intention of writing a "What's Going to Happen with the NCC?" post where I talked about North Dakota's move to D1, St. Cloud and Mankato considering a move to D1, and Omaha's budget crisis, but I haven't been able to strike up the enthusiasm to write about it.

MavRick's UNO Hockey Pages sums up UNO's problems and tries to provide some solutions. If you want even more background: check out Husker Mike's blog. He had pretty solid posts covering the whole thing.

Sunday's Omaha World-Herald also had a very interesting article on UNO starting to lose money as a program. I have no idea how they made almost a million dollars in 2001-2002. That type of revenue could almost fund an entire athletic department at a D2 school on its own. But there is also no reason they should be losing money in Omaha. Part of the problem is that last season, Omaha had to compete with the Ak-Sar-Ben Knights of the AHL. I think Omaha is more of a college town though, and I think that if their athletic department makes some changes, there's no reason the Mavericks shouldn't be making at least a decent profit.

Denver's 2006-2007 Season Prospectus is out. There's probably nothing in there that you didn't already know.