bonin21 help me understand better as you seem to be our Gopher hockey guru
Isn't GopherPuckLive the first and foremost place for Gopher hockey fans to talk about their favorite team? I visit there on game days and the game thread today only had about 25 posts from puck drop at 7 pm until the end of the game. Am I missing something? Is there another game thread over there or is a live chat the place to be for game chats? Or maybe there's a different site that I don't know about? Man, if you come to this site during a Gopher basketball or football game or Reddit for other Minnesota sports teams there are hundreds of posts.
GPL is the place. I was a heavy user, but when I hit 15,000 posts I decided to take a break and then the Gophers started winning like crazy and I didn't want to mess with a good thing. There is a live chat, but it's usually like ten of us max.
What I think you're missing is just how badly the combination of the Big Ten conference that no one wanted, and holding onto a coach for multiple years too many has hurt the Gopher hockey program. No program in the country was damaged more during the conference shuffling than we were.
I LOVE Gopher hockey. I'm obsessed with it. It's the only sports team I follow religiously and I watch every second if possible. I support the program financially with season tickets in the highest donation section, but... I hate the Big Ten. It's frustrating as a season ticket holder to drive down to the U and know it's going to be half full at best and you don't really care about the teams they're playing.
Even winning games like crazy this year, the excitement is nowhere near what it would be if we were playing the old rivals in conference games every weekend. The only easy road trip in the Big Ten is wisconsin, which was part of the WCHA. So road trips in the WCHA included Mankato and SCSU which you could drive home from same night, Duluth which is an amazing weekend road trip, Madison, UND, and if you want to "splurge" you could get a flight out to Denver or CC (which is a cheap destination from MN) and enjoy the mountains. Also, those WCHA teams are loaded with Minnesotans that you watch play at your local HS or in the state tournament and think "Damn I wished we got that kid when I saw him in HS.".
I could go on, but basically the Big Ten delivered a near death blow to the Gopher hockey program and anything short of a national championship will probably not get the arena full again. Combine that with Kaprisov likely becoming an NHL star across town, which will make many young kids Wild fans primarily and the Gophers an afterthought, and it will be hard to turn things around completely.