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2026 Frozen Four

LongGame said:
The sport is too top heavy. There’s just not enough elite talent to distribute to other schools to allow them to challenge Wisconsin and Ohio State. I don’t know what the solution is, though.
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The solution is time. The game has to continue growing at youth levels and eventually there will be more depth of talent. Leads to talent being spread out and more parity.

Women's basketball shows it can happen but it is a lengthy process. Just now starting to see enough parity where you get some better games and even upsets in early rounds of the tournament. It doesn't have the depth and parity of men's basketball, so you see 7 seeds beating 11 seeds by 40. It's evolving in the right direction though.

Similar with volleyball, which is now exploding in popularity. The national champions club in that sport has remained quite small. But more girls are playing it, more people are watching, and depth/parity are going in the right direction.

Hockey might be too niche at the college level to expect a big boost in parity, but the teams at the top can rotate. Used to be Duluth and MN.
 
The solution is local girls hockey which will mean more girls hockey players. What percent of the American girls on Ohio state and Wisconsin left home to play high school hockey? Of the girls who didn’t leave home but somehow made it to D1, what percent played on expensive travel teams?

Male dominated high school hockey = $500 in fees, only available girls option = $2k to $3k just in initial fees in a cheap market. That needs to be fixed.
 
Well Penn State almost pulled it off but the bottom line is you just can't give Wisconsin power plays unless you have and exceptional PP kill. I'd imagine the Penn State girl who committed the boarding penalty that cost them the game feels pretty down.
 
shelfit said:
With no pregame offense to Penn State, I just don't think they stand any chance against Wisco.

The WCHA should be D-I.
The rest of D-I should be D-II except for the NEWHA which is an insult to D-I hockey.
The NEWHA should be split into D-II and D-III (someone else can do the splitting but maybe the bottom 3 teams should be D-III).
D-III should be split into D-III and D-IV (again, someone else can do the splitting because I don't know where to begin).

Would the NCAA sponsor 4 National Championships?
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I sure was wrong about Penn State being able to compete tonight although Wisco really helped Penn State's cause with some of the penalties they took too. By the end of the game I found myself cheering for the Nittany Lions. In the end the top 2 teams are playing on Sunday.

I still think my 4-division proposal is good.
 
No matter what happens tomorrow, my biggest surprise from this season is that we head into the final with tOSU as the best team in the country. As we wondered how various teams would survive the absence of the Olympians, the Buckeyes somehow managed to thrive during that time and carry the momentum into the postseason. In last year's final, I really didn't expect them to be able to take it to the Badgers for much of the game in the way that they did. Tomorrow, no matter who plays better and/or wins, it won't be a shock.

Wisconsin is still a very deep and talented team. However, this won't go down as one of the best defensive teams that Wisconsin has had. The Badgers posted seven shoutouts in their first 10 games, but only three more since then. You can score a goal with a few seconds of strong play, but it takes a 60-minute effort to log a shutout. The inability to hold late leads in three of their last five games is easy to point to, but those weren't the only times when UW's defensive effort wasn't what we've all come to expect. McNaughton's preparation heading into the postseason obviously wasn't the norm, but the skaters in front of her allow way more opportunities than some legendary UW teams did.

Even if Wisconsin has it all figured out for tomorrow's game, I have to allow for the possibility that the Buckeyes are good enough to just take it anyway, much like Clarkson was in 2014 or 2017.
 
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