Force lose 5th in six games

The Fargo Force took their fifth loss in six games as they lost to the Cedar Rapids Roughriders 3-2 in a shootout.  The Force were able to score in the last minute on a goal from Chase Grant, who had two in the game, with the goalie pulled.  Dayn Belfour was stellar between the pipes stopping 46/48 on the night.

The Force gave up a total of 97 shots on the weekend in the two games and Belfour saw 92 of them.  Belfour stopped a lot of rubber on the weekend saving 82.  The Force were lucky Belfour played so well because this game could have been a lot worse if it wasn't for him.  They were able to pick up one point in the USHL standings by sending the game to overtime.

Fargo takes on the Waterloo Black Hawks on March 5-6 at the Urban Plains Center and then take off to Sioux City, Iowa to play the Musketeers on Sunday, March 7th.

Here is the last of the shootout from Cedar Rapids.

Unofficial USHL Hockey Blog

The Unofficial USHL Hockey Blog is back up and running after some time off for the year.  There are some interesting videos regarding Muskegon's new franchise and they will be providing some good USHL news (hopefully) for the year! 

Check it out here.

Urban Plains Center naming rights

Force fans might have to get ready to start calling the home rink a new name. The Urban Plains Center will be selling the naming rights to a sponsor that will allow the UP Center staff to begin the construction of the Tournament Facility that was set to have four sheets of ice. It looks like they will build one sheet of ice at a time and will try to start with one after they sell the naming rights. Check out the article link below.

Urban Plains Center has ongoing negotiations for naming rights | INFORUM | Fargo, ND


This could also lead to the UP Center hosting the North Dakota State Hockey Tournament.  See link below.

SHIFTING ICE: North Dakota state high school hockey tournament | Grand Forks Herald | Grand Forks, North Dakota

Force drop another one

The Fargo Force were unable to use the momentum they built from their win over the Indiana Ice on Sunday into tonight's game as the Force lost to Waterloo tonight 8-2.  Waterloo outshot the Force 49-28 on rout to the big victory.  The Force have now dropped four of their last five games and will take on the Cedar Rapids Roughriders in a rematch from the series not so long ago.  The Force will need to be better than they were in that series and certainly better than they were tonight to beat the Roughriders.

Scoring for the Force in tonight's game was Marek Hrbas (assisted by Nate Condon) and Johnnie Searfoss (assisted by Nate Schmidt and Garrett Allen).  Both Force goals were scored on the power play, the only bright spot in the game for the Force (2/6 on the PP).  Dayn Belfour stopped 36/44 shots in the game in relief of Ryan Massa who was injured about five minutes into the game.  Belfour played a lot better than the score indicated as the Force didn't help Belfour much defensively.  We are going to need a lot stronger effort to get a win on the road at the Stable.

Go Force!

EDIT:  Ryan Massa Update - He was cut on the calf of his leg and got 8 stitches.  He will be out at least two weeks.

Final Four Friday

Talk about an exciting day if you are a hockey fan in North Dakota and throughout the United States.  It's Final Four Friday tomorrow night starting with the USA-Finland game starting at 2:00pm CST on NBC and the Canada-Slovakia game at 8:30pm CST on CNBC for the rights to play for the Gold medal at the Olympics.

In North Dakota, we get an extra final four on Final Four Friday with the semi-finals of the state hockey tournaments.  The West dominated on the boys' side of the tournament with Bismarck, Williston, Bismarck Century and the favored Grand Forks Central Knights making it to the semi-finals (Live blog available here).  The girls' final four consists of all eastern ND teams with West Fargo, Grand Forks, Fargo North and Fargo South making it to the semi-finals.

The Fargo Force will also be taking on the Waterloo Blackhawks from Waterloo (Live blog available here).  It's an action-packed day of hockey in North Dakota!

Weekend Preview - Waterloo, Cedar Rapids

The Fargo Force will be taking on the Waterloo Blackhawks on Friday and the Cedar Rapids Roughriders on Saturday this weekend.  The Force are coming off a win over Indiana after a 3-game losing streak in which they gave up 22 goals in possibly their worst three games of the year so far.  Even through the defensive struggles, Nick Romanick has been a +4 in the last five games (including a +1 in a 9 goals against game), the rest of the defensive unit will need to be equally as good if they want to win this weekend.  The Force will look to jump on Force captain Chase Grant's back as the veteran forward has put up points in nine straight games.  He has 8 goals and 6 assists in those 9 games and leads the team with a total of 23 goals this season.

The Blackhawks and the Force have played one game this year in Waterloo early in the season and lost that game 7-3.  The Blackhawks were led by J.T. Brown (2g, 3a), Tyler Barnes (1g, 2a), Brock Montpetit (1g, 1a), Derek Arnold (2a) and Patrick Divjak with 2 goals including the eventual game-winner.  Derek Arnold has scored 11 goals over his current nine-game point streak and 14 goals in his last 16 games.  The Blackhawks are currently on a 5-game winning streak so the Force will need a strong effort to get the win.  C.J. Motte has been in goal for all five of those wins and has posted a 1.78 GAA in those games.  Motte was also strong when they faced Fargo earlier in the season as he stopped 39/42 Force shots.

After the battle in Waterloo Friday night, the Force will head down the road to take on the Cedar Rapids Roughriders at the Stable.  The Force were recently swept by them in Fargo on 2/12-2/13.  The Force were terrible in both games despite scoring 9 goals.  Fargo will look to redeem themselves defensively against a team that was able to put 15 goals by them on their home ice.

I wonder who Coach Johnson will go with in net this weekend.  Personally, I hope he puts Massa back in net.  Belfour did a great job against Indiana snapping the 3-game losing streak, but I would love to see Massa regain his confidence on Friday night in Waterloo and redeem himself against the Roughriders (on Saturday) after giving up 9 goals in four periods of play against them.  Defensively, the Force will need to shut down Jeff Costello (3g, 3a in two games vs. Fargo) and Zach Lehrke (3g, 1a in two games vs. Fargo) as they dominated the Force in Fargo.

What do you think Force fans?  Who does Coach Johnson go with this weekend in net, Massa or Belfour?  Do you think that the Force will have a little fire in their belly after struggling against Cedar Rapids just a few weekends ago?  Despite the recent struggles, the Force have been able to score goals with 19 over the four games.  Does that continue?  Who steps up their game defensively?

USHL has made its mark on U.S. hockey squad

There are a number of former USHLers that are competing in the Olympics in Vancouver, B.C., Canada.

Check out this article in the Argus Leader out of Sioux Falls, South Dakota on the five players currently competing for the United States in the Olympics here.

The five former USHL players playing for USA in the Olympics are:

David Backes (Lincoln Stars)
Ryan Malone (Omaha Lancers)
Joe Pavelski (Waterloo Blackhawks)
Paul Stastny (Omaha Lancers)
Brian Rafalski (Madison Capitols)

Hockey coverage in America...

If you ask me, NBC completely dropped the ball when they chose to televise tonight's epic USA vs. Canada Olympic hockey game on MSNBC.  I get it that they didn't want to devote 3 hours to one sport so I appreciate that they allowed for it all to be broadcasted in its entirety with a decent pre-game on MSNBC.  The problem with them broadcasting the game on MSNBC is that there are some Americans out there that don't get MSNBC.  Another problem for Americans that actually do get MSNBC is that it was not in HD.  They could have aired the game on USA or CNBC instead (2 networks that do broadcast in HD) but they chose MSNBC. This is why Gary Bettman is forced to make the difficult decision on whether or not to send the NHL players to Sochi in 2014.  The NBC executives always give hockey the shaft and as a die-hard hockey fan, I am sick of it.

Critics of hockey throughout America always point to the TV ratings and state that this is why the NHL isn't put on prime time television, but the only time the NHL is ever on a national network is at 11:00am CST on a Sunday.  I am sure the hockey fans on the West coast don't appreciate getting up at 9:00am to watch hockey.  There are also a lot of people that are attending church at that time, and if you aren't at church maybe you are grabbing lunch.  If you ask me, that's why the NHL doesn't get the ratings that some of the other sports may get with prime time broadcasts. 

The NHL and hockey in general is always getting the shaft when it comes to being taken seriously as a major sport and we need a network that is willing to give it some coverage in order for hockey to grow as a sport.  The Olympics are a once every four years and it doesn't happen often that they are in North America. I have a hard time believing that most Americans really wanted to watch ice dancing over the USA-Canada hockey game.  Please NBC, start taking hockey seriously!  It's not just NBC (at least NBC is broadcasting hockey!), ESPN is terrible at broadcasting hockey.  I should say that ESPN is nonexistent when it comes to covering hockey.  ESPN is so bad that I have actually stopped watching Sportscenter.  I don't need to watch an hour of basketball highlights followed by a Tiger Woods press conference followed by 30 minutes of NFL coverage in February two weeks after the Super Bowl (Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating...).  Am I the only hockey fan out there that is frustrated with this?

EDIT:  This basically sums up my frustration... NBC Dances in Hockey Hell

Indiana at Fargo - Live Blog 4:05pm

Live blog provided to you by Kerry Collins from the Fargo Forum (www.areavoices.com/force)

Struggles continue for the Force

The struggles continued last night for the Fargo Force as they fell behind quickly and weren't able to dig themselves out of the 5-0 hole they put themselves in going into the 3rd period.  The Force need to take the momentum they built in the 3rd period (scoring 4 goals to bring it to a 1-goal game) into this afternoon's game.

I would have to say it is a must for the Force to get on the scoreboard quickly as the Force have not even led a game since their last win against Omaha on 2/6.  Another thing the Force need to do tonight is to limit the odd-man rushes that the Ice were able to get last night.  If they do this in the first period it will allow our goalie to settle in and see some shots to build their confidence.  They also desperately need to put three good periods together.

Indiana at Fargo - Live Blog 8:05pm

Fargo Force take on Ice this weekend in Clark Cup Finals rematch

This weekend will mark the first time that the Fargo Force will be taking on the Indiana Ice at the Urban Plains Center since the Ice hoisted the Clark Cup in Fargo last year.  Indiana doesn't have very many returning players from last year's Clark Cup winning team with 6 players remaining from 2008-09 and a lot of their big name guys from last year won't be in Fargo this year as most of them have gone on to play NCAA college hockey this year.

This year, the Force have played the Ice twice in Indiana and have split their first two meetings.  Fargo lost the 11/13 battle 6-3 and won the 11/14 in come from behind fashion to beat the Ice 6-5.  Nate Condon netted three goals and added two assists for five points in two games against Indiana so far this year.  Captain Chase Grant has also been good against the Ice with two goals and two assists and Corey Leivermann has been the dishmaster with four assists in two games against Indiana this year.  The Force will look to shut down Shane Berschbach (1g, 4a against Fargo this year), Nic Dowd (2g, 3a vs. Fargo this year) and Antti Roppo (3g vs. Force this year) this weekend.

Force goaltenders Ryan Massa and Dayn Belfour have yet to face the Ice in a Force uniform this season as former goalies Cody Campbell and Ryan Holfeld played the Ice in Indiana earlier this year.

Fargo takes on Indiana at 8:05pm on Saturday night and 4:05 on Sunday afternoon.