2026 Frozen Four from Las Vegas

[chimpfood]

This year really shows how anyone can win the tourney. Both Wisconsin and Denver weren't one seeds and needed miracle goals at some point to send games to OT and save their seasons. Just keep making the tourney and this will be us one year.

[andyw2100]

Tough one for the Wisconsin goalie. He lost his stick trying to go side to side, and was stickless for the GWG.

And on that note, has strategy changed and it's no longer in vogue for a defenseman to give their stick to a goalie who has lost his? I haven't watched a replay but it felt like a really long time between when he lost his stick and when Denver scored.

[stereax]

McNally from Vegas. Great story as always!

[adamw]

"The hotel told us, if we don't get back by 10:45, we don't get to eat, so we need to get the hell out of here."

Am I being... endeared by Carle?

He's clearly the best coach in the West. Runs complete teams, not just a collection of blue chippers and throwing them out there.

Absolutely. Gets crazy value out of his guys. Could stand to take a page out of his book.

Pohlkamp, for example, was a 5th rounder who is now a 1st round talent.

Denver poached Pohlkamp in the transfer portal after he was already one of the best defensemen in the country at Bemidji. It's true Denver isn't getting many first rounders, which is interesting given they get as many 2-4th rounders as anybody.

Indeed. And no one should listen to anything David Carle says about crying poverty about Denver. They are about two get a massive 1st rounder, and perhaps another top-5 pick. And because of their money, they can retain anyone they want - including players who may be 4th liners looking to leave - who will then become future 2nd liners.

[fastforward]

"The hotel told us, if we don't get back by 10:45, we don't get to eat, so we need to get the hell out of here."

Am I being... endeared by Carle?

He's clearly the best coach in the West. Runs complete teams, not just a collection of blue chippers and throwing them out there.

Absolutely. Gets crazy value out of his guys. Could stand to take a page out of his book.

Pohlkamp, for example, was a 5th rounder who is now a 1st round talent.

Denver poached Pohlkamp in the transfer portal after he was already one of the best defensemen in the country at Bemidji. It's true Denver isn't getting many first rounders, which is interesting given they get as many 2-4th rounders as anybody.

Indeed. And no one should listen to anything David Carle says about crying poverty about Denver. They are about two get a massive 1st rounder, and perhaps another top-5 pick. And because of their money, they can retain anyone they want - including players who may be 4th liners looking to leave - who will then become future 2nd liners.

It almost seems to me that the Ivy's  are definitely strongly disadvantaged
since there is no financial incentive.

Am I totally off base on this assumption? Someone please enlighten me.

[Beeeej]

Beeeej Travelogue

In order to have any reasonable portion of Wednesday remaining after landing in Vegas, we had to get in an Uber to JFK at two in the morning. Isaac was a champ, wheeling his own carry-on around the airport in his Batman pajamas, but he didn't sleep much more on the flight, instead charming the pants off the entire plane as he walked up and down the aisle to burn energy. We were sharing a hotel suite with an old friend/fraternity brother of mine who was also landing first thing in the morning - so naturally when we arrived after going to the trouble of getting there early, the room wasn't ready yet. But it was ready by the time our take-out lunch was ready at the pool bar. Note to the kitchen: Double cheeseburgers should have their top buns applied before you close the take-out containers (duh). A hot afternoon splashing around in the pool, a shopping trip to Walgreens, additional groceries Uber Eatsed from Target (we always strive for full kitchens in our Vegas hotel rooms so that we can cook our breakfasts instead of spending $50-100 every morning), and Greek food delivered for dinner, and we somehow got a reasonable night's sleep.

A warm morning splashing around in the pool and some time on the phone with Security at T-Mobile Arena to be sure we could bring Isaac's potty backpack in with us, a slightly shorter "recharge" (read: nap) than usual, and we were at the first semifinal. I wish I'd known marty was going to be there, as I could've made a point of saying hi in person, but then again I didn't make much effort myself to ask in this space whether anyone else was going. That said, he was absolutely right - the sound levels were deafeningly insane, and thank goodness we had Isaac's headphones on him (and even then, we ended up supplementing with a pair of actual earplugs underneath, and he still asked to be taken to a quieter space a few times each game). Piped in music at every possible second of game stoppage (with rare interjections by the bands) is bad enough when it's not making your ears bleed - I seriously do not understand why they think it has to be so loud, but if the NCAA is genuinely after a family-friendly atmosphere this was a major failure on their part. (I think people must have complained after Thursday, since the volume was merely obnoxious on Saturday, as opposed to legitimately dangerous.)

Just as with MSG back in November, it took Isaac over a period to really warm up, but once he did, he was bouncing, dancing, chanting - definitely loving the fact that we were watching another team whose fans yell, "Let's Go Red!" But he also switched to "Let's Go Blue!" for the second semi, even adding "Let's Go Yellow!" of his own accord. I was really proud of myself when I grabbed sixth-row seats on the goal line back in October, but that was before I knew I was going to need the Revision surgery rather than having fully recovered from the original Knee Replacement - let's just say that was a fuckload of stairs to climb and descend several times a game with a knee in pain, a cane, and a toddler. Luckily the people in our section were patient with our comings and goings with Isaac (it helped that he charmed the pants off of most of them, too). And thank goodness for having a Family restroom mere yards away from the top of our section - but last week's Jackhole of the Week award goes collectively to every drunk asshole who decided that the Family restroom was a good way to skip the line and made me wait with my toddler to get in there while he somehow held his pee better than grown men.

The first semi was a fun game to watch, I just wish North Dakota had shown up to enjoy it as well. Wisco continued a great Cinderella story that began with them ungratefully spanking their NPI benefactors in the first round. NoDak barely made it interesting with the EAG, they really just were never in it. Isaac kept seeing NoDak's "fighting hawk" mascot then looking around a few minutes later and asking, "Where the pigeon go??" 

We spent the time between games hanging out in the vomitorium, partly because it was quieter, partly to meet up with another friend. One of dss28's closest friends, her roommate when she and I met, lives with her husband and daughter (almost exactly a year older than Isaac) in Medellín, but her husband still attends the Frozen Four every year with his father and brother, and the three of them graciously made their way all the way around from the other side (next to the NoDak band) to say hi and get photos. Friend and husband also still have a house in Baltimore, though - so we're subtly working on them to bring the whole family to the Frozen Four in DC next year instead of just the husband.

The second semi was more fun to watch in some ways but also tougher on Isaac because of the cumulative effect of the insane noise levels, the sort of sitting still, and the rapidly advancing hour. That said, he also enjoyed popcorn for the first time and got to talk about the puck going in the goal more times than in the first game. Honestly, dss28 and I were blown away by him making it all the way through two full games and the time in between - then somehow he also made it through the first OT, at least more or less. At that point we just couldn't do it to him anymore, and dss28 graciously took the hit to bring him back to the hotel. They turned on the TV literally thirty seconds before the GWG, so Isaac was happy he got to see it before night-night.

Friday was lots more time at the pool, Masters golf on TV, late lunch at Beer Park on the roof at Paris (again, very loud music - outdoors, in the middle of the day, while people are supposedly trying to eat, drink, and converse - did I really spend so little time away from the poker tables on my past trips, or has the atmosphere in Vegas just gotten that much more obnoxious?), hanging out with an old friend who now runs a sports massage business in the area and lives in Henderson with his wife and daughter.

Saturday morning brunch at Bardot Brasserie in the Aria, with another friend/fraternity brother who's been in Vegas for the better part of forty years, except for Cornell and law school in the middle, and is lead labor counsel for the Wynn organization. Met his girlfriend of three years for the first time (like other area friends, the last we'd seen him was Cornell hockey at T-Mobile in January, 2020), we highly approve, and we had lots of recommendations for their upcoming river cruise from Amsterdam to Basel since we did a similar cruise in the reverse direction with my parents almost seven years ago. Back to the hotel for another abbreviated recharge, and off to the natty, where we ran into adamw on our way from the merch table (Michigan shirt for my brother) to our seats and got to catch up with him for a few minutes - again, for the first time in person since the last Cornell hockey at T-Mobile.

It seemed like Wisco was controlling play again for most of the game, but Denver managed to show up for an entire period at the end instead of a few minutes, and that seems to have been the difference. Like I said it wasn't AS loud as the semis, but it was still pretty bad, and Isaac had to take a few breaks. He appreciated the teams saying "night night" to each other at the end, and how many fans stuck around to say their goodbyes to their teams as well. With as many people as there were pouring out of the arena afterward there's no way we were going to get a cab or an Uber, so we walked, and took advantage of stumbling across an Earl of Sandwich in the Miracle Mile shops for dinner. We thought we were getting together that night with yet another old friend (we met her and her then-husband on our honeymoon cruise), but her evening just got too complicated.

Sort of same plan in reverse for Sunday - we didn't want to lose the entire day, so we booked a later flight even though we knew we'd get home extremely late. I spent a lot of the morning in the pool with Isaac while dss28 started the packing process, we had an easy, breezy experience at the airport (I'm told that the hotels/casinos heavily subsidized the local TSA agents while they weren't being paid, in order to ensure LAS wouldn't have the same problems other airports were having), and there were "equipment problems" that delayed the start of our boarding until - miraculously - a few minutes after we'd watched Rory McIlroy close out his Masters repeat live. JFK is an absolute mess during construction - we had a LOT of crap with us including car seat and collapsible (but heavy) stroller, and we had to walk the better part of a mile to get to the taxi line on the ground level of the parking garage for terminal 5. In order to get an Uber, we'd have had to take the AirTrain to the Howard Beach stop, and at 1am and with a toddler there's no way in hell we're attempting that, much less spending the extra money on it. It also took three cabs before we found one with a deep enough back seat to accommodate our car seat, which was frustrating for all involved - luckily, the driver of that cab understood the assignment and activated the flux capacitor on his way to Brooklyn. Arrival at home, 2am today. Our motto on Monday mornings after Isaac's had his schedule upended over the weekend? "It's daycare's problem."

I spotted a few other Cornell jerseys in the crowd, but this has to be the first time I didn't run into any Cornellians I actually know. Maybe there were some in other sections, but I didn't hear from anyone else beforehand this year either. I also spotted fewer other schools' jerseys this year; not sure what that's about. A handful of them didn't happen until the walk out of the arena after the title game. Spotted this year (other than the four participating schools):

• Alaska-Anchorage
• Alaska-Fairbanks
• BC
• BU
• Bowling Green
• Brown
• Clarkson
• Colgate
• Cornell
• Maine
• Mass
• Mass-Lowell
• Merrimack
• Miami
• Michigan State
• Michigan Tech
• Minnesota
• Minnesota-Duluth
• Minnesota State
• New Hampshire
• Penn State
• Princeton
• Providence
• RIT
• RPI
• St. Cloud State
• Western Michigan
• (Div. III: Utica)

...and of course the obligatory Hanson trio in Chiefs jerseys. dss28 got many positive notices for her Kevin Dineen Whalers jersey, and Isaac looked very sharp in his red Cornell jacket.

I have photos, but our policy is not to share photos with Isaac's face in them on public fora or social media. Feel free to DM me with your mobile # if you feel you know me well enough and you're really interested, and I'll shoot a few good ones your way.

Next year in Jerusalem!

[adamw]

"The hotel told us, if we don't get back by 10:45, we don't get to eat, so we need to get the hell out of here."

Am I being... endeared by Carle?

He's clearly the best coach in the West. Runs complete teams, not just a collection of blue chippers and throwing them out there.

Absolutely. Gets crazy value out of his guys. Could stand to take a page out of his book.

Pohlkamp, for example, was a 5th rounder who is now a 1st round talent.

Denver poached Pohlkamp in the transfer portal after he was already one of the best defensemen in the country at Bemidji. It's true Denver isn't getting many first rounders, which is interesting given they get as many 2-4th rounders as anybody.

Indeed. And no one should listen to anything David Carle says about crying poverty about Denver. They are about two get a massive 1st rounder, and perhaps another top-5 pick. And because of their money, they can retain anyone they want - including players who may be 4th liners looking to leave - who will then become future 2nd liners.

It almost seems to me that the Ivy's  are definitely strongly disadvantaged
since there is no financial incentive.

Am I totally off base on this assumption? Someone please enlighten me.

The Ivies have always been disadvantaged by inability to give athletic scholarships. This is now just another thing, and negatively affects probably 65% of the rest of the schools that play college hockey too.

[Will]

Beeeej Travelogue

(snipped for everyone's benefit)

Sounds like the three of you had a reasonably great time (all things considered) in Vegas. Very happy to read about it! I can't imagine that sort of trip with my daughter back when she was of a similar age. Closest we came was Disney when she was 3, and we also had grandparents to help out and no injuries to work through.

[Beeeej]

Beeeej Travelogue

(snipped for everyone's benefit)

Sounds like the three of you had a reasonably great time (all things considered) in Vegas. Very happy to read about it! I can't imagine that sort of trip with my daughter back when she was of a similar age. Closest we came was Disney when she was 3, and we also had grandparents to help out and no injuries to work through.

Let's be clear, btw, there were meltdowns, some screaming, and minor falls and bonks along the way. You can't put a toddler through that sort of experience without consequences. But we think it was worth it, and Isaac came through relatively unscathed. Our other motto where Isaac is concerned is that we're happy to take some credit for his disposition, but also "We got stupid lucky."