Puck Dynasty Podcast

Since the last time I've updated the site a lot has happened.

Let's see: I wrote for both Twin Cities newspapers and a few others, added new places to write and go on the radio (had a couple hits with WCCO Radio), went to Tampa for the Frozen Four, had the feature story for the Big Ten tournament, finished going to all six Big Ten arenas, and regularly contributed to SB Nation College Hockey.

The past three weekends I've been to games at Madison Square Garden, East Lansing, MI, and Princeton, NJ.

I've also been this fall taking part in a weekly podcast called Puck Dynasty, discussing Gopher hockey and the college landscape with a couple other writers. Puck Dynasty is part of local Twin Cities sportstalk station 1500 ESPN's network of podcasts.

You can listen to the latest episode below. The podcast can also be found on iTunes and Podcast One among other places where podcasts can be heard.

Eric Scheid Feature for Wild.com

If there's a list of unofficial hockey holidays, Hockey Day Minnesota is one of the ones on there.

This year Hockey Day Minnesota, a celebration of the sport in the state put on by Fox Sports North and Minnesota Wild, turned 10 February 6th by featuring three outdoor high school games out in Bayfront Park in Duluth. The celebration continued with a college game between the University of Minnesota and Penn State from Mariucci Arena. Pro hockey concluded the festivities that night from St. Louis as the Wild and Blues faced off with one another.

HDM is about the players and stories throughout the "State of Hockey." I was fortunate enough to be able to tell one of them for Wild.com.

Penn State forward Eric Scheid is a Blaine native whose hockey travels have taken him from Minnesota to Nebraska (twice) to Alaska to Pennsylvania. He's a fifth year senior who has played college hockey longer than the Nittany Lions program.

Throughout his time away from Minnesota Scheid has found himself as a hockey player. He also has found his second family, which has been important this season on (where he was tied for second in scoring at the time) and off the ice. Family being very important to him, Scheid's father Jim passed in August.

You can read the feature here.

http://wild.nhl.com/club/news.htm?id=848485

Midseason Mea Culpa

It's been a while since I've updated here, which is not my intention. So much has happened over the past 4-6 weeks between coverage and travel and everything to the point where getting into a regular schedule reposting, let alone anything new, has slipped my mind.

Since the last time I've posted I've written articles for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Minnesota Wild and of course my regular places at SB Nation College Hockey and Wild Xtra.

I'll try to get up some of the work up here in the near future.

After years of anonymity, the UFC Bantamweight division finally brings intrigue

Author's note: Sometimes I write about other subjects than hockey, both sports and non-sports. Not everything is hockey. This piece focus upon Sunday's UFC on Fox Sports 1 main event between T.J. Dillashaw vs. Dominick Cruz for the Bantamweight title and what looms in the distance for the division.

This week has seen the most attention turned towards UFC men's bantamweights since the division was moved into the promotion in December 2010.

It is not too difficult to earn that honor, however. Even with a title fight on the line between the champion and a challenger that never lost the belt and whose only defeats has been injuries. Bantamweights have been a hard sell to casual and die-hard MMA fans. Over the last 5 years the UFC 135 pound division has been somewhere between permanently cursed and ignored.

Mixed Martial Arts has struggled to garner eyeballs and promotion of fighters under 155 lbs until recently in the way boxing has with the possible exception of former WEC featherweight (145 lbs) and perennial UFC contender Urijah Faber, who once again is position to take advantage.