Editors Note: Wisconsin's potential non-conference scheduling agreement with North Dakota hinges on the school officially retiring the 'Fighting Sioux' nickname. Earlier this week UND resumed using the nickname.

According to an article in the Grand Forks Herald on Friday, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa reiterated in formal terms this week “that (they) won’t allow their athletic teams to compete with schools under NCAA sanctions due to American Indian imagery.”

The future of the Wisconsin hockey schedule is starting to come together. At this point, we know who Wisconsin's non-conference opponents will be for the 2012-13 season.

Last month Andy Baggot from the Wisconsin State Journal tweeted that the Badgers are scheduled to play series with Northern Michigan, Penn State, Miami (OH), and Lake Superior State. The Northern Michigan series is a road series for the Badgers but will be played at the Resch Center in Green Bay.

The Penn State series will be played at the Kohl Center, and the Lake State series is expected to be a Badger home date as well. It's not public if the Miami series will be played in Madison or Oxford.

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Tim Davison had an interesting decision this past summer. He could leave to go play junior hockey in the USHL where the Chicago Steel own his rights, or he could come back for his senior season at Green Bay Notre Dame.

Davison weighed his options but chose to return to Notre Dame Academy for one more year. A large part of the reason he chose to come back was his goal of winning a state championship for the Tritons. Another one of his goals was undoubtedly winning the Mr. Hockey award, given to Wisconsin's top senior hockey player.

Friday morning it was announced that Davison, who is verbally committed to attend the University of Wisconsin is one of eight finalists for the award.

The 2013 Badger recruit joins Brett Bukowski (Superior), Jason Ford (Waunakee), Kyle Lee (Wausau West), Joe Llaurado (Marquette), Eddie Matsushima (Verona), Kody Novinska (Rice Lake), and Jesse Tredinnick (Onalaska) as finalists for the award.

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Kerdiles To Play In Finland This Week

It's a huge week for 2012 Wisconsin recruit Nic Kerdiles. The potential first round NHL Draft pick and his USA U18 teammates are currently in Europe for the 2012 Under-18 Five Nations Tournament.

The event taking place in Pori, Finland features five of the elite hockey countries in the world (Sweden, Czech Republic, and Russia, in addition to the United States and Finland). It's not the most high profile international event at the U18 level, but it's a preview of the U18 World Championships that will take place later in the spring.

Kerdiles currently leads the USA U18's in goals scored as well as total points. NHL Draft publications continue to project the future Badger as a high pick. TSN Mid-season report (38), Hockey Prospectus (26), and Future Considerations (17), all rank the Irvine, California native as a top two round talent.

Team USA kicks off the tournament today against the Czech Republic at 11:30 AM Central Time.

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Let's get one thing out of the way right now. This is the last season we'll see Justin Schultz in a Wisconsin hockey sweater.

The junior defenseman from West Kelowna, B.C. will have a year of eligibility left next season, but the chances of him quitting the sport are better than him returning for a fourth year. He's as ready as anyone has ever been to move on to the next level, and there's no reason to hold him back.

In a recent podcast on USCHO.com, Wisconsin State Journal beat writer Andy Baggot, who has covered college hockey since 1986, called Schultz one of the five best players he's covered at this level.

The Anaheim Ducks of the NHL currently own his rights as they selected him in the second round of the NHL draft in 2008, 43rd overall. The general consensus would be that Schultz would sign a contract with the Ducks and start his professional career.

However that might not be so simple.

There's a chance Schultz could exercise a little used loophole in the collective bargaining agreement and become a free agent over the summer.

And that possibility scares the hell out of Anaheim fans.

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Last spring when the Big Ten Hockey conference was formed, representatives from the six member schools that will make up the future conference set to start in 2013-14 (Penn State, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Michigan State, and Ohio State) voted on potential playoff options.

They eventually settled upon a two-weekend format with the #3 seed hosting the #6 seed and the #4 seed hosting the #5 seed in a best of three series the first weekend and the top two seeds receiving byes.The winners would advance to the next weekend which would be hosted by the top overall seed.

Wisconsin was the only school to originally oppose the format. It creates major conflicts with the Kohl Center since UW would have to reserve the building for both possible weekends. Unfortunately, those are weekends that the WIAA has traditionally held state basketball and wrestling tournaments.

However since the original structure was voted on, the college hockey landscape has changed tenfold. Schools like North Dakota, Denver, Minnesota-Duluth, Nebraska-Omaha, St. Cloud and Colorado College branched off from the WCHA to join with Miami and Western Michigan of the CCHA to form the NCHC, which they feel will be a rival conference to the Big Ten.

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Last season Ian McCoshen made the move to the USHL from Shattuck St. Mary's to further his hockey career. While that wouldn't otherwise be noteworthy for most players, McCoshen did it as a high school sophomore, which is a rare feat in the top junior league in the country.

McCoshen, who hails from Hudson, Wisconsin was able to get his feet wet for the Waterloo Black Hawks last year, but has taken an expanded role in his second season.

Known primarily as a shut-down defenseman, the 6'3, 205 pound blue-liner registered six assists in 42 games for the Waterloo last season. However this season McCoshen has doubled his point total (5 goals, 7 assists) through just 33 games.

McCoshen told us over the weekend that his game continues to evolve.

"I try to keep my game simple and hard," the bruising blue-liner said. "My game continues to grow harder, and with more of an edge."

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Huskies Knock Off Badgers Saturday 2-1

In the game of ice hockey, sometimes the better team doesn't win. That was clearly the case on Saturday night at the Kohl Center.

13,815 people packed the Badgers home rink to watch Wisconsin put on their best effort, which simply wasn't enough against Husky goaltender Mike Lee.

Wisconsin played with arguably their highest intensity of the season, and recorded a season high 42 shots on goal in the loss. But St. Cloud State net-minder Mike Lee, who just recently returned from injury provided a riddle that the Badgers couldn't solve.

The previous night saw the Badgers produce arguably their weakest effort of the season, which was something no one associated with the program wanted to repeat.

"You have a lot of time to think about what happened last night, and I know what was on everybody’s mind was the fact that we wanted to come out and play well and get some of our self-esteem back after last night. For a large part of the game, we did it," Wisconsin head coach Mike Eaves noted after the game.

"I think the result would have been different if we weren’t facing Mr. Lee in the net."

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Let's be honest with each other. Last night was an embarrassing loss for the Wisconsin hockey program.

Not only did the Badgers lose to an inferior opponent who is missing multiple key players, but Wisconsin got pushed around in their own building. They also showed a lack of effort that hasn't been on display since Mike Eaves took this program over in 2002.

That said, this team has an opportunity tonight to come back out with a refreshed mindset. Sure, their quest of home ice in the first round of the WCHA playoffs may be out of reach at this point.

But that doesn't mean the season is over.

This is still the University of Wisconsin, and if the 20 players that pull on that Badger sweater tonight can't find that fire, that pride, then we've got issues.

However I'm not ready to write this club off just yet. Sure this young club has struggled at times, but they've also had some great moments including going to to toe with top-five teams in the country multiple times this season.

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