ICE TIME: Hobey finalists to be announced today

UND will find out today whether Danny Kristo or Corban Knight have a shot at college hockey's top individual award.

Ten Hobey Baker Award finalists will be announced this afternoon.

Kristo and Knight both have a shot at being on the list. They both rank in the top seven nationally in scoring.

Kristo is third with 50 points in 37 games, just two off of national leader Ryan Walters of Nebraska Omaha. Knight is seventh with 48 points.

UND's last Hobey Baker Award finalist was Matt Frattin in 2011. He was named a top-three finalist that season.

The last time UND had two finalists in the same year was 2007, when both T.J. Oshie and Jean-Philippe Lamoureux were honored. In 2004, both Zach Parise and Brandon Bochenski were top-10 finalists.

The winner of the award will be announced on April 12 in Pittsburgh.

Attendance numbers

UND led the country in attendance in 2012-13, averaging 11,592 per game. That was significantly ahead of second-place Minnesota, which averaged 9,950 per game.

Wisconsin, which had led the country in average home attendance since the opening of the Kohl Center in 1998, finished third with 9,521.

The Badgers had the biggest dip of attendance in the WCHA this season, falling 19.2 percent from last season.

Alaska Anchorage had the second-largest dip in attendance at 11.8 percent, and, strangely enough, St. Cloud State had the third-largest dip, losing 10.7 percent from last season.

St. Cloud State won its first-ever MacNaughton Cup as regular-season champion in the WCHA, but it's possible that ongoing renovations to the National Hockey Center kept some people away.

Minnesota State-Mankato, which surged from 11th to a fourth-place tie in the standings, enjoyed the largest attendance increase at 13.2 percent.

Commodore finds home

Former UND standout Mike Commodore has found a new home.

Commodore has signed a contract with the Texas Stars in the American Hockey League. Texas is the top minor-league affiliate of the Dallas Stars.

Commodore most recently played for the Hamilton Bulldogs in the AHL earlier this season. He played in the NHL for the Tampa Bay Lightning last season.

Quick hits

• Former Grand Forks Red River standout Eric Meland made his professional debut last week for the Missouri Mavericks of the Central Hockey League. Meland made a transition from forward to defense for his senior year at Princeton and will continue playing defense in the pros. He registered one assist and a plus-one rating in his first weekend of pro play.

• Six of the nation's top 10 scorers will be at the Final Five this year in UND's Kristo and Knight, Colorado College's Rylan Schwartz, Minnesota's Erik Haula, St. Cloud State's Drew LeBlanc and Minnesota State's Matt Leitner.

• The weekend's games will be played at the home of the Minnesota Wild, who have seven WCHA alums on the roster, including UND's Zach Parise, Wisconsin's Ryan Suter, Tom Gilbert and Dany Heatley, Colorado College's Nate Prosser, St. Cloud State's Matt Cullen and Denver's Jason Zucker. All of them played in the Final Five except Suter, who only spent one year at Wisconsin.

• When asked about the breakup of the WCHA this week, Parise told the Associated Press: "No matter how you slice it, the rivalry between North Dakota and Minnesota is never going to be the same as North Dakota and St. Cloud State or North Dakota and Duluth. They can force it as much as they want, but it's not going to be."

• The Daily Mining Gazette in Houghton, Mich., reported that Michigan Tech forward David Johnstone did not fracture his clavicle on a hit by Andrew MacWilliam as was previously reported by ESPN. The hit occurred during Game 2 of last weekend's series. Johnstone did not play in Game 3. MacWilliam was penalized for contact to the head, though replays confirmed he did not hit Johnstone's head.