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Don Lucia steps down as Minnesota Gophers coach

mnstate0fhockey said:
Nope, I don't think so at all. I am not sure he is even going to be offered, and what the U would offer if he is. And if he is offered, he very well could decide to stay. There certainly are some good reasons to stay.

It certainly isn't a foregone conclusion that he'll stay though either. And if he's offered what Lucia was getting, I have a hard time seeing him turning that down. That is a lot of money.
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Not everything comes down to money.
 
Re: Don Lucia steps down as Minnesota Gophers coach

Motzko gonna lose to Atlantic Hockey champ. He's ready for the Gopher job.
 
Re: Don Lucia steps down as Minnesota Gophers coach

J.D. said:
Motzko gonna lose to Atlantic Hockey champ. He's ready for the Gopher job.
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No, we would then take the AF coach.
It's not over yet..... I have a feeling SCSU will come back in this one.
 
Re: Don Lucia steps down as Minnesota Gophers coach

Rabid Gopher said:
I don't think so and hope that is not the case. Need more change than that.
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I can almost guarantee it.

People who say it’s not a change don’t know how different Lucia and Guentzel are. An assistant has only so much control over the team and their direction.
 
Re: Don Lucia steps down as Minnesota Gophers coach

trixR4kids said:
Yeah I saw it and it doesn’t account for the difference between the B1G and the NCHC or other conferences. The NCHC was significantly better at the start and the B1G was probably worse than whatever conference Air Force is in for a couple of those years. Obviously from 2008-2012 it’d be an apples to apples comparison between us and UND and we all know how we fared compared to them during that time (worse). I’m sorry but win% doesn’t really tell us much when we literally won the conference and still missed the tournament one year and that’s not to even mention the 14-15 season where we backdoored into the NCAA by winning the conference tournament only to get curb stopped by a better MN team. Not to mention UMD and SCSU reached the tournament more consistently than we did despite having less advantages than here during the past decade. 6 for Motzko and 7 for Sandelin. 9 for UND, 7 for BC, 6 for BU, 6 for Michigan.

The last decade or so of Gopher hockey has had some nice highs but they were short lived and 5/10 NCAA’s for this program is an absurdly low bar to clear. You cut out a cardboard cut out of a coach on the bench and achieve that with this program. All the credit in the world to the coaches for 11-12 and getting to the championship a couple years later but they also deserve all the credit in the world for the failures of the team during that timeframe and there were far more of those.

And if you can’t see us having sustained success (let’s say at least 9/10 NCAA appearances) then I don’t know what to tell you. We just saw a coach win back to back cups in the NHL without his best defenseman in a league that has far more parity than college. A team of cast offs is in first place in the West and is playing solid well coached hockey. I’m not basing my expectations on titles in a one and done tournament, it’s just not all that realistic or even a great measure of success. I’m basing it off of the achieving the bare minimum requirement to allow that possibility and being in the top 13-14 teams consistently with maybe a hiccup here or there. It’s really not asking that much at this program and just because other programs like Michigan/BU got into the same rut of keeping a coach around too long doesn’t mean we can’t possibly be ahead of the curve and hire an above average coach who can do more with less.

Hopefully Coyle knows what he’s doing because honestly we’ve had some of the biggest moron athletic directors over the years and you’d think we could at least trip over a decent one eventually.
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Did you see the stats for 4 seeds in the NCAA in the last 10 years or so compared to the years prior? Number one seeds only lost 1 game in the first bracket of time and are under 0.600 since that time. To me, that represents the change in recruiting leading to more parity as much as the exclusion of MN, WI, BC and UND (with BU only making it by winning a conference tourney). I really think the MN season wasn't as bad as portrayed (9th in Krach) but every fan was soured by the way it ended. A new coach could bring in freshness to the program, but I don't see any teams being 90% attendees in the NCAA under the current recruiting and NHL CBA agreement.
 
Re: Don Lucia steps down as Minnesota Gophers coach

I pointed and said the reason Lucia got fired was because morons don’t understand that graphic.
 
Re: Don Lucia steps down as Minnesota Gophers coach

I agree. He’s not only earned it, he’s probably one of the better coaches available.
 
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