Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Hockey: 2011-2012 Season Thread
But if I had to pick one big key for the Gophers to "seal the deal" it would be to maintain a super high level of intensity each and every game - for a minimum of 180 total minutes.
Bingo. I really think that when they do this, the Gophers are the best team in the country and should be the favorites against anyone, now matter how well the other team plays. What separates them from Wisconsin, and why I can't say that they are the best team in the country, full stop, is that there are too many periods where they don't play like this. Back in February, after the series in Mankato, Arlan Martilla stated that there was too little team play and that they had to make some big adjustments if they wanted to play deep into March. He was absolutely right. Between the home series against Wisconsin and the series in Columbus they looked sloppy and played like a bunch of highly talented individuals. Something clicked against Ohio State (or maybe the week before, in the second game at St. Cloud, but I hate making judgments based only on play against a vastly weaker team) and they have been really come together. I put very little
predictive weight on the idea of "peaking at the right time,"* but if it has truth, this team is doing it.
The defensive corps in particular has really tightened things up. During that mediocre (relatively speaking) stretch, there were a lot of breakout passes to no one, a lot of critical breakdowns in front of the net a several goals given up to 1-on-3 rushes. All of that has disappeared over the last few weeks. I'd like to give a shoutout to Mira Jalosuo and Bailey Gillanders, who rarely show up on the scoresheet but have been playing extremely well. The positioning and decision making has been tremendous.
All that said, there is more to this Saturday's game than just intensity level. Minnesota made several tactical changes in how they played the twins in the last couple of games, particularly pressuring Monique at the point very aggressively. This was quite successful. It will be interesting to see if North Dakota can make its own adjustments to deal with this. If they can't, and this is just a weakness the Gophers can exploit, North Dakota has a big mountain to climb.
*Obviously, peaking at the right time is critical to winning championships and it can be very clear in descriptions of what has already happened. What I mean is that you can't really use a high level of play in one game to tell you much about whether that team will play at a high level in future games. Sometimes it happens. Other times it doesn't, and there's little correlation to it. Peak performance can disappear at any time, for reasons no one understands or can predict.
