Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2018-19: The Motzko Era Begins! Pt. 2

[Koho]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2018-19: The Motzko Era Begins! Pt. 2

As the article points out blue bloods typically attract the best 17 and 18-year-olds, many of whom have been or will be drafted by NHL teams. What we are seeing this season is the result many smaller schools in the top 20 going after players who will be 21-year-old freshmen. Entering college as a 21-year-old freshman means you’re 24 or 25 by your senior year, depending on your birth date. That means 17 or 18-year-olds going up against 24 or 25-year-olds puts blue bloods at a distinct disadvantage.

The Gophers have typically recruited young and I suspect Motzko will attempt to implement a new strategy over the next couple seasons.

A key in getting the right mix of young and old is identifying those promising late bloomers who have had a couple years in juniors. They’re typically older than average true freshman across the country, but they’re bigger, stronger, faster and more mature. They’re better focused in regards to academics as well.

THis was part of my point in a long-winded post before the thread switch. I also pointed out that a lot of those programs' fans are questioning their coach's abilities. And I postulated that maybe it is the combo of young age players and recruiting misses from kids recruited when they were young is more the issue than the coaching ability, including the performance of the Gophers under Lucia and Motzko. Yes, there are outliers like Denver, but that is not the mean. And I wouldn't expect these programs to fall near the mean for D1 schools as they still have recruiting advantages (facilities and reputation) over other schools. My point was that I think the days of all these programs consistently making the NCAA and having a shot at the NC might be gone. I would guess they will still make it more often than the 'average' team (especially if the minimum recruiting age does change and coaches make further adjustments to their mix of players they recruit), just expect they will have more down years than in the 80's, 90's and 2000's. And I think we will continue to see more programs not in this group that make up the NCAA field and get some wins in the tourney.

 

[trixR4kids]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2018-19: The Motzko Era Begins! Pt. 2

Well these programs all missing isn’t exactly “the mean” either, it’s one year and some of them were in the frozen four as recently as a year ago.

You can argue age is the issue for teams like UMN but we’re pretty clearly missing the top end talent we had in previous years too. Just comparing how many 1st and 2nd rounders we have on this team compared to 2012-14 and there’s a pretty significant difference there as well (and no you can’t just lazily say the team has “draft picks” and equate 7th rounders to 1st rounders like some people do).

I think we all agree that it’s the wrong mix and I think some of both is true.

 

[Koho]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2018-19: The Motzko Era Begins! Pt. 2

Well these programs all missing isn’t exactly “the mean” either, it’s one year and some of them were in the frozen four as recently as a year ago.

You can argue age is the issue for teams like UMN but we’re pretty clearly missing the top end talent we had in previous years too. Just comparing how many 1st and 2nd rounders we have on this team compared to 2012-14 and there’s a pretty significant difference there as well (and no you can’t just lazily say the team has “draft picks” and equate 7th rounders to 1st rounders like some people do).

I think we all agree that it’s the wrong mix and I think some of both is true.

But that is the part of the equation of these programs recruiting young. Many of the kids these teams are recruiting at 15 -16 look like the top end talents for their age, but by the time they reach draft age, they are no longer the cream of the crop. You can go back through recent Gopher teams and recall a number of players that never met the expectations of when they committed. And I don't blame the coaches not picking the right kids at 15, as NHL scouts spending more time scouting players don't do a lot better looking at kids who are much closer to being mature. Until the last decade or so, these programs were getting kids to commit at 18. I can remember how often Mr. Hockey would be named, and a couple weeks later we would hear who he committed to. This seemed really start to change about the time we saw the shift in number of third and fourth seeds in the NCAA winning first round games. In fact, I think that this is probably as big of an issue as team age, kids who just don't reach their early potential. And when they do actually excel, they usually aren't in college long. Hopefully Bob can figure out the right mix and the recruiting age restriction also reduces the number of misses. regardless, I still think that even if the Gophers aren't as dominant as in past decades due to these constraints, they still should be in the mix more often than the Ylaes and Quinnipiacs of the world,so hopefully we will see that sooner, rather than later. This freshman class has been promising.

 

[Gunninwiththerods]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2018-19: The Motzko Era Begins! Pt. 2

But that is the part of the equation of these programs recruiting young. Many of the kids these teams are recruiting at 15 -16 look like the top end talents for their age, but by the time they reach draft age, they are no longer the cream of the crop.

Projecting performance of 15 and 16 year olds is super tough and then trying to find the sweet spot on retention is a difficult balance. IMO recruiting future 1-and-dones and even 2-and-dones is a negative. Better to find 4 year players that are on an improvement trajectory. I like the concept of student athletes instead of being just an alternative 1 year NHL development program. I like the Boyds, Schmidts, Rau's, hell even Seeler.

Draft picks is only a nice topic for fans to talk about. Players don't bring their future performance with them when they step onto the ice. It actually might be a negative for them. They are what they are. Not what they might be.

 

[Slap Shot]

Which was the whole point of the real Part 2 thread.

Tossing shade at like 2 people? Woo hoo!

 

[SteveO]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2018-19: The Motzko Era Begins! Pt. 2

Game day!

OSU is the only Big Ten team the Gophers have not lost to this season. The Gophers lead the B1G on the PP (.267, 5th in the nation) and PK (.836). Saturday's loss to Penn St. snapped a streak of 8 games with a power-play goal. The Buckeyes tend to be a bit chippy against the Gophers, so an effective Gopher PP could be a game changer. 5pm CT start for both nights. Go Gophers!

 

[SteveO]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2018-19: The Motzko Era Begins! Pt. 2

The Gophers are just lucky OSU played probably their worst first two periods of the season. The BMW line was high octane and very focused last night led by Burke's three pt. night. Gophers have now buried a PPG in 9/10 games and that one turned out to be the dagger. The Buckeyes are an older, veteran team. Can the Gophers handle the punch back on Sat.?

HIGHLIGHTS

<img src="https://i.giphy.com/media/Fe7Jvl57Vm6pq/giphy-downsized.gif" class="irc_mi" style="margin-top: 10px;" height="260" width="400">

 

[trixR4kids]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2018-19: The Motzko Era Begins! Pt. 2

That’s kinda what I figured, I didn’t see the first two periods.

 

[St. Clown]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2018-19: The Motzko Era Begins! Pt. 2

Ohio State fell two spots in both the RPI and PWR with their loss yesterday, from #2 to #4 in both rankings.

 

[SteveO]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2018-19: The Motzko Era Begins! Pt. 2

That’s kinda what I figured, I didn’t see the first two periods.

Nice W for the Gophers, but IMO although the they played better throughout the game than last weekend, the Buckeyes definitely had an off night. OSU had only two SOG in the second...the second one was their first goal with 16 sec. left.

 

[D2D]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2018-19: The Motzko Era Begins! Pt. 2

Weird how the Gophs do so well against the top team in the league, yet do so poorly against a pretty average Penn State team.

 

[SteveO]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2018-19: The Motzko Era Begins! Pt. 2

Weird how the Gophs do so well against the top team in the league, yet do so poorly against a pretty average Penn State team.

I think it was a combination of OSU's worst series performance all season, Gopher D playing better and both Schierhorn and Robson on their game. Last night the Buckeyes D gave up too many odd man rushes beginning 20 sec. into the game on Reedy's goal and then on Burke and Jr.

Gophers made some costly mistakes on the PK and let Ohio State back into the game. But there was some improvement in the Gopher D blocking a ton of shots (19/MN, 6/OSU) and protecting Robson around the paint. Robson was acrobatic in the end, making 7 saves in the last 90 sec. while using Sadek's stick!

Other than that the Gopher offense sputtered with 4 SOG in the 2nd and only 2 in the 3rd period. Bottom line, although the Gophers improved a bit on the road, the Buckeyes were their own worst enemy this weekend.

HIGHLIGHTS