Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2019-2020: Motzko 2.0

[SteveO]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2019-2020: Motzko 2.0

****. Gophers are to PSU what SCSU/Mankato are to the NCAAs

At least they can get into the NCAAs. This could be one of the worst seasons for the Gophers in at least 10 years.

Positive takeaway: Gophers had better intensity out of the gate tonight and played with the lead into the 2nd.

Negative: Moe looked shaky in net in the second and third allowing the potent Penn St. offense to come roaring back with 5 unanswered goals for the 6-3 W...a classic team meltdown.

That puts the Gophers at 1-5-2 in their last eight avg. 2 goals/game (opponents - 3.7 goals/game).

The new team goal this season should be try to get to .500.

 

[D2D]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2019-2020: Motzko 2.0

Penn State is really good. Player for player, they are more talented, and definitely more experienced. I think you can honestly say that our young Gophers gave it their all, and competed extremely well for a good portion of the game. Despite the rather lopsided final score, I liked what I saw, like 100 times better than Friday night.

 

[SteveO]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2019-2020: Motzko 2.0

Penn State is really good. Player for player, they are more talented, and definitely more experienced. I think you can honestly say that our young Gophers gave it their all, and competed extremely well for a good portion of the game. Despite the rather lopsided final score, I liked what I saw, like 100 times better than Friday night.

Definitely better than Friday. Motzko said the Gophers committed 52 turnovers on Friday night.

 

[SteveO]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2019-2020: Motzko 2.0

Hey, I hear there's a border skirmish this weekend at Mariucci. There's been a lot of excuses [cough, cough] ahhh...emphasis on the Gophers being very "young" this season. I found it interesting to note that according to CHN, the BADgers have the same mean age as the Gopher youngins. In fact among teams in the PWR top ten only MSUM (2) and ASU (10) are more than 1 year older than the Gophers.

So if age is not a causal factor that determines success, what is? Raw talent? The last time the Gophers had a FR and SO Mr. Hockey combo (Walker and Brodzinski) was 2011-12 (Kyle Rau and Nick Bjugstad) and Rau essentially came to the Gophers straight out of HS. Brodzinski was also named the Associated Press Player of the Year and Sammy Walker was Big Ten Rookie of the year last season.

The Gophers have plenty of talent, but perhaps the 2011-12 team which also had Erik Haula was a step ahead. But what has happened to Bryce Brodzinski who after 12 games is the only FR F who has yet to find the back of the net?

Maybe the answer is coaching. Has Motzko been tough and strategic enough to fully tap into this current Gopher talent pool? Remains to be seen.

But in terms of age, the young BADgers are 5-6-0 against six different ranked teams. By contrast, the equally young Gophers are 0-5-1 against three ranked teams.

If they stumble against the 16th ranked BADgers this weekend at home, age is no excuse. Hopefully they'll have a lot more fan support this Friday than LAST WEEK....ouch.

 

[The Rube]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2019-2020: Motzko 2.0

The Gophers are young, and seems like WI is not as high-powered offense as has been advertised.

Motzko is also still dealing with tDon's recruits, it's a process (cliche alert!). I don't expect much from MN this year. I do expect more next year, and hopefully even more the year after that (depending on retainment).

As for fan support, hearing some of the ticket prices, is the admin insane? I know that cannot control secondary, but man...

 

[burd]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2019-2020: Motzko 2.0

Plus they are playing a tough schedule. The Big is good this year.

It will be interesting to see how the UM/UND game goes. UND has been pretty mediocre in recent years, but they appear to have some chemistry this year.

 

[trixR4kids]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2019-2020: Motzko 2.0

The Gophers have plenty of talent, but perhaps the 2011-12 team which also had Erik Haula was a step ahead.

That team was more than a few steps ahead in terms of talent at forward with Rau, Bjug, Haula, and while Boyd took a little longer to develop in terms of scoring he was still a very useful depth center even at that point. That team also had a far more talented PP because of the forward talent that carried the team a bit. The talent level of the D might be a bit closer though none of the new freshmen on this current team are at the level Nate Schmidt was at that point in his career.

As for coaching it's hard to say because the team is young, hasn't played much together, lacks talent at forward, and the guys who show signs of promise (the D) are playing a position that has a steep learning curve at the college level especially when they're playing against older stronger players more often than not. That said there are some things I question like putting Stucker on the PP.

 

[D2D]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2019-2020: Motzko 2.0

Should be an interesting test for this young team this weekend against the equally young Badgers (won't be able to use our relative youth as a disadvantage). By all accounts Wisconsin has "out-drafted" the Gophers the past two years in terms of adding superior talent to their roster, but I guess we'll see about that.

 

[trixR4kids]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2019-2020: Motzko 2.0

Yeah I assume that won't be the case forever and we'll get some NHL talent eventually (already got some on the blue line) but it doesn't appear that there's a lot in the pipeline in terms of forwards for next year.

 

[SteveO]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2019-2020: Motzko 2.0

That team was more than a few steps ahead in terms of talent at forward with Rau, Bjug, Haula, and while Boyd took a little longer to develop in terms of scoring he was still a very useful depth center even at that point. That team also had a far more talented PP because of the forward talent that carried the team a bit. The talent level of the D might be a bit closer though none of the new freshmen on this current team are at the level Nate Schmidt was at that point in his career.

As for coaching it's hard to say because the team is young, hasn't played much together, lacks talent at forward, and the guys who show signs of promise (the D) are playing a position that has a steep learning curve at the college level especially when they're playing against older stronger players more often than not. That said there are some things I question like putting Stucker on the PP.

Game Day!

Yeah, Schmidty had a career high in pts. that season as a SO. The D corp won't come anywhere near that. But there is solid talent on the blueline with Johnson and Lacombe and up front as well.

I question the Zuhlsdorf/Lacombe pairing though. Zuhlsdorf leads in +/- at -10 and consequently Lacombe is at -8. Arguably that stat is stocked with covariates, but overall I felt Zuhlsdorf's play last season was a disappointment and apparently he's picking up were he left off.

Upfront, I'd like to see McLaughlin and Sammy stay together and add Meyers at C. I agree with Motzko moving Brodzinski to C, but he's got find the open spaces and start firing his cannon more.

I watched the 3rd and OT of the Wisc/ND game last Sat. and Bucky looked pretty good missing a ND sweep in OT by about 4 inches. If they keep Ahcan/Turcotte/C. Caufield together, our D are going to be very busy. Along with Weissbach/Holloway/Lindmark, the BADgers have at least two, maybe three solid lines. They're currently tied at 3rd in NCAA scoring, Gophers are 28th. Overall, I think their backline looks more solid than the Gophers as well, and I suspect we'll see K'Andre Miller with some offensive upside.

BADgers PP is clicking at 23% compared to the Gopher 15%. That's gotta change for the Gophers this weekend. If LaFontaine/Moe are on their game, I give the edge to the Gophers in net.

Both teams are used to the big sheet, so I expect race horse hockey for this rivalry. Better dead than red.

 

[trixR4kids]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2019-2020: Motzko 2.0

Game Day!

Yeah, Schmidty had a career high in pts. that season as a SO. The D corp won't come anywhere near that. But there is solid talent on the blueline with Johnson and Lacombe and up front as well.

I question the Zuhlsdorf/Lacombe pairing though. Zuhlsdorf leads in +/- at -10 and consequently Lacombe is at -8. Arguably that stat is stocked with covariates, but overall I felt Zuhlsdorf's play last season was a disappointment and apparently he's picking up were he left off.

Zuhlsdorf has to be one of the biggest disappointments in terms of development over the years and he was one of the worst Dmen on the team last year. Part of that could be that he really shouldn't be in any type of top pairing role and maybe he would've been ok-ish playing as a depth guy but even then he'd get exposed eventually, just not as often as he has been. Problem is there isn't much in terms of alternatives, they seem to want to keep Brinkman and Nanne together but swapping Brinkman and Zuhlsdorf might not be a bad idea, hard to imagine it being much worse other than potential chemistry issues that might need to be worked out.

And I agree that Meyers needs to center his own line because the team has zero depth at that position right now and Reedy probably isn't the answer in terms of 2nd line center. As for BB I kinda forget that he exists until I read the message boards, hopefully that changes sooner than later.

 

[Slap Shot]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2019-2020: Motzko 2.0

<img src=" https://www.gopherpucklive.com/forum/images/smilies/Goldy_Kills_Bucky2.gif" height="300" >

 

[The Rube]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2019-2020: Motzko 2.0

Cobra Kai. No Mercy.

Good win tonight. Very good win tonight.

 

[SteveO]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2019-2020: Motzko 2.0

Cobra Kai. No Mercy.

Good win tonight. Very good win tonight.

Yes it was! LaFontaine was a human backstop tonight in what I thought was his best performance to date. Hope his injury is minor.

The D guys were gutsy and tested their body armor with twice as many BLKs as the lowly BADgers (29/15) led by Nanne with 5. For the most part, the Gophers kept their sticks down in the lanes, kept shots on the perimeter and took advantage of the Wisc. flair for turning the puck over.

Ranta is finally finding his groove and giving the Gophers some long overdue offense for his third straight goal in as many games.

Couldn't have drawn that game plan up any better for their first B1G home win of the season.

All good. Let's finish off the BADgers tomorrow night and send them back sniffing paint thinner.

 

[The Rube]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2019-2020: Motzko 2.0

From the sounds of it, LaFontaine Of Youth took a puck off the left arm/shoulder, went to locker room, but was back on the bench. GUESSING it was just a stinger of sorts, and they took precautionary measures. Let's hope this is the case.

 

[SteveO]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2019-2020: Motzko 2.0

<img src="https://i.imgflip.com/3hajrn.jpg" class="irc_mi" style="margin-top: 10px;" height="260" width="210">

 

[D2D]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2019-2020: Motzko 2.0

From the sounds of it, LaFontaine Of Youth took a puck off the left arm/shoulder, went to locker room, but was back on the bench. GUESSING it was just a stinger of sorts, and they took precautionary measures. Let's hope this is the case.

Thanks for the update, Rube. Good news indeed.
Also, for other Gopher fans who haven't already, check out the Wisconsin thread, just for laughs. Talk about panic and over-reaction!

 

[The Rube]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2019-2020: Motzko 2.0

Thanks for the update, Rube. Good news indeed.
Also, for other Gopher fans who haven't already, check out the Wisconsin thread, just for laughs. Talk about panic and over-reaction!

It still could be serious, he was still favoring it during handshakes/etc.

And per Todd Milewski (decent dude, WI) the WI fanbase is in total dumpster fire mode right now. Even he is going Baghdad right now saying "Nothing to see here." They want to BURN Granato.

 

[The Rube]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2019-2020: Motzko 2.0

GPL just posted a presser from Laffer, and Laffer said he could not talk about the injury. Uh oh.

 

[burd]

Re: Minnesota Golden Gopher Season 2019-2020: Motzko 2.0

Also, for other Gopher fans who haven't already, check out the Wisconsin thread, just for laughs. Talk about panic and over-reaction!

And per Todd Milewski (decent dude, WI) the WI fanbase is in total dumpster fire mode right now. Even he is going Baghdad right now saying "Nothing to see here." They want to BURN Granato.

Who can blame them. They just lost to #31.