Re: Minnesota Golden Gophers Season Off-Season Thread 2018
I was hoping for something more. But that essentially is my point. There is an added value when a coach is an alumnus of the school he or she is coaching at. That is not to say that a coach who is not cannot perform very well. There are many examples.
Money and prestige can emotionally flame out, whereas the flame of true loyalty to your alma mater is difficult to extinguish.
I think the example of the Lam sisters is relevant as a comparison to Motzko. Why did they pick Minnesota over UND? lol we all know why, at UMn they could play for Natl Titles.
But why did they transfer to UND? Because that was their first love, that is where their true loyalties laid. I had a lot of respect for them for doing that. It was good for women's hockey and worked to help make UND a much better team, until they left and well, things went downhill from there.
So let me ask you SteveO, why did Motzko leave UMn and go to SCSU? Was it because SCSU was his true first love? Is that the team he grew up wanting to play for?
Why did Herb Brooks leave UMn to coach the Olympic team? Was coaching the Gophers and winning a Natl Title in ncaa hockey his biggest dream? If it was, he would have turned down the chance to coach the Olympic team and/or gone back to UMn the next year.
Or was it to win a Gold Medal at the Olympics? I think we all know the answer to that.
The Lams were willing to sacrifice the great chance of winning Natl Titles, to do something more noble and memorable and meaningful.
If Motzko's TRUE love was SCSU, wouldn't he have gone there his first year? And wouldn't he have turned down the offer to come here and coach? I mean, SCSU, arguably has been the more successful program as of late. Had he stayed there and we gone with Grant P or someone even further down the list of candidates, there would be a chance SCSU would have continued to best the Gophers in head to head matchups and in their place in the rankings and # of trips to the NCAA tourney, etc..
So it's a pay raise, but you don't think SCSU wouldn't have given him a pay raise if they thought it would keep him there? Grant P used the interviewing for the job here as leverage for a pay raise, my guess is Motzko would have gotten a raise had he made that offer to SCSU. But he didn't, did he? And the cost of living in the Twin Cities is higher than it is in St Cloud, so will he really be making a HUGE amount more, when it's all said and done?
So I doubt the money issue was a big factor. And Prestige? The only way he'll gain more prestige is if he does something MORE than what Lucia did the past 5-10 years, and something MORE than what SCSU succeeds in doing the next couple of years as well.
This seems sort of like the Herb Brooks thing to me. Motzko came to the U to play for the U and that didn't work out, and didn't just try once, but twice, much like Brooks tried out for the 1960 Olympic team and it didn't work out, and tried again in 64 and made the team but didn't win Gold. 20 years later he left what was easily considered, AT THAT TIME, the #1 top most prestigious college hockey program of the 70's, to take on the daunting task of trying to beat the mighty Russians and garner the US a Gold Medal. Now it's been how many years since he tried out for the Gophers and failed, and he gets an opportunity to lead the team he couldn't make, to a Natl Title? And he knows what it feels like since he as on the staff when Lucia achieved as a coach what he couldn't as a player.
Seems to me like there could be the evidence there of where his heart truly has been all along? Definitely worth considering.