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Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

Sophomore class with 7 goals and 8 assists today. Offensively, I think that the Gophers will go as that class goes, as people like Heise, Oden, and APot have the potential to improve on what they produced as rookies.
 
Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

ARM said:
Sophomore class with 7 goals and 8 assists today. Offensively, I think that the Gophers will go as that class goes, as people like Heise, Oden, and APot have the potential to improve on what they produced as rookies.
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Makayla Pahl with a nice assist on the second Aero goal. ;)
 
Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

ARM said:
Sophomore class with 7 goals and 8 assists today. Offensively, I think that the Gophers will go as that class goes, as people like Heise, Oden, and APot have the potential to improve on what they produced as rookies.
Click to expand...
I thought all three of these looked dynamic at times. Tomorrow's game against a much more experienced Whitecaps team should tell us a lot more.
 
Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

Patty Marshall wearing the "C".

Two "A"s, one of whom was Emily Brown.

The other was Alex Woken.
 
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Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

The Whitecaps only had two practices before playing the Gophers, which is about three more than I would have guessed watching them play. The Gophers, on the other hand, looked a lot sharper than I expected on exhibition weekend. The passing was crisper then it's been late in a lot of recent seasons recently. Both the Wente/Potomak/Potomak and the Heise/Zumwinkle/Woken lines had a lot of chemistry. Skaja/Oden/Keller showed a lot of promise, and the 4th line of Robinson/Boreen/Shearen could be useful, though I suspect that they'll end up as injury replacements given that several players on the roster haven't shown an ability to stay healthy for very long.

Of the freshmen, Shearen could be a nifty depth piece to have. Wethington looks like she'll live up to the advance billing. She was a real presence offensively, and solid defensively. She got badly beaten by Allie Thunstrom once, but she's hardly the only one that's happened to.

I feel pretty good about our chances this year.
 
Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

FiveHoleFrenzy said:
Wait a minute...Eeyore feeling fairly positive about the coming year? What's next?
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I think that unprecedented positivity is due to not having to deal with Goldy in his sight lines. Wait until we play a game and fail to convert a 2-on-1 or a D turns over the puck.
 
Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

FiveHoleFrenzy said:
Wait a minute...Eeyore feeling fairly positive about the coming year? What's next? A certain place registering freezing temperatures? ;)
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You missed the last sentence in the paragraph.
Still Eeyore said:
... though I suspect that they'll end up as injury replacements given that several players on the roster haven't shown an ability to stay healthy for very long.
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you have to remember, feeling pretty good means the sky isn't falling.
So FHF, can I assume from your new signature you went to see Chicago in Hastings a couple weeks ago?

As for the Whitecaps, I suspect those wanting to practice more will get less pushback by those wanting to practice less after Sundays game. At least it was a good practice game for Leveille.
 
Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

ARM said:
I think that unprecedented positivity is due to not having to deal with Goldy in his sight lines. Wait until we play a game and fail to convert a 2-on-1 or a D turns over the puck.
Click to expand...

#24 could be the one to harsh his mellow pretty quickly...
 
Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

Marshall with the "C"...no surprise. Great character and has been Minnesota's most reliable D over the last two years.
 
Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

The Gophers looked really good tonight, and the game wasn't as close as the 2-0 score would indicate. Colgate only had a couple of 2-3 minute stretches, one late in the second and one late in the third, where they really looked dangerous. They didn't seem like a top ten team, though how much of it was just Minnesota looking that good is hard to say this early in the season.

Three things stood out to me. The first was that the Gophers had a lot of good offensive transition plays. They looked a lot more purposeful breaking out of their own zone tonight than they have in recent seasons. There was a lot less shuffling of the puck back and forth behind the net, and it meant that they got things going before the opposition was set defensively. They used the boards well to advance the puck and made a lot of nice cross ice passes. Colgate seemed very passive, not forechecking aggressively and not stepping into passing lanes well, so we'll have to see if things continue to look as good, but early signs are encouraging. The nice transition play only kinda resulted in one goal (Wethington's was in transition, but it was unassisted and something of a gift), but there were a lot of chances.

On the other hand, Minnesota's forechecking was lethal. They bottled up the Colgate break out and forced a lot of offensive zone turnovers. Again, it didn't produce any goals, but it kept the puck at that end of the ice for long stretches and they had chances.

The third thing is that it was a physical game and the refs let pretty much everything go. Unlike some previous iterations, these Gophers looked like they could thrive in that environment. Zumwinkle and Amy Potomak looked especially good mixing it up, and Taylor Heise took a beating and kept going. I'm still not sure that this is the team's preferred style of play, but they look more capable at making things work when it's necessary.
 
Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

Even though Amy Potomak wasn't named as one of the "3 Stars of the Game' I thought that overall she was clearly the best player on the ice, no question. Most other Gophers played very well, but she clearly stood out, not just skill-wise, but giving complete effort every time she was out there.

Solid opening game win, but yet so many opportunities to improve.
 
Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

Still Eeyore said:
... Colgate seemed very passive, not forechecking aggressively and not stepping into passing lanes well...
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Did you miss the first period?
Colgate was forechecking hard the first period, problem is they had nothing to show for it. Gophers handled it well. When you come out and forecheck hard against the Gophers historically, and they weather it four things happen, none of them good:
Your team is drained, both menatally and physically.
The Gophers, having taken the best that can be thrown at them, are now more confident and often return the favor, coming out in and forechecking the other team hard.
This game reminded me of the 2015 semi-final against WI, except that Colgate didn’t get on the board first. The game was still within reach for them, all they needed was a goal but ScoobyDo was awesome, coming up with some nice stops when the game momentum could have changed.
Before this season started I felt that this team should be better than last year, and last year was pretty good. This game didn’t indicate otherwise, one thing they do need to improve on is finishing, they could have had a couple more goals, but I’m not complaining about a 2-0 win, they played very well.
 
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Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

The Gophers aren't going to win any individual scoring titles if 56% of their goals are unassisted.
 
Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

Other than the finishing, I thought the Gophers weren't as sharp on Saturday as they were on Friday, though that's kind of like saying, "Except for all the twenties, my wallet was a lot fuller on Friday." The decision making wasn't as good and the passing wasn't as crisp. They certainly played very well, I just thought they were better on Friday. As a team, aynway. Taylor Heise was a beast.

Colgate, on the other hand, was dreadful. They were more aggressive than they were for much of Friday's game, but it didn't help them. It was far too easy to take the puck away from them, and I'm not sure they won any physical battles. They have a long, long way to go if they are going to contend for anything.
 
Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

Still Eeyore said:
Colgate, on the other hand, was dreadful. They were more aggressive than they were for much of Friday's game, but it didn't help them. It was far too easy to take the puck away from them, and I'm not sure they won any physical battles. They have a long, long way to go if they are going to contend for anything.
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I don't know if this is piling on Colgate a bit as they did leave their net minder hanging out to dry quite a bit yesterday but, the goaltending wasn't very good either.
 
Re: Minnesota Gophers 2019/2020 Season Thread

FiveHoleFrenzy said:
... the goaltending wasn't very good either.
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Dobchuk has now played a total of 105 minutes in her college career. It took a lot of starts before Peters or Gulstene started to look like what Frost and co. expected from them when they were recruited. I think I'll give Dobchuk a mulligan, and I don't think that Auby has to apologize for 3 goals on 41 shots.

As a team, I thought that Colgate was fairly aggressive all weekend. When they got possession after fending off an attack, they had three or four people heading up the ice with speed faster than most teams do. I would agree that they were better Friday. Some of that could be that their first road trip started to take a toll, and they were on the PK almost immediately, and then fell behind at 4:09.

For Colgate, I think that this is a throw-away series. Schneider was the only player to pick up a point on the weekend; she now has 68 in her career. Next in career points is Larose with 33. When was the last time that the Gophers played a game with so little proven production? Probably the fall of 2005 just after Wendell, Darwitz, and Stephens had left; I remember St. Lawrence coming to town and making the Gophs look like a club team. You can tell that some of the young Raiders have talent, but just haven't figured it all out yet. Minnesota's coaches were very aware of Serdachny and made a point of shutting her down.

As for Minnesota, they only played two new players, one sparingly. Based on her resume, Wethington isn't likely to be the typical new player in terms of coming up to speed. The Gophers should be able to hit the ground running more than most teams this time of year. Our third line finished the season playing together as the fourth line, and I thought that familiarity was apparent. The only real problem up front seemed to be Wente trying to figure out where she fit in with the Pots after two years of mostly being with Zum and Scham; she'll get there. The fact that they could play without their senior captain on D, get only a period from Gulstene, and still look this complete says a lot.

The PP will take time, but there are pieces available. I thought that Knowles didn't have the hands needed for the role they tried to play her in. Maybe that was going to be Marshall? It will be interesting to see if it looks better in Mankato.
 
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