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Minnesota Gophers 2022-23

Hockeynation said:
Your observations seem to be bang on. Such a talented team with great potential. Seems like a lot of individualism appears vs. the lesser opponents as some players seem to make it about chasing stats rather than proper fundamental team play and puck movement. Needless to say going to be an awesome Championship weekend to watch coming up.
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Boy, you called this. They look like they are playing pond hockey way too much of the time. (I don't include the first line in this. Heise will go free-lance from time to time, but often enough she succeeds at it, and generally she is playing very well with others. Particularly Boreen, who BTW, I feel has improved throughout her Gopher career more than any other player I've watched.)

And while I'm here....if M Wethington made the fundamental play 80/90% of the time and the "I'm so spectacular, watch this!" play 10/20% instead of vice versa she could really be something. As it is she is just a pretty good player who adds greatly to the general ridiculous game the Gophers way too often play.

Finally.....with this roster this is a season to do something at the end of the year.
 
KTDC said:
And while I'm here....if M Wethington made the fundamental play 80/90% of the time and the "I'm so spectacular, watch this!" play 10/20% instead of vice versa she could really be something. As it is she is just a pretty good player who adds greatly to the general ridiculous game the Gophers way too often play.
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Ok...Someone else calling out #5 which admittedly, I have done in the past. I gave up on it because, unfortunately, it isn't going to change until eligibility runs out.

KTDC said:
Finally.....with this roster this is a season to do something at the end of the year.
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The talent is there to do something but I don't think they have the teamwork needed to go with the talent required to win a championchip.
 
I really hate Murphy’s dirty play, a lot. But I have a hard time not being affected by how all out she goes all the time and how much fun it looks like she is having.
 
KTDC said:
I really hate Murphy’s dirty play, a lot. But I have a hard time not being affected by how all out she goes all the time and how much fun it looks like she is having.
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I concur, but that is a good point about her effort and the smile on her face...

the feisty play is fixable and would love to see that happen.
 
Murphy is like a smaller Lamoureux without a twin. I watched a postgame interview by Hockey Live with her earlier in the season (maybe 1st tOSU game at Ridder), and she sounds like somebody who grew up playing with guys, like maybe 60 year old guys, who would hack each other for 60 minutes and then drink a 6-pack each and cuss a blue streak. Undisciplined? Yes. She dishes out punishment and gets as much back. She leads the team in +/- and is second to Heise in goals. It isn't pretty at times, but she does give it everything she has.

As for the team as a whole, they skated hard throughout. I hope that they have the legs left to give the same effort with a quick turnaround tomorrow. They'll have to be a bit cleaner, because tOSU probably isn't going to somehow fail to score from in front as often as Wisco' did. And they'll have to stay out of the box.
 
That was a really good game. Overall, Minnesota was the better team, though Wisconsin definitely had their chances. One encouraging thing for Gopher fans is that this was not another episode of The Taylor Heise Show. She played well, but was limited to a single secondary assist, plus an assist on Skaja's empty net goal. With most forwards, I cringe when I see that they are going to have to defend the rush from a defenseman position.

If Wisconsin played as well against anyone else as they do against Minnesota, they'd be really dangerous.

One thing I can't figure out is why the people that incessantly complain about Madelaine Wethington give a pass to Lizi Norton. She's been a turnover machine all year, and frequently gets caught in the offensive zone as the play goes by her. Of the defensemen that get regular ice time, she's been the weakest link. She doesn't provide the sort of offensive threat that Wethington does. In the limited action she saw during the mid-season injury crisis, I thought that Allie Franco played at least as well, and should be in the lineup.
 
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Still Eeyore said:
That was a really good game. Overall, Minnesota was the better team, though Wisconsin definitely had their chances. One encouraging thing for Gopher fans is that this was not another episode of The Taylor Heise Show. She played well, but was limited to a single secondary assist, plus an assist on Skaja's empty net goal. With most forwards, I cringe when I see that they are going to have to defend the rush from a defenseman position.

If Wisconsin played as well against anyone else as they do against Minnesota, they'd be really dangerous.

One thing I can't figure out is why the people that incessantly complain about Madelaine Wethington give a pass to Lizi Norton. She's been a turnover machine all year, and frequently gets caught in the offensive zone as the play goes by her. Of the defensemen that get regular ice time, she's been the weakest link. She doesn't provide the sort of offensive threat that Wethington does. In the limited action she saw during the mid-season injury crisis, I thought that Allie Franco played at least as well, and should be in the lineup.
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For me it’s because every time I watch Wethington play I get the feeling of someone who could be a great player if she made a fundamental but seemingly not so difficult shift in how she plays the game. Lizi Norton just hasn’t been good.

My frustration level is totally different quantitatively and qualitatively watching what I perceive as underperforming talent vs a bad player.
 
KTDC said:
My frustration level is totally different quantitatively and qualitatively watching what I perceive as underperforming talent vs a bad player.
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While I agree with your overall premise, this last characterization goes beyond what I would say. And though I am quoting you, I don't mean to single you out specifically. The Gophers have people who get few shifts and may not even dress for games who would at least be in the mix for the top two lines on the depth chart at some other programs. It isn't easy to be in a role like Franco, who might not get called on for two months, but she has to be ready when called upon. This season, she wasn't given the opportunity to play against the top-level competition, so we can't really say how she will do once she is. Are there varying levels of ability? Definitely. But the range isn't so wide that those nearer the bottom of it are "bad".

Ashton Bell is a great player: Olympic gold medalist; 1st-Team, All-WCHA; defensive-PotY type talent. Yesterday, she made a bad play that was very costly to her team. That doesn't suddenly make her a bad player. Hockey players, even great ones, make mistakes. It's part of the game. Minnesota players are going to make errors, and when they do, I feel it is part of my role to accept that they are human, and imperfect, and continue to support them.
 
UMD defensemen (and an ex UMD defenseman) with 3 primary assists on goals for their opponents yesterday. Two of which were especially egregious with Bell (UMD) and Norton (UM).

What KTDC says about #5 is how I feel. I cringe a lot whenever she gets the puck in her own zone because it will likely be on her stick for far too long.

In comparison, #28 doesn't play the minutes that #5 does and even though she does turn the puck over more than you would like, she will also make the more fundamentally sound plays that KTDC refers to.
 
ARM said:
While I agree with your overall premise, this last characterization goes beyond what I would say. And though I am quoting you, I don't mean to single you out specifically. The Gophers have people who get few shifts and may not even dress for games who would at least be in the mix for the top two lines on the depth chart at some other programs. It isn't easy to be in a role like Franco, who might not get called on for two months, but she has to be ready when called upon. This season, she wasn't given the opportunity to play against the top-level competition, so we can't really say how she will do once she is. Are there varying levels of ability? Definitely. But the range isn't so wide that those nearer the bottom of it are "bad".

Ashton Bell is a great player: Olympic gold medalist; 1st-Team, All-WCHA; defensive-PotY type talent. Yesterday, she made a bad play that was very costly to her team. That doesn't suddenly make her a bad player. Hockey players, even great ones, make mistakes. It's part of the game. Minnesota players are going to make errors, and when they do, I feel it is part of my role to accept that they are human, and imperfect, and continue to support them.
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"Bad Player" was an unfortunate use of shorthand. But I completely agree with eyesore's description of Norton.
 
FiveHoleFrenzy said:
In comparison, #28 doesn't play the minutes that #5 does and even though she does turn the puck over more than you would like, she will also make the more fundamentally sound plays that KTDC refers to.
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I'll note that this is why Norton does not have the offensive upside that Wethington does. It's why Wethington is better at getting the puck out of the defensive zone. There's a trade-off there, and I think some people do not appreciate the positive side of that exchange. She is, if not a great player, at least a very good one. As I've said before, Brad Frost's teams always have a defenseman that plays the way Wethington does.
 
We probably aren't that far apart in our assessments of the various Gophers D. Handling the puck in your own zone is a vital skill for them, and it's one of those jobs like being an OL or CB (except when intercepting a pass) in the NFL, where you are judged as "just doing your job" when things work and receiving an inordinate amount of blame when they don't. Norton's error wasn't that she made a play that she should never make, it was that she failed to recognize that play wasn't available in that instance. Hengler was very shaky early in yesterday's game, but she got better and her mistakes didn't result in goals, so we don't remember them as clearly. UM's PK was too passive on the second goal allowed; I doubt that the plan was to give LaMantia a free look from the slot below the top of the circles. And mistakes happen the other way, as well. I don't remember which Badger put the puck on Hemp's stick for the first goal, but TYVM. Of course, she made a nice play to control the puck and set up Kaiser's chance, just like the Badgers made nice shots after our goofs.
 
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