Re: Minnesota Women's Hockey 2015-2016: Confection Free
At the BC-Yale game last year I felt that Yale were very good in patches, not afraid to push the bounds of physicality (and to be honest benefited from a lot of homer refereeing) and had a couple of top-tier players, Staenz in particular. Did you notice a lot of physicality from them this game?
Not really, though reading through the board, I often get the feeling that we define "physicality" a bit differently out here. I didn't think they rose to the level of the average WCHA team in that. Though, some of that may just be that the Gophers were just better at being physical. In front of the net and along the boards, Minnesota had a big advantage.
Surprised to see them get three past Leveille though. I wouldn't have thought they were that good. What's up with the Gopher D this year? You still have Stecklein.
In most of the games, the defensive problems have really been the forwards more than the defensemen. Tonight was something of an exception; by her standards, I thought Stecklein had a poor game, keeping in mind that that means she was just pretty good. The last two games, the goals they gave up only came after Minnesota had established a big lead. This team doesn't seem to keep the pedal down as much as previous teams have and close everything out. Unlike D2D, that doesn't concern me at all, until they show any sort of tendency to let up before they have a big lead, show an inability to turn it back on when things get close, or to do it against a really good team that has the firepower to complete a comeback.
So far, they haven't demonstrated any of those tendencies. I'm very much of the opinion that you simply can't deliver a top notch effort all the time, every period, every single game, though Bemidji challenges that belief. They came close in 2012-13, but that's not going to happen very often. Correctly picking and choosing when to back off is a very valuable skill, and the second and third periods (I thought Minnesota was very good in the first period tonight)of a non-conference game against a mid-to-lower ECAC team is an acceptable time to do so.
In weeks prior to Bemidji, and especially up in Grand Forks, I think a lot of suspect defense was injury related. As I said, it's been the forwards more than the defensemen, and against North Dakota, at least a part of the Brandt/Cameranesi/Potomak line was on the ice for every North Dakota goal on the weekend. Both Brandt and Cameranesi were nursing injuries, and it showed. The backchecking wasn't strong and they struggled when UND would move the puck around in the offensive zone. It wasn't just them, but that was a big part of it.
As of right now, I'm not worried about this team. Unlike some of the others, I think the Gopher/Badger match up in a couple of weeks looks pretty even, and possibly slightly in Wisconsin's favor, but that's because Wisconsin looks to be very, very good, not because I think we aren't. If we can just get to that series with three more wins and no more injuries, style points don't concern me.
