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MN Gophers @ tUMD Bulldogs: Sibling Rivalry!

Re: MN Gophers @ tUMD Bulldogs: Sibling Rivalry!

Hey, Harley, I think it will be a weekend of Hyde and Jekyll this time... Gophers will lose Friday because the Dogs will be amped up, but Gophers take advantage of the Friday hangover and sneak one out on Saturday. Consistently inconsistent!

This weekend will be a showcase of some of the best goalies right now in the WCHA: Reiter/Crandall, and Patterson. Patterson is by far the MVP elect of the Gophers this season, and is second in the WCHA in SV%. Reiter and Crandall have been alternating over the last few series for UMD and are #1 and #3 respectively in GAA in the WCHA. Patterson is 4th. If all goalies play consistently up to their potential, these may be low scoring, close games this weekend.

The Gophers need more help from their quiet, overdue seniors if they hope to get any points whatsoever this weekend. Barriball, Cepis, and Hoeffel need to generate more offense and scoring early. Special teams have got to step up this weekend. The Gophers are a pathetic 9th in PP and 12th in PK in the WCHA. UMD is 1st in PP and 2nd in PK. Obviously, the Gophers will be shooting themselves in the foot if they get in penalty trouble against UMD.

A positive is the Gophers defense has improved from the first half and has only allowed one game over 3 goals in the last 11. That's also been partly due to the outstanding goaltending the Gophers have been getting from Kent Patterson.

I think the Gophers will be up for the rivalry and they have been surprising better on the road than at home this season as well. I'll go along with you on this one Gordy, the Gophers will split this weekend.
 
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Re: MN Gophers @ tUMD Bulldogs: Sibling Rivalry!

Yep. Exactly. What they needed to have happen was the offense to stay and the defense to tighten up over time. Instead they reverted back to the last 3 years or so and turned their goaltender into their best player.

I disagree with the initial assessment that 'Patterson is the ONLY bright spot". He is the only consistently bright spot (for the most part). The Gophers as an entire team have had bright spots this season, with the last couple Friday night games where they looked capable of beating any team in the country, and in the Duluth win. Didn't see the Mich game (####ing BTN!) but sounded good. The worst part about the season isn't that they are so poor that they require a great game by the goalie to win every night. It is that they have demonstrated they are capable of using all the skill on this team to play at a very high level, but only rarely have achieved that and never for an extended period.
 
Re: MN Gophers @ tUMD Bulldogs: Sibling Rivalry!

The Gophers need more help from their quiet, overdue seniors if they hope to get any points whatsoever this weekend. Barriball, Cepis, and Hoeffel need to generate more offense and scoring early. Special teams have got to step up this weekend. The Gophers are a pathetic 9th in PP and 12th in PK in the WCHA. UMD is 1st in PP and 2nd in PK. Obviously, the Gophers will be shooting themselves in the foot if they get in penalty trouble against UMD.

A positive is the Gophers defense has improved from the first half and has only allowed one game over 3 goals in the last 11. That's also been partly due to the outstanding goaltending the Gophers have been getting from Kent Patterson.

I agree that the Seniors just aren't showing the consistent "heart" they need to, to lead by example. This team needs to find a way to believe in itself.

As for better defense, I put that more on improved defensive play than Patterson playing better. Patterson has played well all year. What I see as the change is we aren't seeing multiple times per game where an opposing player is fed the puck in front of the net and is all alone. In the first half the season, opposing teams on rushes were able to hit the trailing player with a pass all the time because a forward wouldn't pick them up. Or three Gophers would go into a corner to try to take the puck from one or two players in the corner, and leave an opposing player standing in front of the net waiting for a pass. Those lapses seem to have been reduced, which means Patterson doesn't have to try to stop guys with all the time and space on his doorstep.

Of course, in every other game, they are still standing around on D (especially on special teams) waiting to see what the other team does rather than just out-race/muscle/desire them for the puck!
 
Re: MN Gophers @ tUMD Bulldogs: Sibling Rivalry!

I disagree with the initial assessment that 'Patterson is the ONLY bright spot". He is the only consistently bright spot (for the most part). The Gophers as an entire team have had bright spots this season, with the last couple Friday night games where they looked capable of beating any team in the country, and in the Duluth win. Didn't see the Mich game (####ing BTN!) but sounded good. The worst part about the season isn't that they are so poor that they require a great game by the goalie to win every night. It is that they have demonstrated they are capable of using all the skill on this team to play at a very high level, but only rarely have achieved that and never for an extended period.

That all may be true. However, they now sit as fourth worst in scoring in the WCHA. How do you argue out of that stat? The only teams not scoring more goals than the Gophers are UAA, Bemidji, and Tech.

So, I find it hard to find "bright" spots with the offense as a whole. Game to game there have been some nice games, but as a whole Patterson has been "THE bright spot" on the team. And that was the #1 thing in my mind that had to change this year.

From Roman's Tweet.

Gophers have scored 72 goals, only three WCHA teams have scored fewer: Mich Tech with 58 and Alaska Anchorage and Bemidji St. with 54.

Stats don't lie.
 
Re: MN Gophers @ tUMD Bulldogs: Sibling Rivalry!

I think the Gophers will be up for the rivalry and they have been surprising better on the road than at home this season as well. I'll go along with you on this one Gordy, the Gophers will split this weekend.

Probably. If they truly want to make it interesting yet this year they would need a sweep or two the next few weekends which seems impossible considering who and where we play.

A 6 game winning streak would do the trick. :)
 
Re: MN Gophers @ tUMD Bulldogs: Sibling Rivalry!

Lost in all our discussions is John Hill. I love the man. He is a fantastic coach. I hope one day he will take the reigns from Lucia.
 
Re: MN Gophers @ tUMD Bulldogs: Sibling Rivalry!

Of course, in every other game, they are still standing around on D (especially on special teams) waiting to see what the other team does rather than just out-race/muscle/desire them for the puck!

And it drives me batty! They better win battles to the puck and move their feet or they'll be digging themselves a hole early.

That all may be true. However, they now sit as fourth worst in scoring in the WCHA. How do you argue out of that stat? The only teams not scoring more goals than the Gophers are UAA, Bemidji, and Tech.

So, I find it hard to find "bright" spots with the offense as a whole. Game to game there have been some nice games, but as a whole Patterson has been "THE bright spot" on the team. And that was the #1 thing in my mind that had to change this year.

They've actually slightly improved in scoring on goals per game from last year. Last year at this time the Gophers played 28 games/78 GF: 2.78 G/GM; this year 24 games/72 GF: 3 G/GM. With the same amount of games played, the increase in goal scoring this year from last year will probably be negligible and nothing to shout about. I thought Grant Potulny's presence would help in this regard? I'm not sure what Potulny has significantly accomplished during his time to continue to earn an assistant coaching spot.
 
Re: MN Gophers @ tUMD Bulldogs: Sibling Rivalry!

Did posts get lost or has no one really commented since wee this morning?
 
Re: MN Gophers @ tUMD Bulldogs: Sibling Rivalry!

Did posts get lost or has no one really commented since wee this morning?

They are running the backup, trying to recover all of today's posts that were lost. Server went schizo. There is an info link near the top of the pages to the forums.
 
Re: MN Gophers @ tUMD Bulldogs: Sibling Rivalry!

The Gophers matched the intensity of the Dogs in their dogpound tonight and got the early lead. Amazingly, 5 times the Gopher PK shutdown the Dog's tenacious PP. Both goalies lived up to their stellar reps stopping a combined total of 80 SOG :eek:. The highlight was Barriball being stonewalled by Reiter on the breakaway.

The Gopher's made some stupid mistakes with 4 Ozone penalties and neutral ice turnovers that inevitably cost them the win. Nice to see seniors Barriball and Fairchild with goals. Can the Gophers pull out a W tomorrow night? Coming out of this series with 3 pts. will be a huge lift for this team.
 
Re: MN Gophers @ tUMD Bulldogs: Sibling Rivalry!

The Gophers matched the intensity of the Dogs in their dogpound tonight and got the early lead. Amazingly, 5 times the Gopher PK shutdown the Dog's tenacious PP. Both goalies lived up to their stellar reps stopping a combined total of 80 SOG :eek:. The highlight was Barriball being stonewalled by Reiter on the breakaway.

The Gopher's made some stupid mistakes with 4 Ozone penalties and neutral ice turnovers that inevitably cost them the win. Nice to see seniors Barriball and Fairchild with goals. Can the Gophers pull out a W tomorrow night? Coming out of this series with 3 pts. will be a huge lift for this team.

Were you at the game or watching on TV? You have remarkably different impressions than I did, watching the game.

First, the Gophers's early lead came despite tUMD really setting the tone and controlling the play during the opening 10 minutes or so. Things evened up more after that, but the beginning was all tUMD.

Barriball shot the puck right into Reiter's glove. Patterson had the highlight save of the game, I think actually two of them. One where he came across the crease so fast none of us could even believe it, and another where I turned to Jup and said "Lucia should be fired just because he hasn't played Patterson before now."
 
Re: MN Gophers @ tUMD Bulldogs: Sibling Rivalry!

Were you at the game or watching on TV? You have remarkably different impressions than I did, watching the game.

First, the Gophers's early lead came despite tUMD really setting the tone and controlling the play during the opening 10 minutes or so. Things evened up more after that, but the beginning was all tUMD.

Barriball shot the puck right into Reiter's glove. Patterson had the highlight save of the game, I think actually two of them. One where he came across the crease so fast none of us could even believe it, and another where I turned to Jup and said "Lucia should be fired just because he hasn't played Patterson before now."

I don't think we're entirely that different in our observations, but I wasn't at the game. UMD did come out of the gate strong and outshot the Gophers in first few minutes. But overall I thought the Gophers matched the intensity of the Dogs and they're PK was surprisingly sustainable and they got the lone PP goal. Balls perhaps could of put a better move on Reiter and got a better look. And as you pointed out Patterson had some great saves too.

I think Lucia's reasoning behind playing Kangas was based primarily upon Kangas' stellar freshman season and postseason that carried the Gophers all the way to the F5 championship game and the NCAAs. He admitted though he probably played him too much last year.
 
Re: MN Gophers @ tUMD Bulldogs: Sibling Rivalry!

I don't think we're entirely that different in our observations, but I wasn't at the game. UMD did come out of the gate strong and outshot the Gophers in first few minutes. But overall I thought the Gophers matched the intensity of the Dogs and they're PK was surprisingly sustainable and they got the lone PP goal. Balls perhaps could of put a better move on Reiter and got a better look. And as you pointed out Patterson had some great saves too.

I think Lucia's reasoning behind playing Kangas was based primarily upon Kangas' stellar freshman season and postseason that carried the Gophers in F5 championship game and the NCAAs. He admitted he probably played him too much last year.

Lol, Jup had practically a verbatim response re: Kangas.

Fun game. No one listen to FHG's whining about AMSoil Arena.
 
Re: MN Gophers @ tUMD Bulldogs: Sibling Rivalry!

Lol, Jup had practically a verbatim response re: Kangas.

Fun game. No one listen to FHG's whining about AMSoil Arena.

I've heard lots of positive comments about the arena. The only slightly negative comment actually came from Lucia in his post game in saying something like the lighting on the ice was a bit dimmer than in other rinks. He said during the practice that he actually thought some of the lights were out, but discovered they were all on.

CC beat Denver last night and UAA won over MTU. That means the Gophers sit in 7th today. I expect Denver to win over CC tonight and UAA will finish off a sweep of MTU.

Soooo...log jam/crunch time again Gopher fans! Given this reasonably hypothetical scenario, if the Gophers Win/6th, Lose/8th, Tie/CC, UAA, Gophers in a tie for 6th.

This makes a win in Duluth tonight even more important for the Gophers especially looking forward to next weekend with Denver coming into Mariucci. If the Gophers lose and end up in 8th place in the WCHA, other series next weekend with CC/MSUM, UAA/UND become very critical for the Gophers in their battle for home ice in the playoffs. NCAAs? They need a string of wins against top teams (UMD, DEN, WIS), finish strong against MTU (home) and BSU (away), win the first round of the playoffs, and some games in the F5 to come close to being considered a possibility for the NCAA tournament.
 
Re: MN Gophers @ tUMD Bulldogs: Sibling Rivalry!

I was at the game last night and I will state the obvious that both goalies played fantastic. I will admit that I have not watch the Gopher's play much this year, but I will say they suprised me. Last night UMTC played with as much intensity as I've seen any team play UMD this season.

Look for both teams to shore up their D tonight...no excuse allowing that many SOG by either team. Dogs are tied for 2nd place 1 point behind the Sioux (who are off this week). If the Dogs want to make a run for the McNaughton a W tonight sure would be a step in the right direction. Anything less than a W and 3 points would be disappointing. With that being said, UMD is in a great position to get an NCAA bid. BTW...the Bears won the division this year...do you think anyone in Green Bay cares who won the division now? If the Dogs don't win the regular season...that will be disappointing, but an NCAA championship is what I really want.

GO DOGS!!!
 
Re: MN Gophers @ tUMD Bulldogs: Sibling Rivalry!

I've heard lots of positive comments about the arena. The only slightly negative comment actually came from Lucia in his post game in saying something like the lighting on the ice was a bit dimmer than in other rinks. He said during the practice that he actually thought some of the lights were out, but discovered they were all on.QUOTE]

I think that's interesting the Lucia mentioned the lighting. One of the first things I noticed about the Amsoil Arena was how much brighter the rink area looked compared to the DECC arena. I'm been to the AA and to Mariucci. Both are great rinks and are designed different enough that it's hard to compare the two. However, if you asked me to pick what one I like better I would have to say AA without any question (note I'm very biased).
 
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