Just a quick review of the this past weekend at MTU and a short look forward to this coming weekend at Wisconsin. Obviously, Friday night was pretty brutal. Sounded like there was some good play by the team but the breakdowns were too much to overcome. Giving up quick multiple goals is always a killer. Good on Dusan Sidor for his play on Friday which was good enough to get him the Saturday game.
Saturday was full on heartbreaking. Come back from a 3-0 deficit to take the lead? 4 straight goals is always awesomeness. Not being able to make the one-goal lead stand? There's all sorts of adjectives for that. I can't imagine the players were anything other than pissed off at themselves.
Not getting any scoring from underclassmen forwards has me concerned. With half the season gone you'd like to see the higher profile freshman forward finding their touch. Specifically, Scott Allen, Sam Mellor and Eric Scheid really need to start finding ways to get it done if the team wants to accomplish something noteworthy this season. Those three guys are going to be go-to guys in the future ... I have no doubt about that. But they're all now getting good minutes with good linemates and have enough games under their belt to be up to speed with the college game.
The penalty kill was solid shutting out the Huskies. But conversely, getting shut out on 9 power play chances in 2 games blows.
It's rough I'm sure having that much time off, coming back to some ineligibility issues and suspensions for late arrivals then trying to win hockey games. That shouldn't be an excuse though. We've seen this team learn much over the last couple of years in terms of learning to be resilient and finding ways to get over the hump. Well, we're at the point in this season now where those traits need to become part of the picture.
Lastly, all the hoopla and confusion and finger-pointing regarding Mickey Spencer's departure should just stop now ... ok? Doesn't matter exactly what happened etc from my standpoint. If Mickey wants to email me, I'll be happy to express his views. If not, as I hope I said before ... best of luck to him in whatever he chooses to do.
Now it's Advil time again for me.
6 comments:
Hey Donald. First off, hope you're doing ok yourself (re:the Advil comment). Second, I appreciate your balanced response to this weekends results. You could have sugar coated the losses, but you didn't. But you also gave credit where credit was due as well. I think your conclusion was spot on in that we are going to need to see a multi-class (I.e. not just senior) scoring regime emerge or our gooses our collectively cooked. They may be able to waive last weekends series off as a holiday slump loss, but this coming weekend I think will be a true barometer or the remaining secon half. Let's hope it's a good reading.
Even if we Screamed, would anyone hear us?
LOL, good one Anonymous @ 10:41 (and good question) :)
I like Wally Shaver's line about 56 seconds into this recall of what happened friday night at the Minisoda versus North Dakota game:
http://www.gopherpucklive.com/audio/1500/WallyShaver_BenBlood.mp3
any lines for tonights game?
No lines were emailed to me. That happens a lot with road games ... definitely hit and miss kinda thing.
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