MN Daily: Five for '15: Gophers Back to Big Ten

per the Daily:

The Gophers will attempt to begin their roll in Ann Arbor this weekend, taking on the Michigan Wolverines in their second Big Ten series of the season. Before the two teams face off, here's five storylines around Gopher hockey this week:

1. No Letdown During Big Ten

Coming out of the Mariucci Classic, the Gophers remain the only ranked team in the latest USCHO poll.

But head coach Don Lucia said teams like the Wolverines are starting to heat up, pointing out that Michigan is 8-2 in the team's last 10 games.

"The Big Ten, it might be weak now but teams are starting to come along," sophomore forward Hudson Fasching said. "We kind of have some pressure on ourselves, almost, to go out and win the Big Ten."

http://www.mndaily.com/blogs/upon-further-review/2015/01/07/five-15-gophers-back-big-ten

Go Gophers!!

Hopefully we'll see something different this year and the Gophers will rip a page out of North Dakota's playbook.... slow start, close like a freight train. No better place to start than Yost.

With how bad the Big Ten was out of conference, unless we finish in a very dominant first place, I think there is a good chance we could win the conference and still need to get the auto-bid from the conference tournament to go dancing. The pairwise won't be friendly to us this year.

In my opinion, there are two realistic possibilities for the weekend. One is a split. The second is that Michigan sweeps past the Gophers with ease. If the Wolverines play hard both nights, the Gophers will be in trouble. Minnesota doesn't play hard for full games, that's their M.O. Hoping for a split, but that would be more surprising to me than if we see the Wolverines put it to Lucia's team both nights. If it comes down to desire, Michigan should have a big advantage.