The world is flat and the Gopher hockey team has gone over the edge and fallen into the abyss! The responsibility for this disaster has to fall squarely on Don Lucia and his coaching staff. There is absolutely no excuse for the miserable uninspired hockey this team has played this season ! I would add that the coaching staffs failures has been an on going problem for a long time now.
While watching two other Big 10 teams play on the Big 10 Network recently the announcers started talking about the Gophers. One of them said, "They look bored !". Bored is just one of the negative adjectives I'd used to describe this team. Unfortunately these problems are not recent developments. The Gophers have consistently come up flat in the post season for a decade now. A well coached team improves as the season progresses. The Gophers have often started the season winning a lot of games only to fade late in the season then fail completely in the post season. Year after year they lose to teams they should never have lost to ! The coaching staff has to accept responsibility for these failures !
How many players show up their Freshman year looking like they will set the world on fire then not only don't improve as their college hockey career progresses but actually fall off in subsequent years ? I can think of quiet a few Gophers who fall into that category ( I'm not going to name names here but I'm sure we can of think of a lot of players ). A good player will improve playing for a good coach. By the time he moves on to the next level he should be a better hockey player than he was as a freshman.
We call Minnesota The State of Hockey. A few weeks ago while watching Hockey Night In Canada the CBC announcer described Minnesota as "the best hockey state in America". As such our expectations as Gopher hockey fans should be on a par with the expectations of a football fans in Alabama or a basketball fan at Duke. We should expect and demand the best hockey program in all of college hockey. We certainly aren't getting it ! It's time for Don and his staff to move on. Ideally we need to find another Herb Brooks. A guy who can put the right chemistry together on the ice and demand results. I realize that guys like Herb are few and far between. Mike Hastings has done a heck of a job at MSU. Him or a guy like him is what the gophers need.
While watching two other Big 10 teams play on the Big 10 Network recently the announcers started talking about the Gophers. One of them said, "They look bored !". Bored is just one of the negative adjectives I'd used to describe this team. Unfortunately these problems are not recent developments. The Gophers have consistently come up flat in the post season for a decade now. A well coached team improves as the season progresses. The Gophers have often started the season winning a lot of games only to fade late in the season then fail completely in the post season. Year after year they lose to teams they should never have lost to ! The coaching staff has to accept responsibility for these failures !
How many players show up their Freshman year looking like they will set the world on fire then not only don't improve as their college hockey career progresses but actually fall off in subsequent years ? I can think of quiet a few Gophers who fall into that category ( I'm not going to name names here but I'm sure we can of think of a lot of players ). A good player will improve playing for a good coach. By the time he moves on to the next level he should be a better hockey player than he was as a freshman.
We call Minnesota The State of Hockey. A few weeks ago while watching Hockey Night In Canada the CBC announcer described Minnesota as "the best hockey state in America". As such our expectations as Gopher hockey fans should be on a par with the expectations of a football fans in Alabama or a basketball fan at Duke. We should expect and demand the best hockey program in all of college hockey. We certainly aren't getting it ! It's time for Don and his staff to move on. Ideally we need to find another Herb Brooks. A guy who can put the right chemistry together on the ice and demand results. I realize that guys like Herb are few and far between. Mike Hastings has done a heck of a job at MSU. Him or a guy like him is what the gophers need.