First off, North Dakota played very, very well.  The desraved the win.
On the other hand, this is developing into the most gutless group of
Gophers I have witnessed in a lomg time.  Steve DeBus (despite the 12
goals against), Brett Abrahamson and Wyatt Smith were the only Gophers
who had a good weekend.  Add to that back-up goaltender Willy Marvin,
whose only action was to go after a VERY mouthy Jason Blake after the
final buzzer.
 
DeBus was tremendous.  Granted, the goal that broke the 2-2 tie tonight
was set up when he mishandled the puck and the next UND goal was soft.
Still, he made some tremendous saves in these two games.  If the goalies
had been reversed, the combined score of the two games would have been
something like 22-3.
 
Minnesota has gone back to giving up an amazing number of odd man
rushes.  When they make passes, they don't seem to pay any attention to
whether there is an opposing player (or two) between the passer and
receiver.  It is time to stop being so cute with the puck and pay
attention to the situation as it actually exists on the ice.
 
Most conspcuous for poor play has been Erik Rasmussen.  He has been a
non-factor since returning from the World Juniors.  He is far too
concerned with throwing his weight around and taking dumb penalties.  He
is contributing nothing constructive.  Through the first half of
December, he was the best player on the team.  I can only go back to
what I said about his suspension for improper registration; I think his
head is already focused on his pro career.  If this is the case, I wish
he would go ahead and sign with the Sabres, because he isn't helping
here.
 
Casey Hankinson has also been a disappointment.  He disappeared in the
first game of the series and took a checking from behind major late in
the first period tonight.  Minnesota killed off the penalty, but Casey
got tossed and wasn't around to help out the rest of the game.  The
whole team has to cut down on the penalties, and this would be a fine
place to start.
 
Other than that, it's not worth singling out individuals for criticism.
 These two losses were a total team effort.  That Minnesota was in the
Friday game at all was a miracle; after two periods, they had been
outshot 41-11, but were within one goal not long into the third because
DeBus stood on his head.  They couldn't ever get over the hump, though,
and lost 6-4.
 
Tonight, they just collapsed.  Minnesota led 2-1 after two periods
despite being outshot and marginally outplayed.  After they gave up the
tying goal, the Gophers lost heart.  When the Sioux stepped up the
pressure, Minnesota had no answer except to cough up the puck and watch
the game turn into a rout.
 
It has now been almost two months since Minnesota actually outplayed
what the Pairwise Rankings consider to be a TUC.  Boston College,
Alaska-Anchorage and Michigan Tech are all sub-.500 teams (the last two
dramatically so).  Over this stretch, they were outplayed by Miami in
the Mariucci Classic but stole a win, outplayed by Denver but managed a
split and did the same against St. Cloud.  Now they've been whitewashed
in Grand Forks for the second year in a row.  If they continue to play
the way they have lately, it isn't inconceivable that an NCAA berth
could slip away from them.  Doug Woog has to use this weekend to light a
fire under his team.
 
J. Michael Neal
 
Tonight's game was very chippy all the way through.  For starters,
someone seems to have torn the interference page out of Don Adam's copy
of the rulebook, so bodies were flying everywhere.  A major scuffle
broke out after the first period.  It was probably ignited by a North
Dakota player poking at a puck underneath DeBus a good three or four
seconds after the horn, though tempers had been high for ten minutes by
that time.
 
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