It was an interesting weekend.  A split, but both teams played better in the
game they lost than in the game that they won.  Friday was most certainly a
closer game than the 5-2 score would indicate.  In fact, if Steve DeBus
hadn't come up huge in the first and second periods, the Gophs could easily
have been run out of their own building.  They put together a great third
period to mount the comeback, but if not for DeBus, I would have to say that
CC outplayed them for the game as a whole.
 
Tonight, Minnesota completely dominated the second and third, outshooting CC
26-3, but giving up the only goal.  They controlled the play, but didn't get
as many great chances as they should have.  The Tigers are a much smaller
team than they were last year and the Maroon and Gold are, if not bigger,
certainly much more physical than in recent seasons.  They spent most of the
weekend punishing CC very effectively, but got too cute in the offensive zone
rather than just pounding it in.  At this stage of the season, the offense
hasn't gelled sufficiently for these tricky passing plays to be very
successful.
 
Referee Mike Schmitt called very loose games both nights.  This worked to the
Gophers advantage, a claim I haven't been able to make for a while.  Ryan
Kraft was lucky not to get a major for the hit that put Dan Peters in the
hospital, and I was disappointed not to see it called that way.  Still, it
fits very well into the context of what Schmitt let go all weekend.  An
equally blatant hit from behind ON Kraft went uncalled in the last few
minutes of the secnod game.
 
Speaking of Kraft, I thought he had a poor weekend all around.  He picked up
an assist on Minnesota's only goal tonight, but that was due to a wonderful
play by Mike Crowley to recover the deflected pass and convert it into a
shot.  In addition to the bad penalty on Friday, Kraft did not fare well in
close.  He tanked the breakaway he had as he stepped out of the box after the
cross-check.  Worse, there were three instances where he was all alone in
front of the net when a teammate fed him a pass and never even managed to
launch a shot on any of them.  In the second period of the first game, he
played croquet wicket as the puck went through the five hole.  On Saturday,
he twice clanged it off his stick trying to receive the pass.  It's only the
first weekend and there are all sorts of good explanations for what went
wrong.  Nevertheless, Kraft is a guy who is going to have to perform this
year for Minnesota to be successful.  They are short of nifty playmakers this
year and need him to step into that role.
 
Mike Crowley played well, but is something I'm a bit worried about.  I sat in
the fourth row behind the goal on Friday.  There were too many times that
someone else would pass the puck to Crowley to start a breakout when he was
covered by CC and the guy passing it to him wasn't.  Someone commented about
Michigan during Felsner's senior year that the team had a habit of saying,
"Here's the puck, Denny.  Go win the game for us."  I'm a little worried that
Minnesota might do the same thing this year when the going gets tough.
 
Three guys I praised last week had another good weekend.  Nate and Cory
Miller were once again all over the place.  They crash the net looking for
loose change and in general throw some weight around to create havoc (Nate
has more of it to throw, but other than that I thought they looked very
similar).  Bill Kohn showed a different side of his game than against BU.  I
was pointing out that he's got some real skill and isn't just the thug I
thought he would be.  Now he has showed that he can also be a thug.  Along
with Rasmussen, he led the team in its efforts to play demolition derby with
CC.  We'll see how well his style holds up with a ref who's not as lenient as
Schmitt was, but he was the kind of presence Minnesota has needed on D.
 
To resurrect a thread that floated around last year, I want to come to the
defense a couple of this year's Gopher sophomores.  To the person who
bemoaned the fact that Matt Cullen got away, along with a couple of other
members of the class, I will once again ask, which of the guys the Gophers
got would you discard?  Wyatt Smith took a lot of abuse last year, I guess
because he looked like a freshman at times.  Mike Anderson was an
afterthought for most people.  These two were tremendous this weekend.
 Between them, they only had one point, but both were constantly in the thick
of things.  Against a team that doesn't play defense as well as CC, Anderson
could have had a hat trick either night.  In the tradition of John Brill, I'm
beginning to think that Anderson is going to be my favorite player on this
team, assuming that the Millers don't edge him out on numbers.
 
Dave Spehar.  I think this kid's upside potential is everything that's been
claimed, but it's going to take him a while to reach it, assuming he ever
does.  He doesn't have a lot of straight line speed after others have caught
up with his explosive first step.  The nifty moves that he used last year
aren't going to fool opponents at this level, so he's going to have to take
the time to learn new ones.  At this point, his shot has been a big
disappointment; the chances he has had have not been finished off with any
authority.  I would attribute this to him concentrating on all the things
that he needs to work on.  In the long run, I think this is the right
approach.  He hasn't been the defensive liability that he might have been,
though there were a couple of times I saw him lingering up ice.  Some of his
passing has been very sharp (such as the assist to Godbout for the first goal
on Friday).  Other passes have been poorly thought out or executed, but this
hardly singles him out; the whole team got caught up in the idea of long
passes through two defenders.  On the whole, I think he (and obviously the
coaching staff behind him) are going about things the right way.  We're just
going to have to be patient and wait for him to develop.
 
In all, a good weekend.  I'm disappointed that we didn't manage to pull out a
win tonight, but I'll take a split.  Denver, my pre-season pick to win the
league, got swept.  For the time being, I'll continue to believe that North
Dakota isn't going to run away and hide like CC has recently.  The Gophers
appear to be right in the thick of things.
 
J. Michael Neal
 
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