--- Original Message ---
From: "MacKinnon, John" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject:      Can Hauser win a "Clemmy"?


>Adam Hauser reminds me a great deal of Clemensen.
Big, athletic, with a
>penchant for back breaking soft goals in his earlier
career.  Very
>interested in people's opinions whether he can win
a "Clemmy" by getting
>Minnesota over the hump in tournament games.

Can he?  Sure; Hauser has always been capable of some
amazing hot streaks that last three or four weeks at a
time.  That was true in his freshman year, and it was
true early this year.

Will he?  Who knows.  He's also capable of some really
god awful stretches where he looks really lost out
there, and that's as true now as it was three years
ago.  It wasn't an accident that Lucia spent much of
January and February giving Travis Weber and Justin
Johnson a lot of playing time.

Can the Gophers win anyway?  Well, obviously not if
Hauser is at his very worst; then again, who would?  I
think that they can win even if he's not at his best,
though.  That was certainly true this weekend, when
they swept St. Cloud while getting average
performances from him.

I'm not a member of the Cult of the Goalie.  The key
questions for the Gophers don't revolve around Hauser,
they revolve around about 8-10 guys that play in front
of him.  If the top two lines and top four defensemen
show up with their A game, Hauser's performance
becomes less important.

Along these lines, I'm really wondering if Robb
Stauber is going to be a very good goalie coach.
Hauser has never developed as well as he was supposed
to when he arrived on campus.  He's got flashes of
brilliance, but is maddeningly inconsistent.  While
that might be a statement about him, I'm not so sure.
Stauber was a brilliant goalie because of an absurdly
aggressive style that matched his rather unusual skill
set so well.  I'm not at all convinced that he's going
to be effective trying to teach the position to
players that don't have that skill set.

J. Michael Neal