I'm going to disagree with Kevin on this one; I don't think this weekend was
a case of Minnesota not performing under pressure.  I just think that North
Dakota is a much better team.  Even under the best of circumstances, I don't
think this would be any better than a third-place team (behind North Dakota
and St. Cloud) and perhaps not even that.  Obviously, this hasn't been the
best of circumstances.  Crowley and Rasmussen turned pro so late that I
thought the team looked out of sync from the word go and were looking for a
leader and a personality.  Then the bad bounces and close losses started,
followed by the wave of injuries.  By the time they were all over, you had a
team that was playing two men short for six weeks and was thoroughly out of
sorts.  It's possible that coaching or (lack of) senior leadership was
responsible for this, but I thought that, all things considered, the Gophers
fought through it pretty well.  They certainly played hard, except for a
couple of games here and there (such as the first one vs. Denver).  Heck,
they just played UND tighter than anyone, except St. Cloud, has in quite a
while.
 
But let's take a look at what this team might have been like without all the
injuries.  They simply don't have anyone who you'd think of as a real
play-maker on the blueline.  If you think back to successful Woog teams,
this has always been a prerequisite.  Godbout, Kohn, and Abrahamson each
have some some useful, though not stellar, offensive capabilites; none of
them leap out at you as someone who can direct an attack, though.  Clymer
showed some potential last year, but that's still not his game and it's a
big leap of faith to count on him just after his freshman year.  There isn't
a Crowley, or Larry Olimb, or Tom Pederson in this group.
 
There isn't a whole lot of firepower up front, either.  Ryan Kraft, Dave
Spehar and Wyatt Smith are all good.  The problem is that they play best as
a line, which leaves the team rather short of punch elsewhere.  I think we
were all distracted by Casey Hankinson's play last year and forgot that for
two seasons, he looked a lot more like Ben than Pete; too much was probably
dropped on his shoulders (our first clue should have been those uniforms
unveiled at the Hall of Fame game).  Reggie Berg has been something of a
disappointment; he has obvious skills, but is frighteningly inconsistent.
You keep waiting for him to put it all together and catch fire, but he only
does so for brief periods.  But this isn't new this year; last year was very
similar.  Reg is someone who's going to have to step up next season to see a
big turn around.  Mike Anderson, Nate Miller, and Rico Pagel are all solid
players who can come up with big goals and the occasional hot streak.  As
much as they are my favorite kind of players, though, they aren't ever going
to be your scoring leaders.  I really like the freshman class of forwards
and think that Westrum and Miskovich could be the core of a strong team in a
couple of years, but that's a bad place to put your reliance this year.
 
Early in the year, I thought that Steve DeBus was inconsistent and not up to
his previous standards.  While I still think that was the case, honesty
compels me to say that he has really turned it around.  He single-handedly
kept Saturday's game against UND to a margin less than a touchdown.  He
wasn't stellar in the third period on Sunday, but the Sioux probably would
have managed to beat Ken Dryden.  They played that well and would have kept
coming until they had the four goals they needed.
 
Essentially, the Gophers need to regroup and get set for trying to make a
serious run in the WCHA playoffs.  But let's not pretend that that isn't a
long shot.  And not performing under pressure isn't the big worry.
 
J. Michael Neal
 
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