--- 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