Update: Minnesota held on to win 6-3 tonight despite a late surge from the Mavs. Jerad Stewart scored with minutes remaining, but the deficit was too much to overcome. After Zacharias was pulled in favor of the empty net, Ryan Flynn made it a three goal differential with the open goal – his first tally of the year. Talk about powerplays, Minnesota is now 4-for-8 tonight as Jordan Schroeder got his second goal of the night around the seven minute mark to make it 5-2 Gophers. Mike Carman picked up an even-strength goal earlier in the period. Gophers outshot the Mavs 37-28. Goodnight everybody. Second: Five goals in one period, what teams are we watching? These two usually don’t score five in a game when they play each other. State’s fourth-line winger Mike Louwerse scored twice for the Mavs while Stoa, Schroeder and Fischer tallied for Minnesota. Stoa scored his sixth goal in six games, Schroeder scored his first career goal, and Fischer got his first of the season. Didn’t point it out earlier but Mike Zacharias IS in net for State after taking that nasty cut to the head last night. Here’s a link if you missed it. The funny thing is Zacharias lost his helmet again tonight early in the second, that’s three times this weekend. Minnesota is leading on the shot chart 23-17 and how about this…a night after going 1-for-11 on the powerplay, the Gophers are now 3-for-7 tonight while on the advantage. That’s got to have the coaching staff happy. Here’s an interesting defense of team’s not disclosing injuries by former NHL goalie Kelly Hrudey: http://www.cbc.ca/sports/blogs/2008/10/disclosing_injuries_can_put_pl.html. Hrudey is referring to the NHL’s new policy, but it still applies to college hockey. It justifies the difference between the Stoa and Fischer injuries, but I still disagree with the way Lucia addresses it. Don’t say you can’t talk about an injury, say you won’t talk about it. First period:
It’s been a pretty dull game so far, sorry no pregame. Let’s see…Nico Sacchetti and Jake Hansen are both back in the lineup after being benched last night for violating team rules. Like I said last night in the blog, I thought both Joe Miller and Michael Dorr played well as fillers, but both were scratched tonight. Don Lucia really didn’t have anything to say about Dorr and Miller other than that Dorr should have finished on his near goal that was barely kept out by Kurt Davis’ stick.
Lucia said the suspensions "speak for itself." I’ve got no idea what that means, but I’m guessing nobody is ever going to find out what happened. Lucia is extremely tight lipped when it comes to the team. When David Fischer sat out the Saturday game with SCSU with a shoulder injury, Lucia said he couldn’t talk about it because "that’s what rules say." What rule is that? I just find it a bit strange that a minor injury can’t be discussed yet there was an official release when Ryan Stoa went down with a season ending knee injury last season.
Anyways, shots were down in the first period with the Gophers leading 9-6. Penalties were low too with each team pulling in a pair of offenses. The lineup for Minnesota is the same as usual but here the lines are anyways:
Stoa-Schroeder-Barriball
Lucia-Carman-Flynn
Hoeffel-White-Sacchetti
Hansen-Matson-Bostrom
Fairchild-Fischer
Ness-Anderson
Wehrs-Lofquist
Kangas in goal.