Gopher Hockey Season Thread 25-26

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Outsider said:
Glad to know that you already know who the winner is, the seasons first game hasn’t even been played yet. Any of a number of teams can win it. At this time Minnesota has just as good a chance as anyone. Your such a pessimist it’s ridiculous.
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Shame, looks like I was right about the team having no chance. Just let me know when you agree Motzko has to go and enjoy watching these guys play B Bantam hockey until you come around.
 

This could be the worst Gopher team I have seen in my lifetime. I thought we'd be maybe 3rd or 4th in Big Ten. We are a last place team. It's tough to see.
 


Crosby said:
This could be the worst Gopher team I have seen in my lifetime. I thought we'd be maybe 3rd or 4th in Big Ten. We are a last place team. It's tough to see.
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Maybe if the idiot coach wasn't so full of himself to realize his recruiting is now shit and that he needed to go to the CHL and the portal more we wouldn't be here.
 


bonin21 said:
Shame, looks like I was right about the team having no chance. Just let me know when you agree Motzko has to go and enjoy watching these guys play B Bantam hockey until you come around.
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I don’t have to come around, Gophers aren’t my first nor second favorite team. I grew up in northern Minnesota and I went to school at Mich Tech. My order is Tech, UMD, then the Gophers.
 

Funny that the usual posters who only show up to give Bonin a hard time have been completely silent lately. It was clear to anyone who was looking objectively that this team was going to struggle, and as it stands next year isn't looking any better. Losing Mittlestadt and Thomas on the back end is going to be painful considering who will be coming in and none of the current starters project to be able to play at the level of those two. It is time for a coaching change, let someone new who is willing to embrace the current college hockey landscape build this program back up. Not saying it has to be done during the season, but a change should be made this offseason.
 



Does this team get to double digit wins this year? I think that’s a fair question at this point.
 


Crosby said:
This could be the worst Gopher team I have seen in my lifetime. I thought we'd be maybe 3rd or 4th in Big Ten. We are a last place team. It's tough to see.
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The worst season in Gopher history to date was in 1971-72 when they went 8-24, a .250 win percentage. The current Gopher team has a .278 win percentage exactly 1/4 way through the season. I don’t know how old you are but this team is potentially on track to be historically bad, maybe not just in your lifetime bad.
 
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GopherPete said:
Funny that the usual posters who only show up to give Bonin a hard time have been completely silent lately. It was clear to anyone who was looking objectively that this team was going to struggle, and as it stands next year isn't looking any better. Losing Mittlestadt and Thomas on the back end is going to be painful considering who will be coming in and none of the current starters project to be able to play at the level of those two. It is time for a coaching change, let someone new who is willing to embrace the current college hockey landscape build this program back up. Not saying it has to be done during the season, but a change should be made this offseason.
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think the challenge is the mass discrepancy in what Bob sold vs what we're seeing on the ice and then the choice from Bob to stand pat on this roster. He's an experienced coach and I 0% buy the bonin take he's just mailing it in. I've watched him too long behind the bench and he reacts too much for a guy who doesn't care (like Lucia who'd just stand there stoically while the team looked like absolute shit). This looks like its hurting him but that does not mean he gets away without blame in it.

If they were playing hard checking, grittier hockey from the guys he brought in with the idea he said we were going to get older and heavier so you could tell it was a clear transition year while older, more finesse guys moved on, sure that's fine. Think that style fits with guys like Hendrickson, Zeimer, Whipple. But instead we're not finishing checks and guys are floating out there. You knew you'd get freshmen mistakes (like the crap that leads to WIs goal post PP where one guy holds up play and 3 guys come towards him with no one reading and communicating its painfully obvious its a hold up play and he's going to dump the puck in, where there should be a waiting Gopher defender instead of everyone acting like a peewee skating to the puck), but that's the part I don't get.

We'll find out this offseason if we have an AD who's going to take hockey seriously. Bob didn't manage the roster well with some lean years in MN recruiting and didn't decide to go address it with adding some guys who were either even older/grittier/experienced in the portal or some high end talent in the CHL which was his choice. He either needs a GM to help with that or we need to move on.

Obviously I think Bob was thinking he'd have some guys be here this year that weren't who would've buffered some of this by being our clear top line who instead have chosen to play AHL minutes or ECHL minutes who really should've stayed (Chesley, Kurth, Moore), but that's on him to have addressed that. There are a couple guys who look like they should be good middle 6 players that have come in (Pritchard, Moe) and some then Mooney is a top line talent coupled with some solid guys like Zeimer and Hendrickson. But there are also too many guys who look like mixes between 4th liners/healthy scratches and Bob should know that seeing them play. I'm not saying this is pitchforks time, but he's going to need to change with the times or this will continue with what he's currently put on the roster and in the pipeline. They don't all need to be 1st rounders (DU has shown that, WMU has shown that), but if they're not going to be 1st round skill guys, they need to work their asses off, hit and play smart hockey. I'm fine with either style, but the horses we currently have don't fit a full roster to play either of those ways
 
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bonin21 said:
And turns out one isn't even a Gopher fan
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You’re right, not my first team. But I’m not an eternal pessimist like you are. Treat the team for what it is, entertainment instead of like your life depends on them always being good. Your blood pressure would go down significantly. College sports isn’t even college sports anymore, it’s paid professionals in case you haven’t been watching.
 

Outsider said:
You’re right, not my first team. But I’m not an eternal pessimist like you are. Treat the team for what it is, entertainment instead of like your life depends on them always being good. Your blood pressure would go down significantly. College sports isn’t even college sports anymore, it’s paid professionals in case you haven’t been watching.
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Supporting multiple teams in one sport says a lot about how you approach things.
 

upnorthkid said:
Motzko. Hynes is getting canned midseason
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Agreed, Hynes is lucky to survive November. And Guerin should go with him. I don't trust him to be in charge of the "rebuild" that they are going to have to go thru to get this team to be serious contenders.

Motzko will at least get to finish out the season....I think
 

GopherPete said:
Motzko will at least get to finish out the season....I think
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They don't fire college coaches mid season. We get to suffer through what could turn out to be the worst Gopher hockey season in 100+ years.
 

bonin21 said:
They don't fire college coaches mid season. We get to suffer through what could turn out to be the worst Gopher hockey season in 100+ years.
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They don't fire college *hockey* coaches mid season, but they do in other sports so at some point that is going to change and we'll see it happen in hockey
 

bonin21 said:
They don't fire college coaches mid season. We get to suffer through what could turn out to be the worst Gopher hockey season in 100+ years.
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yep. we may have seen this in the last lucia season, but a god awful B10 saved it looking worse than it could've been. Though truthfully that team could've skated circles around this one with where they're at right now
 

yep. we may have seen this in the last lucia season, but a god awful B10 saved it looking worse than it could've been. Though truthfully that team could've skated circles around this one with where they're at right n
upnorthkid said:
yep. we may have seen this in the last lucia season, but a god awful B10 saved it looking worse than it could've been. Though truthfully that team could've skated circles around this one with where they're at right now
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This seems to be 100 percent correct. I really can't believe how far we have fallen. I mean, that was not remotely close last night. I had posted here after last season that I thought it was time to consider a change. But... there is NO WAY I thought we'd be this bad.
 

Crosby said:
yep. we may have seen this in the last lucia season, but a god awful B10 saved it looking worse than it could've been. Though truthfully that team could've skated circles around this one with where they're at right n

This seems to be 100 percent correct. I really can't believe how far we have fallen. I mean, that was not remotely close last night. I had posted here after last season that I thought it was time to consider a change. But... there is NO WAY I thought we'd be this bad.
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I posted it on GPL as well, but as an FYI with some edits to make it make sense as an isolated post.

It's the hard part to know what to make of it when you have Moe (18), Zeimer (19), Mooney (18), Hendrickson (20) against WI and Finley (21), Fitzgerald (23), Horbach (23), Kukkonen (22), Morrissey (22) and Tassy (24). They're going to look like shit unless they're just head and shoulders more talented. The BC series told us this isn't a bunch of 1st rounders we snuck in and that the team wasn't as good as what we had in the past, but even game 2 of that series the team figured it out because BC couldn't just outphysical us like WI can with size and experience. Similar to the UND series. But this type of matchup is an absolute nightmare for this kind of team similar to the UMD series and MI/PSU/MSU are just going to be more talented than we are. That's on Bob for not addressing it, but it's not surprising at all to see WI stranglehold us with the general roster makeup up front and who's playing right now.

Bob should've stop gapped this team with either poaching more US kids if he didn't want to go to Canada or should've recruited the CHL. To not do so was a fool's mistake and he sold us that these kids would be ready. Now they may grow through the year but this is also super hard on a player's psyche to go out there and get bitched for a season by older guys from WI, OSU and ND then follow it up with high end talent at MI/PSU/MSU skating around you. At some point he needs to slide into talent eval and figure out what holes to plug for next year, knowing he could push some of these kids off to USHL for a year mixed in the middle or cut bait entirely (Begley, Rud, Harris are easy removals, then there are numerous bottom 6 forwards and you do not NEED to bring in Phillips or Grimes). If he's not willing to do that, you need someone who is as it's also going to stunt a lot of these players and think we're going to get a way better version of Kvasnicka coming in next year compared to if he would've come in and played for this team this year, even if he would've helped it appears
 

bonin21 said:
And I've said it on here, that is not acceptable for this program. New coach won't have his squad built until at least year two.

So you'd be looking at a title in spring 2029 at the earliest. 26 years. They have to cut the cord in March/April.
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A title? 😂 MN ain’t winning shit. 87 and 91 is ancient history. Over 20 years with no natty! State of hockey my a$$. Nothing for sports fans in MN to hang their hat on. Tommy’s and Bulldog’s will win a Natty before the Gophers ever do.
 

Big Dawg said:
A title? 😂 MN ain’t winning shit. 87 and 91 is ancient history. Over 20 years with no natty! State of hockey my a$$. Nothing for sports fans in MN to hang their hat on. Tommy’s and Bulldog’s will win a Natty before the Gophers ever do.
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Your likely wisconsin/North Dakota education really comes through in your post.
 

upnorthkid said:
I posted it on GPL as well, but as an FYI with some edits to make it make sense as an isolated post.

It's the hard part to know what to make of it when you have Moe (18), Zeimer (19), Mooney (18), Hendrickson (20) against WI and Finley (21), Fitzgerald (23), Horbach (23), Kukkonen (22), Morrissey (22) and Tassy (24). They're going to look like shit unless they're just head and shoulders more talented. The BC series told us this isn't a bunch of 1st rounders we snuck in and that the team wasn't as good as what we had in the past, but even game 2 of that series the team figured it out because BC couldn't just outphysical us like WI can with size and experience. Similar to the UND series. But this type of matchup is an absolute nightmare for this kind of team similar to the UMD series and MI/PSU/MSU are just going to be more talented than we are. That's on Bob for not addressing it, but it's not surprising at all to see WI stranglehold us with the general roster makeup up front and who's playing right now.

Bob should've stop gapped this team with either poaching more US kids if he didn't want to go to Canada or should've recruited the CHL. To not do so was a fool's mistake and he sold us that these kids would be ready. Now they may grow through the year but this is also super hard on a player's psyche to go out there and get bitched for a season by older guys from WI, OSU and ND then follow it up with high end talent at MI/PSU/MSU skating around you. At some point he needs to slide into talent eval and figure out what holes to plug for next year, knowing he could push some of these kids off to USHL for a year mixed in the middle or cut bait entirely (Begley, Rud, Harris are easy removals, then there are numerous bottom 6 forwards and you do not NEED to bring in Phillips or Grimes). If he's not willing to do that, you need someone who is as it's also going to stunt a lot of these players and think we're going to get a way better version of Kvasnicka coming in next year compared to if he would've come in and played for this team this year, even if he would've helped it appears
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Thank you for the informative post. Based on your analysis—and results to date—the season is over by Halloween except for the playing of the inevitable losses. Hard to believe how far we’ve fallen.
 

Married@SiebertField said:
Thank you for the informative post. Based on your analysis—and results to date—the season is over by Halloween except for the playing of the inevitable losses. Hard to believe how far we’ve fallen.
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personally i never call it over until it definitively is, but for all purposes it has moved into the 1% territory of likelihood of just making the NCAA tournament
 

upnorthkid said:
personally i never call it over until it definitively is, but for all purposes it has moved into the 1% territory of likelihood of just making the NCAA tournament
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Someone will say the 2003-04 team started with the same record. They are of course, idiots, as that team had Thomas Vanek and Keith Ballard
 

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