Minnesota Hosts Notre Dame: 1-15-21 & 1-16-21

Ignatius L Hoops

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Megan Ryan:

LaCombe and Johnson are both high NHL draft picks from the second and first round, respectively. Plus, the Gophers have 14-year NHL veteran Paul Martin as an undergraduate assistant on the coaching staff. Between LaCombe and Johnson staying late at practice to help their teammates and Martin offering his pro experience, the Gophers defense never has a questioned unanswered.

And the defensemen ask a lot of them.

"That's kind of the biggest thing that I've noticed," said Martin, a former Gopher now finishing his degree. "… They have a great attitude, they come to work every day, and they ask questions, and they stay after to work on things. And it seems like they all get along, which is huge."
 


Pathetic effort.

Deserved to get boat raced with how they played.
 

The crisp, accurate passing from the beginning of the year is missing now. Lots of pucks hopping over sticks lately. Bad passes and turnovers. Notre Dame deserves some credit for sure. That's a speedy team and the Slaggert Bros and Hellickson are nice players. Gophers gotta be better, though.
 

This is not the best team in the country and if this team played like that against any other of the top 5 teams it would have been 7-2. The weak schedule early on is showing itself more and more each weekend.
 
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bonin21 help me understand better as you seem to be our Gopher hockey guru

Isn't GopherPuckLive the first and foremost place for Gopher hockey fans to talk about their favorite team? I visit there on game days and the game thread today only had about 25 posts from puck drop at 7 pm until the end of the game. Am I missing something? Is there another game thread over there or is a live chat the place to be for game chats? Or maybe there's a different site that I don't know about? Man, if you come to this site during a Gopher basketball or football game or Reddit for other Minnesota sports teams there are hundreds of posts.
 

bonin21 help me understand better as you seem to be our Gopher hockey guru

Isn't GopherPuckLive the first and foremost place for Gopher hockey fans to talk about their favorite team? I visit there on game days and the game thread today only had about 25 posts from puck drop at 7 pm until the end of the game. Am I missing something? Is there another game thread over there or is a live chat the place to be for game chats? Or maybe there's a different site that I don't know about? Man, if you come to this site during a Gopher basketball or football game or Reddit for other Minnesota sports teams there are hundreds of posts.
GPL is the place. I was a heavy user, but when I hit 15,000 posts I decided to take a break and then the Gophers started winning like crazy and I didn't want to mess with a good thing. There is a live chat, but it's usually like ten of us max.

What I think you're missing is just how badly the combination of the Big Ten conference that no one wanted, and holding onto a coach for multiple years too many has hurt the Gopher hockey program. No program in the country was damaged more during the conference shuffling than we were.

I LOVE Gopher hockey. I'm obsessed with it. It's the only sports team I follow religiously and I watch every second if possible. I support the program financially with season tickets in the highest donation section, but... I hate the Big Ten. It's frustrating as a season ticket holder to drive down to the U and know it's going to be half full at best and you don't really care about the teams they're playing.

Even winning games like crazy this year, the excitement is nowhere near what it would be if we were playing the old rivals in conference games every weekend. The only easy road trip in the Big Ten is wisconsin, which was part of the WCHA. So road trips in the WCHA included Mankato and SCSU which you could drive home from same night, Duluth which is an amazing weekend road trip, Madison, UND, and if you want to "splurge" you could get a flight out to Denver or CC (which is a cheap destination from MN) and enjoy the mountains. Also, those WCHA teams are loaded with Minnesotans that you watch play at your local HS or in the state tournament and think "Damn I wished we got that kid when I saw him in HS.".

I could go on, but basically the Big Ten delivered a near death blow to the Gopher hockey program and anything short of a national championship will probably not get the arena full again. Combine that with Kaprisov likely becoming an NHL star across town, which will make many young kids Wild fans primarily and the Gophers an afterthought, and it will be hard to turn things around completely.
 

Thanks for your extensive analysis. Plus, do you think that folks who don't have cable, not being able to watch the games, also leads to meager game thread chat? I've seen lots of discussion regarding FSN not being available to many viewers who don't have traditional cable
 

Thanks for your extensive analysis. Plus, do you think that folks who don't have cable, not being able to watch the games, also leads to meager game thread chat? I've seen lots of discussion regarding FSN not being available to many viewers who don't have traditional cable
That doesn't help but I don't see much more activity for games on BTN, on traditional game nights at traditional times, etc.
 



That doesn't help but I don't see much more activity for games on BTN, on traditional game nights at traditional times, etc.
I mean, there were 1,200 posts on the Reddit thread last night for a Wild game that started at 9 pm. You would think that for rabid hockey fans in the "State of Hockey" there would be more than 25 posts tonight for the #1 rated college hockey team. I tried looking for a Gopher Hockey subReddit, but one doesn't exist. I wonder if that avenue has ever been explored for Gopher hockey fans? There is a GopherSports subreddit, but not really any hockey talk.
 

I mean, there were 1,200 posts on the Reddit thread last night for a Wild game that started at 9 pm. You would think that for rabid hockey fans in the "State of Hockey" there would be more than 25 posts tonight for the #1 rated college hockey team. I tried looking for a Gopher Hockey subReddit, but one doesn't exist. I wonder if that avenue has ever been explored for Gopher hockey fans? There is a GopherSports subreddit, but not really any hockey talk.
Knowing how little activity the college hockey subreddit gets, a Gopher hockey specific one would be dead.

The Wild are another big reason for Gopher hockey's fall. When I grew up there was no NHL team here until I was in middle school. So by that time, I was completely hooked on Gopher hockey. Kids born post 2000 are growing up watching the Wild because, well, watching world class players is amazing.
 

I mean, there were 1,200 posts on the Reddit thread last night for a Wild game that started at 9 pm. You would think that for rabid hockey fans in the "State of Hockey" there would be more than 25 posts tonight for the #1 rated college hockey team. I tried looking for a Gopher Hockey subReddit, but one doesn't exist. I wonder if that avenue has ever been explored for Gopher hockey fans? There is a GopherSports subreddit, but not really any hockey talk.

GH started out strictly basketball. While it's added boards for other sports over the years hockey has never really been a big topic here. Serious hockey fans just never gravitated here in big numbers. If I recall correctly, there used to be a page called Pride on Ice that was all Gopher hockey. Not sure if it's still around.

Anyhoo...not a hockey expert but it look like tonight the gophers just never got in sync on the offensive end and got sloppy in their own end to give up the game winner.
 

If I recall correctly, there used to be a page called Pride on Ice that was all Gopher hockey. Not sure if it's still around.
That was before my time but GPL was the heir
 



I wish the GopherPuckLive crew would migrate over here. Their site is rather outdated. I love how GopherHole has evolved and the site interface has improved over the past 10 years I've been here. I would much rather post here than on GPL. Oh well, a guy can wish.
 

I wish the GopherPuckLive crew would migrate over here. Their site is rather outdated. I love how GopherHole has evolved and the site interface has improved over the past 10 years I've been here. I would much rather post here than on GPL. Oh well, a guy can wish.
GPL is smooth. I go to the portal and navigation is easy. They make improvements over time. Those folks won't migrate over here as many have been friends for years and years, and there really isn't a reason to go over here. They have a podcast which gets some really really good hockey guests.

Since we know the hockey program is trying to replace many fans lost with the WCHA (as well as a very old season ticket holder base), the best we could hope for here is football/basketball fans get interested in the program and become new fans to replace the lost ones.
 

GPL is smooth. I go to the portal and navigation is easy. They make improvements over time. Those folks won't migrate over here as many have been friends for years and years, and there really isn't a reason to go over here. They have a podcast which gets some really really good hockey guests.

Since we know the hockey program is trying to replace many fans lost with the WCHA (as well as a very old season ticket holder base), the best we could hope for here is football/basketball fans get interested in the program and become new fans to replace the lost ones.
I'm thinking that just the sheer number of football/basketball fans on GH could only help GPL if they moved over here. Having it all on one site could only help the GPL crew. A rising tide lifts all boats, right? As it stands now, they are basically on an island over there at GPL. If they moved here, you know they would pick up more interest and fans, by the sheer number of new eyeballs that would see their activity every day, and pop in to the threads to comment and take interest. Basically "One stop Shopping"
 

Rehashing some old issues here that I agree with 100%.
1) Lucia clearly on as head coach way too long allowing the program to lose creditability.
2) Big 10 screwed us. It is a joke to think that we'll get rivalries with other Big 10 schools when we had them basically in our back yard. It will never be the same. If the Big 10 is concerned about money when it comes to hockey attendance, they need to go back to the old WCHA or whatever league they want to call it.

On last night's game. They kind of remind me of the Wild in that they play well, then not so well taking nights off. Not sure why that happens in hockey though as they play fewer games. Don't understand why the players aren't more focus on the game at hand. Afraid of them?

Hopefully we'll have a better performance with the Gold Helmets in the 2nd game.
 

Random criticism: despite having the lowest PIM per game in the NCAA, I've been disappointed by the number of penalties the forwards have been taking especially in the O zone. Forwards have taken 22 out of 35 minors.

Walker/Mclaughlin/Burke have had some of the most disappointing careers in recent memory after what they showed as freshmen. McManus might still be hurt cuz he's doing nothing. You could really list all the healthy forwards as disappointing right now other than Ranta and Meyers (though Meyers had a rough weekend).
 




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