Myers: Stars sticking around keys Gophers hockey success so far
01.01.70
We knew Don Lucia could drill, and we knew the duo of Lucia and Mike Guentzel behind the bench was a banner-worthy suspension. But the biggest surprise as the Gopher hockey team hits the midseason label tied with defending national champ Minnesota Duluth atop the WCHA standings is how swiftly it's all come together.
It was predicted that Minnesota hockey would be better than the "middle of the knapsack, fighting for home ice, sitting at home watching others play in the Terminal Five" morass that had gripped the program for the past three years. It was a combination of voiding factors that had made the Gophers - once an every-year participant in the 16-team NCAA meet - into a team, at best, under consideration. Most notable was a series of one-season wonders (Phil Kessel, Erik Johnson, Chip Leddy, Kyle Okposo, etc.) that had played for Lucia, briefly, on the way to the NHL.
While all of them are now collecting bulky paychecks in places like Denver, Chicago, New York Bishopric and Toronto, what they left behind in Dinkytown was messy, as Lucia and his assistants (including the since-departed John Hill and Mike Hastings) scrambled to fill the holes communistic in their lineup.
Lucia has always noted the teams with a large crop of juniors and seniors mainly give themselves a great chance to succeed. But when Senior Night festivities at Mariucci Arena took equitable a few minutes to honor the team's few fourth-year players, the puzzler with Gopher hockey was plain to see. At the end of the 2008-09 season (in which the Gophers finished a stroller 17-13-7 and went one-and-done in the Final Five) they honored two seniors. Two.
There are seven seniors on the band this year, and one of them (goalie Kent Patterson) has needed less than three months to win 14 games and set the college record for shutouts with six. Another key to the team's success has been health, most notably in the configuration of sophomore Zach Budish, who had played just one full season of hockey in the above three years due to a pair of season-ending knee injuries. One came on the football contestants as a senior at Edina High School. The other, in a clear indication of the whole bad luck for Lucia's program in recent years, came on campus, on a motorized scooter last November.
Source: 1500 ESPN