PHILADELPHIA<\/b> — Before Minnesota took the ice for its Friday practice, Don Lucia was frank about what the Golden Gophers need to do in Saturday’s national title game.<\/p>\n
“We need to play better tomorrow to beat Union than we played last night,” Lucia said.<\/p>\n
For fans, the last-second nature of the Gophers’ win 2-1 win over North Dakota on Thursday may obscure what the Gophers themselves see plainly.<\/p>\n
“I thought some of our young guys played tentative,” said Lucia. “It’s amazing sometimes when you’re a little bit nervous that your legs get heavy and they’re not moving the way they need to move. I thought we were fortunate in some regards last night to be moving on, but sometimes you have to find a way to win. And we found a way to win and we stuck with the game until we made a play.”<\/p>\n
North Dakota outshot Minnesota 37-28 and the Gophers often had difficulty maintaining possession of the puck in the offensive zone. In that regard, Lucia said, North Dakota may have done Minnesota a favor.<\/p>\n
“North Dakota’s defensemen were very offensive and very active in the play last night,” said Lucia, “so that’s going to help us I think with the mentality we’re going to have to have in the game tomorrow.”<\/p>\n
“We have to be more solid defensively,” said senior captain Nate Condon, a forward. “When they [North Dakota] got into the offensive zone, they ran a lot of high cycles and their D really used their feet to change shooting lanes and things like that.<\/p>\n
“It’s more of a matter that our wings had to be more active defensively. It wasn’t so much of just standing out and guarding your point; you had to be involved and be communicating with the D corps and the guys you had to switch with there in the D zone … and that was probably one thing that we picked up big early in the North Dakota game.”<\/p>\n
The Dutchmen and the Gophers are well matched on paper. Union’s offense is second in the nation (3.73 goals per game) and Minnesota’s is sixth (3.48); the Dutchmen are fourth defensively (2.10), the Gophers second (1.98).<\/p>\n
“We have to be a little bit sharper,” said Lucia, “and get pucks behind the D and establish more offensive zone time than we did last night because Union’s a very, very talented team.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Before Minnesota took the ice for its Friday practice, Don Lucia was frank about what the Golden Gophers need to do in Saturday’s national title game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":140328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1426],"tags":[729],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n