St. Cloud
The first thing Bob Motzko talked about post-game was how his team seems to be on a yo-yo right now, and tonight was the bottom of that yo-yo.
He said they had a good week of practice, started out playing well, but then they got frustrated and that frustration mounted as the game went on. The word 'implosion' was used a couple times.
He obviously didn't use any names, and there's probably multiple players you can attribute that to, but Garrett Roe seems the most obvious. He's a fiery player, and looks great when things are going well, but you can also see him get very frustrated at times.
For what it's worth, St. Cloud didn't seem to feel like they got totally dominated by a better team tonight. They just felt like they didn't play their best game. Motzko called it "a very vanilla performance".
UMD
The first question to Scott Sandelin was something to the effect of "I guess you've been saving all those goals from the past couple years for this year" to which Sandy replied, "So you're saying we've still got a lot more coming?"
The two biggest things that stuck out to me from the press conferences was that UMD really worked on their penalty kill for this game, specifically shutting down Roe and Lasch. "Taking away time and space" for those two was mentioned a couple times. I think this goes back to my theory about St. Cloud missing Andreas Nodl more than people thought. His presence down low on the right side of the net bought both Lasch and Roe a ton of space this year. Aaron Marvin and Tony Mosey aren't garnering the same respect.
The other thing mentioned by both Sandy and Nick Kemp/Mike Greer was how both Jack and Mike Connolly make the players around them better. That's definitely evident both in person and on the score sheet. You add two great offensive players like that into a lineup and they can make a bad offensive team look pretty good.
Both coaches seemed positive on the experience. They both said their players were excited to play at X, and that they'd like to see the event continue.
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3 comments:
I didn't realize tUMD was a bad offensive team. I don't think anyone other than you thinks that.
They miss Nodl and the defense is not "much improved." Maybe by the second half the new guys on D will step it up.
Last year tUMD's offense was abysmal, I think plenty of people are surprised to see five goals in a WCHA game from the Bulldogs.
Mosey and Marvin shouldn't garner the same respect Nodl got, not when Nodl put up 90 points in 2 years, when they start to produce they will start to earn respect.
Right now for St. Cloud it's got to be about playing together as a team and not trying to do too much as individual players.
These guys get way too frustrated when things aren't going their way.
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