Fighting Sioux coaches show.

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Notes from the coaches show.

Tim Hennessy: We discussed it this afternoon DU is one of the best teams the Sioux has played. Coach Hakstol agreed with Tim, maybe because Minnesota didn’t give their best effort when they were in Grand Forks a few weeks back. Hakstol said, “DU is a very good especially their forwards like Rhett Rakhsani who had a great weekend for the Pioneers.”

Tim Hennessy: Denver University Freshman Joel Colborne who was picked to be the preseason ROY in the WCHA was almost invisible this past weekend and that isn’t a knock on him. Coach Hakstol said that they had watched Colborne develop over the years in the AJHL and if Colborne is given time to develop in the WCHA by the team that drafted him, Colborne is going to be a great player in the WCHA. Coach Hakstol said that the WCHA is a tough league even for juniors and seniors. Tim and Coach Hakstol were also wondering who Colborne was drafted by, for the record Joel Colborne was drafted by the Boston Bruins.

Tim and Coach Hakstol discussed Tyler Bozek playing with Salazar and Colborne before the injury. Coach Hakstol said that, “Tyler Bozek is one of the players in the WCHA that could be playing in the NHL this season.”

Tim Hennessy mentioned the Walk: Coach Hakstol believes at a minimum that they should have gotten a 5-3 power play for the walk. The rest of that stuff is the league’s business. Coach Hakstol didn’t really want to make any moral judgments on the incident and he doesn’t have time to. George set out to affect the officiating and to motivate his team probably accomplished that. Coach Hakstol said that basically we should move on, the incident is over and we are playing SCSU this weekend.

Tim Hennessy: How much better is SCSU now then when you played them. Coach Hakstol, “I don’t know.” When SCSU was here in December he thought that the Sioux got the jump on them and they didn’t have a chance to recover. They are a very dangerous team, at all times you have to be very sharp, their forwards are like Denver.

Tim Hennessy: You got a few of their guys frustrated Roe because he didn’t get any (points) and Lasch who didn’t have much either. Coach Hakstol: We didn’t really match anyone with their guys? We had a couple of lines prepared to play to against them and two defenses paring to play them. Coach Hakstol was very complementary of Husky players Roe and Lasch. Hakstol compared Roe to Denver forward Rhett Rakhshani.

Tim Hennessy: your team has played well for some time your play on Saturday was an aberration. Coach Hakstol said they didn’t have it till the third period we got back where we wanted to be then we took three penalties.
Tim Hennessy: How good was Brad Eidsness. Hakstol he was that good as you thought after the game, he was very good throughout the game.

The Standing in the WCHA is close; there is a jam up at the top. Your guys are energized because they are back in it. Hakstol thought the team got back into it at Christmas time. We stumbled a bit when the team had a brutal weekend in Detroit. I honestly think we have fought out way back into this thing and battled back into this thing. There are 6-7 teams looking at the standings and the Sioux just have to play their game and not standings watch.

Tim Hennessy: Why was Matt Jones was not playing on Friday night? Coach Hakstol said that he would discuss it a little bit but not get into a lot of the details. Coach Hakstol said at the beginning of the season he said that he likes the character of this team. Ben Blood has made great strides in his development. Hakstol is not just going to pull a healthy player out of the line up without talking to him. Jones agreed with Hakstol and told him it was the right move. That takes a man to do that. There are a lot of unselfish players on this team, guys like Harrington, Lammy, Davidson. Hakstol thinks there is a lot of glue on this team and he likes their chances. All 25 guys are committed to the goals.

Coach Hakstol said the environment in the REA the last two weekends have been amazing. The environment was maybe a factor where maybe it helped UND get a point.