I think this blurb from the Fighting Sioux.com sums tonight game pretty well. Not the Fighting Sioux's night or weekend. Kind of a low point of the season.
MINNEAPOLIS--Minnesota scored three goals in the final 5:09 of the second period, including a pair of goals seven seconds apart, en route to a 5-1 win over the fourth-ranked Fighting Sioux tonight in front of the second-largest crowd in Mariucci Arena history.The Sioux ran into the "hot goalie" tonight, seems like the Fighting Sioux run into a hot goalie each and every weekend. The Sioux really didn’t play all that bad they put 35 shots on the Gophers net tonight and could only sneak a meaningless goal by in the third period. The Sioux killed themselves with stupid penalties at inopportune times. Players have to stop taking knuckle headed penalties in key points of the game.
The defenseman have to be more smart with the puck, turnovers kill this team each and every week. Chip the puck out of the zone. Don’t count on your goaltender to bail you out, because the goaltending have been absolutely brutal this season. I hate to bag on the goaltender but In my humble opinion I believe that goaltending is the weakest link on this team. Brad Eidseness has to be better if this team is going to win. I don’ t understand it, Eidness stinks up the joint and yet coach Hakstol keeps going back to him. Only think I can figure is that Dell must be hurt or he is not doing well in practice I don’t know what else it could be. Seriously, I wonder why he doesn’t at least get a chance to play, when the starter has stunk up the joint, like he did tonight.
All good teams are back stopped by great goaltenders, unless you can score goals and put teams away. Not this team. Reviewing the game tape in my mind, the first goal was questionable, defense didn't pick up the man. Forward went to the net unchallenged. The second goal, Brad had no clue where the puck was, didn't even see it. On the third goal defense should have been sued for non-support, same with the fourth. On the fifth and final goal, this was grounds for being pulled from the game and sent to the showers. Disgusting effort.
Second Achilles heel this weekend was the power play; UND was 0/9 on the power play this weekend that has to change. I hope finally the guys in that locker room realize that they need to have a team effort from everyone.
[Box score]
