Roman Augustoviz is covering Gophers hockey this season for a fourth year. Coach Don Lucia's team finished seventh, fifth and seventh in the WCHA his first three years on the beat, but it’s not his fault. Occasionally, Roman will write about other Gopher sports such as volleyball, wrestling, cross country, track-and-field and baseball.
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Lucia said everyone has to contribute, play well at Ralph
Coach Don Lucia said everybody on the Gophers hockey team has to play well in their first round, best-of-three series at North Dakota.
"When you get into the playoffs," Lucia said during his weekly radio show on Monday, "you can not have passengers. Everybody has to play their A game, especially in the environment that we are going up to, if we are going to give ourselves an opportunity to win.
"And then what has to happen, guys are going to have to make plays. And when the plays are there, we have to finish our chances. We've got to block the key shot, we got to make the key save. If you do those things, then you are going to have a chance to move on.
"But if you have those opportunities and you miss the net or it goes off the pipe, then the mountain becomes that much higher."
He said his players all understand that.. "If we continue to get the effort that we have been getting, we will take our chances," Lucia said.
Lucia said the most important thing to win is a tight defense and not giving up more than two goals. "If North Dakota gets four or five on the board," Lucia said, "it will be awfully difficult for us to win. We want to go up there and play a great road game.
"Our feeling is that if it is 0-0 after the first period, we are happy. As long as we can keep that game tight into the third, or maybe even into overtime. Based on history I wouldn't be surprised if the games are going into overtime this weekend. Good starts are going to be extremely important and then all 18 guys and the goaltender have to play well and I think they will be prepared to do that."
The Gophers and North Dakota are 1-1-2 in four games this season. Each won one game at home and tied one.
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