Lucia frustrated with lack of scoring

"We would like to be the top team in the country each and every year," Gophers coach Don Lucia said on Wednesday during the team's weekly media day. "Is that realistic? Probably not. But what we want to do, is try to get back to where we were. We are disappointed in where we sit right now."

The Gophers are tied for seventh place in the WCHA standings with Alaska Anchorage. They are three points behind sixth-place North Dakota, five ahead of ninth-place Minnesota State Mankato.

"There is no secret [about that disappointment]," Lucia said. "Certainly our players are [upset]. Certainly our coaches are. But all you can do is to continue to work in practice and try to make your team better and hopefully you string together a couple of wins and that kind of turns the tide on everything."

The Gophers have only six regular-season games left, three at Mariucci Arena, one at Target Center and two at UMD.

Lucia said the Gophers played well on Friday in a 3-1 loss at Denver. "We played as good a game as we have all season long," he said. "We hit the pipe there. We had two breakaways in the second period and don't score when we have chances to take the lead and maybe extend the lead. Then all of a sudden they make the play and we are down 1-0."

Tyler Ruegsegger scored for DU at 55 seconds of the third period. Those goals late or early in a period seem to carry more weight.

"That's kind of the way it has gone for us," Lucia said. "Not being able to create enough from an offensive standpoint to win games or seize momentum early in games. We touched on [it] early in the season, where maybe we scored in the first period, then we can't score again. Or we can't get that second goal to get the lead or extend the lead. We haven't done that enough this year."

"That's the one thing, more than anything else, that is hard to teach," Lucia said. "You have those natural goal scorers, the guys who can put the puck in the net. That's something with this team, at least its shown so far this year, that has been lacking. We have some guys that are capable of scoring a few more goals. We have a couple guys that almost need to be a little more selfish on when they shoot.

" We have a number of players that look to make a pretty play as opposed to pound pucks to the net. It's something we have touched on all year and worked on, is traffic and the rebounds and getting in front of the net because that is where you are going to score goals."

Lucia sounds a bit like a broken record or maybe he is in his own Ground Hog Day movie, reliving the same nightmare over and over again. Makes someone wonder whether the players can't be taught, don't want to change or if the teaching techniques are flawed. Hard to know.

"Denver [on Saturday] night, they scored five goals and probably none of them were more than 3 feet from the blue paint," Lucisa said. "We haven't had enough of those kind of goals this year. "

No kidding.