Lucia's silence prompted Gophers' leaders to urge more effort

Don Lucia didn't waste his breath last Friday night.

"See you tomorrow" was all the Gophers men's hockey coach said to his players after his team's 5-4 overtime loss to the U.S. National Under-18 team, an exhibition defeat after being swept by Minnesota Duluth.

The limited message made a bigger impact than any long-winded rant Lucia could have delivered.

"As a team, we need to be grounded … and each individual player on this team needed to find a different level [of commitment]," senior defenseman and alternate captain Ben Marshall said. "I think when that happened, when he came in and just didn't say anything, I think maybe we all realized it a little more. We need to fight better and just all around have a better work ethic."

The fight won't get any easier for Gophers. They'll spend Thanksgiving weekend in Boston with a split series against No. 12 Boston College on Friday night and Northeastern on Saturday night. It's the Gophers' first trip to Boston College since January 1999 and first to Northeastern since 1987.

Boston is also the site of this season's Frozen Four.

The Gophers' core leadership used the extra time after Lucia's short message last weekend to voice its own concerns. Senior captain Kyle Rau said it was a chance for everyone to re-evaluate their commitment and effort.

"I was just telling everybody to stick together. It's a long season," Rau said. "Hopefully that was one of those weekends we'll look back on in two months and no one will even remember it. … There were times last year it felt like we weren't going to have a very good year or whatever. It's all part of the deal. You have your ups and downs and right now, we just had one of our downs so we're trying to get back up on the up slope."

The Gophers' top lines have been stuck in a scoring drought over the past 10 periods and the defense continues to make poor puck management decisions in front of its goal. Lucia said he expected some growing pains with a young blue line and two of his top players injured, but the reoccurring mental mistakes are frustrating.

Lucia has been happy with junior goaltender Adam Wilcox's improving effort and said the team needs to build on that.

Playing for one another was the focus during the week of practice. The leadership core said it felt like they got away from that over the past several weeks and a road trip could be just what the team needs to reconnect.

"Right now it's just not clicking and that sometimes can be a tough, tough pill to swallow for some," senior forward and alternate captain Seth Ambroz said. "We just gotta be able to respond and find that extra energy, find that spark. … With the ability we have, we'll find it and when we do, we can do a lot of good things."