Colorado College came into last weekend's series with the best power play in the WCHA, but the Tigers left wondering how to fix that special teams unit.
"[The Gophers] are a top three defensive team in the country and they showed it," said Owens after his team's 2-1 loss to the Gophers on Saturday. "There was not a lot of room out there [at Mariucci Arena] despite it being an Olympic sheet [200x100 feet].
"A lot of the credit has to go to them and their defensive play. That being said, I don't think I have seen our power play this out of sync in a couple of years. And obviously that was a big part as far as generating chances. We gave up a short-hander. We take a penalty while we are on the power play and then we didn't generate very much."
CC was 0-for-8 on the power play in two games and had only five shots.
"All in all, 2-1 [for CC], 2-1 [for Gophers] -- we didn't have a power play over the weekend," Owens said. "Generally that is a big part of our offense. I liked our compete level, but there just wasn't a lot of room and that is one of the reasons we could not get a lot accomplished.
"We are not moving our feet, we are not making good, safe passes to get things started. On the short-hander, we made a diagonally, hope play that they ended up converting. A lot of shots getting blocked. We are just not moving our feet very well.
"We need this week off, we need to rework it a little bit and come back fresh."
CC's power play has slipped a spot to second in the WCHA at 23.1 percent. The Gophers are third on the power play at 22.6 percent in all games and first on the penalty kill at 84.4 percent. CC is sixth on the pk at 80,2 percent.
