Gophers coach frustrated by late breakdown at Denver with split in sight

Gophers coach Don Lucia said last weekend was frustrating for him and his team.

"We were three minutes away from a split," Lucia said on Monday during his weekly radio show on 1500-AM. "Heading out to Denver, it has been a very difficult building for us to play in over the years and have success.

"And Denver has a good team. They are getting more healthy. They got their goaltender [Sam Brittain] back. And we knew after they lost and tied [with Colorado College] the weekend before that they would be ready to go, certainly this weekend. And if we could have got that split -- you look at boy, we were at North Dakota, we had CC at home, we were home and home with St. Cloud and at Denver. Five of the eight on the road, if we could have been 5-3 in that stretch, that would have been terrific."

Instead, the Gophers go 4-4, see their lead in the WCHA dwindle to one game over UMD and see the preseason favorite Pioneers become relevent in the race, too, just two points back.

He said the Gophers not only gave up a late power play goal Saturday, which tied the game at 3-all, but made a mistake on the first shift of overtime to lose 4-3.

"OK, we gave up the power play goal, at least maybe we can get away with a point and keep Denver four point back, but that wasn't to be," Lucia said. "Give Denver credit for making some plays at the end of the game, but we made some mistakes."

Nick Shore of DU scored both the tying goal -- on a power play -- and the winning goal.

The Gophers had a 2-1 lead and were on a power play in the third period Saturday when things started going badly. The Gophers took two penalties to make it a 4-on-3 for Denver and then Erik Haula's stick broke and it was a 4-2 and the Pioneers scored.

Nico Sacchetti gave the Gophers another lead, at 3-2. "Nico is playing really well right now, which is great to see," Lucia said. "I am happy for him and he was rewarded. And then you think, 'we are going to close this thing out now.'

"Again it was an inadvertent penalty, we [Justin Holl] tried to pick up a guy's stick and we missed and hit him in the facemask and it is a two-minute high-sticking, no issue with the call. We are a minute and a half into the kill and we are so close to getting it killed and, had we gotten the kill, their top end guys were out there two straight minutes. They had no more timeouts. They probably could not even have played that last minute.

"That's the frustrating part to be so close, but yet so far."

DENVER DANGEROUS

"That shows you there are 10, maybe 12 teams that are so close together," DU coach George Gwozdecky said, "that a win or a loss against a good team can move you several spots."

The Gophers dropped to No. 13 in the PairWise ratings with the two losses. Most years, a team needs to be in the top 15, probably 14 to be assured of an at-large NCAA bid.

"As important a win as that was for us [Saturday]," Gwozdecky said, "it is more important how this team is coming together."