Lucia likes tough early schedule

A TV sports reporter wanted to know, why is the Gophers early schedule so tough, where are the nonconference no-names?

"It's just the way the schedule unfolded," Gophers coach Don Lucia said on Wednesday. "We have our eight non-conference games and they happen to be four in November, then our Christmas tournament [two games] and then we play Harvard the first weekend in January.

"It is just a matter of when the open weekends are. Ideally, we would have liked to play a nonconference game [at the start]. It is not the way it worked out. You don't have control over who you are playing in the WCHA.

"It just so happened we get last year's champion [North Dakota] and the team that is picked to win the league this year in Denver the first two weekends of the year. But I think that is good. It was great we got a chance to open up at North Dakota in a very difficult environment for anybody but more so for us."

Sioux fans seem to especially enjoy their players hitting and scoring on the Gophers.

"This weekend we will learn more [about our players] because we are playing a very good team in Denver, a team that is very quick and able to get up and down the rink. You are able to evaluate your team, your weaknesses, strengths and go back to work the following week in practice getting ready for that next weekend."

After DU, Alaska-Anchorage comes to the Maroosh on Oct. 30 and Nov. 1. There is a day in between games for Halloween or, more importanly, a Gophers home football game.

This season Lucia wants the Gophers to finish strong unlike last season when they struggled, especially in late January and most of February when they went 1-6-1.

"We hardly had any scoring chance on Friday [at North Dakota]," Lucia said. "We didn't earn any. And then on Saturday, we outchanced North Dakota. So those are little things you are looking at when you evaluate.

"Sometimes you have to sit back and watch the video and really watch your team to see how they played as opposed to just having that emotional gut feeling right after a game.

"There is times you are going to come in and yell at them after a game, but other times you might be better off with a good, stern video session the next day."

The latter approach is what Lucia used last Saturday. Junior forward Mike Hoeffel said the players got "rammed" or "ramped" pretty good. Didn't hear him too clearly but I don't think I would want to get rammed or ramped.

Defensemen Sam Lofquist and Brian Schack are questionable for the Denver series this weekend. Lofquist, a sophomore, took a puck the wrong way on one of his feet. "It's one of those things you play with it," Lucia said, "then you take off your skate and it hurts a lot more the next day."

Schack suffered a lower body injury the first week in practice, which was the first full week in October.