USA Hockey officials have talked to Don Lucia and told him which of his players they probably want for the U.S. under-20 junior team. It will competein the International Ice Hockey Federation World Junior Championships in the Czech Republic from Dec. 26 to Jan. 4.

The six candidates, who participated in tryouts at Lake Placid, N.Y., in August are forwards Mike Carman, Ryan Flynn, Kyle Okposo and Patrick White and defensemen Cade Fairchild and Dave Fischer.

Lucia said he has given USA Hockey the OK to take”the guys” — that is a plural noun and the basis for the above headline, saying at least two –they want with one caveat. “If over the next couple of weeks we have two, three guys go down with injuries, we have to have enough players to field a team,” Lucia said. “But I am hoping that does not happen because that’s thelast thing you want to do, you don’t want to take away their opportunity.”

Whoever leaves — and my guess is it will be three or four players –will miss four nonconference games. The Gophers have a tournament Dec. 29-30. They will play Rochester Institute of Technology and either Air Force or Boston College. Then the next weekend they will play Wayne State twice at home.

LAST WORD

Lucia, asked if any line changes can be expected this weekend for Michigan Tech: “I’m toying a little with the lines, but we don’t have a lot of players. So we don’t have many options. We just have to get the players we have to play a little better.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 29th, 2007 at 12:07 am and is filed under Gophers men's hockey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.