Air Force Academy coach Frank Serratore has a son, Tom,playing in the USHL for Sioux City.

After the Falcons tied with the Gophers 2-2 in overtime on Sunday, Serratore was asked if his son might play for Minnesota and coach Don Lucia some day.

“All Don has to do is ante up,” Frank Serratore said. “He needs a little Greenway on that team. It will turn things right around.

“He’s got Pat White. His dad Mark played with me at Greenway, but he moved over to Grand Rapids so he can’t go back.”

KANGAS PROGRESSING

Freshman goalie Alex Kangas said he was satisfied with his play against the Air Froce Academy despite giving up a late goal, which he said was his fault for playing his angles wrong.

“I thought I played pretty well and controlled my rebounds for the most part, except on that first goal,” Kangas said. “After that I settled down and we settled down as a team.”

He stopped four shots in the shootout — the first ever for Minnesota –which the Gophers won 2-0.

LUCIA: OPPOSES SHOOTOUTS IN WCHA

Don Lucia saidthe Gophers played better against Air Force than they did in a4-3 loss tothe Rochester Institute of Technology on Saturday.

“This team does not have a large margin for error,” Lucia said, “and that’s OK. They just have to accept the fact that they have to work hard for everything they are going to get this year.

Lucia said shootouts for holiday tournamentswere OK, but he would not supportthem for WCHA regular-season games. “No way,” Lucia said. He said he did not want to see a leaguechampionshipdetermined by shootouts.

He is also trying to hammer home a message to his players: Play hard always. And delievered it again after the Air Force game.

“I told the guys, ‘We are 9-9-2, which says we are average,’ ” Lucia said. “But the positive thing is we can still get into the Final Five and wecan makethe NCAA tournament. So as we head into the new year, those are still our goals whether we can achieve them or not.

“But one thing I do know, is that if we don’t play hard like we did [Sunday], we won’t have any chance.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 at 5:22 pm 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.