The Western College Hockey blog has come out with its preseason WCHA predictions.

The Gophers are picked to finish fourth. The complete list:

 1. North Dakota

2. Denver

3. Wisconsin

4. Minnesota

5. Minnesota-Duluth

6. St. Cloud

7. Colorado College

8. Minnesota State

9. Alaska-Anchorage

10. Michigan Tech

So what’s the rationale for the U being fourth. Here is what the WCH says:

4. Minnesota

Last year I picked Minnesota to finish pretty high in the league, hedging that they’d been too good too long for the previous season to be anything other than a fluke. But after another down year by their standards, maybe there’s something more to it.

To understand the Gophers over the past couple of seasons and why they struggled, you have to break them down into three groups. Group A was the group of uber-talented NHL prospects they brought in a few years ago that included guys like Phil_Kessel, Erik Johnson, Kyle_Okposo and Blake_Wheeler. They were good, but left early, and when they should have been upperclassmen, there was nothing (aside from Wheeler who stayed for his junior year, and was great, but pretty much all alone).

Minnesota has the recruiting clout to make that work, but since those players leave so early, you have to bring in comparable players every single year to make it work. That brings us to Group B, which includes guys like David Fischer, Pat White, and Jimmy O’Brien, and Mike Hoeffel who all came in around the same time. They were all fairly high NHL Draft picks, but not top 10 guys like Group A, and for the most part, they failed to even live up to their late first/early second round draft status. (At least so far. Fischer, White, and Hoeffel still have time to really turn things around, and Hoeffel looked especially promising by the end of last season.)

Group C is the freshman class that was brought in last season—minus Jordan Schroeder. It was a group of very solid hockey players with guys like Jake Hansen, Nico Sacchetti, and Taylor Matson, that showed promise, but was going to take some time to mature and really become effective, and there was no one above them to carry the load while they developed.

Add up A+B+C and you’ve got a decent team, but one that just barely makes home ice in the playoffs and doesn’t make the NCAA tournament. It goes to show that chemistry is a delicate thing and one that’s pretty difficult to recruit for.

This year’s freshman class adds another interesting dynamic. It’s tough to tell where they fall in, but probably somewhere between Group C and Group A. The other mystery will be in goal. The Gophers looked set in goal after Alex Kangas’ freshman season, but his confidence seemed destroyed by the end of last year. But if he falters, Kent Patterson should be able to pick up the slack in goal.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 9:16 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.