University of Minnesota Athletics
Michigan State at Minnesota Quotes
11/27/2010 12:00:00 AM | Men's Hockey
Minnesota Head Coach Don Lucia
On the rough start to the game:
"That's not the way you want to start, taking a penalty right away. We had a chance to clear the puck. It was right on their stick and we threw it right to their defenseman. He ended up scoring and then they scored 20 seconds later. It was one of those games. Kent [Patterson] had played so well all season long, and it just wasn't his night tonight. I thought Alex [Kangas] came in and did a good job in relief. That was real positive. We had a lot of good looks to get ourselves back into it. I thought [Drew] Palmisano made some real good saves during the course of the game. When it was 3-2, I felt like, okay, we got a chance here...The guys did a lot of good things, but to me it was our start and turnovers that doomed us."
On some bad bounces:
"That's going to happen, and you've got to be more resilient. The turnovers more than anything else is probably what bothers me."
On the second period:
"We had a good second period. We started to get pucks in deep and got to work a little bit, and we scored the two goals. The goaltender made a couple big saves there, and we would've been in position to tie it. If we could've kept three going into the third, it would've put us in much better shape to try to win."
On the 3-0 deficit in the first period:
"[Our starts have] been a problem this year. The first five minutes we've been kind of getting down. Obviously we've got to work on the first 10 minutes, not taking penalties and get into our game, and begin with good starts."
On the second period:
"We got on each other in the locker room a little bit. We knew we had to come out stronger, because that was definitely not Gopher hockey in the first period. So we came out in the second period starting to play like we knew we could play."
