Rockne's Roundtable

Lou, what surprised me most was that ND seemed to sit back (not pressuring the puc) while in their power play defense. It was quite different when MD had the power play advantage. It that a coaching thing or a result of something else?

Minnesota-Duluth looked to be skating a lot faster than the Irish and controlled the puck at both ends of the ice. The Irish looked confused at times during the game was that a result of being a younger team?

Jeff Jackson indicated that 5-on-5 the Irish were playing fine, otherwise they wouldn't have had the 1-0 and 2-1 leads. They got into a bad 13-minute lull where they were a man down too often and UMD seized the opportunities.

I thought ND controlled the action in the final period and were the aggressors then. There were three of four scoring opportunities that barely missed. OT would have been interesting. Frankly, I'm amazed the team got this far after last year and with freshmen and sophomores leading the way most everywhere.

I felt four years ago this is the next program at ND that will be consistently in the national title conversation, a la fencing and women's soccer. It has everything going for it now — coaching, recruiting and facilities, plus a pretty darn consistent last five years to demonstrate they weren't flukes the first time.

Well, a nice, unexpected run in the NCAA play-offs for the icers.
Straight to the Frozen Four.
Well done.