Hockey Site Looks At DU's Resilient Nature

From: USCHO.com
by Theresa Spisak

We all knew Denver would be pretty good coming into this season, despite all of its offseason losses in important roster chunks and goaltending.

If you had given the Pioneers the benefit of the doubt by looking at their history, their second-place spot in the league makes sense.

What’s been surprising, however, is how they’ve done it [read rest of article].

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can't help but get more and more excited about this team.

We've had the talent the last few years to make a run but kept getting bounced in the first round by lower seeded opponents. There's probably many intangible reasons for this, but the most common term that seems to be said is "leadership", "mental toughness", etc. I don't blame Rock or previous captains for failures, but I guess we lean on "leadership" as being the reason when we can't otherwise explain failure.

Why I'm excited - this team seems to have the leadership and mental toughness as we like to call it. (i.e. the intangibles that separate a winner from a loser). I have confidence that this team will not only make the NCAAs but make a deeper run (i.e. at least win a game) than any team in the last few years.

If we make the NCAAs and get bounced again in the 1st round what term do we now come up with for the failure? I'm going with I-SUC (intangibles separating underachievers & champions)

puck swami said...

You can also add injury to the list of reasons for underachieving inthe NCAAs. Last year, there were NINE post-season surgeries. That's almost half the playing roster.

Still should have beat RIT, but sometimes our teams are way more hurt than we know...

dggoddard said...

The best teams often don't win the NCAA, NHL and other hockey Tournaments. All you can hope for as a DU fan is that the boyz learned something from the recent NCAA losses and it will make them tougher this go around.

Aluuum said...

The theme of this article is a testement to Gwaz's recruiting beliefs. He just doesn't look at hockey skills, like that goon coach at North dakota, but also evaluates the character element when deciding who to offer a scholarship to.Teams in any sport reflect their coach. N.D. reflects that and D.U. reflects that.