HJ Sports Blog

Forget about the loss to Holy Cross. Saturday’s (Dec. 29) loss to the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is a bad loss for the Gopher men’s hockey team. The game was at Maricci Arena and was supposed to be a cupcake game that would get the Gophers into the championship game of their own Dodge Holiday Classic. The Gophers had won the tournament the past eight seasons. Boston College went on to claim the title with a 6-0 win over RIT Sunday. The fact about RIT is that they don’t have one scholarshipped athlete on their team. Holy Cross had some, and Minnesota’s loss to Holy Cross came in the 2006 NCAA tournamnet. That means Holy Cross was good enough to get to the final tournament of the season. It used to be that the Goper hockey team was the one team we could rely on during the winter when the Timberwolves and Wild tail off. I’m not sure that’s the case. The Gophers don’t seem to have the swager they used to. They need to get it back. Somewhere on Long Island, New York, Kyle Okposo and Garh Snow are laughing.