Considering they currently have 13 drafted players on their roster I'll have to disagree that the NCHC has impacted them. UND currently has 10. I think you will see the gophers numbers start going in the wrong direction. Their team is loaded with talent, Motzko is a great coach they are just a bunch of spoiled little brat cake-eaters. They don't have the blue-collar edge you need to win in hockey.
There was a GREAT article about that. I'm not sure if this is the one, but it hits the mark: http://www.citypages.com/news/how-don-lucia-killed-the-minnesota-gophers-hockey-dynasty/477582963
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This is what I feel is the crux of the issue with MN:
"It wasn’t that Lucia had forgotten how to coach. It’s that he’d forgotten what constitutes a good hockey team. He’d increasingly turned to recruiting younger and younger players, getting commitments from 15- and 16-year-old child prodigies who shined in box scores. Last fall he plunged ever lower, getting commitments from Cruz and Chaz Lucius, ages 13 and 14, from Gentry Academy in Vadnais Heights.
Loading up on pubescent phenoms was akin to building a football team with only quarterbacks and receivers. The firepower looks dazzling paper, until you realize no one wants to block or stuff the run. The results were predictable.Tune in this year, and you would bear witness to a collection of child stars unable and unwilling to subvert their ego for the aggregate good. When you’ve been told you’re the greatest since elementary age, there’s a tendency to see the yeoman’s part of your job as beneath you."