ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Even though it's been 379 days and 44 games ago, the season-ending loss to Maine in the 2001 NCAA Tournament still bothers Adam Hauser.

The Minnesota goaltender was a few seconds from advancing to the second round of the East Regional in Worcester, Mass., when the Black Bears scored at 19:57 on the power play (plus an extra man) to send the game into overtime. Maine's Robert Liscak went on to score the game-winner at 13:04, which sent the Black Bears to the next round and sent the Gophers back to Minnesota.

		Fri., April 5 The key is going to be who can establish their game the quickest, and I have a feeling that the onus is going to be on Minnesota to do that. The Gophers are a very talented puck-control team. They established their game right off the bat against Michigan. Maine is more of a scrappy team, they make adjustments. They are one of those huge heart teams and it's harder to describe their style because you don't know who is going to hurt you. They have 10 guys with at least 20 points so they really spread their scoring out. That's why the onus is on Minnesota to establish its game. If Maine scores the first goal the home-ice advantage will tighten up for Minnesota. The Gophers scored first on Thursday night and it was huge for them. Even if Maine gives up the first goal, I think it would hurt Maine less than it would hurt Minnesota to give up that first goal. It's going to be interesting to see what Maine coach Tim Whitehead chooses to do in goal. I'm sure the goalie knows but the great thing for Maine is that the team doesn't care who is in net. They trust both guys, they just go play their own game and it doesn't matter to them. It's a group that's loose, has fun and never count them out. If Maine is down by three goals in the third period, until that final buzzer sounds, I'd be double-checking the clock all the time if I was playing against them.

"It was hard for me after last year. It almost felt like a raw deal after they scored the overtime goal," Hauser said in front of his teammates late Thursday night. "I don't know about the rest of you, but I remember us losing to Maine in our last game last season and this is going to be our last game of this season, and even though we're both going to be done, I still want to beat the University of Maine."

Minnesota will get that chance in Saturday's national championship game at the Xcel Energy Center (7 p.m. ET, ESPN).

Hauser may still harbor some resentment from last year's loss, but his coach and teammates saw it as a turning point that actually helped the Gophers get back to a national championship game for the first time since 1989.

"We talked earlier in the week how Coach (Don Lucia) thought that we came together as a team even though we lost that game," senior forward John Pohl said. "We competed and played together, and although they beat us that night, we really didn't have anything to hang our heads about.

"I think the fact that we are playing for the national title overrides that fact that they beat us last year."

And most Minnesotans would agree. Not only has it been 13 years since the Gophers have reached the title game but it’s been 23 years since they collected their last national championship.

Around here that’s tough to take.

The Twin Cities have been described as the capital of the Hockey State, so the expectation level that comes with wearing the "M" on a hockey sweater is immense. But so, too, is the in-state talent base from which to build a hockey team.

"We inherited some great kids," Lucia said. "But some of it is experience. You learn to be in these types of situations, and we try to tell them to play like they've been there before, but until you're there, it's hard.

"Last year when we lost that game to Maine, (our players) wanted to win so bad that they didn't use their heads. Four guys went down, the puck was lying there and they scored with a couple of seconds to go and we ended up losing in overtime. So it comes down to experience."

And chemistry.

When Lucia arrived in Minneapolis in 1999, he also inherited a team that had just experienced back-to-back losing seasons for the first time since 1971-73. According to Lucia, some of the players were playing more for the name on the back of the jersey than for the team on the front that they represented.

"I think the biggest thing we tried to do early was develop the team chemistry," Lucia said. "I didn't think it was near where it needed to be. I felt a lot of the guys were more concerned about themselves. The big thing we tried to get across to them was that I've never been a part of a good team that didn't care for each other, that didn't work for each other and where nobody cared who got the glory.

"Nobody cares who's getting the glory right now."

It took some time to get to this point. Senior captain and Hobey Baker Award winner Jordan Leopold remembers his freshman season with then-coach Doug Woog and the transition to Lucia and staff the next year as a rocky road.

"Those two years were tough on us because we didn't have the greatest record and we didn't have the greatest team chemistry," Leopold said. "Now in the last two years it has come together really quite well. We didn't really expect it to come together that fast, but we got together a group that really gets along and supports each other all the time and this is just a result of it."

A win over Maine on Saturday night would even give Hauser the result he's been looking for since March of 2001.

David Albright is a senior editor for ESPN.com.