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The Olympics are over. The players are back. The postseason starts now. The Minnesota Golden Gophers women’s hockey team begins their postseason run this weekend when they host the St. Cloud State Huskies in a Best-of-Three WCHA First Round Playoff series at Ridder Arena. Minnesota will look to advance to the WCHA Final Faceoff held next weekend at St. Thomas.
The Gophers have struggled at times over the past month going 2-5-1 while missing their four players who were off playing in the Olympics in Abbey Murphy, Josefin Bouveng, Nelli Laitinen and Teresa Plosova. Admittedly three of those losses were to NCAA powers in Wisconsin and Ohio State—but it is the tie of the year where if you want to actually achieve any of your goals it will involve defeating those teams. But, now those four players are back in the lineup, and Minnesota will look to find the cohesiveness they had earlier in the season.
The Gophers offensive attack struggled while missing their top two points performers in Murphy and Bouveng. Minnesota has scored only 15 goals in the eight games where they missed their Olympians—not even averaging two goals per game. Meanwhile while the Gophers were at full strength earlier in the season the Gophers were averaging 5.6 goals per game—a very start difference. The offense is the key to this Gopher team. In all nine of their losses this season Minnesota has scored two or less goals. In all 24 victories they have scored at least three goals. The line could not be any clearer.
But Minnesota gets Abbey Murphy back. And that will matter a ton. The fifth year senior forward despite missing eight games for the Olympics is still second in the nation in points with 61 and leads the country in goals with 36. She is averaging a ridiculous 2.35 points per game. Her return to the Gopher lineup should hopefully supercharge a struggling offense.
Murphy has some individual records to break as well. She enters the weekend tied with Ohio State head coach and former Gopher star Nadine Muzerall with 139 career goals—the most in program history. Her first goal this weekend will make her her the most prolific goal scorer in Minnesota history.
Add in the return of Bouveng who has a 23-game point scoring streak and Minnesota will hopefully figure out a way to click on offense once more before the games get a lot tougher starting next weekend.
The good news for this weekend is that the Gophers have been dominant against St. Cloud State this season. They opened WCHA play in October with a pair of wins 4-1 and 5-3, and in the teams second series of the season in late January they improved on those numbers picking up 5-1 and 8-1 victories. Historically Minnesota has absolutely run roughshod over St Cloud State. Minnesota is 113-6-4 all-time against St. Cloud State and boasts an impressive 64-1-2 record at home versus the Huskies. But, the Gophers had nearly similar numbers against Minnesota State heading into their playoff series a season ago, and were upset in the first game forcing a game three.
Obviously the key for the Huskies is going to need to keep the puck out of their own net. In goal SCSU has a good pair in Jojo Chobak and Emilia Kyrkko who have split time. Kyrkko leads all Huskies with a 2.35 goals against average and a .932 save percentage. Interestingly enough she has only played a portion of one of the games against the Gophers. Chobak has started all four games, and was pulled after giving up three quick goals in the second loss in October, but otherwise has played the remainder of the time against Minnesota. The Huskies are allowing 3.24 goals per game—and as we have seen from the Gophers stats, that will not be good enough this weekend.
St. Cloud States best hope is to steal a 3-2 type of victory. Offensively the Huskies are led by junior forwards Alice Sauriol with 29 points while Sofianna Sundelin leads the squad with 16 goals. SCSU averages 2.65 goals per game, but only has six in four games against the Gophers this season.
Assuming Minnesota wins, they will advance to the WCHA Frozen Faceoff and play a semifinal matchup next Thursday likely against #2 Ohio State who has owned Minnesota this season. The Gophers also have a lot to play for when it comes to NCAA seeding. After being swept by Minnesota-Duluth last weekend the Gophers dropped to fourth in the NPI which helps determine the NCAA Tournament field. The top four teams will host a NCAA Quarterfinal, and the Gophers have a good margin between them and #5 Northeastern, but getting a few more wins would go a long way to locking that up.
All-WCHA Teams Announced:
Minnesota had four players named to the All-WCHA teams which were announced on Thursday. Murphy was named to the First Team All-WCHA for the fifth All-WCHA honor of her career. She leads both the conference and the nation in goals per game (1.38).
The Gophers placed a pair of defenders on the second team in Nelli Laitinen and Sydney Morrow. It;s the second honor for Laitinen who ranks second among WCHA defenders in points (29) and goals (10), and fourth in assists (19), despite appearing in just 28 games due to Olympic competition. Morrow was named to the second team for the second year in a row. She ranks second among WCHA blueliners with 31 points and 23 assists.
Freshman Bella Fanale was named to the All-Freshman Team. Bella ranks fourth nationally among freshmen and second in the WCHA with 18 goals, while her 34 points rank second among WCHA freshmen.
Notably snubbed from any of the teams were Josefin Bouveng, Bouveng is 11th in the WCHA with 39 points and 8th with 1.5 points per game. She deserved at least a third team honor. Hopefully she can use that as motivation for the rest of her senior season.
All of the games this weekend between the Gophers and Huskies will air locally on Fox9+ and stream on B1G+. Friday’s faceoff is set for 6 PM and Saturdays is set for 2 PM. if a Game 3 is needed, the teams will face off at 3 PM Sunday.