The Minnesota Golden Gophers will hope to find their mojo and spur a long postseason run beginning this weekend when they head across town to the WCHA Final Faceoff held at St. Thomas. Minnesota will face #2 Ohio State Thursday night at 7:30 with a trip to the WCHA Championship game on the line, but also for the Gophers the chance to control their own destiny in hosting a NCAA Quarterfinal. Thursday night’s game will air on Fox9+ in the Twin Cities and stream on B1G+.
Minnesota advanced to the Final
Faceoff in three games over #6 seeded St. Cloud State. In the Gophers first game back with their entire roster from the Olympics, Minnesota struggled to click together and their offense was shut down by Huskies goalie and Finnish Olympic goalie Emilai Kyrkkö who made 42 saves in a 1-0 overtime victory. The Gophers figured out more things as the weekend went on and Minnesota would put together 4-1 and 6-1 victories on Saturday and Sunday to advance to this weekend’s action. In Saturday’s game Gopher 5th year senior Abbey Murphy scored her 10th career goal passing Ohio State head coach Nadine Muzerall for the most goals in Minnesota Gophers history. She would add an empty netter to move her tally to 141 career goals and counting.
Murphy was named last week to the All WCHA-First Team, and then on Wednesday night was named the WCHA Forward of the Year, and Thursday morning was named one of ten finalists for the Patty Kazmaier Award as the best player in the nation. It was the third consecutive season Murphy has been a Top 10 Finalist for the award. She has been the best player on the ice this season setting a career high with 38 goals in just 29 games. She leads the nation in goals per game (1.31) and points per game (2.21), while ranking fifth in assists per game (0.90). She also paces the conference in power-play goals (7) and hat tricks (5). She lost the WCHA Player of the Year award to Wisconsin defender Caroline Harvey.
Ohio State cruised to a second place finish in the WCHA and has been ranked in the top three in the nation all season. The Buckeyes took care of St. Thomas last weekend sweeping them in a pair of games at advance. Ohio State has an incredibly talented group led by US Olympian joy Dunne who leads the Buckeyes with 26 goals, and Swedish Olympian and WCHA Freshman of the Year Hilda Svensson who has 49 points on the season. In goal they have one of the three finalists for WCHA Goalie of the Year in senior Hailey MacLeod owns a 1.58 GAA and .925 save percentage going 22-3 to pace the Buckeyes.
Minnesota will need to find a way to get past the Buckeyes once more this season. Ohio State went 3-1 against the Gophers this season sweeping Minnesota in Columbus in February with both teams missing their Olympians. The teams split a series in Minneapolis in October with OSU winning the opener 4-1 before Minnesota came back to win the second game of the series 6-3. The situation is much the same as a year ago when the Gophers and Buckeyes faced off in the WCHA Semifinal. Ohio State had won the season series 2-1-1 from the Gophers in the regular season, Minnesota had dropped a game in the Best-of-Three WCHA Quarterfinal series to Minnesota State and did not appear to be playing their best hockey. They would defeat Ohio State 6-2 in that Semifinal game in Duluth before falling to Wisconsin in the Championship Game.
Minnesota will once again need to find way to knock off one of their greats. Since Muzerall took over Ohio State she has led the Buckeyes to a 25-18-4 record over Minnesota in the past ten seasons. The Gophers did get the best of OSU in the WCHA Semifinal last season, but lost in the 2020 Semifinals at Ridder Arena.
The winner of the Gophers and Buckeyes game will advance to the WCHA Championship against the winner of the earlier semifinal between Minnesota State and Wisconsin. The championship game will face off at 2PM Saturday and air on Fox9+ and stream on B1G+.
This weekends games will have extra meaning for Minnesota as they try and earn their seniors one final home game at Ridder Arena. Minnesota’s February swoon has dropped the Gophers down to #4 in the NPI rankings. However, #5 Northeastern can leap the Gophers with any Minnesota loss this weekend and a win over UConn in the Hockey East Championship game on Saturday. If that occurs the Gophers will be headed to Boston for a NCAA Quarterfinal game next Saturday. But, if Minnesota can either win the WCHA Final Faceoff this weekend, or get some help from UCONN, they would host Northeastern. That game will face off at 2:30 PM and stream on ESPN+ from UCONN on Saturday afternoon.
The NCAA Selection Show will air at 10:30 AM Sunday morning on ESPNU. But as said before the Gophers and Northeastern are locked into one NCAA Quarterfinal in the 4/5 matchup. The only question is who will be the home team, which we will know by the end of Saturday’s games.
