Gophers men’s hockey team pours it on, completes weekend sweep of Minnesota Duluth

DULUTH – Minnesota’s bus pulled out of the Amsoil Arena parking lot on Saturday night with a weekend sweep, growing team chemistry and enough goals to go around.

“Almost every forward has a goal,” Gophers coach Bob Motzko noted.

The No. 6 Gophers (3-1-0) pushed past the unranked Bulldogs (1-4-0) for a 5-1 win in front of more than 7,000 fans in the second game of the nonconference series. It was a far different style of win than Friday’s, when Minnesota stacked up nearly a handful of unanswered goals in the first period — too many for the Bulldogs’ late-game surge to cover. The Gophers won the series opener 7-5, with the teams piling up a total of six goals in the final period.

Saturday’s game was different: faster, feistier. This time when the Gophers took an early lead, it wasn’t a lopsided one. Both teams got shots off, both teams killed most penalties. Both goalies left pucks sitting just short of the crease for a scary amount of time before they were knocked, or gloved, to safety.

BOXSCORE: Gophers men 5, Minnesota Duluth 1

Gophers goalie Liam Souliere, a graduate student who played for Penn State, finished with 31 saves; UMD freshman Adam Gajan had 29.

“We’ve got to make harder plays and better decisions,” UMD coach Scott Sandelin said. “Because right now it’s costing us goals.”

For the second consecutive night, Minnesota’s Oliver Moore and Brodie Ziemer combined for the first goal of the game. This time Moore, a sophomore center, crossed the puck to the freshman winger, who tipped it up over Gajan’s glove midway through the first period. They added another when Connor Kurth pushed the puck behind Gajan off a pass from Matthew Wood.

“Their first goal, turnover. Their second goal, turnover,” Sandelin said. “They’re magnified now because they’re in the back of our net. That’s not a team you can give those opportunities to.”

In the final seconds of the first period, the Bulldogs sneaked the puck past Souliere, but Minnesota defenseman Ryan Chesley was able to scoop it out just before it crossed the goal line, a moment that was played and replayed, backward and forward on the big screen. It was close, but no goal. But UMD went for it again: Defenseman Owen Gatlin sent the puck sailing clean into the net from the point with just more than three seconds remaining. The Gophers had a 3-1 lead at the end of the first period.

Minnesota junior winger Jimmy Snuggerud caught the rebound of his own shot and turned it past Gajan midway into the second period.

Gophers sophomore center Jimmy Clark scored off a quick pass from Kurth, a power-play goal in the waning minutes of the third period. Then Wood tacked on an empty-netter.

“We were really strong start to finish,” Motzko said. “I liked us all week.”

And Sandelin? “There are lessons in both winning and losing,” he said.

The series was the first time back-to-back games between the rivals were played on either team’s home ice in more than a decade — and it will remain scheduled like this for the next three seasons, Sandelin said earlier this week.

Minnesota faces St. Thomas next weekend while the Bulldogs host Stonehill College.