January 17th, 2025: Gopher fans got a glimpse of what a fully healthy hockey team looks like and man was it a treat to watch.
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Minneapolis, Minn – For the first time since Nov 1, the Minnesota Golden Gophers (19-4-2|10-2-1) played a game with a completely healthy team. Although Connor Kurth was not listed on the first linechart the Gophers released. He was dealing with an upper-body injury but did take warmups and was good to go against Notre Dame.
The Gophers opened the season with a 6-0-1 record with a fully healthy team. The only game they lost was against Omaha in overtime when they ran into a hot goaltender. Omaha’s Simon Latkoczy stopped 53 shots in the overtime win. The Gophers outshot the Mavericks 54-18 that game.
Point is, Friday against Notre Dame was the first time in 77 days that we saw this Gophers team at full health. They went 12-4-1 with injuries to six different players. They also played games without three players due to the World Juniors Tournament.
The Gophers were so shorthanded at one point that Axel Begley, who is normally a defenseman, had to play forward for multiple games. They even played a few games with only three lines because of multiple injuries to their forward group.
Friday night’s game marked Cal Thomas’ return to the lineup. He missed the six previous games with an injury. He scored the go-ahead goal in the first to propel the Gophers to a 5-2 victory over the Notre Dame Fighting Irish (7-15-1|2-12-1).
The Fighting Irish got out to an early 1-0 lead but 22 seconds later, Jimmy Snuggerud tied the game with his 14th of the season and away the Gophers went.
“Yeah, it’s huge. I think the first shift after a goal is the biggest shift in the game, especially after the first goal,” Snuggerud said. “So it was a fortunate bounce there and you know, we were really happy to get that goal.”
The Gophers finished the first period with 24 shots while only allowing five to Notre Dame. They had 42 shot attempts in the first period alone and finished with 78 total on 46 shots. Notre Dame finished the game with 42 shot attempts and only 15 total shots.
“I just think our energy level was high in the locker room before the game,” Snuggerud said as to why they started so well. “You know, we knew we would have a nice crowd. With students coming back, you know, we just kind of wanted to show them our best game.”
Minnesota fired 24 shots on the freshman goaltender Nicholas Kempf in the first period. He stopped 19 of them. According to what I tracked, the Gophers had 7.38 expected goals in the first period. Kempf stopped -2.38 goals above expected.
Notre Dame switched things up in the second period and went with Owen Say in goal. The Junior goaltender finished the game with 22 saves on 22 shots. But the Gophers five first period goals were able to hold up.
Just about two minutes after Snuggerud tied the game, Thomas scored his first goal of the season in his first game back from his injury. It was Thomas’ 12th game of the season, he had missed the previous six games with an injury and missed seven games earlier in the year.
“It’s monster for us to get Cal back,” Gophers head coach Bob Motzko said. “I mean, he’s a physical force for us. He’s just a shut down defenseman and he can sneak in a little offense for us. It’s going to take a couple of weeks for him to get back to 100 percent but he looked awfully good in there tonight.”
Not only was it the first game in two months that the Gophers have had a full lineup but it is the first since they have had a full d-corps. They had seven defensemen in the lineup against the Fighting Irish on Friday and used 12 different combinations.
“He’s a huge asset to our team,” Snuggerud said on getting Thomas back. “Him and Chez (Chesley) work so well together. They’re impossible to play against in practice so I can only imagine what it’s like going against them in games. So having Cal back and having him bury one, I’m really happy for him. And, you know, hopefully he can keep moving forward with that.”
Friday night was a glimpse of what a fully healthy Gopher team can accomplish and boy was it a treat to watch. The game got away from them in the second period a bit and Notre Dame was able to score one goal, but the Gophers stuck with it in the third and were able to come out with a win.
Michigan lost on Friday night so that means the Gophers are back in first place. As for what Motzko thinks?
“I wish it was March.”
Nonetheless, it’s nice to see the team in first in the middle of January but there still is a lot of hockey to be played. Like Saturday’s game against what will be a hungry Fighting Irish team.
“We said it at the end of the second period, you know, Coach has to get out of the room today. You’ve got to figure out how we’re in this game and they did it right,” Motzko said on what the message was to the group after the game. “It’s the same thing. We’re in the second half now, we come back at five o’clock tomorrow. They have to determine how they’re going to do this because you know Notre Dame is going to respond. We’re going to be in for a hockey game tomorrow.”