October 21st, 2023: Gophers fall 2-1 to North Dakota to claim a series split after not recovering from their six penalties.
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Grand Forks, N.D. – In yesterday’s 4-0 win the Gophers dodged the first ten minutes of the game than took control of the next 50 minutes which is something Gophers head coach Bob Motzko said you have to do against the Fighting Hawks to be successful.
Tonight the Gophers dodged the first ten minutes then regained a little momentum with a couple of chances but later slipped and North Dakota took full control of the game in the second period.
“It’s simple. We can’t take the penalties we took,” Motzko said. “Couple of questionable calls, us being really dumb, and tonight it put us behind the eight ball and we didn’t recover.”
Minnesota started the second with a shot in the first three minutes, another two minutes later, and then the Gophers went 12 minutes without a shot. In that span, North Dakota fired six shots on net and picked up the game’s first goal.
After two periods of play North Dakota outshot the Gophers 24-12 and recorded 16 five-on-five shots opposed to Minnesota’s eight. There just wasn’t any type of recovery from the Gophers until the third period when they fired six five-on-five shots but Ludvig Persson stopped five out of the six and finished the night with 21 saves.
The good news for the Gophers is they went six for six on the penalty kill, the bad news is they allowed North Dakota to go on the power play six times with two penalties in each of the three periods.
“There is a ton of positives that we will become a better hockey team from,” Motzko said on the weekend. “But we better learn we can’t take penalties like that.”
With all the penalties, the Gophers could never set up for a good stretch of five-on-five play and although North Dakota never scored on the man advantage they sure did gain momentum which they carried through the end of the game.
Jayden Perron got the Fighting Hawks on the board first in the second period. UND captain, Riese Gaber picked up the puck in the neutral zone and flew past Bryce Brodzinski into the offense zone around the net before he passed one to Cameron Berg.
The Junior forward then fed one to Garrett Pyke who fired a shot towards the net that Perron redirected in for his second goal of the season.
It only took 59 seconds to start the period before North Dakota got another. The play originally started when a puck was cleared from the Gophers defensive zone out to center. As Jake Livanavage picked up the puck at the red line, the entire Gopher team skated towards the blue line and Livanavage blew past Minnesota before sneaking the puck past Justen Close five-hole making it 2-0.
Close stopped 32 out of 34 and was slapped with the loss, his first of the year. But Close was easily the Gophers best penalty killer tonight as he stopped all 13 shots he faced on the power play.
Minnesota did get on the board in the third period when Ryan Chesley threw a nice pass to Jaxon Nelson in the slot who tipped home his first goal of the year and 25th of his career. The graduate student had a very good weekend and continues to be a little underrated.
Ultimately the Gophers walked away with a 2-1 loss and a series split against North Dakota on the road. The bad news is they lost another defenseman in Max Rud after he left during the second period.
The Gophers were playing five defenseman from the second period on but Axel Begely who was the extra skater coming into the game, only played five shifts. So the Gophers were rolling four defensemen the entire game.
Rud’s injury doesn’t seem to be that bad though as he left the rink not in any type of pain. I did not see the play that caused it but maybe he was taken out of the game with for precautionary reasons.
Other notes
Minnesota is back home this upcoming weekend where they will open Big Ten play with a series against Wisconsin starting on Thursday.
“As soon as we get on the bus,” Nelson said about turning the page and getting ready for the series against Wisconsin. “We’ve got to take something away from this and digest it on monday. But Wisconsin with Mike Hastings, he’s a good coach and he’s going to have them ready to go in the rivalry weekend.”