After dominating the play for most of the second period, which includes outshooting Minnesota 10-2 with less than five minutes to play, the Sioux imploded. A six-minute stretch where Minnesota tallied 4 goals on 12 shots.<\/p>\n
Throughout most of the game, North Dakota could not buy a bounce against Alex Kangas, but the Gophers found plenty of puck luck.<\/p>\n
“It was Alex’s best game of the season,” commented Don Lucia on his goalie’s performance.<\/p>\n
“Tonight, we had a little [luck],” added Lucia.<\/p>\n
At 14:51 of the second, Zach Budish scored an unassisted goal off a faceoff. No one won the draw, and the puck banged around until Budish saw it and got some wood on it at the same time as a North Dakota a player partially blocked it. The puck went eight feet in the air. A perfect nine-iron shot right into the back of the net over bewildered goalie Brad Eidsness.<\/p>\n
It was only 2-0 and the Sioux were playing well. Both Minnesota’s goals at that point were fortunate bounces, but the next bounce broke the Sioux’s back.<\/p>\n
At 18:06, Tony Lucia blocked a shot and the puck headed straight out of the zone. Lucia picked the puck up at the Gophers’ blue line and skated in on a breakaway, beating Eidsness stick side over the blocker. He was mobbed on the bench. <\/p>\n
“Tony made a great play with the blocked shot,” remarked Don Lucia. <\/p>\n
The Gophers then set a new school record, scoring just seven seconds later on a goal by Jacob Cepis on a feed from Jordan Schroeder.<\/p>\n
The collapse continued, as the Sioux took two minor penalties, giving Minnesota a two-man advantage that spanned the second intermission.<\/p>\n
The Gophers made it 5-0 when Mike Hoeffel turned and fired a wrist shot on net from 50 feet that hit Eidsness’s pad and bounced in.<\/p>\n
“Looking at the shots in the first part of the second, we were all over them; the last five minutes of the second we could not get out of it,” said Darcy Zajac.<\/p>\n
Zajac scored the only North Dakota goal at 8:33 of the third.<\/p>\n
The Sioux outshot Minnesota 14-to-two in the third period.<\/p>\n
The win by Minnesota at Mariucci ended a six-game winless streak (0-4-2) versus the Sioux.<\/p>\n
“Obviously they have had our number; it’s definitely good to get a win,” said Kangas.<\/p>\n
The Gophers opened the scoring at 18:11 of the first with a goal by Josh Birkholz off a three-on-two rush. Ryan Flynn brought the puck into the zone and left a drop pass for Nico Sacchetti, who fired a shot from 40 feet out hitting the cross bar. Birkholz picked the puck out of mid-air and buried it into the empty net.<\/p>\n
Jacob Cepis went off late in the second for Minnesota and did not return for the third period. The injury was minor, and the coaches expect him back next week.<\/p>\n
Next week, North Dakota heads to Cornell and Minnesota plays a home-and-home series with St. Cloud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After dominating the play for most of the second period, which includes outshooting Minnesota 10-2 with less than five minutes to play, the Sioux imploded. A six-minute stretch where Minnesota tallied 4 goals on 12 shots. Throughout most of the game, North Dakota could not buy a bounce against Alex Kangas, but the Gophers found […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10086"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10086"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}