Minnesota’s balance on offense was the most thoroughly-documented strength going into the season.<\/p>\n
How balanced?<\/p>\n
Seventeen different Gophers recorded at least one point as the team scored 12 goals over the weekend and No. 2 Minnesota swept No. 16 Michigan State with a 7-1 win Saturday at Mariucci Arena.<\/p>\n
“I like the balance,” said Gophers coach Don Lucia. “We took Zach Budish off that top line to get three lines that we can score on a nightly basis. We feel comfortable in certain parts of our lineup that’s going to create a lot of competition.”<\/p>\n
The Gophers (2-0-0) travel to Michigan Tech next weekend for their WCHA opener in Houghton, Mich. Michigan State looks for its first win against Niagara Friday and Saturday at home.<\/p>\n
Minnesota won 5-1 Friday, with all nine members of the top three lines and two defensemen figuring in the scoresheet.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, six more players – defensemen Nate Schmidt, Brady Skjei, Justin Holl and Mark Alt and fourth-liners Tom Serratore and Ryan Reilly – recorded their first points of the season.<\/p>\n
Isaackson played in 11 games last season, but didn’t record anything more than a minor penalty and now he’s playing with Minnesota’s top line at right wing, where Budish played last season.<\/p>\n
Like Friday night, the Gophers got on the scoreboard early. All it took was 1:25 for Erik Haula to stuff the puck under MSU goaltender Will Yanakeff’s pads. Nick Bjugstad scored his second goal of the season 3:54 later on a nice tic-tac-toe play from Kyle Rau and Isaackson.<\/p>\n
“I saw (Bjugstad) coming out of the corner and he yelled for it,” Rau said. “I almost handcuffed him on the pass but he made a good play and put it in.”<\/p>\n
Serratore added another goal two minutes later and Ben Marshall made it 4-0 going into the first intermission on a soft shot from the blue line that trickled through Yanakeff’s pads.<\/p>\n
Yanakeff finished with 18 saves before he was pulled during the second intermission. Jake Hildebrand had nine in relief.<\/p>\n
The Gophers outscored the Spartans 7-0 in the first period this weekend, not the type of starts MSU coach Tom Anastos wanted to see.<\/p>\n
“You always want to get off to a better start than that,” Anastos said. “They’re a terrific team. We watched them play last year and they’re way better (this season).”<\/p>\n
Any deficit against the Gophers is going to be tough to overcome this season if the Minnesota defense continues to shut down opponents like it did the Spartans.<\/p>\n
Minnesota’s other strength, defense, didn’t give opposing offenses much of a chance, whether Adam Wilcox or Michael Shibrowski was in net.<\/p>\n
“We had the puck a lot this weekend,” Lucia said. “Our ‘D’ can skate well and they can get back to pucks and make plays, so it’s hard for other teams to forecheck. I thought we were clean coming out of the zone all weekend.”<\/p>\n
Minnesota’s ‘D’ made it easy for Wilcox, who only had to make 10 saves, including a few that would make the highlight reels.<\/p>\n
He snagged his first career save with the glove early in the first, made a desperation pad save later in the period, and sprawled out to stop the puck with the stick late in the second period.<\/p>\n
The 10th shot Wilcox faced, by Brent Darnell 2:05 into the third period, was his first collegiate goal allowed.<\/p>\n
“(Wilcox) looked sharp,” Lucia said. “He’s not afraid to go out and get the puck. He can be an asset.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Minnesota’s balance on offense was the most thoroughly-documented strength going into the season. How balanced? Seventeen different Gophers recorded at least one point as the team scored 12 goals over the weekend and No. 2 Minnesota swept No. 16 Michigan State with a 7-1 win Saturday at Mariucci Arena. “I like the balance,” said Gophers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"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\/15600"}],"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\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15600"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15601,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15600\/revisions\/15601"}],"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=15600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15600"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=15600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}