Freshman Sarah Potomak shook off the effects of a first-period collision and set up two of Minnesota’s goals in the Gophers’ 3-1 win over Ohio State.<\/p>\n
Midway through the first period when a knee-on-knee hit left her crumpled on the ice, the odds of her skating another shift, let alone emerging as the game’s No. 1 star, didn’t look good.<\/p>\n
“When I got hit with my knee, I couldn’t really feel it,” Potomak said. “I think I was more scared than anything. I got it looked at, and it’s all good. I’ll be ready for tomorrow.”<\/p>\n
Minnesota (16-3-0, 12-3-0-0 WCHA) was playing its first game after the holiday break, while Ohio State was coming off a series split versus Penn State.<\/p>\n
“It’s always different practicing than it is playing a game,” Potomak said. “For a first game back after almost a month break, I thought we played pretty well.”<\/p>\n
The Buckeyes (7-14-0, 3-12-0-0 WCHA) were much more competitive than they were in October when they dropped a series on home ice to the Gophers by a composite score of 18-4.<\/p>\n
“I thought they came together and did a lot of great things tonight,” OSU coach Jenny Potter said. “Yeah, we’ve got to clean up a few areas as far as picking up people and working together and making some smarter choices, but I thought they made a lot of great choices and I thought they played extremely hard and played a very smart game overall.”<\/p>\n
Julia McKinnon scored the Buckeyes lone goal when she held the puck on a two-on-one break and fired a snipe over goalie Amanda Leveille’s shoulder to cut Minnesota’s lead to 2-1.<\/p>\n
Leveille, returning from playing for Canada in the Nations Cup, saved the other 18 OSU shots to get the win.<\/p>\n
“I thought Amanda Leveille, coming back on just a night’s rest from Germany, was outstanding,” Minnesota coach Brad Frost said.<\/p>\n
Potomak helped seal the win when she fed Dani Cameranesi for an empty-net goal with just over a minute left.<\/p>\n
“The defenseman was taking my shot away, so I just moved it over to Dani for the empty net,” Potomak said.<\/p>\n
She combined with Kelly Pannek, her center for the game, on the game’s first goal.<\/p>\n
“Kelly made a really nice pass to me, and I didn’t really have a shot,” Potomak said. “I knew she had a better chance to score, so I just tapped it back to her and she put it in the net.”<\/p>\n
Taylor Williamson’s second goal of the season 4:36 into the middle period doubled the lead. Defenseman Sydney Baldwin earned one of her two helpers of the game on the play.<\/p>\n
Alex LaMere prevented further damage with 25 saves.<\/p>\n
“We had a ton of chances,” Minnesota coach Brad Frost said. “Two cross bars, a post, and many other Grade-A chances. Their goaltender played really well.”<\/p>\n
The series concludes Sunday at 2:07 p.m. CST in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Freshman Sarah Potomak shook off the effects of a first-period collision and set up two of Minnesota’s goals in the Gophers’ 3-1 win over Ohio State. Midway through the first period when a knee-on-knee hit left her crumpled on the ice, the odds of her skating another shift, let alone emerging as the game’s No. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"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":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21517"}],"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\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21518,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21517\/revisions\/21518"}],"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=21517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21517"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=21517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}