Lindenwood squared off for the first time ever against two-time defending NCAA Champion Minnesota, and while the Lions were outplayed in losing a 3-0 contest, they certainly weren’t outclassed.<\/p>\n
“I was real happy with them,” coach Scott Spencer said. “I thought we competed for 60 minutes. I thought we had good sticks. I thought we made things hard for Minnesota. Nothing was clean and easy.”<\/p>\n
It certainly wasn’t easy through a scoreless opening 20 minutes for the Gophers (1-0-0), but they got on the scoreboard by burying a couple of rebounds in the middle frame, with sophomore Sarah Potomak and junior Cara Piazza doing the honors.<\/p>\n
“You can see that when their skill takes over, they’re a very talented hockey team,” Spencer said.<\/p>\n
Senior defenseman Megan Wolfe completed the scoring in the waning seconds of the middle frame.<\/p>\n
“The third one late —- that’s a back-breaker to get a redirect off a blocked shot,” Spencer said.<\/p>\n
Redshirt-junior Sidney Peters took care of the rest, turning away all 10 shots from the Lions (0-1-0) to earn the shutout in her first game as Minnesota’s top goaltender.<\/p>\n
Jolene deBruyn stopped 27 of 30 shots in her debut as Lindenwood’s main backstop.<\/p>\n
“Jo played well through the game,” Spencer said. “She played well in the games she played last year. I think we’re going to be okay in net with her and [freshman] Morgan [Skinner].”<\/p>\n
Lindenwood was trying to thwart a Gophers’ attack that is retooling after graduating the top two career point leaders in program history.<\/p>\n
“We were changing lines up even throughout the game there, finished with something completely different than what we started with,” coach Brad Frost said. “It’s just a matter of trying to find those combinations. I think we’ve got a multitude of options, which is good, but it makes it difficult as well.”<\/p>\n
Frost was impressed by what he saw in his first look at the opponent.<\/p>\n
“As a six-person unit, I thought they played very strong defensively,” he said.<\/p>\n
Minnesota began the evening with former Gophers great Hannah Brandt raising the banner to commemorate the team’s seventh national title. Senior captain Lee Stecklein has been a part of the last three of those.<\/p>\n
“It felt incredible, just to watch that video and remember that year and those last two games was really special,” Stecklein said. “It just gave us a lot of energy, but it was also a great turning point. That year is done, and now we’ve got to start another exciting one.”<\/p>\n
Game two for both teams comes Saturday in Minneapolis with a 2:07 p.m. CDT start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lindenwood squared off for the first time ever against two-time defending NCAA Champion Minnesota, and while the Lions were outplayed in losing a 3-0 contest, they certainly weren’t outclassed. “I was real happy with them,” coach Scott Spencer said. “I thought we competed for 60 minutes. I thought we had good sticks. I thought we […]<\/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\/22378"}],"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=22378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22378\/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=22378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22378"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=22378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}