{"id":23353,"date":"2017-03-04T21:19:54","date_gmt":"2017-03-05T03:19:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/?p=23353"},"modified":"2020-08-24T21:53:53","modified_gmt":"2020-08-25T02:53:53","slug":"stalder-bats-bulldogs-by-gophers-and-into-wcha-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/2017\/03\/04\/stalder-bats-bulldogs-by-gophers-and-into-wcha-final\/","title":{"rendered":"Stalder bats Bulldogs by Gophers and into WCHA final"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Minnesota Duluth is headed to its first championship game since 2012 after senior Lara Stalder knocked a puck out of mid-air and into the Minnesota net 11:29 into the second overtime for a 2-1 victory.<\/p>\n

“I saw [Katerina Mr\u00e1zov\u00e1] saw me, and she tried to give it over to me,” Stalder said. “Then it came high, and I whacked at it, and it was in. But I knew it wasn’t higher than the crossbar right away.”<\/p>\n

That put an end to 91 minutes and 29 seconds of hockey — the longest game in WCHA Final Face-Off history in front of 2,533 fans.<\/p>\n

“What an unbelievable game,” UMD (25-5-5) coach Maura Crowell said. “Both sides back and forth, fast, dynamic players going for both teams. I thought the Gophers played fantastic, and we came out strong in the end.”<\/p>\n

Minnesota (25-7-5) had the better of things at times, especially in the opening period and the first OT, when it outshot the Bulldogs 17-6 and 20-8, respectively.<\/p>\n

“I think we weathered a lot of pressure at times — 63 shots against — but we figured it out and put the puck in the net when we needed to,” Crowell said.<\/p>\n

Much of the weathering was thanks to sophomore goaltender Maddie Rooney, whose 62 saves were the most in league playoff history.<\/p>\n

“Maddie was outstanding,” Crowell said.<\/p>\n

Beyond the saves, she had to prepare for even more, as Minnesota attempted 119 shots.<\/p>\n

“It’s just a battle mentally,” Rooney said. “You’ve just got to do whatever you can to keep the puck out of the net despite fatigue.”<\/p>\n

A couple stops stood out among the dozens she recorded.<\/p>\n

“The breakaways in the first overtime — [Sarah] Potomak and [Lee] Stecklein,” Rooney said. “Potomak cut across, and I just stayed patient with it. Stecklein, she went to her forehand and I got my toe on it, I think.”<\/p>\n

UMD struck first on a power play. Ashleigh Brykaliuk got the puck to Mr\u00e1zov\u00e1 in front, and the junior from Prague waited for Sidney Peters to commit and flipped the puck by her at 12:15 of the second period.<\/p>\n

Just over a minute after falling behind, Potomak carried the puck the length of the ice, cut toward the net, and found the five-hole on Rooney to tie the score, 1-1.<\/p>\n

Rooney denied all the other chances.<\/p>\n

“Definitely would have liked to have some of those back, but she stood on her head and played unbelievable,” Potomac said.<\/p>\n

Stalder, usually a forward, made the game-winning play when she moved in from the blue line, where she had lined up for the final period.<\/p>\n

“It was actually to help our D out back there, because they had logged a ton of minutes,” Crowell said.<\/p>\n

She retained her offensive instincts.<\/p>\n

“I saw the opportunity,” Stalder said.<\/p>\n

It was one of those games where neither team deserved a loss, but the Gophers had to accept one, in spite of 39 saves from Peters.<\/p>\n

“Certainly, we wish we were on the other end of it, but I told our players to keep their heads high,” coach Brad Frost said. “We wish we didn’t lose, but we did things right.”<\/p>\n

Minnesota’s spirits were high at the outset, as senior Dani Cameranesi was back in uniform after having surgery in January.<\/p>\n

“I was just joking with these two and said I missed too many games so they wanted to throw two at me right away,” Cameranesi said. “It was a lot of fun, battling it out every single second, and being back on the ice with my family feels really great.”<\/p>\n

UMD feels great as well.<\/p>\n

“Couldn’t say enough about the team and the way we got it done in the end,” Crowell said.<\/p>\n

The Bulldogs will need to hope that they’ve saved something in the tank, as top-ranked Wisconsin stands in the way of them hoisting the first trophy in their college careers.<\/p>\n

“This has definitely given us motivation,” Rooney said.<\/p>\n

The puck drops at 2:07 p.m. CST in Ridder Arena.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Minnesota Duluth is headed to its first championship game since 2012 after senior Lara Stalder knocked a puck out of mid-air and into the Minnesota net 11:29 into the second overtime for a 2-1 victory. “I saw [Katerina Mr\u00e1zov\u00e1] saw me, and she tried to give it over to me,” Stalder said. “Then it came […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":23354,"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\/23353"}],"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=23353"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":171840233,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23353\/revisions\/171840233"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23353"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=23353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}