This Week...Gopher Hockey

Well, it's been a pretty good seven days for the University of Minnesota University Men's hockey program. 

The Gophers, coming off a successful Mariucci Classic campaign in the waning days of 2012 - including a wonderful 8-1 triumph in the Championship game, against the same Boston College Eagles team who ousted the Gophers in the Frozen Four semi-final last year, to the tune of 6-1 - started off 2013 with a bang. 

Securing their No. 1 ranking after the shellacking of the Eagles, and with the No. 2 Notre Dame Fighting Irish coming to town, there was a feeling that, potentially, the Gophers would suffer a letdown. After all, the game against BC had been fast, hard and tough from the outset and after such a morale-boosting win to close out the old year, it was always possible that the team would come out flat in another big game.

Thankfully, it wasn't a problem. The Gophers scored early - a wonderful drop pass from Zach Budish for a laser from the top of the right circle off the stick of Nate Condon for a 1-0 lead - and they scored often, out-muscling Notre Dame when necessary, and riding another sterling performance from freshman goalie Adam Wilcox to a 4-1 victory. It wasn't as physical a contest as against Boston College, but the maroon-and-gold jerseys asserted their collective will where necessary. It was a powerful message sent from Minneapolis to the rest of the college hockey world, on top of the one sent at the end of the Boston College demolition: Dear rest of the NCAA, the Gophers are for real.

Three days later - a tough rebound after such a big-time game against the Irish - the Gophers were back in action, against an Alaska-Anchorage team who figured to be pesky. And they were. The Seawolves went up 1-0 in the opening game of the weekend, and after taking a 2-1 lead into the third period, it was a wild final frame that first saw AK-Anchorage go up 3-2 before the Gophers came roaring back, thanks in part to a bad Seawolves penalty - a five-minute major - that sent the big gunners on the Minnesota offense to work. Bang-Bang! Nick Bjugstad scored, and, with fifty-one seconds left to play in a tie game, Bryan Marshall broke his twelve game goal drought with the game winner, and it was Minnesota, 4-3.

Saturday night, the Gophers came out on a mission. Unlike the close game one night before, Minnesota jumped all over the Seawolves, scoring 2-2-3 in the three periods for a commanding 7-1 win that featured Kyle Rau's first career hat trick (which gave him the team scoring lead, which Bjugstad had held for only one night), and, perhaps most important of all, a chance to rest Wilcox midway through the final period. After a ten-save performance, Wilcox rode the pine for the final 7:53, allowing Michael Shibrowski to make a rare appearance, and two saves, and the Gophers ran out the clock, storming to their eighth consecutive victory.

The Gophers maintain their No. 1 ranking heading into this weekend -- the blood feud series against North Dakota, who will be Minnesota's third nationally-ranked opponent in six weeks. It will also be the last regular season WCHA match-up between these long-time rivals. A tough schedule is a good schedule, especially after the weak schedule last year was show up by Boston College in the Frozen Four , and anything above a 1-1 series split this weekend stands the Gophers in wonderful stead heading into the WCHA stretch run.

Notes:

1. Wilcox improves to 15-2-3, best in the WCHA, with two wins this weekend
2. Bjugstad held the team's scoring lead for just twenty-four hours, before Rau's hat trick relegated him to second place again.
3. 2-0 record vs. AK-Anchorage is the Gophers' first WCHA season sweep
4. Rau's hat trick was the first since a 5-goal Bjugstad effort vs. St Cloud State in November of 2011