Souliere Shuts Out Penn State with 28 Save Night
Minneapolis, Minn. — The transfer portal was originally put into place in October 2018 by the Division I Council to allow student athletes the ability to transfer to a different school and receive a scholarship without asking their current school for permission. The whole concept was to allow players to transparently publicize their desire to find a new school and in 2021 the portal exploded when the NCAA started allowing players to make that move without sitting out a year and getting an extra year of eligibility due to COVID.
Minnesota had barely dipped its toes into the portal under coach Bob Motzko, mostly sticking to building its roster with recruits and taking advantage of a few internal players gaining an extra year of eligibility. Motzko often brushed off questions about getting too involved in the portal, but always said that the portal makes a lot of sense when teams are looking for goaltending and quarterbacks.
Saturday night, it was a goaltender picked up in the portal when it made sense for the Gophers making a big impact as graduate goalie Liam Souliere made 28 saves to shutout his former team Penn State 1-0 in front of 8,872 at Mariucci Arena.
“We’re getting used to knowing him. He just looked good in there,” said Motzko. “Both goalies were just dueling it out, and both looked great. [Souliere was] calm, cool, collected and the few times that he was really under pressure, he never felt it. And then, he made some critical saves on the one, two on one, and then the one when the guy got it from below the goal line, one timed it and Liam was just laying there waiting.”
The night was a battle from start to finish for the Gophers as they were outshot 28-11 by the Nittany Lions. Minnesota was only out attempted 52-40 and Motzko didn’t feel like the shots on goal truly reflected the game flow, but the Gophers missed the net 15 times, had 12 shots blocked and Brody Lamb hit one pipe.
“We missed the net on a couple critical opportunities that we had where we didn’t make their goalie work. We’re going for the upper corner and sometimes you watch NHL games where you’re up against a big goalie like that–you’re not trying to score, you’re trying to make him work,” said Motzko. “I think we let him off the hook a couple times and missed the net. It’s something after we’ll have to watch back.”
While Arsenii Sergeev maybe was let off the hook only having to make 11 saves, Souliere was busy all night going against his former program seeing 20 shot attempts in the first, 15 in the second and 17 in the final period. The toughest stretch may have come when Jimmy Snuggerud took an offensive zone contact to the head major and game misconduct for an ill advised hit on Nicholas DeGraves in the dying seconds of the first period.
“Our PK is phenomenal. We work on it a lot. Props to [Coach Steve] Miller, he does a great job preparing us and the guys in front of me block a lot of shots. They make it easy for the goalie. They clear out the net. We got the long body going on the down low plays,” said Souliere. “It’s a well oiled machine right now. We got a lot of faith in it. I think we got a lot of momentum from it too. We got a little burst after that, and just kept grinding away.”
Souliere said he didn’t have this game circled on his calendar, but acknowledged it was a super fun game to play in as he dealt with the jitters, nerves and excitement of playing against his old team.
“It was everything that I ever dreamed of, so it’s pretty fun,” said Souliere. “There’s nothing more fun than this. It’s all about having fun. We’re a show at the end of the day. We’re just trying to make the fans happy and I think we did that tonight. It’s a pretty good feeling.”
Penn State coach Guy Gadowsky and his staff gave their former goalie a hearty handshake at the end of the game and you could see a few genuine words shared between them. Souliere said his former coaching staff was pretty quiet, but he could feel they were proud of seeing him play well and still a little fired up after playing well enough in two games this weekend, but going home without any points.
“I thought Soulie had a hell of a game. It’s good to see. He’s a good kid, really good kid. He did it the right way. I wish him the very best, except for against Penn State,” said Gadowsky. “He did everything right. He was very honest and upfront. He’s a great kid. I will always think very highly of Soulie, and I wish him the very best again… except against Penn State.”
Motzko credited his goalie with showing some great maturity and experience throughout the night, especially with his puck handling decisions. The coach noted that Liam knew when to play pucks right to the defense where he needed to move it and freezing pucks when it was time to calm things down. It was something that Souliere knew needed to be improved from the previous weekend.
“Against St Thomas, at the Xcel Center, I think I did a pretty poor job of controlling the game a little bit over there. I was playing too many pucks,” said Souliere. “We were flying high that game, scoring a lot of goals, but sometimes just getting a stoppage of play is good. When I know that my guys are fresh, I keep the puck moving because I know that our veteran d corps and the amount of talent we have, we can wheel up and go to offense real fast.”
While Saturday’s game didn’t feature defensemen putting up multiple points, Luke Mittelstadt got a key one assisting on the game winning goal. His shot from the point was tipped by Jimmy Clark and found its way through traffic into the goal with just 26 seconds left in the third period.
“Twenty seconds left, that puck comes rolling around, I just didn’t want to make a mistake,” said Mittelstad. “I saw two somewhat open guys, I just threw it through in there and Clark made a great play. If you watch it back, Nevers is wide open and that’s who I was going to, but Clarkie intercepted it and put it in… I just ripped it, I was totally coming back towards the neutral zone, getting ready to defend [after.]”
The win gives the Gophers a conference sweep to open Big Ten play and makes them 7-0-0-1 overall this season with their seven regulation wins and overtime loss to Omaha. They’ll travel next weekend to Wisconsin and could be without defenseman Cal Thomas after he suffered a lower body injury early Friday against Penn State. Mittelstadt said it was a fun series against a team that brought a lot of energy and should help them going forward.
“It was a man’s game and that’s what it’s gonna take to win games like that. We can win six to five and we can win one to zero,” said Mittelstadt.