Dominant First Period Paces Gophers to 5-2 Win over Fighting Irish

Minneapolis, MN – After an uncharacteristic 5-1 loss a week ago in Columbus, Minnesota was searching for answers.

It seems like they may have found them.

Behind a five goal first period, the Minnesota Gophers (19-4-2 Overall (1-1 OT), 9-2-1-1 B1G) trounced the Notre Dame Fighting Irish (7-15-1 (1-2), 1-10-2-2) 5-2 Friday night.

The drama coming into the weekend was who would start in goal Friday night. Nathan Airey was in net when the Gophers got blitzed by Ohio State last weekend, while Liam Souliere played well Saturday. Lots of speculation (including from this writer) that Souliere had earned a good hard look at being the #1 goalie for this team, but coach Bob Motzko stuck with his plan and went with Airey between the pipes Friday night.

The game started out shaky for Airey, who gave up a soft goal 4:02 in to put the Irish up 1-0. A weak angle shot squirted through Airey and sat on the goal line before ND’s Paul Fischer poked it into the back of the net.

Minnesota turned it on from there, though. Jimmy Snuggerud evened the game at. 1-1 just 22 seconds later at 4:24 when he cleaned up a puck in the crease off a nice Erik Pahlsson rush.

Minnesota took their first lead of the night on Cal Thomas’ first goal of the year. The defenseman, in his first game back from injury, took a nice pass from Luke Mittelstadt on a delayed ND penalty and fired it home from the right-wing circle to give the Gophers a 2-1 lead.

Less than 30 seconds later, John Mittlestadt slid the puck from his knees past ND goalie Nicholas Kempf to make it 3-1.

The Gophers continued to dominate the period, racking up 24 total shots (on 42 attempts) through the first 20 minutes of action. They struck gold again late in the frame when Jimmy Snuggerud netted his second of the night and 14th of the season off a nice pass and rush from Mike Koster. The graduate defenseman drove the puck deep into the left-wing corner before putting an against-the-grain pass into the slot for Snuggerud. Jimmy’s shot deflected off an Irish stick and into the net for the 4-1 Minnesota lead.

14 seconds later, Mason Nevers scored his third of the season on a tip out front from a Beckett Hendrickson pass from the corner, making it 5-1 heading into the first intermission.

The second period was a bit more steady, with Notre Dame putting Owen Say into the goal in place of the beleaguered Kempf. If the Irish were going to have any chance to win the game they’d need to score the next goal, and they did midway through the period on Jimmy Jurcev’s snipe from the top of the right circle to make it 5-2.

Neither team was able to dent the twine the rest of the middle stanza, so Minnesota took a 5-2 lead into the third.

A ho-hum third period for the Gophers resulted in very few chances and no goals, and by the end of the period Minnesota put the seal on the 5-2 victory. Final shots on goal were 46-15 in favor of the Gophers.

Nathan Airey improved to 11-1-2 on the season, stopping 13 of 15 Notre Dame shots. Cal Thomas earned the third star of the game, while Mike Koster was the #2 star, and Jimmy Snuggerud was the #1 star of the game.

The win, combined with the MSU OT loss to Michigan, puts Minnesota up by one point in the Big Ten conference standings, and they currently sit third in the PairWise rankings behind #2 MSU and #1 Boston College.

The Gophers have a chance to be the first team in the country to 20 wins in the rubber match against the Irish tomorrow evening. Saturday’s game starts at 5PM.