Can the Gophers earn at least one more game on home ice next weekend?
The Minnesota Golden Gophers women’s hockey team has one advantage that none of the rest of the 10 other teams in the NCAA Women’s Hockey Tournament have. As long as they can keep winning, they won’t need to leave their home rink. The #4 seeded Gophers will face #5 seed Colgate Raiders on Saturday afternoon at Ridder Arena in a NCAA Quarterfinal. Earn a win, and the Gophers return next weekend to the NCAA Frozen Four held at…Ridder Arena.
The Gophers are making their 23rd appearance in the NCAA Tournament and with a win would advance to their 16th Frozen Four in program history. Minnesota will look return to the Frozen Four for the second time in three seasons after making it to the 2023 Frozen Four in Duluth before falling to Wisconsin in overtime in a NCAA Semifinal. The Gophers lost a 4OT thriller in their quarterfinal at Clarkson last season. This year Minnesota will look to get past their ECAC opponent and back to the Frozen Four where WCHA teams will likely be familiar foes to wind out the season.
Minnesota will of course rely on Senior forward Abbey Murphy. The Patty Kazmaier Top 10 Finalist for the second season leads the nation with 31 goals this season, and ranks fourth in points with 63. Murph has notched at least one point in 30 out of the Gophers’ 40 games, including 20 multi-point games and also leads the team with seven game-winning goals and six power play goals.
Colgate will obviously try and shut Murphy down, so the Gophers will need production out of some of their other top players. Senior Ella Huber has recorded a career-high 47 points this season to be second on the team, and she is followed by fifth-year forward Natalie Mlynkova who has 33 points and 16 goals on the season.
Minnesota also has gotten offensive production from a couple of blue-liners in junior Sydney Morrow and freshman Chloe Primerano who both have 29 points on the season.
In goal the Gophers are riding true freshman Hannah Clark. She holds an 24-9-1 record on the season with a .906 save percentage and 2.30 goals-against average. Her 24 wins are the most ever for a freshman in program history.
Minnesota locked their home quarterfinal with a win in the WCHA semifinals last Friday over #2 Ohio State. The Gophers then fell 4-3 to #1 Wisconsin in the WCHA Championship game on Saturday. Colgate comes in with a similar weekend knocking off #7 St. Lawrence in the ECAC Semifinal on Friday before falling 5-1 to #3 Cornell in the ECAC title game.
Minnesota will look to continue their historical dominance over the Raiders. Minnesota and Colgate have faced one another nine times in their history and the Gophers lead the all-time series 8-1. Colgate did win their most recent meeting at the Smashville Showcase in Nashville in November of 2021. Minnesota had previous swept the Raiders on their home ice a month prior in October. This will be the first time the two teams will have ever met in the postseason.
Colgate has become an eastern powerhouse since then. The Raiders are making their 6th trip to the NCAA Tournament and were the #3 seed last season and made their second Frozen Four appearance in program history. They knocked off Cornell in the quarterfinals before falling to #2 Wisconsin in a Frozen Four Semifinal. Gone from that team is Patty Kazmaier Award winner and Minnesota native Izzy Daniel, but the Raiders still have some dangerous scorers and a goalie who can keep them in any game.
The Raiders boast a top-ten Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award finalist in fifth-year forward Kristýna Kaltounková, who leads the NCAA with 111 active career goals and ranks top-five nationally with 26 goals and .72 goals per game. She scored both goals in the 2-1 win over the Gophers the last time the two teams faced one another in 2021 as a freshman. Joining her as major offensive threats for Colgate are Eylssa Biederman who leads the Raiders with 50 points and 32 assists on the season. Kaia Malachino has 19 goals on the season as well and scored the lone goal for the raiders in their 5-1 ECAC Championship game loss.
They also boast a great goalie in Hannah Murphy. The senior has made 937 saves this season, second most in a season in Raiders history for a save percentage of .940 and is two shy of the mark for most wins in program history. Murphy has contributed 13 30+ save performances this season, and she currently holds the program records for most career shutouts (17) and most shutouts in a season (6). She allows just 1.88 goals per game.
The teams are fairly evenly matched statistically as you would expect for a 4vs 5 matchup. Minnesota ranks third in the nation scoring 3.7 goals per game, Colgate is 4th at 3.63. Colgate is 11th in the nation defensively giving up 1.89 goal per game, Minnesota is 23rd at 2.4 goals per game allowed. Minnesota has the third best power play in the nation at 28.7%, Colgate is 4th at 28.57%. The Raiders are 12th in the nation on the penalty kill at 87.51%, the Gophers are 22nd at 82.93% Colgate averages 8.32 penalty minutes per game, Minnesota 8 even. The Gophers have six shorties on the year, but Colgate has just one. Its about as even as they come.
Against common opponents this season Minnesota went 5-0 while Colgate went 3-1. Minnesota swept Minnesota -Duluth 4-0 in the season series and defeated Brown 9-1 in a non-conference matchup at Ridder Arena in January. Colgate split with UMD at home in October in a pair of one goal games and swept Brown in both matchups this season, but went to overtime in one of them.
The game will come down to who can play in their system best, whos goalie can make the biggest save, and it is almost guaranteed to be a one-goal game, or sealed with a late empty netter one way or another. Hopefully the Gophers can pull out a close one and get at least one more game in front of their fans on the Ridder Arena ice.
HOW TO WATCH:
NCAA Women’s Hockey Quarterfinal
#5 Colgate Raiders @ #4 Minnesota Golden Gophers
Where: Ridder Arena, Minneapolis, Minnesota
When: 2 Pm Saturday
Stream: ESPN+
Live Audio: Gophersports.com