The Minnesota Golden Gophers Men’s hockey team kicks off the second half of of the season in Happy Valley this weekend with a series against the Penn State Nittany Lions. The Gophers and Nittany Lions enter the weekend ties for 4th place in the Big Ten Standings with 13 points each, but the Nittany Lions are ranked #9 in the national polls while the Gophers are no where to be found. Penn State is squarely in the NCAA field sitting #8 in the NPI rankings that replaced the Pairwise this season to determine the NCAA field, while the Gophers are way back at #32 very much out of the field. That’s why this weekend is the start of a critical stretch for Minnesota’s NCAA hopes. A split at minimum is needed to keep the Gophers in the game. A few sweeps by Minnesota’s opponents going forward, and Minnesota will need a March miracle.
The Gophers have not played a regular season game since December 5th when they lost in overtime to Ohio State. Minnesota played Bemidji State to a 3-3 tie in an exhibition game last Friday but were without two of their top scorers in Brodie Ziemer and LJ Mooney who were with the US World Junior’s squad. The good news for the Gophers is that it appears their roster is back to full strength. Minnesota was missing players up and down the lineup in the fall, but looking at the lineup Minnesota skated in the exhibition tie, the Gophers should be back at full strength for their trip to Pennsylvania.
As Minnesota starts the second half of the season they will need to improve both offensively and defensively. Minnesota averages 3.05 goals per game on offense with the Brody (ie)s tied for the team lead in points. Both Ziemer and Brody Lamb have 19 points on the season. Ziemer’s 12 goals lead the way including seven power play goals ranking him second in the nation. It’s been a mixed bag defensively for Minnesota who allows 3.32 goals per game. Neither goalie hs really taken the 31 ole by the horns with Junior Nathan Airey 3-6-1 with a 3.09 GAA an a .895 save percentage. Michigan State transfer Luca DiPasquo has a better record at 5-4, but his stats are not much different with a 2.99 GAA and a .905 save percentage.
Penn State comes in off of a home and home split with RIT last week after not playing for 43 days prior to that. The Nittany Lions were missing plenty of talent and their head coach who were both at the World Juniors Tournament and the Spengler Cup in Europe. But when the Nittany Lions are at full strength, they are a team that can both play wide open hockey, but can pay a more shutdown game if needed. The Nittany Lions average 3.22 goals per game and are led by Charlie Cerrato who ranks 14th nationally with 24 points, while JJ Wiebusch and Matt DiMarsico each have 20 points. Wiebusch leads the Lions with 11 goals on the season, six of which have come on the power play. The Nittany Lions give up 2.78 goals per game and freshman Joshua Fleming has a 2.20 goals-against average and a .931 save percentage that have pushed his record to 5-3-0 in eight starts.
Special teams will be key this weekend and definitely favor the Nittany Lions. Despite leading the nation by averaging 19.8 penalty minutes per game, PSU has the NCAA’s sixth-best penalty killing percentage at 88.2 percent. They also rank 17th in the country on the power play at 23.46% success rate. Minnesota has been much better on their power play and are a smidge better than PSU at 23.64% to rank 15th, but the penalty kill has been abysmal. They still rank second to last in the nation killing off just over 64% of their penalties.
These teams met in November in Minneapolis and split a series. Minnesota won the opener 3-2 coming back from a 2-0 deficit, with Axel Begley’s first NCAA goal helped spark the rally before Ziemer scored on the power play and Mason Moe buried the first game-winning goal of his career. PSU evened the series by scoring twice on the man advantage Saturday for a 2-1 win.
Both games on Friday and Saturday are set for a 5 PM central puck drop and both will air on Big Ten Network.
