Gophers Sweep BSU, Win 5-3 on Saturday

The No. 1 Golden Gophers battled back after being down twice in the game to finish off a series sweep of Bemidji State with a 5-3 victory at Mariucci Arena. Four different players notched multiple points for Minnesota and Adam Wilcox’s 19 saves were enough to keep the Gophers’ record unblemished at 4-0-0 on the season.

Game Notes
-- The special teams were special tonight for the Gophers. Minnesota finished the game 2-for-4 on the power play and a perfect 3-for-3 on the penalty kill, although BSU did score just seconds after one penalty had expired.

“We’re clicking right now on the power play and that’s good to see,” said Travis Boyd who scored the game-winning goal on the power play. “So much of the game depends on good special teams and even our PK was good this weekend, too. We talk about winning the special team battle every game, every weekend and that was a big reason why we came out with two wins this weekend.”

-- If tonight was any indication of how he’ll play the rest of the season, you’ll begin to hear the name Leon Bristedt more frequently as the year progresses. The true freshman was all over the ice, playing on the top line with Rau and Fasching. While he didn’t record a point, he did nearly everything else well. The 5-foot-8, 183-pound Swede not only flashed his speed, puck control, and vision in the offensive zone, he also showed some grit along the boards fighting for pucks and standing up for Wilcox after the whistle on one play. The points will come if he keeps working like he did tonight.

-- Mike Reilly was honored during the game for being named first-team All-American last season. He played like one tonight. He finished with two spectacular assists and ran the power play artfully. Some games he tries to do too much and makes mistakes but tonight he played within himself and let his dominate skill take over.

“The kid makes plays,” Boyd said of Reilly. “He’s unbelievably talented, unbelievably skilled and I think he showed that tonight. He had a great game. What makes him so dangerous is his ability to get up in the play and he did that tonight a couple times and it benefited our team. Kloos had a great goal on a good play by Mike getting up in the play. We expect that from him. He makes those plays every game.”

-- The defensive pairing of Ben Marshall and Jake Bischoff struggled tonight. They were often pinned down in their own end and struggled to effectively break out of the zone. Bischoff, overall, played fairly well positionally, but he was very sloppy moving the puck. Marshall made one huge gaffe, something he seems prone to doing every few games. He turned the puck over right in front of Wilcox to a BSU player, who laid a backhand into the net for a goal. It’s a sloppy, unacceptable play for any defenseman, especially a senior.

-- Adam Wilcox didn’t play his best game, but he wasn’t awful either. He was solid; making 19 saves on 22 shots. The first goal he let in was pretty soft, but the other two were a combination of poor defense by the Gophers and solid execution by BSU—he didn’t have much of a chance on either.

“Sometimes we rely on Wilcox too much,” said Justin Kloos who scored his second goal of the season on Saturday. “We kind of hung him out to dry a couple of times in the second period. When we got down, we all realized we had to step it up and play for our goalie and play from our defensive zone, out.”

Luckily the Gophers scored fives goals, so 19 saves was adequate for the victory.

“It was nice for us to score a few goals,” said Don Lucia. “We expect so much from Adam and maybe he wasn’t quite as sharp as he usually is but he made some key saves when we needed it. We scored enough to win the game for him tonight.”

By the Numbers
50 Career goals scored by captain Kyle Rau in the Maroon and Gold after his first-period tally.

8 Points on the season for Rau after just four games.

4 Players recorded multiple points: Rau, Boyd, Reilly, and Kloos.

Three Stars of the Game
No. 3 Kyle Rau – The senior scored a goal and added an assist.
No. 2 Markus Gerbrandt – Scored two goals on five shots for BSU.
No. 1 Travis Boyd – Boyd had two points on the night including the game-winner.

What’s Next
Minnesota continues its nonconference slate next week with a home-and-home series against rival St. Cloud State. The series will open in St. Cloud on Friday, Oct. 31 at 7:30 p.m. and return home to Mariucci Arena on Saturday afternoon at 4:00 p.m.

TravisErickson said:

-- The defensive pairing of Ben Marshall and Jake Bischoff struggled tonight. They were often pinned down in their own end and struggled to effectively break out of the zone. Bischoff, overall, played fairly well positionally, but he was very sloppy moving the puck. Marshall made one huge gaffe, something he seems prone to doing every few games. He turned the puck over right in front of Wilcox to a BSU player, who laid a backhand into the net for a goal. It’s a sloppy, unacceptable play for any defenseman, especially a senior.

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That seems like a frequent problem with the skilled offensive defensemen that Lucia likes. I recall Reilly having trouble with it when he was younger (though he seems grown out of it). I always thought Ness was a disaster. A Marshall turnover ended our tournament appearance in overtime two years ago. Marshall seems to be one of the worse cases of this particular affliction. Maybe I just have a different vision for how a blueline should look (I like a lot of the old school gritty defensemen), but it seems like we always have at least a couple defensemen prone to bad turnovers and getting out muscled in front of our net or in the corners in our end.

I know I say this after pretty much every out of conference sweep, and at risk of sounding like a broken record, the way the pairwise works really makes these sweeps important for our comparisons against teams in the other conferences, so this was another huge weekend for us.