Well, Husky fans, this is something we all enjoy seeing. Our hockey team took down the "mighty" Minnesota Golden Gophers in a very convincing manner. Yeah, they scored a couple of late goals on us, but the game was pretty much over at that point anyway. It was a bummer to see Mike Lee miss the shutout, yet again, though.
The Huskies opened the scoring 2:21 into the game on a Brian Volpei goal. Garrett Roe shot the puck from the point and the puck deflected right to Volpei who buried it into the open net, giving the Huskies a 1-0 lead.
Nine-and-a-half minutes later, the Huskies struck again; this time on the power play. With the Gophers a man short, the Huskies were controlling the puck in the offensive zone. They were getting some good rotation on the power play and created some space to open the door for Jared Festler. From the half wall, Drew LeBlanc passed to Tony Mosey, standing in the faceoff circle, who then passed to Festler on the backside for a beautiful bing, bing play to put the Huskies up 2-0.
Period two saw even more offense from the Huskies, and effectively put the game out of reach for the Gophers. With the Huskies on a 4-on-3 power play, Nick Jensen and Roe were playing catch from about the top of the faceoff circles trying to setup one-timers for one another. Finally, Roe got a clean one off and it hit the pipe. Fourtunately, it bounced right to Tony Mosey, who was camped out on the back of the crease, and he buried it to give the Huskies a 3-0 lead at 5:22 of the second.
The Gophers started to show signs of life after the third goal by the Huskies, but it didn't last too long. St. Cloud took a penalty chasing after Gophers in their zone. With Minnesota on the power play the Huskies got another break. The Gophers dumped the puck in deep and Chris Hepp found the puck behind the net. He rang the puck around the boards and Roe picked it up around the Husky blue line. He then skated up the wall, into the Gopher zone, and cut back to the middle of the ice where he fired a shot, using the defenseman as a screen, that beat goalie Alex Kangas to put the Huskies up 4-0.
A mere 44 seconds later, the fourth line for the Huskies found the back of the net on a nifty move by freshmen wing Nic Dowd. He got control of the puck near the boards, cut towards the net, used a great move to freeze the defenseman, moved around him, and got Kangas to bite on the play, thus opening the net for the fifth goal of the game for the Huskies.
Mike Hoeffel scored midway through the third for the Gophers and Tyler Matson scored with just over 30 seconds left in the game to cut the embarrassment for the Gophers down a little. They were, however, meaningless goals.
Overall, I thought the Huskies played well. They gave up some turnovers, but they didn't end up in the back of the net because of the superb play of goalie Mike Lee. The D and forwards did a nice job, all night, of clearing the puck away from the front of the net any time there was a rebound which eliminated a lot of scoring chances for the Gophers.
The Huskies finally had a offensive outburst tonight, and it was led by Roe's three points. "In the first four games, I haven't played well," Roe said. "There's a lot of pressure and a lot of focus on me and how I play.
"I had been turning the puck over," said Roe. "The coaches had kind of been harping on me to improve right away and deservedly so. I'll take that. I got back to my roots and working hard."
"Nobody puts more pressure on Garrett than he does to himself," said Husky goalie Mike Lee. "I know I wasn't worried about him and I don't think anybody else was worried about him. He's going to find a way to get it done and be that little bulldog."
And that's exactly what happened.
The rematch is set for 2:07 on Sunday afternoon at Mariucci arena. Let's hope the Huskies can close out their first sweep of the season.
