Gopher Hockey Is Demon Slaying—2 Down, 2 To Go.
If you’re a Gopher hockey fan, there are demons. And we’re not talking about the ever-present whining about rekindling the WCHA (seems like the B1G 10 is doing okay btw), complaining about how the Olympic-sized ice sheet doesn’t prepare us for the playoffs, or Shane “the Ghost” Gostisbehere singlehandedly spooking Minnesota out of a championship in 2014.
No, we’re talking about the real demons. The ones lurking just beneath the surface, perched, and poised to turn our Golden Gophers into fool’s gold the moment we start believing.
Well, good news. The 2022-23 University of Minnesota Gophers are special. And the NCAA Tournament has all the makings to show us that they’re also different. The moment it came out, we could see more than one devil on the shoulder of this bracket. And halfway through, the Gophers have slayed two demons, with another pair waiting for them in Tampa.
Demon #1
A Holy Cross to Bear
Slayed: Minnesota 9 Canisius 2.
Despite the lopsided final score, last Thursday was no easy task for Gopher fans. Having watched Phil Kessel and the rest of the Gophers lose to Holy Cross in 2006. There is no less joyful fan experience than watching your team play as a #1 seed against the 16 seed. It’s, quite literally, a no-win scenario. If you win, you were supposed to. If you lose, there’s going to be dozens of sporting goods stores selling Canisius jerseys in Grand Forks by morning.
What people seem to forget in these 1 vs. 16 scenarios is that this is college hockey, it’s one game, and anything can happen. This seemed to be the case last Thursday, as Canisius had a plucky start, with the score tied 2-2 until late in the second period.
If you’re like most Gophers fans, this wasn’t your best evening. You openly wondered how on earth your Golden Gophers had to play something called a Golden Griffin when it really mattered. Two Goldens and three Minnesota teams in one regional, clearly the world was conspiring against us! And after the sluggish start you were cursing Coach Motzko for rolling four lines, wondering if our hockey arrogance would end our tournament before it started.
In fact, the only one who didn’t seem to be nervous was Bob Motzko. He carried himself with a quiet confidence, even mentioning he liked our game while bring interviewed on the bench while trailing early in the game. It was as if the real Bob Motzko had been turned into @fakebobmotzko on Twitter. Like Bob woke up in Fargo that morning, looked in the mirror and said, “there’s no way in hell we’re losing to Canisius.”
And Bob was right. With depth scoring from the likes of Luke Mittelstadt, Connor Kurth, Mason Nevers and Brody Lamb, Minnesota didn’t need to depend solely on the big line of Cooley, Knies, and Snuggerud. Add in a bad penalty from the Griffins, a hat trick from Bryce Brodzinski, and the same Gopher fans that were swearing at their televisions were now joking, “Hey Alexa, what’s a Canisius?” and rooting for double digits. Their only care in the world whether the hashtag should be #TrampleToTampa or #Natty2Dinky, and trying to find that weird gold “M” on the emoji keyboard.
The 9-2 victory in the regional semifinal official tossed those vintage Holy Cross jerseys into a Dinkytown firepit once and for all. Can you have firepits in Dinkytown? Can you burn Holy Crosses? It doesn’t matter. One demon down, three to go.
Demon #2
Can’t Win Against the other Minnesota Teams
Slayed: Minnesota 4 Saint Cloud State 1.
Once upon a time, the Gophers were the clear big brother to the 5 (now 6) Division 1 teams in the state of Minnesota. But over the past decade we’ve watched Minnesota Duluth parade to National Championships, been eliminated by Minnesota State the last two years, and now we had to play Saint Cloud State . . .Bob’s old team!
Cue the not-so-little voices inside our heads. You know you heard them. Was the B1G Ten really that good? Were we about to get a NCHC sucker punch from our neighbors up Interstate 94? Was our in-state little brother going to hang us on the doorknob by our golden underwear?
You know who doesn’t hear voices? Logan Cooley. He only hears goal horns. His breakaway in the second period let out a sigh of relief from Gopher fans who now suddenly found themselves on Expedia, StubHub, and Marriott Bonvoy planning their second spring break. A big faceoff win, and a Jackson Lacombe bomb from the point midway through the third period had them crossing their “T’s” for Tampa.
As time expired, and with the Gophers ticket officially punched for Tampa, I received a text from a friend and lifelong Saint Cloud fan. It was just one word, a confirmation. It read simply: MASTER. Order had been restored, as it was the Gophers not the Huskies who were top dogs.
Good news: the Gophers are headed to the Frozen Four in Tampa. Bad News: we need to do it all over again, as more demons await in Central Florida. The question is, which ones will we face? We know one for sure, and the Final (should we reach it) will determine the final devil to knock off the shelf.
Demon #3
Blue Bloods, Blue Collar.
Gophers Vs. Boston University April 6th.
One of the great frustrations of Gopher fans is we only have 5 National Championships. A program that is clearly the Coke or Pepsi of college hockey has been to the Frozen Four a whopping 23 times, emerging with just five wooden rectangles. Not counting this year’s appearance, that’s a paltry 23%. Sure, that’s nearly one in four, but we’re the Gophers! We should have the most National Championships! If that sounds like arrogance, it should. Every Gopher fan knows arrogance is one of the best parts of being a Gopher fan. It’s just been hard to pull off with a straight face for a while.
Certainly, Minnesota is one of the blue bloods of college hockey. And April 6th they’ll have the chance to square off against another blue blood of college hockey, the Terriers of Boston University.
In a scene straight out of the movie “Miracle,” BU and Minnesota will joust for hockey royalty.
Why should we bet on the Gophers to win this battle of the blue bloods? Well, because Bob Motko has been doing everything in his power to paint the blueblood Gophers collars a matching shade of blue since his arrival in 2018.
And this year, Bob finally has his team. He has arguably the best line in the hundred plus years of Gopher hockey in Cooley, Knies, and Snuggerud.
If you made players in a laboratory for Bob Motzko to love, they’re all on this year’s team. Matthew Knies is a relentless competitor, a throwback power forward with a neck that’s as big as his thigh. Jaxon Nelson is the guy behind the guys, a player Motzko can trust in critical situations. And this year’s Gopher team has the best back-end in all of college hockey with a blueline full of NHL draft picks, and a goaltender in Justen Close that has done everything that’s been asked of him. Sandpaper and gold are strange bedfellows indeed, but somehow Motzko found a way to hammer them together.
The Gophers semifinal against Boston University presents a wonderful opportunity to slay yet another demon in a best-on-best battle of the bluebloods. Only time will tell if it’s the Minnesota Mercedes or the B.U. BMW that gets the parking spot for the championship on April 8th.
Should the Gophers advance to the final, one of two possible demons will remain:
Demon #4—Option 1
We Can’t beat the Defensive-Minded Team Full of Older Guys.
Opponent: If we play Quinnipiac in the National Championship.
Two words you won’t often see on the Golden Gopher roster (unless it’s assistant coach Paul Martin): Grad Student.
While Quinnipiac is far from the NCAA’s oldest team, 2 of their 5 top scorers are grad students born in 1998 and 1999. Toss in Rod Brind’amour’s son (1999 birth year), and it’s clear that despite the Gophers logo, it’s the Wildcats who are long in the tooth.
We’ve heard it for years, and this season is no different. The Gophers are tied with Michigan as the youngest team in the NCAA. Should they face the experienced, and defensive minded Quinnipiac in the championship you’ll hear the chains rattling from NCAAs past, including last year when the Gophers were bounced from Boston by you guessed it: an older, defensive-minded Minnesota State team.
Demon #4—Option 2
Will the Real U of M Please Stand Up. Please Stand Up.
Opponent: If we play Michigan in the National Championship.
Don’t look now, but those B1G Ten rivalries they told us would happen are here. For the past two seasons, just as the RAH had been officially restored to a sold-out Mariucci Arena, the Michigan Wolverines came into our house at the end of the season and beat us by the same 4-3 score in a pair of B1G Ten Championship games.
Add in Erik Portillo kicking the net off its moorings 36 times a game, and diaper-dandy and NCAA leading scorer Adam Fantilli as the perfect Gopher villain, and you have the battle for the real U of M potentially playing out on the biggest stage of them all. Admit it, you were a little bit happy when the Wolverines came back to beat Penn State.
Minnesota and Michigan are quite similar. Both teams are loaded with superstar NHL-caliber talent. Both teams can run and gun. Although by the book, this year’s Gopher team does more closely resembles last year’s Wolverines who were tripped up in the semifinal by eventual champion Denver.
Add in the fact that Mike Legg’s original “Michigan” was pulled off against Minnesota, and that the Wolverines have hoisted 9 championships to Minnesota’s 5—and it’s easy to see how meaningful it would be should the Gophers sixth National Title run through “the Mitten.”
In closing, while we won’t know exactly which demons the Gophers will have to slay in Tampa, it’s clear that this year’s team has instilled something in the fanbase that hasn’t been there in some time. We trust them. We believe.
Why? Because this Gopher team doesn’t carry the demons with them that the fanbase does. And in ten days we’ll get to see if they have what it takes to snap all the pitchforks that have stuck us in the past.
Because one thing is for certain, it will take a devil-may-care attitude to be the last one standing in Tampa. Here’s to hoping that this year’s Gophers have the swagger required to slay not just two, but all four demons required to get the job done. We’d love to see it. Ideally on a Logan Cooley “Michigan” in overtime, against Michigan.
Does that sound arrogant?
