Huge Kangas Effort Leads Way To Gopher Split

[Jeff Oftos]

Huge Kangas Effort Leads Way To Gopher Split

Schack two point night highlights team workmanlike effort

You’re not going to win many games giving up almost 50 shots on net, so hopefully the Gophers all thank their goalie on the bus ride home tonight. Alex Kangas, a last minute addition to the lineup by coach Lucia, makes his coach look good in leading the Gophers to their first road win of the season, a 5 – 2 win at the Kohl Center in Madison.

The Gophers actually came to play tonight. In a rare change of events this season, the Gophers actually took a lead – and built on it by playing strong hockey all over the ice.

Tony Lucia continued his strong season by lighting the lamp just 17 seconds into the game. He took a cross neutral zone pass into the Badger zone, and flipped a shot over Badger goalie Brett Bennett’s shoulder. As a bonus on the play, senior defenseman Brian Schack had the second assist on the play, his first point in quite some time in his first game action of the season.

Lucia helped up the lead to 2 – 0 with a great individual play. He grabbed another cross neutral zone pass, and this time flipped the puck by a Badger defenseman. He skipped around him on the other side, and threaded a perfect pass to freight train Budish, and Zach deflected it home; the Badgers were probably just as surprised as most Gopher fans were to see the scoreboard at this point.

13 Minutes into the game, the Gophers had scored on 2 of their 3 shots, but were being out-shot 15 – 3. And halfway through the game, the Badgers had 30 shots. But it was the Gophers who left the ice after two periods with a 3 – 0 lead.

After playing seemingly the entire period on the penalty kill and otherwise in their own zone, Kevin Wehrs got his own rebound in the slot, and put the weakest shot in the history of shots on net, yet it found Pat White’s stick in the crease and went in.

The third period, as you could guess, got a little hairy at points, but in the end each team pots two goals. The Gophers never lost a two goal lead but they did get their fair share of bounces, including Schack’s second ever career goal (both coming at the Kohl Center oddly enough) and the Badgers missing on a lot of close in chances.

The Gophers really came up with a huge win tonight. They played really hard in the corners and worked all night. But in reality they were outplayed for a majority of the last 40 minutes and without Alex Kangas’s best effort (45 saves) in more than a year, there’s little chance we get out of Madison with a split. There is a lot to take from this weekend, hopefully they can continue their hard work if nothing else.

On to next weekend. Bemidji State visits for their last ever non-conference series at Mariucci. It’s a Saturday – Sunday series, Saturday starts at 7:30, Sunday at 6 PM. Both games live on FSN.