The perfect script for the Gophers in their regular-season finale on Saturday night would have included finishing a sweep of Michigan on a night that celebrated 1974 Minnesota team, which won the program’s first NCAA hockey championship 50 years ago.
Thing is, nobody let the Wolverines in on the plan.
Seamus Casey scored a power-play goal with 3:29 left in overtime, giving Michigan a 6-5 victory over the Gophers, who furiously rallied to tie the score 5-5 on Luke Mittelstadt’s extra-attacker goal with 1:39 left in the third period. Rutger McGroarty had given Michigan a 5-4 lead with 3:25 left.
The Gophers used a five-goal third-period surge to force overtime as Jaxon Nelson scored two goals, and Brody Lamb, Aaron Huglen and Mittelstadt one each. Minnesota trailed 3-0 after one period as Casey, Gavin Brindley and Mark Estapa scored for Michigan.
Goalie Noah West, starting in place of the injured Jake Barczewski, made 23 saves for Michigan (18-13-3, 11-11-2 Big Ten). Casey’s winning goal came with the Gophers’ Rhett Pitlick in the penalty box for cross-checking with 16 seconds left in the third.
The Gophers (20-9-5, 13-7-4), who scored three power-play goals in a 6-2 win on Friday, went 0-for-5 with the man advantage, and that included a five-minute major penalty on Michigan in the second period. Goalie Justen Close gave up three goals on 15 shots in the first period. Coach Bob Motzko replaced Close with freshman Nathan Airey to start the second. Airey stopped 14 shots.
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The Gophers will face Penn State in the best-of-three first round of the Big Ten tournament on Friday through Sunday at Mariucci.
Michigan, playing the desperation of a team that entered the game No. 15 in the PairWise Ratings and outside of the NCAA tournament cut line, struck early on the power play when Casey scored on a shot from the point at 8:01 of the first.
Michigan took control of the game with two goals in a span of 31 seconds late in the first period.
First, Brindley finished a 2-on-1 rush by tapping in a pass from Rutger McGroarty at 16:20. Next, TJ Hughes intercepted Close’s clearing attempt and fired the puck toward the net before Close could get back. Estapa knocked it in for a 3-1 lead at 16:51.
At 9:10 of the second, Hughes cross-checked the Gophers’ Charlie Strobel into the boards, drawing a hitting-from-behind major and a game misconduct. With five minutes of power-play time and a chance to get back in the game, the Gophers couldn’t crack West, who made five saves during the penalty kill.
Nelsons put a charge into the crowd 32 seconds into the third period when he fired a sharp-angle laser over West’s left shoulder, trimming the lead to 3-1.
Brindley’s bar-down shot beat Airey at 7:01 of the third, making it 4-1.
The Gophers cut the lead to 4-2 at 7:58 of the third when Lamb tipped a Mittelstadt shot past West. Nelson scored his second of the game at 9:29, sneaking a sharp-angle shot from the goal line past West to make it 4-3.