Gophers enter NCAA men's hockey tournament fueled by last season's heartbreak

SIOUX FALLS Overtime had barely begun on April 8 in Tampa when Quinnipiac's Jacob Quillan raced down the left wing, took a pass from Sam Lipkin, made a move toward the net and put the puck past Gophers goalie Justen Close.

It lasted just 10 seconds and the Bobcats stood as 3-2 winners and NCAA hockey champions after delivering a gut punch to a Minnesota team less than three minutes away from completing a storybook season.

“We'll take it to our graves,” Gophers coach Bob Motzko said. “You have a loss like the Minnesota Vikings, who have had some losses that you take to your grave. That's for us. I hate it, but now, a new year.'

Redemption from last year's sudden ending has been a theme for the Gophers, and Thursday night they will try to take their first step in writing a new script when they take on Nebraska Omaha in the NCAA Sioux Falls Regional semifinals. A win at the 10,600-seat Denny Sanford Premier Center would put Minnesota one win away from a third straight trip to the Frozen Four, this one at Xcel Energy Center.

To reach St. Paul and try to end their nearly 21-year NCAA championship drought, the Gophers will draw motivation from last year's missed opportunity. They also know that even though they have seventeen players back from that team, this group still has to forge its own identity.

“We obviously had a hard time getting over that, and some guys still aren't,” Gophers senior forward Mason Nevers said. “We try to make up for it, of course, but you never really forget something like that, and it can take you out of these moments.”

One goal at a time

Motzko was an assistant to Don Lucia when the Gophers won their last two national championships in 2002 over Maine during overtime at Xcel Energy Center and in 2003 over New Hampshire in Buffalo. In his sixth season as Minnesota's head coach, Motzko has the Gophers playing in their fourth NCAA tournament. They won one match in the 2021 tournament, two in 2022 and three in 2023.

If they continued that progress, they would be hanging the program's sixth NCAA championship banner in their backyard. Reaching the Frozen Four in St. Paul is the glittering prize fans have been pointing to all season, but Motzko isn't picky about the destination.

“Someone asks, 'Well, it's in St. Paul. Is that more motivation?'” he said. “What if the Frozen Four were in Kansas? It wouldn't matter. We would like to be there.'

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To get there, the Gophers need to win two games in Sioux Falls. Top-ranked Boston University will play Rochester Institute of Technology in the first regional semifinal on Thursday. Coaches, who are always focused on the opponent, will tell you that it is not a matter of winning two games, but of winning one game twice. In Nebraska Omaha, the Gophers have an opponent that has soared in the second half of the season, going 12-3-2 since late January and finishing second to Denver in the NCHC Frozen Faceoff.

“We watched them a little bit last weekend, and they're just tough, they're tough, they're aggressive,” Gophers senior defenseman Mike Koster said of the Mavericks. “You know they're going to be ready to go, and we have to match that intensity.”

The Gophers have forged a 22-10-5 record in a strong second half of the season, but are coming off a 2-1 loss to Michigan in the Big Ten semifinals and a 3-2 quarterfinal loss to Penn State in which they were down 48 points were defeated. -24. They have played a challenging schedule and are 6-6-3 against teams in the NCAA field.

With last weekend off, Motzko took his team to a resort in northern Minnesota to recharge, bond and prepare for the tournament. “I hope we get the same results we've had in recent years,” he said of previous NCAA first-round wins over Nebraska Omaha, Massachusetts and Canisius.

Forging your own identity

If the Gophers want to make a long NCAA run, they will have to do it without the star power they had last year. Gone from that 2023 team are NHL rookie standouts like Wild's Brock Faber, Toronto's Matthew Knies and Arizona's Logan Cooley. All three were first-team All-America selections last year, and Cooley and Knies were two of three Hobey Baker Award Hat Trick finalists. Additionally, defensively, Jackson LaCombe has played 62 games for Anaheim this season and Ryan Johnson has skated 41 games for Buffalo.

This season, the Gophers rely on depth with leading scorers like Rhett Pitlick and Jimmy Snuggerud, an all-senior line of Jaxon Nelson, Nevers and Bryce Brodzinski, plus top freshmen in center Oliver Moore and defenseman Sam Rinzel.

Tying it all together is veteran goaltender Justen Close, who has five NCAA tournament victories to his name.

“This is our fourth NCAA Tournament and now we have to draw on some experience with guys who have been in it,” Motzko said. “We have won six matches in the tournament in the last three years. We have to hope that there is some experience that can get us to the starting line and get us into that fight.”

That battle begins Thursday, with the Gophers knowing what's at stake. Fair or not, high-quality programs like those in Minnesota are judged by what they do in March and April during a seven-month season. The razor-thin margin for error is never more apparent than during the NCAA tournament.

“The most important thing is that you never know what will determine the outcome of a match,” Koster said. “Every service is important.”