MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. \u2013 The No. 3-ranked University of Minnesota women’s hockey team battled to a 4-3 win over No. 12 Minnesota State on Saturday night at Ridder Arena to complete the weekend series sweep. Minnesota jumped out to an early 2-0 lead before the Mavericks answered with three straight goals. The Gophers responded with two goals of their own to secure the conference victory.<\/p>\n
Minnesota opened the scoring 10:42 into the first period. On a two-on-two rush, Josefin Bouveng<\/a> found Abbey Murphy<\/a>, who slid the puck through a Mavericks defender’s legs before ripping a far-side, high wrist shot for the game’s opening goal.<\/p>\n Bella Fanale<\/a> doubled the Gophers’ lead just over five minutes later on a highlight-reel play from Murphy. Murphy lifted the puck to herself, tapped it back down to herself and through a defender’s legs, fought off pressure, and delivered a one-handed pass to Fanale, who one-timed home her first goal of the night to make it 2-0.<\/p>\n Minnesota State responded with three consecutive goals to take the lead. The Mavericks scored with just over a minute remaining in the first period before adding goals at the 1:33 and 3:52 marks of the second period.<\/p>\n The Gophers continued to push and found the equalizer midway through the second. At the 11:35 mark, Ava Lindsay<\/a> took a feed from Jamie Nelson<\/a> and sniped a far-side, high shot from the left faceoff circle to tie the game at 3-3.<\/p>\n Fanale netted her second goal of the contest and the eventual game-winner at 16:57 of the second period, finishing a rebound just outside the crease off a Murphy shot.<\/p>\n The teams skated through a scoreless third period, which saw Minnesota State pull its goaltender with under a minute remaining. The Gophers held strong defensively to fend off the six-on-five attack and seal the sweep.<\/p>\n With the win, Minnesota improves to 18-4-0 (12-4-0 WCHA), while Minnesota State falls to 11-10-1 (5-10-1 WCHA).<\/p>\n Quotable Notable Up Next \n\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. \u2013 The No. 3-ranked University of Minnesota women’s hockey team battled to a 4-3 win over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232155,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-232154","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n“We got better as the game went on, the third period in particular,” said head coach Brad Frost<\/a>. “We did our job in regard to closing out the game. I’m proud of our group. We were up, got down there in the second, but were able to get a couple quick ones in the third to get the lead and then closed it out.”<\/p>\n
\n– Abbey Murphy<\/a> tallied her 50th point of the season in just 22 games.
\n– Bella Fanale<\/a> tallied her fourth multi-goal game of her career.
\n– Josefin Bouveng<\/a> extended her point streak to 21 games.
\n– Layla Hemp<\/a> made 31 saves on the night.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nMinnesota heads north next weekend for its final regular-season series against Bemidji State on Jan. 16-17. Puck drop is set for 7:00 p.m. CT on Friday and 3:30 p.m. CT on Saturday. Both games will stream live on B1G+.<\/p>\n