In-state rivals Minnesota and St.Cloud State will play their second home-and-home series of the season this weekend. The teams split two games at Mariucci Arena last season and split their first home-and-home series of this season, back in November. The Huskies won, 4-3, in St.Cloud in the first game of the series, while the Gophers got their revenge with a 5-0 win the next night back in Minneapolis.
Minnesota currently holds a 49-27-12 edge in the all-time series, which began in 1990.
This weekend, the first game of their series is at Mariucci Arena with the second game at the National Hockey Center. The Gophers are in first place in the WCHA with 24 points; St. Cloud State is tied for seventh with 17, but Minnesota head coach Don Lucia knows the Huskies are a tough foe.
"Nobody in the league has swept St. Cloud, but they haven't swept anybody either," Lucia said. "They are just on that win one, lose one deal. But they have some good, skilled players. The strength of their team is their goaltending and their defensemen. They have a nice corps of defensemen, a good mix of size and skill."
St. Cloud has been led offensively by junior forward Ben Hanowski’s 27 points (12g-15a). Behind Hanowski are senior forward Jared Festler (11g-9a) and standout defensemen Andrew Prochno (4g-16a), and Nick Jensen (5g-14a). Prochno’s 20 points rank him second nationally in scoring by a freshman defenseman.
The Huskies lost star goaltender Mike Lee to an injury early in the season, but freshman Ryan Faragher has done a solid job filling in. Faragher enters this weekend with a modest, 8-10-3 record, but he has posted a solid 2.75 goals-against-average and a sparkling .914 save percentage. Last weekend, in a split with North Dakota, the rookie netminder stopped 74 of the 78 shots he faced.
The 17-9-1 Gophers are No.3 in the latest USCHO.com poll and No.3 in the USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine Poll. Minnesota has been ranked in the top five in both polls for the last 12 weeks.
Up front the Gophers are led by sophomore forwards Nick Bjugstad (20g, 12a) and Erik Haula (10g, 18a). On the back end, sophomore defenseman Nate Schmidt looks to continue his brilliant season as he has posted 24 assists.
One area to focus on this weekend will be special teams. The Gophers' power-play is clicking at a stellar 22.6 percent, while the Huskies penalty kill has struggled killing off just 76.8 percent this season.
Lucia, however, remembers what happened the last time these teams met.
"We made some mistakes up there on our penalty kill," the Gophers' coach noted. "We got stretched out and we got seamed a couple of times. Our lack of execution on the penalty kill probably cost us the game on Friday night. We will need to be be much better in the area of special teams if we want to be successful this weekend."
When the Huskies have the man advantage they score at a 19.2-percent rate, while Minnesota's penalty-kill unit shows an 84.4-percent success rate. The most important player on any team's PK unit is the man in the mask, and the Gophers have one of the best in the country.
Goaltender Kent Patterson has played every minute in net for the Gophers this season. He is first in the country in minutes played, (1,618 minutes, 54 seconds), and is tied for first in the nation with six shutouts. Patterson also boasts a .919 save percentage and a 2.08 GAA. He leads the WCHA with a 1.94 goals-against average.
Minnesota is just 7-6-0 on Friday nights but an impressive 10-2-1 on Saturday, which includes a perfect 9-0-0 record on Saturday within the WCHA conference.
