In a weekend of upsets around the WCHA, North Dakota had its best result ever against Minnesota, but still fell by a 4-2 score.
The Gophers (27-1-2, 22-0-2 WCHA) grabbed a four-goal lead through the first half of the game and hung on despite a spirited rally by the Fighting Sioux (7-20-3, 4-19-1 WCHA).
Freshman Bobbi Ross laughed off her pair of “garbage goals,” but coupled with markers by Chelsey Brodt and Natalie Darwitz, they provided enough offense to move Minnesota ahead of UMD in the WCHA standings. Krissy Wendell assisted on three of the Gopher tallies.
“Her job on the power play is to create traffic, and hang around the net,” Coach Laura Halldorson said of Ross. “Garbage goals are those where you have a rebound sitting there, and work hard to poke it in. She’s had a few goals like that, because she’s strong, and she’s good around the net.”
Though her goals are not always of the picturesque variety for which some of her teammates are known, Ross has quietly built her total to 12 in her first campaign. Her role in scoring down low is different from how she played before donning the Gopher uniform.
“Before coming here, I wasn’t getting those goals,” Ross said.
When Kelly Stephens fed the puck across to Darwitz on a 2-on-1, she became the fifth player in Minnesota history to reach 200 career points. To what did Stephens attribute reaching that milestone?
“That I have good line mates, that I have a good team. I wasn’t aware that it was my 200th point,” she said. “So when I saw Darwitz go to center [to get the souvenir puck], I was like ‘Come on, it’s not her first goal!’ She just sniped on that goal.”
At that point, the Gophers appeared ready to cruise to an easy victory. UND climbed back into the contest on a pair of unassisted goals with each team a skater down. Freshman Melissa Dianoski picked off a Darwitz pass, froze goalie Brenda Reinen on a breakaway, and scored through the five hole.
“I just tried making a play,” Dianoski said. “I saw her telegraph to the other girl, got it out of the air, and went down. We needed one real bad, and it helped us out, gave us a boost. We got one right after, and that helped.”
Fellow newcomer Cara Wooster also found the net for the Sioux, when Reinen fanned on her dump in.
“It actually was a catalyst for the second goal as well,” Sioux coach Shantel Rivard said of Dianoski’s goal. “It kind of got the goalie back on her heels, thinking about it. If that goal hadn’t been scored, I don’t know if that second one would have been either.”
Though UND battled to draw still closer, neither team was able to score during a penalty-laden third period.
“It was a 2-2 second period, and a 0-0 third period,” Rivard said. “We’d never scored two goals and tied them for two periods, so we definitely made one more little step. I don’t know about a big step, but it was little, and we’ve got to keep going in that direction.”
Her counterpart thinks they are making progress.
“They are only in their third season, and they’re playing established programs,” Halldorson said. “They’re going to take their lumps early, and I know that they will build on that and continue to improve. I’ve always thought that they work really hard.”
For the Gophers, this was another test in their effort to defend their championship.
“I thought we came out pretty good, and kind of withered away,” Stephens said. “It’s something that we’ve got to work on obviously, because we’ve got to go back-to-back. Again, I think it’s partly a mental toughness thing. We’re going to have people score goals on us, and we have to respond better than that, and I think we will. But it was a pretty good weekend overall.”
