“You don’t have to do anything special. You just can’t do anything wrong.”
That nugget from Minnesota coach Bob Motzko speaks to so much in life, but it’s especially useful when trying to contain one of the top lines in the country, a line that also happens to play for your own team’s top conference rival.
This week, No. 4 Minnesota hosts No. 17 Wisconsin in the final two regular-season games of the Border Battle, a series that dates back to 1922. As in all great rivalries, each opponent reserves the right to tell at least a little bit of its own tale: according to Wisconsin, Friday’s game will be the 313th between the teams, but according to Minnesota, it’s the 317th.
In early November, the Golden Gophers swept the Badgers in Madison, a pair of 3-2 wins with the second coming in overtime. Wisconsin struggled early in the season, with three wins in nine games leading into that set against Minnesota.
“They’ve been pretty darned good ever since our series with them,” said Motzko.
Since starting 3-8-0 including their series against the Gophers, the Badgers have gone 9-4-3 starting with a sweep of Penn State and including wins over No. 2 Michigan State and No. 13 Michigan. Part of Wisconsin’s success is due to the Badgers’ top line of Quinn Finley, Gavin Morrissey and Ryland Mosley. It was a question on his weekly radio show about how to play against that line that Motzko suggested aiming for flawless hockey.
“When you make mistakes is when those guys capitalize,” said Motzko.
Finley, Morrissey and Mosly have combined for 39 of the Badgers’ 84 goals this season, 12 of them on the power play.
“Of course, you really have to watch them on the special teams,” said Motzko. “That’s where they’re very dangerous and that line’s got a lot of confidence and Finley’s been terrific this year in his sophomore year, but every team we’re playing now has got top guys.”
And at this point in the season, every team has guys that are emerging. In a 5-4 win and 4-4 tie at home against Michigan last weekend, the Wolverines limited that top trio to one goal and two assists, but Wisconsin’s second line of Tyson Dyck, Christian Fitzgerald and Kyle Kukkonen wouldn’t be contained. Fitzgerald had three goals on the weekend, including Friday’s game winner from Dyck with less than five minutes remaining in regulation. Kukkonen had two assists Saturday, the second coming on Ben Dexheimer’s tying goal which also came with less than five minutes to go in the third.
Fitzgerald’s three-goal weekend doubled the number he’s scored on the season, and his goal Friday was his first since a Dec. 29 game against Connecticut in the Kwik Trip Holiday Faceoff.
“Christian’s been fighting through this real hard and stuck with it,” said Wisconsin coach Mike Hastings, “and as a coach, you hope the game pays him back some time.”
Fitzgerald’s performance earned him this week’s Big Ten first star, the first weekly award in the junior winger’s career.
Said Hastings, “This weekend, he earned everything that he got.”
Since their sweep of Penn State, the Badgers have been struggling to earn points on consecutive nights in series against conference opponents, something they have in common with the rival they face this weekend. On the road last weekend, Minnesota lost to Michigan State 9-3 before salvaging a point the following night with a 3-3 tie. They split with Notre Dame the week before and the week before that, they split with Ohio State.
After losing 5-1 to Ohio State Jan. 10, the Gophers beat the Buckeyes 6-1 the following night so, said Motzko, “You kind of pawn it off. We had an off night.”
Against the Fighting Irish the following week, though, the Gophers again couldn’t find their consistency. They won 5-2 Friday but lost 4-3 in overtime Saturday.
“The next Friday night, we have a great first period against Notre Dame, and then the Saturday game, we were outcompeted,” said Motzko. ‘But now we have a little data here. Three weeks in a row, we’ve been off of our game and we’re digging into that.”
Motzko said that he doesn’t like to make excuses, but right now the Gophers are fighting injuries as well as illness.
“There’s no question that we’re one of the teams right now where you find yourself in the middle of the season in January where we’re not on top of our game every night,” said Motzko. “We were also on top of it three nights of those weekends, but that’s not acceptable for us.
“Also in January, the second half of the season, everybody’s playing harder. The games are tougher. So when we’ve been pushed, we’ve rebounded, but why are we always being forced to rebound?”
With their 32 points, the Gophers sit in second place in the Big Ten standings, five behind first-place Michigan State and eight ahead of Wisconsin. Motzko said that one of the differences between the Gophers and Badgers is that early in the season, Wisconsin hit the same kind of rough patch Minnesota has hit in January.
“Wisconsin has turned the corner and lo and behold, they were decimated with injuries early in the season,” said Motzko. “Well, since then, they don’t have many losses. Mike does a great job there and he went through his stuff early.”
Hastings said in his weekly press conference that the early trials have hardened his team a little in the second half.
“You know what’s been really good about it from my standpoint is that we’ve had some peaks and valleys in that that we’ve learned to be a little harder to be successful,” said Hastings.
With the uneven first half behind them, the Badgers need to focus on what they can control themselves, said Hastings, but also to come to terms with their slow start.
“We had to own that, identify it, and then also look out the front windshield because once it goes by there’s really not much you can do,” said Hastings. “You flush it, you learn from it, and you move on. The resiliency of this group going through that adversity I think has allowed them to grow, and we need to continue to lean on that.”
Like Motzko, Hastings knows the talent of the opponent his team faces this weekend.
“You know, they’ve got ability up and down their lineup, they’ve got some guys,” said Hastings. “’Snuggy’’s probably playing as well as anybody in the country right now. Rinzel, real good defenseman. Their whole ‘D’ corps.”
With his 18 goals and 19 assists, winger Jimmy Snuggerud leads Minnesota in scoring and is sixth nationally in points per game (1.32). In the Gophers’ 9-3 loss to Michigan State, Snuggerud had the first assist on linemate Brodie Ziemer’s goal to tie the game 2-2 in the middle of the second before things got away from Minnesota, and he scored the Gophers’ final goal of the game late in the second, with the second assist on that marker coming from linemate Erik Påhlsson.
Snuggerud had two goals in the tie game the following night, the first assisted by Rinzel and the second by Ziemer.
“They’re going to go back home and try and defend their home ice just like we did last weekend,” said Hastings. “We’ve got to go on the road and find a way to play good hockey and give ourselves opportunities to get points.”
Hasting said that the series with Minnesota will be “as it always is with them … just a grind.”
Friday’s game starts at 7:00 p.m. CT. Saturday’s start is 5 p.m. CT. Both games will steam live on Big Ten+.
