MINNEAPOLIS<\/b> — In between Friday and Sunday’s games, Minnesota-Duluth bused from Minneapolis to Duluth and back.<\/p>\n
But the Bulldogs didn’t let that affect them Sunday, coming out and grabbing a 3-0 first-period lead that they wouldn’t relinquish and earned a series split with No. 1 Minnesota with a 6-2 victory in a penalty-filled matchup. <\/p>\n
Bulldogs’ forward Justin Crandall said the team was a little upset with the way the scheduling worked out because this was supposed to be Minnesota-Duluth’s easiest travel weekend of the year.<\/p>\n
But he said it was nice to get back to their own beds Friday and regroup in Duluth before heading south again on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Freshman Dominic Toninato got the Bulldogs on the board early with a shorthanded goal at the 7:47 mark in the first period. <\/p>\n
The goal came right after a 5-on-3 power play chance for Minnesota ended.<\/p>\n
“Obviously, it was a nice shorthanded goal, but then we scored some goals and kind of took a little wind out of their sails like they did to us in the first period Friday,” UMD coach Scott Sandelin said.<\/p>\n
The Bulldogs added two more first-period goals, one from sophomore forward Tony Cameranesi and a power-play goal from Crandall.<\/p>\n
The two teams combined to take 23 penalties on the night and much of the game was a battle of special teams.<\/p>\n
Minnesota-Duluth converted four times in seven power-play opportunities. <\/p>\n
“Our special teams today didn’t do the job,” Gophers’ coach Don Lucia said. “You can’t give up four goals on the penalty kill and give up a shorthanded goal and still give [yourselves] the chance to win.”<\/p>\n
Crandall said the Bulldogs have been getting a lot better on the power play as of late.<\/p>\n
“[We’ve been getting] a lot more chances, getting pucks to the net,” he said. “I think tonight, guys kind of bought into that idea and scored some nice goals.”<\/p>\n
Crandall had two of the Bulldogs’ power-play goals and assisted on freshman Kyle Osterberg’s power-play tally. <\/p>\n
Sandelin said it has taken Crandall “awhile” to get back into it after an upper-body injury forced him out of play.<\/p>\n
But Crandall was able to do so today.<\/p>\n
“Hopefully, that’s a good springboard for him to get him back to where he was,” Sandelin said.<\/p>\n
Sophomore goaltender Matt McNeely was also instrumental in the Bulldogs’ victory and recorded 36 saves Sunday.<\/p>\n
“In the beginning he was huge, especially during the 5-on-3,” Sandelin said. “He made two or three saves which kept it 0-0. You need that.”<\/p>\n
The Gophers got power-play goals from sophomore defenseman Mike Reilly and freshman defenseman Michael Brodzinski, but they struggled throughout the game and Lucia said the team didn’t play with “great structure.”<\/p>\n
“We didn’t have real discipline in our performance today, whether it was off of positioning or stick positioning,” Lucia said. <\/p>\n
Still, Minnesota will head into Big Ten play with a 9-2-1 record, which Lucia said is a good position to be in. <\/p>\n
For Duluth, Sandelin said his team needs to figure out how to put together back-to-back performances.<\/p>\n
“Our best games have come after we’ve lost on Friday,” explained Sandelin. “With the games we’ve won on Friday, our performances haven’t been good. I like our kids’ response. I think that tells a lot about our team.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MINNEAPOLIS — In between Friday and Sunday’s games, Minnesota-Duluth bused from Minneapolis to Duluth and back. But the Bulldogs didn’t let that affect them Sunday, coming out and grabbing a 3-0 first-period lead that they wouldn’t relinquish and earned a series split with No. 1 Minnesota with a 6-2 victory in a penalty-filled matchup. Bulldogs’ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18166"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18166"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18168,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18166\/revisions\/18168"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18166"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=18166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}