STATE COLLEGE, Pa.<\/b> — Penn State learned why No. 1-ranked Minnesota is a powerhouse in college hockey Monday night as the Gophers defeated the Nittany Lions 5-2.<\/p>\n
That said, Minnesota coach Don Lucia said he thought Penn State played “pretty well.” <\/p>\n
Despite the loss, Penn State outshot the Gophers 38-25 and won more faceoffs by a 40-36 margin. <\/p>\n
Nittany Lions’ coach Guy Gadowsky said the latter wasn’t expected, as did Lucia.<\/p>\n
“What really hurt us tonight was faceoffs,” Lucia said. “They kicked our rear on faceoffs, so they were starting with the puck all the time and [we had] to chase it a little bit.” <\/p>\n
The first period of game mirrored the first game between the two teams.<\/p>\n
For the second consecutive night, the Golden Gophers found the net early by cashing in on their first power play. <\/p>\n
At 2:25 of the first period, Travis Boyd received a cross-ice pass from Hudson Fasching and snapped a shot from the left circle past PSU goaltender Eamon McAdam for his sixth goal of the season.<\/p>\n
Like Sunday night, Minnesota had a 1-0 lead and the shot total was 12-9. However, it was Penn State that outshot the Gophers.<\/p>\n
The second period had plenty of chances for both teams, but none of them seemed to have enough to beat either of the two netminders. <\/p>\n
It wasn’t until 17:15 of period when a Nittany Lion turnover at their own blue line allowed Ben Marshall and Justin Kloos to set up a tic-tac-toe one-timer for Sam Warning, who scored his sixth of the year.<\/p>\n
With the goal, Warning also ended a 15-game span without a goal. The junior said he wasn’t exactly sure why the drought was happening, but he did pinpoint one part.<\/p>\n
“I think I was just more passive,” Warning said. “I think I just wanted to make the pass more. I just need to bear down when the shot is there.” <\/p>\n
Despite outshooting the Gophers again by an 11-10 margin in the second period, Penn State came out of the dressing room needing a spark in the third period. <\/p>\n
It looked like it was going to come when Eric Scheid spun away from traffic in the neutral zone and backhanded a pass to a hard-charging David Goodwin. The freshman and tried to slide through the five-hole, but Adam Wilcox denied Goodwin with his stick.<\/p>\n
Warning struck again with his seventh goal of the year when a loose puck ended up on his stick. The following backhander tickled twine top shelf at 6:06.<\/p>\n
Just as some of the Nittany Lion faithful started headed for the exits, sophomore Kenny Brooks picked up a loose puck behind the net and banked it off Wilcox’s back and into the cage at the 10:01 mark.<\/p>\n
However, the Gophers didn’t let the glimmer of hope last long as Nate Condon pounced on a rebound just 17 seconds later and snuck it past McAdam.<\/p>\n
Even though the game seemed out of reach for the Lions, Curtis Loik proved otherwise as he streaked down the left wing and put a puck past Wilcox’s left shoulder at 16:30.<\/p>\n
But it was too little, too late for Penn State as Justin Kloos added an empty-netter to his two assists with four seconds left in the game.<\/p>\n
With the sweep, the Gophers improve to 15-2-3 heading into next week’s outdoor game at TCF Bank Stadium against Ohio State. <\/p>\n
But Lucia said there was still one thing missing from the Pegula Ice Arena’s atmosphere that they experience on the usual road trip. <\/p>\n
“It’s unusual for us to go on the road and not have anybody hate us,” Lucia said. “That’ll take some time.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Penn State learned why No. 1-ranked Minnesota is a powerhouse in college hockey Monday night as the Gophers defeated the Nittany Lions 5-2. That said, Minnesota coach Don Lucia said he thought Penn State played “pretty well.” Despite the loss, Penn State outshot the Gophers 38-25 and won more faceoffs by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"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\/18453"}],"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\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18453"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18455,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18453\/revisions\/18455"}],"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=18453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18453"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=18453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}