Bob Motzko assessed a first period Friday night that saw his Gophers men’s hockey team trailing Wisconsin by two goals, and he delivered a succinct message in the locker room.
“Enough! Enough!” he said. “It’s ending right now. And the guys responded.”
The response came in spades, especially from Minnesota’s top line of junior Jimmy Snuggerud and freshmen Erik Pahlsson and Brodie Ziemer, who combined for 12 points in the Gophers’ 5-2 victory over the Badgers in front of 10,747, the third-largest crowd in the history of 3M Arena at Mariucci.
Snuggerud started the comeback with a second-period goal, then scored in the third and added two assists. Ziemer tied the score in the second and capped the win with an empty-net goal while also contributing two assists. And Pahlsson scored the go-ahead goal in the third and had three helpers.
The victory capped an up-and-down January for the fourth-ranked Gophers (20-6-3, 11-4-2 Big Ten), who went 3-3-1 in conference play in the month and will try to sweep their border rival in Saturday’s 5 p.m. series finale. Sluggish Friday starts against Ohio State and Michigan State crept into their game, and Motzko wanted to end that quickly.
“That first period is something that we’ve been seeing for a while, and we needed to dig our heels in and fight,” Motzko said. “… The next two periods, we played like we needed to play."
Helping the cause was goalie Liam Souliere, who made 33 saves in his first Friday start of the season after being the Saturday starter in a rotation with Nathan Airey. Motzko said Airey was under the weather.
Wisconsin (11-13-3, 6-10-1) built a 2-0 lead on first-period goals from Simon Tassy and Ryland Mosley. Goalie Tommy Scarfone made 23 saves.