WCHA Women's Preview: Influx of Olympic talent boosts a loaded group (The Athletic)

College hockey is back. In the WCHA, so are several of the sport’s top players.

If the topsy-turvy turnover nature that surrounded 2017-18 was an opening for several teams then 2018-19 is a return to the status quo. The year is a bit of a comeback season for the conference. Despite three teams in the eight-team NCAA tournament and two Frozen Four finalists, the year ended empty. For the first time since women’s ice hockey was sponsored by the NCAA in 2000, no WCHA team made the championship game.

It’s also a comeback in the fact that many top collegians are returning after spending a year centralized with their country training for the Olympics. Several teams restock with leaders. Others are getting Olympians as freshmen.

Of the four players given votes for Preseason WCHA Player of the Year, none played college hockey in 2017-18. (Even two of the three nominees for the Preseason Rookie of the Year award delayed their enrollment by a season.) Maddie Rooney gives UMD stability in net. Kelly Pannek, Sarah Potomak and Amy Potomak give Minnesota a top line. The end result is four WCHA teams ranked in the top 9, including one that finished below .500 last season.

Read the full preview, including in-depth looks at the Gophers and all seven WCHA teams here. (subscription required)

Top 10 2017-18 Features Nate Wrote (or) Welcome Back!

Welcome back!

With summer unofficially coming to an end after the Minnesota State Fair closing up shop for another year, September marks a new year of hockey.

It's time to prepare for the 2018-19 college hockey season. School has begun around the country. Ice sheets are ready to go. Same with captain's practices. Countdowns until opening night remains somewhere in the 20s to 40s.

Starbucks brought back its Pumpkin Spice Latte, perhaps the biggest sign fall peeks around the corner.

Prior to any preseason coverage, however, and on the one-year anniversary of The Athletic Minnesota launching, I wanted to showcase some of my favorite features from the site in the year since launching. Give them one last bit of love before turning my attention towards the future.

May 2018 College Hockey Mailbag (The Athletic)

This week I participated, along with a few others, in answering questions from Athletic subscribers and Twitter followers. We ended up enough college hockey questions to split the whole thing into three parts based on schools. (Part III also has a couple more general college hockey questions.) I can't thank everyone enough for sending such thoughtful questions. Hopefully, we do something similar soon.

They can be read below.

Part I: On Mankato, Bemidji, North Dakota and the NSCC

Part II: On the Gophers' men's and women's programs

Part III: On the national champions and St. Cloud State

Non-Gopher Stories (March & April 2018)

Much like the radio and podcast article, I thought it'd be best to put all my recent coverage from non-Minnesota stories in one spot. Feel free to click and read up although as a head's up, everything is from the not-free The Athletic.

Minnesota High School State Boys Hockey Tournament Coverage:

-Wednesday Dispatch
-Thursday Dispatch
-Friday Dispatch
-Saturday Dispatch

Women's Frozen Four Coverage:

-With ex-Gophers at the helm, Ohio State comfortable at this Frozen Four
-In WCHA country, Clarkson wins first all-ECAC Frozen Four

Men's West Regional

-Everything's on the line in the latest clash between Minnesota State, Minnesota Duluth
-OT veterans of Minnesota Duluth rally for thrilling win over Minnesota State
-Minnesota Duluth hoping to ride 2011 parallels to another title

Men's Frozen Four Coverage:

-Notre Dame's Minnesota contingent making their mark, fishing for a title (The Athletic Minnesota)
-Stars' Tufte, Minnesota Duluth wins NCAA title (The Athletic Dallas)
-Stars prospect Cecconi grows as player and leader (The Athletic Dallas)

Feature: The Humanitarian Spirit of Sidney Peters (The Athletic)

When you spend a lifetime tying your identity to hockey, discovering who you are outside the game can be difficult.

That was the case for Sidney Peters in fall 2013 when she stepped on campus at the University of Minnesota. One of the top goalies in her age group, the Geneva, Illinois, native saw herself competing right away for a starting spot. Instead, she sat behind Amanda Leveille, redshirting her first year and playing a combined 17 games the next two.

It turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Sitting on the bench forced Peters to figure out who she was without hockey. Over the past four years she has logged over 800 volunteer hours, traveled to Haiti as a certified Emergency Medical Technician and figured out her post-hockey career; all while backstopping the Gophers to a Frozen Four last season and WCHA Final Faceoff championship this year.

Her work away from the ice resulted in Peters being one of five finalists for the Hockey Humanitarian Award, which will be presented Friday afternoon to college hockey’s “finest citizen” for leadership in community service.

Click here to read the rest!

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Feature: Questions facing the Gopher program...beyond finding a coach (The Athletic)

“Selfishly, we feel like we have the best hockey job in the country.”

University of Minnesota athletic director Mark Coyle was frank during Tuesday’s press conference announcing head coach Don Lucia would be stepping down after 19 years. As questions turned to who would be Lucia’s successor — the third permanent head coach since 1985 — Coyle mentioned he wants someone who understands what the program means to the state.

“We’re very proud of what we’ve accomplished and our incredible tradition,” he said. “I look forward to having conversations with the right people and making sure we find the best fit for our student-athletes and our program.”

However, a new head coach is not the only question facing the Gopher program. Whoever gets the job will have some work to do in 2018-19 after a season that ended with a 19-17-2 record, four consecutive road losses to Penn State and the perfect storm of outcomes to knock the team out of the NCAA Tournament.

Here’s a look at some of the other questions facing Minnesota in 2018-19.

Click here to read the rest!

Feature: When they needed it most, Gopher women found a way to beat the best (The Athletic)

With her team’s center of attention turning towards needing two wins, internally Sidney Peters spent much of the weekend focusing on a single droplet of water.

It’s a trick Peters, a kinesiology major, picked up to help concentrate. During stoppages of play Minnesota’s redshirt senior goaltender will spray her water bottle in the air and try to watch the droplets falling down.

“It’s a way to keep my eyes awake. You have all these little muscles in your eyes. When you’re zoning out and not getting a lot of shots, you can lose control,” she said. “It’s also a focal point for me. It helps me to stay focused and deal with the anxiety that’s inevitable as an athlete.”

Inevitably there was anxiety.

Two hours before Saturday’s WCHA Final Faceoff semifinal, any plans of the Gophers making the NCAA tournament as an at-large bid disappeared 1,100 miles away. Minnesota players and coaches found out through scoreboard watching that UConn upset Hockey East regular-season champion Boston College. Hockey East’s automatic bid would go to a team outside the top eight in the Pairwise Rankings, taking away an at-large spot in the eight-team field.

That spot would have been Minnesota’s.

Click here to read the rest!

Feature: Taylor Williamson "overcame the impossible" to get back to Gophers (The Athletic)

During the first period of Minnesota’s first game, Taylor Williamson quietly left the bench. She didn’t return for over three months.

To get back to her spot at Ridder Arena, where Minnesota will this weekend try to escape the NCAA tournament bubble and win an automatic bid through the WCHA Final Faceoff, was far from a guarantee.

“I was the only person who in my head thought I could do it,” Williamson told The Athletic. “If you would have asked the doctors, my coaches, my teammates, the way they would had seen me at my lowest point, easily people would have said there’s no way Taylor is going to make it.”

Nothing has been easy for Williamson in a year which saw the 21-year-old undergo brain surgery, be diagnosed with a rare neuromuscular disorder and, in her words, overcome the impossible.

Click here to read the rest!

Feature: Gophers eye one last hurrah at Mariucci for seniors in Big Ten tourney (The Athletic)

Author's note: I realized I never linked to this feature over at The Athletic, which was written after the Ohio State series and prior to Minnesota losing to Penn State. Keep that in mind when reading.

If you haven't subscribed to The Athletic and want to find out about the quality journalism, no ads or clickbait for the price of a coffee a month, let me know so I can hook up with a deal.

Prior to the final six games of the regular season, Minnesota’s underclassmen had a goal to give their five seniors one more chance to play at home after the two remaining guaranteed regular-season home games. To get there, the Gophers, sixth place in the Big Ten at the time, needed to finish fourth in order to ensure a best-of-three conference tournament quarterfinal series would be at Mariucci.

Three wins and a tie later, Minnesota is in reach of that goal.

Senior Day came and went Saturday afternoon. Minnesota held a pregame ceremony before facing Ohio State. Every freshman, sophomore and junior sat on the bench watching their teammates be honored.

“I’ve been so blessed and so rewarded to come to this program. It’s a decision I’ll never forget,” senior defenseman Steve Johnson told The Athletic.

Click here to read the rest!

After another top-five win, Gopher hockey eyes a consistent formula for the season (The Athletic)

At his end of the ice, playing in a scoreless game that had gone into overtime, Mat Robson had one thing in mind.

“Make the next save,” he said.

Matching Notre Dame’s Cale Morris save for save, the Gopher goaltender did just that Friday. Robson stopped all 25 and was rewarded when Casey Mittelstadt, on a point of emphasis from the last time the two teams met, crashed the net and tapped in a Rem Pitlick rebound for a 1-0 victory over a No. 1 Fighting Irish team that swept the Gophers (and every other Big Ten team) earlier this season.

“Don’t give up the first one. You can’t think about losing or winning, you just have to make the next save and keep yourself composed,” said Robson, who for the first time this season started both games in a weekend.

When that doesn’t happen, as was the case in Saturday’s 4-1 loss to snap a three-game winning streak, it leaves Minnesota searching.

3M Arena at Mariucci has seen its share of highs and lows during the month of January. The Gophers have now twice shut out the then-No. 1 team in the nation. Sandwiched between was a 15-minute postgame players-only meeting at home, necessitated by a lifeless 3-1 defeat to Michigan.

Click here to read the rest (subscription required)!

Finally eligible, Mat Robson is ready for his shot in the Gophers net (The Athletic)

For practical purposes, Minnesota’s second half of the regular season begins when the team returns from a two-week break for finals and the holidays. Technically, as Gopher sophomore goaltender Mat Robson certainly knows, it started with last weekend's road series against then-No. 15 Ohio State.

Ineligible for the season’s first half, the true halfway point marks a new beginning. Excited and in good spirits, there’s one thing Robson wants now after finally earning his college hockey eligibility back.

“Just play,” he told The Athletic prior to the Ohio State series. “I just want to play and play well and give our team a chance to win every night, whenever I’m looked upon to do my part and to be a good teammate as well. We definitely want to get to St. Paul at the end of the year (for the Frozen Four).”

Being able to play does not guarantee playing time, however. Head coach Don Lucia acknowledges as much with Robson’s addition. Junior Eric Schierhorn is in his third year as Minnesota’s starting goaltender. This season he has a career-high .912 save percentage.

Click here to read the rest!

Feature: Shorthanded Gopher women keep learning lessons as No. 1 Wisconsin looms (The Athletic)

Returning home to Ridder Arena from a difficult four-game road trip, Minnesota enters the end of October a different team than the one that began the month.

The Gophers face top-ranked Wisconsin Saturday and Sunday on the heels of a four-game winning streak. Along the way, Minnesota (5-2-1, 4-1-1-0 WCHA) swept two in-state foes in two tough environments. The team won a pair of games at Bemidji State before sweeping Minnesota Duluth last weekend, coming back from a 1-0 deficit Saturday with two third-period goals for a 2-1 victory.

Throughout October, Minnesota has been slowly finding its own identity.

“It’s a process. We’re learning a little bit more about that each game, each day that we practice,” senior defender Sydney Baldwin said. “I think we’re just becoming a really gritty team, just fighting back, keep moving forward and getting better each day and keep playing our hardest.”

Baldwin and Minnesota's lessons in self-discovery began early.

Click here to read the rest! (Subscription Required)

Author's note: I wrote this before the weekend series against Wisconsin. Keep that in mind.

Gopher hockey has another rollercoaster weekend against Penn State (The Athletic)

MINNEAPOLIS — Don Lucia walked into his postgame press conference Friday night and opened by saying his Minnesota team is not yet a finished product. The same holds true after Sunday’s game against Penn State, although the Gophers could take solace in their best 60-minute performance of the young season coming two days after their worst.

Two weekends into 2017-18 has seen Minnesota twice struggle Friday night before bouncing back in the weekend’s second game to earn a victory.

This has created plenty of teaching moments for Lucia in the early going. Repeatedly in practices Monday through Thursday, players have been told to focus on staying disciplined and starting off the first 10 minutes strongly.

Neither happened Friday night.

Click the link for the full story (Subscription Required)

Long Feature: Tyler Nanne living his dream playing for Gophers (The Athletic)

"After two and a half years with zero competitive games, two schools, several trips to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, a year where he was not allowed to skate, and a year where he was only allowed to practice, Tyler Nanne was about to finally experience collegiate hockey for himself."

My first big feature for The Athletic is an in-depth dive into the remarkable road Tyler Nanne took to get to Minnesota and opening night. Once one of the top high school players in the state, Nanne was struck with Myocarditis and spent a year recovering. Now healthy, his family helped him greatly along the way.

I'm happy to be having the opportunity this season to write long college hockey features.

Read here (The Athletic subscription required): https://theathletic.com/126066/2017/10/13/tyler-nanne-minnesota-golden-gophers-feature/