No. 7 Penn State crashes in 7-2 loss to No. 2 Minnesota
University Park, PA. - The Penn State Nittany Lions were overwhelmed Friday night as the Minnesota Golden Gophers blew them away by a final score of 7-2.
The Nittany Lions never looked like themselves as Minnesota controlled every aspect of the game from the jump.
Connor Kurth opened the scoring for the Golden Gophers about halfway through the first period with a nice combination play with teammates Aaron Huglen and Rhett Pitlick.
The Golden Gophers came flying out of the locker room scoring two goals within the first three minutes of the second period.
Penn State head coach Guy Gadowsky said, “we were not prepared to play our game.”
The Nittany Lion bench boss added that he has to take most of the blame for his team’s lack of preparation, but added that the team’s leaders were not ready to go either.
Those two goals ended Penn State goaltender Liam Souliere’s night after allowing four goals on just 12 shots.
Despite the poor numbers, the pulling of Souliere was more of a wake-up call to the team according to Gadowsky.
The Nittany Lions trailed 4-0, but there were still nearly two periods left to play and the Penn State players were trying to respond with some physicality.
Unfortunately for the blue and white, that physicality went a bit too far as an after-the-whistle scrum led to a minor penalty on Carter Schade for roughing and a major penalty on Ture Linden for grabbing a player's face mask.
“We had chances to change the momentum,” Gadowsky said, “the biggest way to do that is to score the goal and we had chances and it did not happen.”
The Golden Gophers proceeded to have a scoring party adding two goals on the man-advantage and finally a seventh tally on the night by star freshman Logan Cooley before the second period ended.
All in all, Minnesota buried five goals in the period of the long change.
Penn State forward Christain Sarlo did not like how his team responded to Minnesota’s onslaught.
“We just did a really bad job of responding to adversity,” Sarlo said.
Sarlo scored one of Penn State’s two goals throughout the contest.
The third period was mostly a wash as many fans had left the building early and Minnesota laid up on their scoring onslaught.
The Golden Gophers even gave starting goaltender Justen Close the final nine-plus minutes of the game off, giving way to Owen Bartoszkiewicz.
Penn State scored the only goal of the third period with Ashton Calder finding the back of the net.
It’s obvious nothing went right for Penn State in this contest, but the team will have to battle Minnesota again in less than 24 hours.
When asked if there were any positive takeaways from the game, Gadowsky said, “yes, there’s one tomorrow night.”
Maclain Young is a third-year majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact him, email macyoung21@gmail.com.
