The No. 2 Gophers women’s hockey team continued its dominance Friday night with a 7-0 win over Minnesota State at Ridder Arena.
Six Minnesota players had goals, and 12 scored points in the win. Sarah Erickson had two goals, Amanda Kessel scored her team-leading ninth goal and had two assists, and Megan Bozek added a goal and an assist.
Sarah Davis and Megan Lorence each had two assists for the Gophers (7-1-0, 5-1-0 WCHA), who scored four times on the power play.
Minnesota outshot the Mavericks 35-19, but didn’t look as dominant as it did Thursday night when it held a 52-20 shots advantage in a 3-0 win over the Mavericks.
“We played much better last night than we played tonight,” Gophers head coach Brad Frost said. “Tonight we played a very good 20 minutes. … In the first time in a long time, we came out great in the third period at home when we had the lead, and extended the lead.”
Gophers goaltender Noora Räty recorded her third shutout of 2011 after sitting out Thursday’s game with an undisclosed injury. She made a number of key saves in the first and second periods to hold off an aggressive Minnesota State attack, and Minnesota took a 3-0 lead after 40 minutes of play.
“I thought the first two periods, we got some fortunate goals and [Räty] made some saves,” Frost said. “I didn’t think we were necessarily playing well enough to be up 3-0.”
Minnesota put the game out of reach with four goals in the first 12:04 of the third period. The Gophers outshot the Mavericks 15-3 in the final 20 minutes after holding just a 20-16 shots on goal edge in the first two periods.
Minnesota’s first goal of the night was also freshman Stephanie Anderson’s first goal in a Gophers uniform.
“I didn’t even know it went in at first until everyone came towards me,” Anderson said. “It was kind of a surprise.”
Frost commended the play of Anderson and her linemates, Lorence and Bona, saying they “played particularly well all weekend.” The three freshmen have combined for eight points on the season, three of which came against the Mavericks on Friday.