(Editor’s note: This is the third of a five-part series chronicling the history of the Western Collegiate Hockey Association, now in its 25^th season as the best conference in women’s ice hockey. Part Three: Minnesota’s perfect season)

By Bill Brophy

For all the achievements in its first 25 seasons of women’s collegiate ice hockey, whether it be the 20 national titles, the nine Patty Kazmaier Award winners or the 121 all-American players that the Western Collegiate Hockey Association has produced, the single greatest accomplishment is unanimous.

Minnesota had a perfect season in 2012-13. The Gophers went 41-0.

They are the Miami Dolphins of women’s college hockey. No one else in their sport has accomplished the perfect season.
Brad Frost was the architect and coach of that team. He acknowleged the other day that he hasn’t reflected much on that magical year lately, but when he does….

“It doesn’t seem real quite honestly,” said Frost. “But it was because I know I had a ton of emotions that season.”

The Gophers had all the ingredients for a great team. They had the elite goaltender in Noora Raty, who posted a 1.05 goals against average and a .950 save percentage, a shutdown defense which featured Lee Stecklein, Rachel Ramsey and WCHA defensive player of the year Megan Bozek, whose big shot produced 20 goals and 57 points, plus a couple snipers in rookie of the year Hannah Brandt and Amanda Kessel, the 2013 Patty Kazmaier Award winner who scored 46 goals and 101 points.

“They had so much depth,” said Jeff Giesen, now an associate head coach at Minnesota State, but in 2012-13 was the head coach at St. Cloud State who lost four times to Minnesota that season. “They had six unbelievable defensemen who were tall and strong and then if you beat them they had Noora to bail them out.  Then they had all those all stars like Kessel. That team was like the second coming of Darwitz, Wendell and Stephens at Minnesota.”

The Gophers are the only women’s collegiate hockey team to complete an undefeated season in Division 1. The last National Collegiate Athletic Association  team to complete an unbeaten season was the 1983–84 Bemidji State men's team, which then competed in Division II, a level that no longer holds a championship. The last team in the top level of NCAA men’s hockey with an unbeaten season was the 1969–70 Cornell squad.

“We had a lot of great teams in my time in the WCHA but that season for Minnesota was incredibly special,” said Sara Martin, the first WCHA commissioner who served for 14 years. “Coach Frost, his staff and the players did something that very few teams can do.”

The Gophers came into the 2012-13 season as the defending national champions with victories in the last eight games in 2011-12. They also knew they were the host team at Ridder Arena for the NCAA’s Frozen Four in March of that year. But they handled the pressure of having a target on their backs effortlessly.

“As the season went along we knew we were on a streak,” said Frost. “I kept saying: ‘We’re not going undefeated, let’s focus on the process’ and it just kept going,”

 

“We had some pretty darn special players. Kessel had 101 points, Hannah had 82 and you throw in (freshman Maryanne) Menefee,” said Frost. “All of our defense were 5-10 or taller and Noora was a world class goaltender. We were really complete in all three groups. The finalists for the Patty Kazmaier that year were Bozek, Raty and Kessel. I don’t think that has ever happened where all the finalists were from the same team.”

The Gophers had 21 shutouts in 41 games and outscored opponents 216-36. They amassed 84 points in winning the WCHA title, 29 better than second place Wisconsin and North Dakota. As the win streak mounted so did the pressure. But they also found a way to win the close game when challenged. Minnesota had only three one-goal victories that season — all in overtime. They beat Bemidji State 3-2 in mid-February and then edged North Dakota 3-2 in three overtimes in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

The victory over North Dakota and the Lamoureux twins, Monique and Jocelyne, was the most stressful to Frost. The Gophers went into the game with a 38-0 record and expectations through the roof.

“The game was at Ridder. We knew the Frozen Four the next week was already sold out and here we are playing North Dakota for the sixth time,” Frost recalls. “They were a very, very good team. We had played them in the Final Faceoff (when the Gophers took a hard-fought 2-0 victory). They were the eighth seed because the NCAA didn’t want to travel teams for the tournament so we get them again.

“I have never been as anxious as a coach before a game as I was that day, knowing everyone expected us to be at Ridder the next week in the Frozen Four. But we still needed to win to get there against a very tough team.”

The teams traded goals in each of the first two periods and it stayed tied until the third overtime when Kelly Terry swatted in Mira Jalosuo’s rebound 69 seconds into the third overtime to end the longest game in Gophers’ history. Raty made 50 saves and North Dakota’s Shelby Amsiey-Benzie made 57 stops in the epic marathon.

The Gophers got another scare six days later, March 22 in the NCAA semifinal round, in another one-and-done situation. Playing at a packed house at Ridder, the Gophers trailed 1-0 after two periods against Boston College. It was the only time all season Minnesota had been behind entering the third period. Brandt tipped in Bozek’s drive to tie the game and Becky Kortum put the Gophers up 2-1 with just under eight minutes left in regulation, only to see BC rally to tie and set up another overtime. With the return to the championship game for a second straight year on the line, Bethany Brausen set up Sarah Davis in front of goal and Davis scored the game-winner 99 seconds into overtime for yet another 3-2 sudden death victory.

“When we got through BC in overtime,” said Frost, “I knew we were going to win the championship, even though we were facing Boston University, a good team with Marie-Phillip Poulin.

“I remember going through the handshake line at center ice after the BC game, and I had never heard Ridder so loud. In the middle of the rink, the noise was just deafening.”

The hysteria hardly let up over the next two days. The Gophers were front page news in both Twin Cities papers. Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton wondered aloud why the Gophers’ title game against BU wasn’t available on television. But ticket scalpers were delighted because tickets were going for four times the face value on the street. The Gophers, now 40-0 and playing for their fifth national title and second straight, were media darlings in the state of hockey.

“That, to me, was the pinnacle of women’s hockey,” said Frost. “Women’s hockey was finally a hot ticket. We still have a picture in our lounge of the championship game and fans are just hanging from the rafters at that game.”
 

The Gophers took a 6-3 decision in the title game to win a second title for Frost who has four in his 17 years behind the Gopher bench.

The perfect season was complete. 41-donut. They didn’t know at the time, but they were highest symbols of accomplishment in their sport. The Golden Gophers were indeed golden.

“When we did win, it was a feeling of pure excitement,” said Frost. “When we won in 2012, it was the first one for me as a head coach and the first time for our program in awhile. The second one was more a feeling of relief combined with happiness.”

A trip to the White House for a visit with President Barack Obama followed, along with treatment around the state reserved for rock stars. Some players, like Kessel, Bozek and Stecklein left the following year to play with the U.S. Olympic team. For others the winning streak remained and it stayed intact for the first 13 games of the 2013-14 season. Finally, on Nov. 17, 2013 North Dakota gained some revenge with a 3-2 victory at Ridder. It was the Gophers’ first loss in 62 games or since Feb. 17, 2012. That is the longest winning mark in either men’s or women’s collegiate hockey.

“That is pretty incredible,” said Frost. “The longer I coach and reflect it gets more crazy….to go 62 in row and without a tie. It was like we were 41-0 and then the streak kept going. It was almost silly the next year that we never lost.

“Especially in the game of hockey when you need the puck to bounce right or if you hit the pipe or run into a hot goalie or the referee makes a call or whatever, you need some breaks. But the publicity the program and women’s hockey got about the streak was really neat.”

So will another perfect season ever occur? Frost says he isn’t like the old school Dolphins’ players who celebrate every National Football League season with champagne when the last unbeaten falls. He doesn’t call his assistant coaches from the perfect season, Joel Johnson and Nadine Muzerall, and toast when the last hockey unbeaten loses each season.

“It will be tough to do again but you know they say records are made to be broken,” said Frost. “BC was 40-0 in 2016 (before the Gophers beat the Eagles in the NCAA title game). Clarkson hasn’t lost yet this season. But there is so much parity in the game now and with the new rules, it will be tough for anyone ever to through a season without a loss.”

The perfect season was Minnesota’s fifth of seven national championship trophies in the Gophers’ trophy case and it came during a period when Dinkytown was the centerpiece of women’s college hockey over a five-year stretch.

Before the Gophers flexed their muscle, Minnesota Duluth won its fifth NCAA title in 2009-10, beating Cornell 3-2 in three overtimes at Ridder Arena. Coach Shannon’s Miller’s team was led by feisty Emmanuelle Blais, a Patty Kaz finalist, and the goaltending of Jennifer Harss. The Bulldogs beat co-champion Minnesota in the WCHA playoff final and two weeks later gave Miller her fifth national championship ring.

The WCHA was chockful of elite Olympic players the next season. Wisconsin coach Mark Johnson returned from coaching the United States to a silver medal in the Vancouver Winter Games and had a bunch of ex-Olympians on his 2010-11 UW roster. The Badgers won the WCHA behind all-Americans Hilary Knight, Brianna Decker and Patty Kazmaier Award winner Meghan Duggan. The Badgers posted a 33-5-2 record overall, won the league title and edged the Gophers 5-4 at Ridder in the Final Faceoff championship game. Wisconsin completed its sweep of trophies by beating Boston University 4-1 in Erie, Pa for its fourth national title in a six-year span.

The next two years in the WCHA belonged to the Gophers. In 2011-12 many of the same players from the perfect season were keys to Minnesota’s national championship run. Wisconsin won the league title that season and Decker was named the Patty Kazmaier Award winner, but the Badgers were upset in the WCHA playoff semifinals and the Gophers won the Final Faceoff by blanking UMD 2-0 in Duluth behind Raty’s goaltending.  Minnesota loved Amsoil Arena that year as two weeks later they returned to the Twin Ports and beat Wisconsin 4-2 in a Border Battle that decided the NCAA championship.

The momentum from that season carried over into 2012-13 when Frost and the Gophers put together the incredible 41-0 record.

Minnesota wasn’t too bad the next year either. After winning 13 games in a row to start the 2013-14 season, the Gophers went 26-1-1 to win the WCHA crown and topped North Dakota 2-1 in Bemidji in the Final Faceoff championships game. Brandt was the league’s player of the year and Frost won his second national coach of the year award that season.

But the storybook finish had a surprise ending in Hamden, Conn. Clarkson became the first non-WCHA team to win a national championship in NCAA history, dethroning the Gophers 5-4.

“You look back and know we came close to winning in 2014” said Frost whose teams won NCAA titles in 2015 and 2016. “We were close to five in a row. Pretty incredible.”

Just like the perfect season.
 

(Editor’s note: Bill Brophy is the former sports editor of the Wisconsin State Journal who has covered the men’s and women’s WCHA since 1975. He has done radio and television for Wisconsin’s men’s hockey since 1990 and has worked for the women’s WCHA as a public relations consultant since 2006.)
                             
UP NEXT - Part 4 of the series:  Major changes in leadership and major changes in the WCHA