The No. 7 University of Minnesota Duluth women's hockey team took two points from No. 12 St. Cloud State University Friday night at AMSOIL Arena with a shootout win following a 1-1 tie in Western Collegiate Hockey Association action. The shootout was the Bulldogs second in their last two games and third consecutive game with extra time.
"I still like the way we played," said UMD head coach Maura Crowell. " It was one shift, broken play. We ended up with three players pretty low and the puck popped to a high forward who took a shot. We kind of jumped in front of Sods and screened what should have been a routine save, so just one broken play, and it's unfortunate, but glad we got the extra point in the shootout."
Despite a lopsided shooting barrage from UMD in the first two periods, including a 18-1 first period, it took the Bulldogs until 16:36 of the second frame to get on the scoreboard. After taking a feed from Maggie Flaherty, Gabbie Hughes walked in from the bottom of the circle and fired the puck short side and off the back of SCSU goaltender Jojo Chobak's helmet, the 80th goal of her career and 206th career point. The goal pushed Hughes into a tie with Haley Irwin for the fifth-most points in program history, and was Hughes' 38th point of the current season (8g, 30a).
The Huskies, who had a 5-on-3 power play for 1:17 at the 6:43 mark of the second period, finally found their equalizer at 16:48 of the third period. Emma Gentry benefitted from a screen in front of Emma Soderberg for her 13th goal of the year, and both sides headed into overtime after the 1-1 tie held through regulation.
UMD's 10th overtime of the season, which tied the program record for most overtime games, ended in the Bulldogs second tie in as many games, and the exact same ending as their previous one.
Soderberg shutdown the Huskies, her sixth-straight shootout save and second shootout clean sheet in a row, and graduate student defenseman Maggie Flaherty did the rest, beating Chobak low blocker side to secure the extra league point.
Soderberg made 20 saves in the game in addition to her three shootout stops, while Chobak had 43 for SCSU, who picked up its first tie of the season (16-15-1, 9-15-1). The Bulldogs were 1-of-3 on their power play and outshot the Huskies 44-21 in the outing.
UMD will honor its seniors following its final regular season game at AMSOIL tomorrow afternoon. The Bulldogs and Huskies will drop the puck at 3:00 p.m.
BULLDOG NOTES: UMD tied its previous record of 10 overtime games in a single season, set in 2019-20 … the Bulldogs are now 5-2-3-2 in those games so far this year … Gabbie Hughes is now just one point away from taking exclusive ownership of the fifth all-time scoring slot … the graduate student has 80 goals, the eighth most in program history, to go with 126 assists, the fourth most at UMD … with an assist Friday night, Maggie Flaherty jumped into a tie with Sidney Morin with the eighth most points by a Bulldog defenseman.