Gopher Men’s Hockey team completes weekend sweep of Northeastern

MINNEAPOLIS (GopherSports.com) – Hudson Fasching tallied a pair of goals including the game winner and Michael Brodzinski notched a career-high three points as the No. 19 Gopher Hockey program closed out a weekend sweep of Northeastern on Saturday with a 4-3 win at Mariucci Arena.

For the second night in a row, Minnesota (2-3-0 overall, 0-0-0-0 Big Ten) jumped out to a three-goal lead in the first period with Fasching starting things off just 59 seconds into the contest with his first of the night.

The two Gophers who set up Fasching’s opening tally were quick to pocket goals of their own minutes later as Brodzinski and Leon Bristedt both scored their first goals of the season within 17 seconds of each other – Brodzinski at 3:22 and Bristedt at 3:39.

After John Stevens put the Huskies on the board at 4:07, Fasching closed out the five-goal period with a late goal – adding his second of the night and third of the season on a Gophers’ power play at 18:38. Brodzinski set up the eventual game-winning goal for his third point of the night while Justin Kloos picked up his second assist of the night on the play.

The scoring play gave both Fasching and Brodzinski their fourth points of the series while Brodzinski now leads the Maroon & Gold with five points (one goal, four assists) on the season.

Northeastern (1-4-0, 0-0-0 Hockey East) got two back in the second period when Sam Kurker picked up his first of the year at 2:04 after slipping his shot past Schierhorn and Eric Williams made it a one-goal game on the power play at 12:52.

But the Huskies would get no further as Minnesota weathered the storm throughout the second half of the game to close out the sweep.

Eric Schierhorn improved to 2-3-0 on the season with his second-straight win following Friday’s 23-save shutout over Northeastern. The rookie netminder made 25 saves in net for the series finale while Ryan Ruck made 28 stops to fall to 0-1-0 for the Huskies.

Minnesota outshot Northeastern 32-28 on the night – the second-straight game that saw the Gophers outshoot their opponent. The Maroon & Gold were 1-for-5 on the power play and 2-for-3 on the penalty kill.

Following a bye next weekend, the Gophers return to action Nov. 6-7 with a two-game series at Notre Dame – the alma mater of head coach Don Lucia.