Gophers' national championship dreams crushed 10 seconds into overtime
Quinnipiac stunned the top-ranked Minnesota Golden Gophers with the national championship-winning goal 10 seconds into overtime Saturday night in Tampa, Florida.
Minnesota, the No. 1 team in the polls and the NCAA tournament, came within three minutes of claiming the university's first men's hockey championship since 2003. But it wasn't to be as Quinnipiac won the opening faceoff in overtime and two passes later Jacob Quillan scored to win the first national championship in Quinnipiac program history.
QUINNIPIAC NATIONAL CHAMPS
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Leading 2-1, freshman phenom Logan Cooley was whistled for high-sticking with 4:52 to play. After a couple of big saves by Justin Close and a big blocked shot by Brock Faber, the Bobcats called timeout with 32 seconds left in the man advantage and got aggressive by coming out of the timeout with their goalie pulled for a 6-on-4 advantage.
The bold decision paid off as just seconds after the penalty ended, Collin Fare fired a shot between the legs of Close for the game-tying goal.
Quinnipac outshot Minnesota 14-2 in the third period. In fact, the Gophers had just 15 shots on goal in the first 60 minutes.
The Gophers opened the scoring with a goal from John Mittelstadt with 14:25 left in the first period, and they pushed the lead to 2-0 with 15:36 left in the second period when Jaxon Nelson backhanded the puck into the net after Brock Faber fired a shot wide and the puck bounced off the end boards in Nelson's direction.
Minnesota was undefeated when leading after two periods this season before faltering on the biggest stage.
Title: Bring Me The Sports co-owner, editor Email: joe@bringmethenews.com Twitter: @JoeBMTN Education: Southwest Minnesota State University Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota Expertise: All things Minnesota sports Nelson has covered Minnesota sports for two decades, starting his media career in sports radio. He worked at small market Minnesota stations in Marshall and St. Cloud before joining one of the nation's highest-rated sports stations, KFAN-FM 100.3 in the Twin Cities. There, he was the producer of the top-rated mid-morning sports show with Minnesota Vikings announcer Paul Allen. His radio experience helped blossom a career as a sports writer, joining Minneapolis-based Bring Me The News in 2011. Nelson and Adam Uren became co-owners of Bring Me The News in 2018 and have since more than tripled the site's traffic and launched Bring Me The Sports in cooperation with the Sports Illustrated/FanNation umbrella. Nelson has covered the Super Bowl and numerous training camps, NFL combines, the MLB All-Star Game and Minnesota playoff games, in addition to the day-to-day happenings on and off the field of play. Nelson also has extensive knowledge of non-sports subjects, including news and weather. He works closely with Bring Me The News meteorologist Sven Sundgaard to produce a bevy of weather and climate information for Minnesota readers. Nelson helped launch and manage the Bring Me The News Radio Network, which provided more than 50 radio stations around Minnesota with daily news, sports and weather reports from 2011-17.