Mankato strikes in second overtime

MANKATO - The streak is over. After six years and 20 games of futility, Minnesota State Mankato defeated the Gophers 1-0 in two overtimes on Friday night at the Alltel Center in the first game of their WCHA first-round playoff series.

Trevor Bruess' short-handed goal, on a 2-on-1 break with 2:24 left in the second overtime, gave the Mavericks the only goal they needed.

Fourth-seeded MSU Mankato can earn a trip to next week's WCHA Final Five with a victory in tonight's second game of the best-of-three series in Mankato. If the seventh-seeded Gophers win tonight, a decisive third game will be played Sunday night.

Gophers freshman goalie Alex Kangas made a career-high 43 saves, but MSU Mankato's Mike Zacharias matched him save-for-save and finished with 34 in his fifth shutout of the season.

"It's not over by any means," Mavericks coach Troy Jutting said, whose team came in 0-17-3 against the Gophers since 2002.

MSU was called for too many men on the ice at 16:40 of the second overtime. It was the first penalty since the second period.

"I just said you got to kill it off," Jutting said. "I thought our penalty killers did a good job early in the game."

And late, too.

"Jon Kalinski made great play" on the pass, Jutting said. "And it was great to see Trevor finish it off. I wanted to see this game end on a good goal."

It was Bruess' ninth goal of the season.

"We turned the puck over in our offensive zone and created an odd-man rush," Gophers coach Don Lucia said. "I'm really disappointed the way we played the first two periods. But I knew [the winner] would be a good goal. Both goalies were sharp all night long."

MSU's Jerad Stewart put the puck past Kangas nine minutes into the first overtime. He crashed into Kangas and the officials immediately ruled the goal would be reviewed. After a tense two minutes, in which two officials stared at a small TV in the scorekeeper's box and Kangas bent over and stood crouched into his net, the referee came out and put his hands to the side: No goal.

This was the first two-overtime game for the Gophers since they beat Michigan State 7-6 in three overtimes on this same date in 1976.

This was only the third 0-0 game after three periods which the Mavericks have played since becoming a Division I program nine seasons ago.

The urgency should have been on the Gophers' side. Instead the host Mavericks dominated play the first two periods but Kangas was superb.

Overtime is all too familiar for the Gophers. Minnesota (15-15-9) came into the game having played in 12 overtimes, and this 13th one tied a school record.

Minnesota was 0-3-9 in its first 12 overtimes and obviously hoping for a change of luck, a Mavericks turnover, anything to beat Zacharias.

The Gophers' record in first-round conference playoffs games was just as gaudy: 29-3 since the WCHA went to the present playoffs format in 1993.

MSU (19-14-4) ignored all that history and came out flying.

If the Gophers' strategy was to tire out the Mavericks' penalty killers, Minnesota, on the PairWise Rankings bubble for to be selected to the NCAA tournament, succeeded in the first period by getting the only four power-play chances. In nearly every other phase of the game, MSU was the dominant team early.

The Gophers had scored at least one power-play goal in going 3-1-2 in their past six games. The power play looked powerless in the first period; the Gophers managed only two shots in eight minutes with a man advantage.

MSU iced the puck at least twice on every penalty kill and permitted only three shots, the closest from 20 feet.

Mike Carman of the Gophers tried to scare Zacharias at least. After a pass from Jay Barriball, he had a 20-foot shot from between the circles, but fell. Two of the three shots Minnesota had came from the right point.

The Gophers woke up in the third period, had the first six shots and Tony Lucia almost scored at 4 minutes. Zacharias had to cover the far corner with his stick to stop the puck.