Somewhere, Herb Brooks is smiling.
Gophers to face Nebraska Omaha in NCAA men's hockey tournament; all five state teams in field
All five Minnesota D-I teams make NCAA field.
March 22, 2021 at 10:55AM
![Minnesota defenseman Ryan Johnson (23) was mobbed by his teammates after he scored from down the ice on an empty net in the third period. ] ANTHONY SOUFFLE • anthony.souffle@startribune.com](https://arc.stimg.co/startribunemedia/UCPYLM32BO5K6MCEDKGMOET57A.jpg?&w=712)
For the first time, all five Minnesota Division I men's hockey teams will play in the NCAA tournament in the same year. The 16-team field was announced Sunday night, and the Gophers, Minnesota State Mankato, Minnesota Duluth, St. Cloud State and Bemidji State all made it.
"That's a really cool story," Gophers coach Bob Motzko said. "I was part of St. Cloud State, just finishing as a young kid, when Herb Brooks came there, and his mission was to get more Division I teams in this state. Here we are all these decades later, and for the first time ever all five teams are going to be in the tournament. And nobody slipped in, I can tell you that."
• The Gophers (23-6) were the No. 3 overall seed and were placed in the West Regional on Saturday and Sunday in Loveland, Colo. Minnesota will play No. 4 regional seed Nebraska Omaha (14-10-1). That game will be at 8 p.m. Saturday on ESPNU.
• Also in the West is No. 2 seed Minnesota State Mankato (20-4-1). The Mavericks will face No. 3 Quinnipiac (17-7-4) at 3 p.m. Saturday.
• St. Cloud State (17-10) was placed to the Northeast Regional in Albany, N.Y., as the No. 2 seed and will face No. 3 Boston University (10-4-1) at 5:30 p.m. Saturday. The other Northeast matchup has No. 1 Boston College meeting No. 4 Notre Dame.
• Minnesota Duluth (14-10-2) was sent to the Midwest Region in Fargo as the No. 3 seed. The two-time defending NCAA champion will play No. 2 Michigan (15-10-1) at 3 p.m. Friday. North Dakota (21-5-1), the No. 1 overall seed, will play American International (15-3) at 8:30 p.m. Friday.
• Bemidji State (15-9-3) is the No. 4 seed in the East Region in Bridgeport, Conn., and will open at noon Friday against No. 1 Wisconsin (20-9-1) on ESPN2. No. 2 Massachusetts meets No. 3 Lake Superior State in the other first-round game in the East.
The Gophers, who beat Wisconsin 6-4 in the Big Ten tournament final, will be making their record 38th appearance in the NCAA tournament and their first since 2017. It's also their first NCAA bid in Motzko's three years as coach.
In Nebraska Omaha, the Gophers will face a Mavericks team that owns two wins over North Dakota and one over St. Cloud State.
"I have so much respect for that conference," said Motzko, who coached in the NCHC when he was with St. Cloud State. "You know you're going to get a battle-tested team."
Should the Gophers defeat Nebraska Omaha, they might face Minnesota State, which won its fourth consecutive WCHA regular-season title but lost 5-1 to Northern Michigan in the conference tournament semifinals. The Mavericks have won an NCAA-best 112 games over the past four seasons. Coach Mike Hastings will try for the program's first Division I NCAA tournament win in its seventh try.
"The road's in front of us," Hastings said. "And it's a road that we're excited about being on right now."
At St. Cloud State, coach Brett Larson has a team that closed strong last year and picked up where it left off. The Huskies finished second to North Dakota in both the NCHC regular season and tournament.
"We knew we had some good players coming in, and we knew we learned a lot and grew a lot last year," Larson said. "We thought we had a chance to make a push to make the tournament."
Minnesota Duluth, which finished third in the NCHC regular season, no longer has stars such as 2020 Hobey Baker Award winner Scott Perunovich and goalie Hunter Shepard, but the Bulldogs still can shut opponents down.
"I'm really excited for our guys and the chance to get back in the tournament and have a chance to do what we did a couple years ago," Bulldogs coach Scott Sandelin said.
The Minnesota team that was closest to the tournament bubble was Bemidji State. The Beavers took fourth in the WCHA in the regular season and lost 4-1 to Lake Superior State in the conference tournament semifinals on Friday.
Coach Tom Serratore believed in his team's body of work, but when St. Lawrence upset Quinnipiac on Saturday afternoon in the ECAC final, things tightened up.
"Oh, yeah," Serratore said. "That's the one thing you can't control: how other teams do."
In the end, the Beavers got in — as did their Minnesota brothers.
"It's a great day for the State of Hockey," Serratore said.
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