Gophers women’s hockey keeps rolling with 4-1 win over St. Thomas

The No. 3 Gophers women’s hockey team, despite missing four key players because of the Olympics, got goals from four different players in a 4-1 victory over St. Thomas on Friday, Feb. 6, at Lee & Penny Anderson Arena.

The victory was the 12th in the past 13 games for the Gophers (24-5-0, 18-5-0 WCHA). The loss ended a two-game winning streak for the Tommies (12-17-0, 7-16-0), who were coming off a sweep of St. Cloud State.

The Gophers improved to 2-1 since forward Abbey Murphy (Team USA), the nation’s leader in goals and points, forward Josefin Bouveng (Sweden), forward Tereza Plosova (Czech Republic) and defender Nelli Laitinen (Finland) left the team to compete in the 2026 Games in Italy. The Gophers split a pair of meetings with Wisconsin at Ridder Arena last weekend.

Sophomore defender Chloe Primerano almost caused the Gophers to fall behind early in Friday’s game before giving them a spark. She was called for cross-checking in the first period and the Tommies had five shots on goal during the subsequent power play. The Gophers got the kill, however, and 10 seconds later Primerano scored to give them a 1-0 lead 6:16 into the first period.

The Tommies trailed 1-0 at the first intermission despite outshooting the Gophers 12-6.

Freshman forward Avery Hovland and junior forward Ava Lindsay scored three minutes apart midway through the second period to push the Gophers’ lead to 3-0.

Junior forward Cara Sajevic later scored with 6:10 left in the second to pull the Tommies within 3-1.

Gophers goaltender Hannah Clark had 30 saves in the win.

“We got significantly better as the game went on,” Gophers coach Brad Frost said. “Obviously we got that one in the first, but we were being outplayed and weren’t breaking the puck out very cleanly. We made some adjustments and our team, to their credit, played much better in the second period and extended the lead. We did a really good job in the third to shut everything down.”