The Gophers women's hockey team defeated St. Cloud State 4-2 on Friday night at Ridder Arena in the opening game of their best-of-three, first-round WCHA playoff series.

Sophomore forward Amy Potomak broke a 2-2 tie on a power-play goal nearly 6½ minutes into the third period. Three minutes later, Katie Robinson made it a two-goal margin.

"The power play had a couple goals here tonight," Gophers coach Brad Frost said. "Come playoff time that's what you need."

The victory was the Gophers' 13th in a row over St. Cloud State, including five this season.

Minnesota (26-5-3), ranked No. 3 nationally and seeded second in the playoffs, took a 1-0 lead on defenseman Emily Brown's goal at 24 seconds. SCSU answered 31 seconds later when Dana Rasmussen scored.

The Huskies (6-24-4) went ahead on Olivia Hanson's goal at 3:17. It stayed 2-1 until Alex Woken of Minnesota tied it just over 12 minutes into the second on a power-play goal.

"The first three minutes were kind of crazy," Frost said. "Scoring the first shift, maybe we got lulled a bit — this might be easy tonight. Credit St. Cloud coming back with two goals there in the next couple minutes. Then we had to fight and battle."

The Gophers outshot the Huskies 24-3 in the second period — "We started to take control and play a little more structured," Frost said — and 14-7 in the third period, taking the lead on Potomak's 15th goal of the season at 6:23.

Robinson got her second goal of the season at 9:22.

Minnesota finished 2-for-3 on the power play, St. Cloud State 0-for-2.

Sydney Scobee, the All-Big Ten first-team goalie, stopped 16 shots for the Gophers. Emma Polusny had 52 stops for the Huskies.

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