Gopher women’s historic season

Chances are you don’t know Noora Raty. Or Amanda Kessel (pictured above). Or Megan Bozek.

And that’s a shame. The trio, along with their teammates on the Minnesota Golden Gophers women’s hockey team, just finished one of the most tremendous seasons by any team, of any gender, playing any sport, in any era.

Forty-one games; 41 wins. It’s difficult to define perfection. It’s even more difficult to argue against a season-long 41-game winning streak not being right up there in Webster’s Dictionary.

“It’s hard to say if we are the best or arguably the best women’s team in the history.
No other team has done this, so we have a better team than anyone
else has had throughout the years.”
- Goalie Noora Raty

Raty knows perfection well.

She holds the NCAA career wins record, with 114. She holds the NCAA career shutouts record, with 43. She posted five straight shutouts just before the postseason started. She posted a 38-0 mark with 17 shutouts this season, allowing less than a goal a game. And she was a finalist for the Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award as the nation’s best player this season.

Not convinced yet? She’s a two-time Olympian for Finland, and she was named Most Valuable Player of the NCAA Frozen Four for the second straight year. Raty made the Finnish national team at 15, started at the 2006 Olympics as a 16-year-old and at 18 was named most valuable player at the 2008 world championships. She carried Finland to an Olympic bronze medal in Vancouver in 2010. Two years ago she won the best goalie award at worlds for the third time since 2007.

“Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll be able to top this feeling. It’s amazing.
A lot of people are crying, but I can’t stop smiling. I’ll be sad when
I can’t play with these amazing players anymore, but right now, I can’t stop smiling.”
- Forward Amanda Kessel

Kessel knows perfection well.

The junior – yes, junior – won the Kazmaier award as the nation’s best player. With two goals and two assists in Minnesota’s 6-3 win against Boston University in Sunday’s championship, she finished the tournament as the NCAA’s leading scorer with 46 goals and 55 assists, giving her 101 points. She became the fourth player in NCAA history to reach the 100-point mark, joining former Gophers Natalie Darwitz (114 points) and Krissy Wendell (104), and Harvard’s Jennifer Botterill (112). Not surprisingly, she was the WCHA player of the year as well.

Perhaps it’s not so surprising what she’s done on the ice, considering her high school – Shattuck-St. Mary’s in Faribault, Minnesota – also gave us Penguins All-Star Sidney Crosby. And, she’s the younger sister of Toronto Maple Leafs forward Phil Kessel.

“I think we felt like it was any other game. We finally got relaxed when we got playing because there was so much pressure to get to this Frozen Four and the National Championship game.
We were able to play 60 minutes of Gopher hockey.”
- Defenseman Megan Bozek

Bozek knows perfection well.

A co-captain of the team, Bozek was second among NCAA defensemen in scoring with 20 goals and 36 assists. She also was a finalist for the Kazmaier award this season. (Are you sensing a theme here?) Last year she was all-conference, all-Frozen Four Tournament team, All-American, and was a finalist for the Kaz as well. This year she was the Defensive Player of the Year in the WCHA, as well as a member of the All-WCHA team. (Other postseason awards have not been released yet).

The season started with high expectations, as the Gophers won the national championship last season and returned the bulk of their team. Midway through the year, they broke the record for consecutive wins and were outscoring their opponents, 84-8.

They knew they’d be good, but this surprised even their coach.

“It’s very surreal,” Brad Frost said. “I still remember on Day One, I made a comment such as, ‘We’re going to lose a hockey game, so it’s not always about the wins and losses; let’s focus on the process.’

“And here we are, 41 games later without a loss. It’s just mind-boggling. This is an incredibly special team and one that will go down in the history books as one of the best ever, if not the best ever.”

You always hear about how it’s hard to beat the same team three times in the same season. Just ask the Georgetown men’s basketball team, the most recent team to prove this axiom against Syracuse.

But the Gophers defeated WCHA rival Bemidji State University five times, outscoring them 31-1 in the process. Perhaps even more impressively, they beat the University of North Dakota SIX times, including in the WCHA championship game and the NCAA quarterfinals. Indeed, it appeared as if the sixth time may have been the charm for North Dakota, who despite losing the previous five games to Minnesota, had scored nine goals in those five games.

(That may not sound like a lot, until you realize that to that point, the Gophers had allowed just 29 goals all season.)

True to form, the game was a tightly-fought contest until Rachel Bona scored with 1:09 remaining in the third overtime to send the Gophers to the Frozen Four.

The very next game was another close call, as Boston College again took the Gophers to overtime. But this time third-line center Sarah Davis played the hero, scoring the game-winner and putting Minnesota in the championship.

The Gophers made sure there would be no more close calls.

In the championship game, in front of a rollicking home crowd at Ridder Arena, Mira Jalosuo scored a power-play goal midway through the first period before WCHA Rookie of the Year Hannah Brandt scored her 33^rd goal of the season, short-handed, later in the first.

The Gophers controlled the second period and got goals from Kessel and Milica McMillan for a 4-1 lead; Rachel Ramsey made it 5-2 with 4:33 to play and Kessel added an empty-netter to set off the celebration at Ridder Arena, the home ice for the Gophers.

Already among the elite programs, the Gophers entered some rarified air with this win.

Since women’s hockey was sanctioned by the NCAA in 2001, only three teams have won a national title with no more than two losses prior to this season: the 2004-05 Gophers (36-2-2), the 2006-07 Wisconsin Badgers (36-1-4) and the 2010-11 Badgers (37-2-2). And just three schools have worn the NCAA crown – Minnesota and Minnesota-Duluth with five each, and Wisconsin (four).

All of those teams were very, very good. But not one quite measures up to this year’s Gophers squad, who finished the season averaging 5.27 goals per game while giving up just 0.88. Further, 32 wins this season have been by at least three goals, while just three were one-goal victories.

“There have been some tremendous teams throughout the history of the college game, from way back when until now,” Boston College coach Katie King Crowley said before the tournament. “I think it’s difficult to compare in that way, but what [Minnesota has] done so far this year is an incredible feat. It’s something that’s really tough to do, to come into the rink every day and be prepared like it seems they have. My hat is off to them, what they’ve done this season is special.”

The Gophers became the first Division I hockey team — men’s or women’s — to complete an undefeated NCAA championship season since the Cornell men’s team went 29-0 in 1970.

“I thought it was impossible,” Kessel said. “But we made the impossible possible.”