Mike Koster will finish his Minnesota Gophers career sometime in March or April having won a Big Ten title in four of his five seasons wearing maroon and gold.
The Gophers co-captain’s power-play goal late in the third period on Saturday gave Minnesota that fourth crown, as their 5-3 victory at Penn State clinched a share of the conference’s regular-season title.
They will share the honors with Michigan State, which won at Notre Dame on Saturday for the Spartans second consecutive regular-season crown. Michigan State gets the top seed for the Big Ten tournament based on a 2-0-2 head-to-head record versus Minnesota.
Gophers coach Bob Motzko’s teams won the Big Ten tournament in 2021, and grabbed all or part of the regular season title in 2022, 2023 and 2025.
“True to our guys tonight, they had no quit in them. We’ve been playing pretty darn well all year long,” Motzko said. “We’ve only got four losses in regulation, but we needed to find a way to win that because we’ve earned and deserve the right to be Big Ten champs. We’ll share it with Michigan State, but we’ve earned that and we’re awful proud of it.”
After Penn State grabbed the first lead six minutes into the second, the Gophers (24-8-4) answered with Matthew Wood and Mason Nevers goals. They initially appeared to have a 3-1 lead late in the second when Jimmy Snuggerud scored, but Penn State challenged the play.
Replays revealed that before Snuggerud’s shot, Gophers defenseman Ryan Chesley had made head contact with diminutive Nittany Lions forward Danny Dzhaniyev away from the play. The goal came off the board, and Chesley was ejected from the game with a five-minute major penalty. Penn State (18-12-4) tied the game on the ensuing power play.
Wood got his second of the game early in the third to put Minnesota back on top, but Charlie Cerrato forged a tie for the Lions again.
Then Penn State got its own five-minute major with 7:35 left in regulation, when forward Reese Laubach delivered a high stick to the head of Gophers defenseman Sam Rinzel. The Lions killed four minutes of the man advantage before Koster caught a backhand pass from Jimmy Clark and shoveled a puck past goalie Arsenii Sergeev with 3:04 left in regulation.
In a postgame interview with Big Ten Network, Koster gave the credit to Gophers goalie Liam Souliere, who came to Minnesota last summer after four years at Penn State, and had 27 saves versus his old teammates.
“It’s just a great feeling, after going up 3-1 and having an unfortunate penalty turn it into a 2-2 game,” Koster said. “It’s all for the guy in net. He’s had a great career. They love him here, but we’re happy he’s on our side and happy we could get it done for him today.”
Sergeev finished with 23 saves.
The first round pairings for next weekend’s opening round of the Big Ten tournament have Notre Dame visiting Minnesota, Wisconsin traveling to Ohio State and Penn State going to Michigan. All of the first round series are best of three. Michigan State, which won its second consecutive regular-season title on Saturday, has a bye and will host the lowest remaining seed for a single-elimination game the following weekend.
Minnesota was 3-1-0 in the regular season versus Notre Dame, winning twice in South Bend, and suffering an overtime loss in their series in Minneapolis.
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