Penn State hockey erased a 2-0 second period deficit to complete a road sweep of Minnesota on Saturday to the tune of a 6-3 victory. The Nittany Lions five of the game’s final six goals en route to a fifth Big Ten victory and the team’s ninth on the year.
Minnesota opened the scoring 11 minutes into regulation scoring twice in the first period to take a 2-0 lead into the intermission. Penn State goalie Peyton Jones still managed 12 saves in the opening 20 minutes and finished the night with 35 on a rare night where the Nittany Lions were outshot.
Sam Sternschein scored his third of the series just three minutes into the second period but the brief 2-1 deficit was short lived as Minnesota responded just over a minute later to push the lead back out to two goals at 3-1.
The chaotic opening minutes continued as Liam Folkes scored 14 seconds later to once again push the margin to just a single goal.
It was all Penn State from there as Nate Sucese scored his 55th goal as a Nittany Lion, a program best with just under eight minutes to go in the second period.
Defenseman Clayton Phillips scored fourth of the night on his former team just 3:51 into the third period to give Penn State a 4-3 lead. Sucese extended his program goals lead with another with just under 10 minutes to play and a Denis Smirnov redirection gave the game its final 6-3 score with just over a minute to go in the game.
Penn State improves to 9-2 on the year and 5-1 in the Big Ten. The Nittany Lions sit two points ahead of Notre Dame in the standings following the Irish’s overtime victory against Wisconsin. The Big Ten uses a three point system in the standings, three points given to regulation and overtime winners and a point given to both teams in a shootout with a second point given to the shootout winner. Shootouts go down as ties in the standings.
The Nittany Lions return home to face Ohio State next weekend. Penn State is currently 14 points clear of the bottom of the seven team Big Ten and six points clear of third place in the early stages of conference play.
Penn State played the entire series without captain Brandon Biro and Saturday night without forward Nikita Pavlychev who was injured on Friday night.
