UMD women's hockey: Goalie change, Rogge hat trick leads to Bulldogs victory in Game 1 with Mavericks

DULUTH — Minnesota Duluth overcame a porous start to the postseason, needing a natural hat trick from redshirt senior Naomi Rogge to come back and beat Minnesota State 5-4 on Friday in Game 1 of a best-of-three WCHA quarterfinal series at Amsoil Arena.

The fifth-seeded Mavericks took a 3-2 lead into the first intermission after scoring three goals on five shots, however, Rogge scored three goals in the second period to give the fourth-seeded Bulldogs a 5-3 advantage going into the third.

Game 2 of the series is scheduled for 2 p.m. Saturday at Amsoil Arena in Duluth. The Bulldogs can advance to the WCHA Final Faceoff with a win. Lose and UMD will play a Game 3 against the Mavericks at 2 p.m. Sunday at Amsoil Arena.

“I'd say it was pretty sloppy in the first,” Bulldogs coach Maura Crowell said. “The opportunities that they were getting at the net were just too good and they're a good team. They have goal scorers, as you can see, so they're going to take advantage of those those opportunities like they did.”

Senior goaltender Emma Soderberg — who backstopped Sweden at the Olympics and was named a semifinalist this week for national goaltender of the year — got the start Friday. She was beat twice in the first period by junior forward Kelsey King, who gave the Mavericks a 1-0 lead 1:57 into the game. King tied it at 1-1 with her second goal at 13:35.

Senior forward Brooke Bryant scored on an open back door with 40 seconds left in the first to give MSU a 3-2 lead, and when the Bulldogs emerged for the second period, sophomore Jojo Chobak was in goal and Soderberg — who finished with just two saves — was on the bench.

“Sometimes when you change the goalie, it sends the message or gives the team a spark,” Crowell said. “And it did and I thought JoJo played tremendously for us. They continued to come at us. I mean, they took 18 shots in the second and 14 in the third, so they certainly didn't go away. But we were able to find the back of the net a little bit more and started locking some things down.”

Chobak finished with 31 saves on 32 shots — only getting beat by an MSU extra-attacker goal in the final minute — stopping 18 shots in the second period. Meanwhile, Rogge was busy building on her scoring streak, which reached six games Friday.

Rogge tied the game 2:04 into the second on the power play by poking a puck through the five hole of Mavericks goalie Chantal Burke. Rogge took a backward pass from senior defenseman Kailee Skinner and put it in the far corner past Burke’s glove for the second to give UMD a 4-3 lead at 9:01. Rogge’s third goal came when she got a piece of a blast by sophomore defenseman Nina Jobst-Smith with just over three minutes to play in the second.

“That was a cool moment to finally get a hat trick in college. It’s, I think, a huge thing,” said Rogge, who is the first Bulldog to register a hat trick since Lara Stalder on Dec. 12, 2015. “We always joked that our team was cursed because there's been a lot of players that had two-goal games, and you thought the third one was coming, and just didn't go. Hopefully the curse is gone and a lot more girls will be getting them.”

Bulldogs fifth-year senior wing Elizabeth Giguere and senior defenseman Kaylie Hanley also picked up goals for UMD. They scored within 30 seconds of each other in the first period to put UMD ahead 2-1.

Senior center Gabbie Hughes had two assists, as did freshman defenseman Hannah Baskin, who had just a single assist in 20 games heading into the postseason.

Bulldogs senior wing Anna Klein finished with an assist in her 158th career game. She now holds the UMD record for career games played as a Bulldog and consecutive games played as a Bulldog. The previous leader in career games by a Bulldog was Jamie Rasmussen with 157 from 2006-10.