Beware of 'Dogs: Women's Hockey falls 7-0 to UMD

Sophomore Clara Van Wieren scored two early goals and No. 8-ranked Minnesota-Duluth showed its speed and experience in Sunday's 7-0 defeat of St. Thomas in WCHA women's hockey play at Saint Thomas Ice Arena.

The Bulldogs (4-4 overall, 4-4 WCHA) closed out a weekend sweep with 3-0 and 7-0 road shutouts. UMD outshot St. Thomas 34-21 on Saturday and came back Sunday to control the contest with a 43-7 shots advantage.

For the Purple, Saskia Maurer played the final 40:00 in goal and stopped 28 of 31 shots, and Alexa Dobchuk had eight saves over the first 20:00. St. Thomas (2-5-1, 2-5-1) is winless in four games against top-10 ranked teams and 2-3-1 in other games.

Acting head coach Bethany Brausen said the Bulldogs are a tough matchup and explained that while frustrating, the losses provide good learning opportunities for a Tommie team in its first season of Division I.

"With their depth and scoring ability, they are a tough team to play against," Brausen said. "But there are a lot of good things to take away from the weekend. We talk a lot about the one percent mentality and getting that one percent better every day. For us the goal is to look at every single day and ask 'Are we better than we were the day before.' Can we grow, show up on Tuesday and get ready for a big road series against a non-conference opponent in RIT (next weekend).

"I've always believe that you learn so much more when you lose than when you win. When you win, it's really easy to dismiss the things that you really needed to fine tune, or you get the good puck luck. This weekend if we allow it to, it will be the biggest learning weekend so far of our season, and you can really be excited for that. I think we have a perfect group (for that) that buys into that mentality."

St. Thomas plays its first non-conference games next Friday and Saturday at RIT in Rochester, N.Y.

Players Mentioned

Alexa Dobchuk

Saskia Maurer