Olivia Knowles showed the Gophers weren’t shy about making contact with UMD goaltender Emma Soderberg at AMSOIL Arena. Photos by John Gilbert.

This weirdest of all sports seasons in our lifetime has ventured into December, and the UM D’s mens and womens hockey teams have injected something resembling normalcy, while giving us relief from the confusion that follows the Minnesota Vikings and Gophers pandemic-infected football season.

The UMD women beat the men out of the gate, and in a mere two weeks have verified that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The Women’s WCHA dihas spent the last decade stratifying into a top tandem of Minnesota and Wisconsin, and a bottom pair of St. Cloud State and MSU-Mankato, leaving a middle segment of UMD, Ohio State and Bemidji State. Recently, Ohio State has moved cup to make it a Big Three, leaving UMD and Bemidji State in the middle of the seven-team league, with MSU-Mankato and St. Cloud State at the bottom.

UMD opened by going to Mankato and gaining an impressive sweep, 5-0 and 7-3 over the Mavericks. That brought the Bulldogs home to AMSOIL Arena to face highly regarded Minnesota, and while the Bulldogs had a lot of stretches of impressive play, they ultimately fell 4-2 after leading 2-0, and sagging in the third. On Saturday, the Gophers took the 2-0 lead, and struggled to hang on 2-1, after a fierce finishing surge by UMD.

That means in only two weekends, UMD re-established the norm of beating the teams below them in prognosticated finish and recent history, but unable to get over the hurdle against Minnesota. That whole theory could gain more credibility this weekend, when UMD is at home again to face St. Cloud State Friday night and Saturday afternoon. Again, AMSOIL will be empty of fans, because of shutdown rules to fight the pandemic.

UMD’s Anneke Linser had a close race for a rebound with Gopher goaltender Lauren Bench, who backstopped both games for Minnesota.

This is the best team Maura Crowell has had in the first six years of her tenure. The loss of ace goaltender Maddie Rooney — the last of previous coach Shannon Miller’s recruits — will be eased by the calm, cool, and outstanding play of Swedish junior Emma Soderberg, and up front, this will be her first team that has three lines that can go over the boards almost interchangeably against anyone. Top gun Gabbie Hughes has Anna Klein and Anneke Linser on her wings, while Naomi Rogge’s return from an injury that took her out of all last season, adds potency and scoring to the second line, and junior Taylor Anderson is a fireball that can make the third line go.

Captain Ashton Bell, who adds offense to whatever line she’s accompanying, might have been the best player on the AMSOIL ice last weekend against the Gophers. For good measure, she moved from right point to the slot and fired the shot that resulted in UMD’s only goal of the second game, in the midst of a final five minutes when the Bulldogs outshot the Gophers 11-1 and evened the shot count at 32-32 for the game.

Crowell said she wants to see more consistency from her players “through the ups and downs of a game.” The Bulldogs were full of life in the first period Friday, sagged in the second in the face of Minnesota’s pressure, then were picked apart by the Gophers in their three-goal third period, although the third one was a 135-footer into the empty net after Emma Sodergren was pulled. Saturday afternoon, the Bulldogs were sluggish out of the gate, hardly threatened through two and a half periods, before coming on impressively in the last few minutes.

“When we got the goal to cut it to one, we showed a lot more life,” said Crowell. “I’d like to see us play with a lot more passion. Now we’ve got St. Cloud coming in, and I told the players we have to be more consistent, because nobody knows when our season could end.”

The men, of course, play in the NCHC, a select gathering of some of the nation’s strongest programs. Their method of taking on the restrictions of the pandemic are to gather in Omaha this week to start a series of doubleheaders at Baxter Arena where all eight teams rotate around to play nine games in 17 days. It was supposed to be 10 games, but Colorado College was eliminated from starting the games by too many positive COViD-19 tests.

Lauren Bench came up with the save to thwart Gabbie Hughes on a point-blank try in the Friday game.

UMD thus moved up to open the tournament against the host Nebraska Omaha team, Tuesday afternoon, with no fans in Baxter Arena. Personally, I think that despite the loss of some firepower and defense — and the impossible challenge of replacing Hobey Baker winner Scott Perunovich, who signed with St. Louis after his junior year ended, and Hunter Shepard, who started 115 consecutive games and was simply unbeatable when the games mattered — will be right in the midst of the NCHC race.

Coach Scott Sandelin has three goaltenders and might give all three of them a look during the crowded schedule of nine games. Sophomore Ryan Fanti from Thunder Bay by way of the Minnesota Wilderness Juniors, got the goaltending call Tuesday in the opener. After Koby Bender’s opening goal, the Dogs fell behind 2-1, but rallied in the third period for the tying goal by Jackson Cates on a two-man power play, and a 3-2 lead when Kobe Roth scored. to a 4-2 lead, but the Mavericks closed it to 4-3 with 1:08 left. It took an empty-net, shorthanded goal by Hunter Lellig in the final minute to let the Bulldogs relax with the 5-3 victory.

The cluster of games also showed the Bulldogs facing Denver Wednesday night, Miami of Ohio Sunday afternoon, and Miami again Tuesday night, and North Dakota on Thursday, Dec. 10, before a second game against Denver at noon a week from Saturday, Colorado College on Sunday, Dec. 13 at noon, and finishing up with a second game against Omaha on Wednesday, Dec. 16.

Around the rest of the Minnesota, football still reigns, which means people are grumbling about the shutdown ordered by Governor Walz. But the Gopher football team gave a hand-painted example of why it was necessary. The Gophers have succeeded in preventing arch-rival Wisconsin from any chance at advancing in playoffs, simply bye getting sick. The Badgers had cancelled their first two games because of too many players found positive for COVID-19, so when the Gophers had a heavy hit of the mysterious ailment and had to cancel last week’s game against Wisconsin, the Badgers were left with too few games to qualify. The Gophers also had to cancel this Saturday’s game against Northwestern because the testing remains heavy for the Gophers.

Before you blame those rowdy college kids, though, the stat that blew my mind was when it was reported that 47 members of the Gopher football program had tested positive, and that 26 of them were on the staff. That means only 21 were players, and raised the larger question of how could Minnesota have 26 staff members infected, and how can any football team have so many staff members?

Bench, a graduate transfer who played four years at Bemidji State, deflected a Gabbie Hughes deflection wide Saturday afternoon.

As we discussed last week, the Gophers beat Purdue only after a closing Purdue touchdown was nullified by a phantom holding call, which led to a last-second last chance touchdown pass by the Boilermakers that was followed by a flag and an even more phantom offensive pass interference call on a receiver who was a step ahead of a harassing Gopher defensive back but was ruled to have somehow reached back and interfered, five steps before catching the TD pass. Following that one, the Gophers cancel against Wisconsin and now cancel against Northwestern. Brutal.

The NFL has had its share of pandemic problems, moving games to different dates, etc., but the once-struggling Minnesota Vikings got a huge boost Sunday when Kirk Cousins — subject of sarcasm, ridicule and occasional scorn — played the best game I’ve seen him play to lead the Vikings to a 28-27 victory over Carolina — secured only when Caroline kicker Joey Slye missed a 54-yard field goal with 1 second remaining.

Slye got plenty of distance on the pivotal kick, but pulled it to the left of the left upright at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. Cousins was 34-45 for 307 yards and three touchdowns, and his second touchdown pass to rookie Justin Jefferson set the stage for cousins to hit Chad Beebe with a 10-yard scoring pass with only 46 seconds remaining to lift the Vikings to the 28-27 lead. The door was left open when the Panthers, leading by three points, pounced on Chad Beebe’s muffed punt reception to take possession at the Vikings 9 yard line, just before the 2-minute warning.

Teddy Bridgewater, who was 19-36 for 267 yards, was directed to play it safe in hopes of running out the clock. Instead, two stopped running plays and an incomplete pass left fourth down, and Slye’s field goal gave Carolina a 27-21 lead. But Cousins had too much time, and led the Vikings down the field with rare precision and efficiency under pressure, and he hit Beebe for a redemption touchdown to give the Vikings the lead.

The Vikings seemed in control at halftime, but the Panthers vaulted ahead when rookie defensive back Jeremy Chinn scored two touchdowns on fumble returns 10 seconds apart in the first minute of the third quarter. Vikings fans could be excused for giving up on the game when Cousins was sacked and Chinn picked up the fumbled ball at the 17 and ran into the end zone for a TD. Caroline kicked off, and on first down, Dalvin Cook took a handoff and was crushed by a throng of tacklers at the 28. China again spotted the loose ball, grabbed it, and ran into the end zone. The clock had only ticked off 10 seconds between the consecutive defensive touchdowns from scrimmage, both by a rookie.

The victory pushed the Vikings up to 5-6 and actually into a position of possible wild card candidacy. The best news of the game for the Vikings though, was Cousins, who didn’t have ace wide receiver Adam Thielen available for the game, because of the virus. Without him, Cousins spread his passes around admirably. Consider that he hit Jewfferson seven times for 70 yards and two touchdowns; he hit often-overlooked and underused tight end Kyle Rudolph seven times for 68 yards including a key 25-yard gain on the winning touchdown drive; he hit Bisi Johnson seven times for 74 yards and also a two-point conversion that ultimately was the difference in the outcome; and he hit Beebe seven times for 63 yards, and the first touchdown of his career, to win the game. You can’t get more balanced that 28 passes to those four receivers — seven apiece.