COLUMBUS — The nation’s top-ranked women’s hockey team survived a wild afternoon on the road on Saturday. Joy Dunne recorded a hat trick, including the tying goal in the third period, as No. 1 Ohio State beat No. 3 Minnesota 6-5 at Ridder Arena in Minneapolis to earn a split of the weekend series.
The Buckeyes improved to 7-1-0 overall and 5-1-0 in the WCHA with the win, in a game that swung back and forth all afternoon: Ohio State built a 3-0 lead, watched Minnesota erase it twice, fell behind in the third period, and then scored twice in just over two minutes to win it.
Ohio State struck twice in the opening period. Mira Jungåker opened the scoring at 6:56, taking a pass from Kaia Malachino and beating Minnesota goaltender Hannah Clark over the blocker, and Dunne added a power-play goal at 10:21, putting away the rebound of a Sanni Vanhanen shot. Goaltender Genny Klein stopped 14 first-period shots as the Buckeyes killed two penalties to keep Minnesota off the board.
Dunne struck again just 16 seconds into the second period, scoring from the goal line on the power play for a 3-0 lead — her third power-play goal of the weekend. Minnesota answered with three straight goals to tie the game at 15:16 of the second, before Rylee Bartz tapped one in at 16:06 to put Ohio State back in front. Sarah Paul tied it again with 24 seconds left in the period, sending the teams to intermission knotted at 4-4.
Paul gave Minnesota its first lead at 5:27 of the third period, and the Gophers held it past the midway point of the frame. The game turned at the media timeout with 9:13 remaining: just 11 seconds after the break, Dunne buried a second-chance shot off a Jocelyn Amos rebound to complete Ohio State’s first hat trick of the season and tie the game 5-5.
Less than three minutes later, Dunne started the winning play by chasing down the puck in Ohio State’s own zone and finding Jungåker, who skated it up ice and dropped it to Vanhanen, who dropped it off for Hilda Svensson. Svensson’s shot from the top of the faceoff circle beat Clark at 11:40 for the 6-5 winner.
Ohio State’s defense closed it out from there, holding Minnesota to just two shots over the final nine minutes, both stopped by Taylor Kressin, who played the third period in net and made 10 saves to earn her second win of the season. Jungåker finished with a team-high four points on a goal and three assists, assisting on both third-period goals.
For Dunne, the hat trick was the sixth of her career, and it moved her into second place in the Ohio State record book with 87 career goals — a fitting finish to a weekend in which she scored three times on the power play alone against one of the Buckeyes’ biggest rivals.