Gopher Puck Live Podcast

We had Connor Eargood join the podcast from the Detroit News to catch up on Michigan State as Minnesota faces the Spartans for the final regular season series this weekend.

We celebrated double Gold medals for the US Hockey Teams at the Olympics with BTN's Ben Holden. 46 years in the making for the men's team and boy did it feel good! We also got in to what happened at Notre Dame a few weeks ago by the Gophers. Can they turn it around the next 2 weeks against the best 2 teams in the country?

USCHO.com’s Creator and President Tim Brule joined us on the podcast to talk about a season that has not gone well at all this year for Minnesota. We get in to that Ohio State sweep of the Gophers and preview this coming weekend with Notre Dame. But USCHO has been THE source for College Hockey in the internet for 30 years now due to the work Tim has put in over the years. We also get heavy in to the new NPI rankings as well.

BTN's Paul Caponigri joined the show as our guest as Minnesota gets a very encouraging sweep of Wisconsin. The power play is now the 2nd best in the country, are things finally coming together? What is happening with Gavin McKenna? Penn State or State Penn? We get in to all of that along with a preview of the Ohio State series this weekend.

Wisconsin State Journal's Todd Milewski made his 20th podcast appearance as we get ready for the Wisconsin Badgers this weekend. While Minnesota is on a 7 game losing streak, the Badgers are on a 4 game losing streak themselves. So it will make for an interesting weekend as the two teams will face each other for the first time in history with both teams having lost 4 or more games in a row.

Though the Gophers are not having a good season, especially here in January. We had fun celebrating our 300th podcast with Gopher Legend Pat Micheletti! But it did turn in to a what felt like a therapy session has the Gophers grabbed only a single point against the Wolverines. I HIGHLY recommend checking out the full show on YouTube. We had a 2 hour overtime that included Nate Well, Drew Cove, Eric Schierhorn, Craig Flor, Brian Deutsch and Ben Holden.

Not a great start for Minnesota in 2026 as they get swept by Penn State. We had former Gopher Nick Angell to survey the situation. Nick went in to detail on what it takes to turn a team around and he shared a lot of it with us on the show. We also got an update on the Golden Helmet Collective initiative from Nick. Oh... Number 1 Michigan is also in town this weekend as January looks to be a super tough road ahead for Minnesota.

After the long December break, we are back at full strength and ready for the 2nd half of the season! We recapped the OSU series in early December and got heavily in to the World Junior Tournament that just finished up. The Gophers are on the road at Penn State this weekend to kick off a very tough January schedule.

Dan Woog, the son of former coach Doug Woog, joined the GPL podcast to reminice about his Dad. Great stories about "Wooger" from "Boomer". We also got in to the big win over Denver this past weekend and previewed the road series with Ohio State.

John King is back on the show and he is a bit concerned with this years team. Last week did look a lot better with the split of Penn State. This week they head west to play Denver in the Hall of Fame game. We get in to all of that and more on the show this week.